Let me tell you how I became a proud science denier, and how it saved my life.
--
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2025/03/12/epi…
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In case you weren’t paying attention, most of the people that understand economics told you that Trump was going to be a disaster. Only those that were part of the cult told you otherwise. So now you are going to act surprised because you voted for a felon, a bigot, a con man, and a dolt.
fastcompany.com/91294460/trump…
WOW 😳 🤯
The Trump administration and GOP, they are admitting this!!!
A true story: at one point Microsoft was selling four entirely unrelated products all pronounced "link". Microsoft Link, Linq, Lynq and Lync.
You'd think whoever let that happen would have lost their job, but years later as we were struggling to fix a Teams interop problem in Firefox, we discovered that the real problem was that MS had _two unrelated products called Microsoft Teams_ who never talked to each other.
Well good news everyone, that guy got promoted:
theverge.com/news/627483/micro…
Microsoft is replacing Remote Desktop with its new Windows app
Microsoft is replacing its Remote Desktop app with the new Windows app. The transition will take place on May 27th.Tom Warren (The Verge)
Not to take away from the amusement but LINQ wasn't "sold" nor was it a product, it was a technology included in .NET.
Microsoft really do have a naming problem though. I used to work at Xbox and I couldn't tell you how all the Xbox console names relate to each other. Unlike PlayStation where any Joe can understand that.
Anchorage Police Department: AI-Generated Police Reports Don’t Save Time
The Anchorage Police Department (APD) has concluded its three-month trial of Axon’s Draft One, an AI system that uses audio from body-worn cameras to write narrative police reports for officers—and has decided not to retain the technology.Electronic Frontier Foundation
Protect Net Plurality! 🦾
Broad brush duties under the UK Online Safety Act threaten any website with possible penalties.
Small, safe sites can't shoulder this burden. We'll see the lights going out on blogs, Fedi instances and forums from 17 March with a devastating impact for online communities.
The Fediverse is under attack!
We must #SaveOurSites 🌐
openrightsgroup.org/blog/save-…
#netplurality #onlinesafety #onlinesafetyact #ukpolitics #ukpol #mastodon #fediverse #activitypub
Save our Sites: Deadline 17 March
Incredible as it may seem, thanks to the Online Safety Act, dozens of harmless, safe, small websites are closing down by 17 March, rather than face threats of fines that could lose their operators their homes.Open Rights Group
reshared this
I live in the UK and I'm in the process of building a website about vintage buses, a harmless subject, you'd think. But what if my opinions, or comments made by my readers fall foul of these unclear rules? The UK's freedom of speech is being quickly (not slowly) eroded.
I think I'll just build my website offline for now and just post on Mastodon, until Mastodon faces the same issues as been suggested regarding content by UK users.
Let's hope that it never comes to that.
Online speech went the moment the law was passed. Mastodon is the least safe from the law too, as there's no big lobbyist to help us. I'm starting to think if they're going to make us criminals just for talking to each other (the law talks about groupchats and email too), we might be better off just accepting it and talking via Tor anyway, sadly...
@openrightsgroup
Step-by-step guide to reading the leaked militia chats yourself
Welcome to the second installment of my series on the Paramilitary Leaks! In case you missed it, the first installment is here: Exploring the Paramilitary Leaks. Since I published that, several people reached out offering to help.Micah Lee (micahflee)
Blaise (@Beerbruin@makersocial.online)
756 Posts, 430 Following, 178 Followers · Engineer, Dad, Maker, Artist, Ballroom Dancer, Entrepreneur, Axe-flinger...Maker Social
reshared this
buff.ly/5IQacBx
US-Ukraine deal highlights Ukraine’s wealth of critical minerals, but extracting them isn’t so simple
Critical minerals are in demand around the world for military, technology and other uses. A geoscientist shares what’s known about Ukraine’s reserves, which could help the country recover from war.The Conversation
[ It's decided, OPNsense is currently installing over pfSense! ]
So my Intel N100 quad core with 16Gb ram and a 256GB NVME drive and 4 x 2.5Gb ethernet ports has arrived with pfSense preinstalled but I'm thinking I'd be better off with #OPNsense installed instead?
Am I right as this is going to be my main router / firewall ? Feel free to comment and thank you.
No I'm not using #OpenWRT anymore sorry.
#FreeBSD #IntelNUC #RunBSD
Migrants detained in Panama expressed fear of returning to their countries.
“They will execute me without hesitation,” one texted.
