Category: links_read

“Democrats need better leadership” – Andrew Gawthorpe

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“You need to control institutions in order to win at politics, so almost by definition you need institutionalists. You need people who are comfortable making compromises and doing boring stuff. But you also need to energize and mobilize people, and the institutionalists tend to be bad at that because they’re busy making compromises and doing boring stuff. So for that you need activists.

Ideally, you want these two tendencies to co-exist. There will be tension between them, but they ought to operate within certain limits. Instead, what we’re seeing right now is essentially a battle of institutionalists versus activists. But that is ultimately self-defeating – because, to repeat, you need both to win. What the Democrats really need are leaders who can synthesize both necessities and build a solid movement. And for that, they need better leaders.

https://amerex.substack.com/p/democrats-need-some-better-leaders

“The Polling Imperilment” – Rick Perlstein (The American Prospect)

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“That error opens up onto the myriad conceptual fallacies built into the entire enterprise, if something so unavoidable can be called an “error.” Past performance is no guarantee of future results; but past performance is all a pollster has to go on. That’s why much of the process of choosing and weighting samples is … well, you can call it “more art than science.” Or you can call it “intuitive.” Or you can call it “trial and error.” But you can also call it “made up.”

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-09-25-polling-imperilment/

“My Brief but Fruitful Career as a Smut Peddler” – Christina Myers (The Walrus)

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“But I’ve come to discover that’s often the case: the most average people you know—the folks you’ll never see on the cover of a magazine, or the people with nerdy hobbies or weird hair or imperfect bodies—are probably having a lot of fun in their private time. (Seriously, if you’re looking for enthusiastic, friendly, kinky people? Try the comic shop or a Star Trek convention or the adults hanging out at the Lego store on new-release day, before you hit the club or a dating app.)”

https://thewalrus.ca/my-brief-but-fruitful-career-as-a-smut-peddler/

“Mauritania’s Secret to Stability” – Fritz Schapp (Das Spiegel)

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“Messoud and his unit are the doctors here. But they are also police officers, counselors, intelligence agents and intermediaries between the people here and the politicians and officials in the cities. They are the state, bringing the rudimentary services of the government on camelback to the most remote villages – places that no cars can reach and where cellphone service is nonexistent”

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/keeping-the-peace-on-camelback-mauritanias-secret-to-stability-a-223fc1f0-c4fe-4483-9815-d6040d659c91

“You don’t want to read this” – Ian Dunt

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“The First World War dominates the culture of the time. It echoes down to us in poetry, literature and film. The flu pandemic which followed infected a third of the global population and killed anywhere up to 100 million people and yet you never really see anything about it. It never comes up. Apart from one informational film, which survives in the BFI National Archive, the 1918/19 pandemic doesn’t appear in British film at all”

https://iandunt.substack.com/p/you-dont-want-to-read-this

“All people could do was hope the nerds would fix it’: the global panic over the millennium bug, 25 years on” – Tom Faber (The Guardian)

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“The remediation work was not sexy. Guenier called the job of scouring raw code for dates that might be problematic an “exceptionally boring and unglamorous undertaking” that involved repeated rounds of testing, because changing code could cause issues elsewhere in the system. It was an enormous job. Martyn Thomas, who ran Y2K remediation efforts internationally for Deloitte, recalled the work for the finance division of General Motors in Europe: “We put together a small army of people, rented an aircraft hangar and bought three or four hundred PCs so we could run the scanning and repair equipment needed. And that was just one example of what was happening all over the world.”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/dec/28/all-people-could-do-was-hope-the-nerds-would-fix-it-the-global-panic-over-the-millennium-bug-25-years-on

“The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age” – Thea Lim (The Walrus)

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“What we hardly talk about is how we’ve reorganized not just industrial activity but any activity to be capturable by computer, a radical expansion of what can be mined. Friendship is ground zero for the metrics of the inner world, the first unquantifiable shorn into data points: Friendster testimonials, the MySpace Top 8, friending. Likewise, the search for romance has been refigured by dating apps that sell paid-for rankings and paid access to “quality” matches. Or, if there’s an off-duty pursuit you love—giving tarot readings, polishing beach rocks—it’s a great compliment to say: “You should do that for money.” Join the passion economy, give the market final say on the value of your delights”

https://thewalrus.ca/collapse-of-self-worth-in-the-digital-age/

“Murder, burglaries, losing every week: Life at bottom of the football pyramid” – Sam Cunningham (The I paper)

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“They tried to comply, raising money for floodlights and getting permission from the council, who own the pitch, to install them. “The following season not only do you need floodlights, the ground has to be enclosed and you have to be able to take money from a gate. We couldn’t do it. It’s a public park.

“So we’re down from One to Two. Not because we weren’t any good but because the FA deemed the pyramid should be based on the facilities not ability.

“When a footballer comes here on a Saturday afternoon they’ve got decent changing rooms, good kit, they come into the bar afterwards, we cook good food, we look after them well – what more do you want?”

Many other clubs like the 61 FC are now essentially trapped at the bottom of the pyramid. Old Bradwell United finished top in four successive seasons but were blocked from the league above”

https://inews.co.uk/sport/football/murder-burglaries-losing-every-week-life-bottom-football-pyramid-3468521

“They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed” – J Oliver Conroy (The Guardian)

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“Confusion and disillusion slowly set in. Many people had paid dearly, personally and financially, to come to northern California to solve the alignment problem. They’d devoted years to the mission, often at great opportunity cost to their careers. They’d made the best friends they’d ever had, and then – in an environment where some people believed it was literally impossible to agree to disagree – lost them to bitter intellectual schisms, exhaustion and nervous collapse. They’d sacrificed to be present at the birth of the future, and now discovered that the future was already being born elsewhere”

https://www.theguardian.com/global/ng-interactive/2025/mar/05/zizians-artificial-intelligence

“A television show called the USA” – Hamilton Nolan

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“The protest checked every “what we should be doing now” box—bringing community members into the streets, speaking out, remaining unswayed in our beliefs, taking action—but it was all playing out in an America where the mood to push the the kid in the wheelchair into the mud and laugh has taken hold. The mean spirit of nihilistic vengeance is momentarily unleashed. We will stuff it back in its box, sooner or later. But not yet”

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/a-television-show-called-the-usa