“the image of the migrant woman and children drowning is so damaging that Texas troops claim they didn’t see any distressed migrants and Texas governor Greg Abbott today insisted that the migrants were already dead when his troops stopped the Border Patrol from helping, although that claim does not address the fact that the Texas…
“The Digital Equivalent of Wearing a Fake Chanel Bag” – Garbage Day
“the early 2010s, big social platforms transformed the internet from a place of mostly text into a network of visual content. In 2011, Twitter launched the ability to embed images directly into tweets. And a year later, Instagram was purchased by Facebook and began its slow morph from hipster Polaroid app to Facebook 2.0 for…
“The World Is Listening To Less Music In English” – Screentime (Bloomberg)
“The craziest stat of all? There are 45.6 million tracks that generated ZERO streams last year. There were 10 tracks that had more than 1 billion.” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-01-14/universal-music-layoffs-record-labels-need-a-new-growth-story
“Risky Business” – A Scammer Darkly
“In a business where some level of loss is written in, the last two years have blown a hole in P&Ls and caused an industry-wide panic. Politicians are faced with an uncomfortable choice – let for-profit insurers gouge their customers by hiking rates double digits each year, or have swaths of their citizens unable to…
“The Failed Commodification Of Technical Work” – Ludicity
“There’s plenty of work that consists of simply churning out widgets faster, and I’m happy to see that work disappear (so long as we find a way for people to continue living healthily without it), but it must be acknowledged that many of the things we value in society come from an ill-defined, more vital…
“Bitcoin has “no chance” of going to the moon” – Molly White
“I learned this week just how brain-poisoned I am from following the cryptocurrency industry. When I first saw reports that HyperVerse’s CEO was revealed to have been completely made up, I thought “lol yeah that makes sense” and went on with my day. I was then surprised to see headlines about it in mainstream outlets…
“A Continual Christmas” – Ed Zitron
“Failing to say what is actually happening for fear that you won’t be “objective” is failing your audience. Accepting that humans are biased, thoughtful, and terrible creatures, and that writing for humans requires a clarity of message and spirit, is necessary to fully communicate what is happening around us. Journalism is not objective, has never…
“Widows and Orphans” – Warren Ellis
“Widows, because sometimes you must kill your darlings. That one sentence you really like, that does its job in the piece perfectly? You know it’s too long, right? You have to find another way to say that, that uses fewer words and operates more efficiently but still has style and snap. Sometimes you have to…
“The Future of Mining Might Be Smaller than You Think” – Caitlin Stall-Paquet (The Walrus)
“He cites S&P Global’s estimate that, in transitioning to green energy, manufacturers will need more copper in the next three decades than the world consumed over the past 120 years. Demand for copper is expected to roughly double between now and 2035, to make hardware such as rechargeable batteries, solar panel heat exchangers, and wind…
“Bill Gates is bad for humanity” – Quinn Slobodian (New Statesman)
“Although Schwab’s book is a tale of frustration and even rage at the culture of secrecy and often incompetence inside Gates’s philanthropic world, it is also strangely heartening. Perhaps we are starting to solve the “Bill Gates Problem” by the creeping (if highly uneven) return of faith in the ability of public authorities to do…