“I am LGBT. My country harass these people. I cannot live a normal life in my country,” said another.
propublica.org/article/trump-d…
#News #Panama #Trump #Immigration #Migrants #Asylum #Aid
As Trump Pushes for More Deportations, Protections for Asylum-Seekers Unravel
The administration’s moves to expel asylum-seekers to third countries put the International Organization for Migration at the center of a policy critics have called illegal.ProPublica
ProPublica reshared this.
By now it should be clear to all refugees (for poverty or persecution) that the U.S. is no longer "the land of the free" but the "home of the Donald Trump ass lickers", who preach anyone who has no money is a criminal (most real criminals have lots of money).
Europe is no alternative: simply to many refugees coming, no place to stay, no jobs. Also Europe has a strict policy: any employer who hires illegal immigrants pays a large fine. Hospitals will not be payed for treating you.
You know, if Tesla fired him and brought back the guys he stole the company from, they might have a chance...
theverge.com/tesla/627894/tesl…
Is Tesla cooked?
With Elon Musk in DC, Tesla has slumped. Sales are down, stock is down, and the future looks even tougher. How can the EV maker get back on track?Andrew J. Hawkins (The Verge)
Blaise reshared this.
‼️ Cause of post-#COVID inflammatory shock in children identified: Reactivation of the Epstein-Barr virus appears to cause the rare condition #MISC. The findings, uncovered by a team from #CharitéBerlin & the DRFZ, have now been published in #Nature.
💡 These insights open the door to new treatment methods, potentially not limited to MIS-C.
👉 charite.de/en/service/press_re…
#CharitéPaper #Science #Research #Medicine #EBV #PIMS #SARSCoV2 #COVID19 #corona
@nature.portfolio
Press reports: Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin
Press release of the Charité – Universitätsmedizin BerlinCharité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin
Gemma 3 is optimized to run on powerful multi-GPU PCs or a single smartphone.
arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/0…
Today is the anniversary of the invention of the World Wide Web in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee.
W3C has continued to expand on what the web does by our mission to make the web work, for everyone. We bring together global stakeholders to develop open standards that enable a World Wide Web that connects and empowers humanity.
w3.org/mission/
Our mission
Learn who W3C is, our values and the principles upon which we conduct our mission to led the Web to its full potential.W3C
❝The Newsom podcasts gutted me. I’m not bothered that he’s talking to conservatives. I’m an organizer. I’m all about outreach. The idea that you should be willing to talk anybody about what you believe and why you believe it is embedded deep in my soul. But the whole reason you have conversations like that is so that you stand up for those who aren’t in the room.❞
Garrett Bucks via @beep:
follow.ethanmarcotte.com/@beep…
Ethan Marcotte (@beep@follow.ethanmarcotte.com)
“You’re always allowed to say no. You don’t actually have to throw anybody under the bus. You can in fact say that the laid-off auto worker deserves sympathy, but so does the single mom on welfare and the trans teenager who loves volleyball and the V…beepin’
Whose failure? Failure can be defined only in relation to a goal. Certainly it's a terrible defeat for humanity, but from the perspective of the people we have in power, it's a success
@inthehands
news.mit.edu/2025/study-climat…
"In a study appearing today in Nature Sustainability, the researchers report that #CO2 and other greenhouse gases can cause the upper atmosphere to shrink. An atmospheric layer of special interest is the thermosphere, where the ISS and most satellites orbit today. When the thermosphere contracts, the decreasing density reduces atmospheric drag - a force that pulls old satellites and other debris down to altitudes where they will encounter air molecules and burn up."
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Study: Climate change will reduce the number of satellites that can safely orbit in space
Greenhouse emissions are changing the environment of near-Earth space in ways that, over time, will reduce the number of satellites that can safely operate there, according to new MIT research.MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
On April 1, #Wisconsin will elect a State Supreme Court Justice. Justices serve 10-year terms & make decisions that impact your rights, including abortion access and voting laws and will shape Wisconsin’s future for decades to come.
Judge Crawford cares about voters abroad, so much so that she called #DemocratsAbroad to answer your questions! Watch the recording here to find out more, and remember to send your ballot back ASAP!
youtube.com/watch?v=-DtdhBlY_B…
#WisconsinitesAbroad #WISupremeCourt
District Judge Susan Crawford, WI Supreme Court Candidate
Hear from District Judge Susan Crawford, WI Supreme Court Candidate, as she speaks with Democrats Abroad. Judge Crawford, a respected legal expert and advoca...YouTube
Climate Group Funded by Bill Gates Slashes Staff in Major Retreat
Breakthrough Energy, an umbrella group for energy and environmental efforts funded by Mr. Gates, is resetting for the Trump era.David Gelles (The New York Times)
Glyn Moody reshared this.
no by DaenaKey
Source: artstation.com/daenakey
#DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #ttrpg #character #characterart #art #digitalart
2025/058
File under: #35mm #amLand #au #BelieveInFilm #dartingtonHall #devon #england #FilmIsNotDead #filmphotography #flora #karlender25 #kodakPortra400 #leicaM4p #nokton40mm #riverDart #swe #wald #wasser #wood
More: karlender.net/5872/
Congress reignites a bipartisan effort to ban hair discrimination
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/12/nx-s1-5324544/crown-act-reintroduced-2025?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Race @race-npr
Meta fights to keep leeching evidence out of AI copyright battle.
arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…
John Oliver Set Up a Guide to Make Your Data Less Valuable to Mark Zuckerberg
gizmodo.com/john-oliver-set-up…
#news #technology #tech #Internet #facebook #meta #security #privacy
John Oliver Set Up a Guide to Make Your Data Less Valuable to Mark Zuckerberg
It's one time it's okay to cheapen yourself.AJ Dellinger (Gizmodo)
Bob Dylan Explains Why Music Has Been Getting Worse
openculture.com/2025/03/bob-dy…
Bob Dylan Explains Why Music Has Been Getting Worse
One often hears that there's no money to be made in music anymore. But then, there was no money to be made in music when Bob Dylan started his career either—at least according to Bob Dylan.Colin Marshall (Openculture.com)
Keir Starmer’s government held a private meeting with Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons company, Declassified has found.
The meeting occurred in December 2024 and was attended by three representatives from Elbit Systems and three officials from Yvette Cooper’s Home Office.
It took place months after Israeli forces used an Elbit drone to kill three British military veterans in Gaza who were protecting a humanitarian aid convoy.
declassifieduk.org/labour-held…
Labour held secret meeting with top Israeli arms firm
Exclusive: Home Office met with Elbit Systems amid crackdown on Palestine Action, documents reveal.JOHN McEVOY (Declassified Media ltd)
Make it rain 🌧️
The UK government’s demand for a spy hole makes your iCloud storage leaky.
All your pics, docs, finances and more are up for grabs. Hackers, blackmailers and predators will have a field day.
Sign our petition to save Apple encrypted services!
➡️ you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions…
#encryption #e2ee #privacy #security #cybersecurity #ukpolitics #ukpol #apple
Keep our Apple data encrypted
It is reported that the Home Office has ordered Apple to build a backdoor into its encrypted services so that they can get hold of content that any Apple user has upload to the cloud. Encryption keeps our private information safe and secure.38 Degrees
History is a set of lies agreed upon.
The UK government took to revisionist tactics and wiped its advice for lawyers and barristers to use Apple encrypted services.
Putting victims of crime at a greater risk of harm so you don't contradict yourself isn't a good look 🤷♂️
techcrunch.com/2025/03/06/uk-q…
#encryption #e2ee #privacy #security #cybersecurity #ukpolitics #ukpol #apple
UK quietly scrubs encryption advice from government websites | TechCrunch
The UK is no longer recommending the use of encryption for at-risk groups following its iCloud backdoor demandsCarly Page (TechCrunch)
In response to the State's demand for insecurity, Apple withdrew its encrypted services from the UK and appealed.
A secret tribunal now decides 🤫
This hearing MUST happen in public.
It starts with Apple... the UK government will chomp away encryption to a rotten core.
digit.fyi/apple-to-battle-uk-g…
#encryption #e2ee #privacy #security #cybersecurity #ukpolitics #ukpol #apple
Apple to battle UK Gov over encryption in secret tribunal
Apple is set to appeal against a Home Office order to create a 'backdoor' to it encryption tools in a secret tribunal.elizabeth (DIGIT.FYI)
Trump increasing the wrong kind of consumption.
nytimes.com/2025/03/11/health/…
Tuberculosis Resurgent as Trump Funding Cut Disrupts Treatment Globally
The United States was the major funder of tuberculosis programs. Now hundreds of thousands of sick patients can’t find tests or drugs, and risk spreading the disease.Stephanie Nolen (The New York Times)
The largest camera ever built for astrophysics (3200-megapixels, >3000 kg) was installed this week at the Rubin Observatory at Cerro Pachón in Chile.
The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) camera, the final major component of the Rubin Observatory's Simonyi Survey Telescope, was transported to the summit in May 2024.
After a few more months of testing, first light is expected around 4 Jul 2025.
noirlab.edu/public/news/noirla…
lsst.org/about/project-status
#Science #Astronomy #Space
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NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory Installs LSST Camera on Telescope
Using the largest digital camera in the world, Rubin Observatory will soon be ready to capture more data than any other observatory in historywww.noirlab.edu
The Rubin Legacy Survey of Space and Time LSST Camera is the largest camera ever constructed for astronomy. It is a large-aperture, wide-field optical camera, capable of viewing light from the near UV to near infrared wavelengths.
Length: 3.73 m
Height: 1.65 m
Weight: 2,800 kg
Pixels: 3.2 billion
Wavelength: 0.32–1.06 μm
Filters: 6 (u-g-r-i-z-y)
Field of view = 3.5° (moon = 0.5°)
Operating temperature: -100°C
www6.slac.stanford.edu/lsst
lsst.org/about/camera/features
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LSST Camera | SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Learn more about the LSST Camera for the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory led the construction of the LSST Camera – the largest digital camera ever built for astrophysics and cosmology.SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
The focal plane of the Vera C. Rubin telescope consists of 189 4kx4k charge-coupled device (CCD) sensors, arranged in a total of 21 3-by-3 square arrays. The system is cooled to about -100 °C to minimize noise.
The 3.5° field of view of the 64 cm wide array is 40 times the area of the full moon in the sky.
Camera Data Rates: ~3.2 GBytes/sec peak raw data 😲
1 pixel = 16 bits (raw)
Pixels: 3.2 billion
Detector read-out time: 2 sec
flickr.com/photos/slaclab/with…
www6.slac.stanford.edu/lsst
#Rubin
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LSST Camera | SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Learn more about the LSST Camera for the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory led the construction of the LSST Camera – the largest digital camera ever built for astrophysics and cosmology.SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
What Trump's cuts to the Department of Education mean for schools and students
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/12/nx-s1-5325731/what-trumps-cuts-to-the-department-of-education-mean-for-schools-and-students?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into U.S. News @u-s-news-npr
Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
It was about 15 years ago. I was living in London, and my wife's job came with a private health insurance buff that let us use private doctors instead of the NHS. I've had worsening chronic pain my whole life, and I've never found anything that made it better, so I thought, fine, I'll see a fancy specialist. So I started calling around to the quacks of Harley Street, London's elite medical precinct.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Soon, I found myself at the very posh offices of a psychopharmacologist who had good news for me: Opioids are safe! Far safer than we'd ever thought. So safe, in fact, that I should get on opioids right away, and take them every day for the rest of my life. I didn't have to worry about addiction. I'd be fine. He had a whole pile of peer-reviewed journal articles that supported this advice.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
I didn't trust the science. I suspected that billionaire-owned pharma companies were engaged in a conspiracy to cook the evidence on the safety and efficacy of their products. I thought that the regulators who were supposed to prevent them from murdering me for money were in on the game - on the take, swapping favors for these companies for a promise of cushy industry jobs after they left the public sector.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
I did my own research. I found people online who were citing other research from outside the establishment that confirmed my conspiracy theory. I decided that these strangers on the internet were more trustworthy than the respected, high-impact factor, peer-reviewed, tier-one scientific journals whose pages were full of claims about the safety and efficacy of daily opioid use for chronic pain sufferers like me. I took control over my own health.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
I didn't fill the Rx for the medicine my doctor had prescribed for me and advised me to start taking immediately. I fired my doctor.
I took these steps despite having *no* background in pharmacology, addiction studies, or medicine. I was totally unqualified to make that call. I was a science denier - but I was also *right*.
It probably saved my life.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
A decade later, I faced another medical question: should I get a new kind of vaccine, which was claimed to be effective against the covid-19 pandemic? The companies that manufactured that vaccines were part of the same industry that falsified the research on opioids. The regulators that signed off on those vaccines were the same regulators that signed off on opioid safety claims. Neither had ever been forced to reckon with the failures that led to the opioid epidemic.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The procedures that allowed that shameful episode were the same, and the structures that allowed the perversion of those procedures were likewise the same. And once again, there was a clamor of dissenting voices from people who distrusted the official medical position on these new pharma products, insisting that they were the creations of pharma billionaires who didn't care if I lived or died, overseen by regulators who were utterly in their pockets.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
I got the vaccine, and then several more. But I tell you what: I had no more rational basis to trust vaccines than I had for mistrusting opioids. I am not qualified to evaluate the scientific claims related to either question, and I know it.
This is an objectively very frightening situation to be in.
We navigate *so many* of these life-or-death technical questions *every single day*:
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Anne Ominous
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
ugh... this portion of the thread is reminding me of listening to Colin Powell make wild claims about WMDs that most people swallowed unquestioningly, while me... a scientist with no military training who had never been to Iraq felt pretty confident the whole thing was bullshit.
spolier alert! it was!
the weirdest thing too, was that Powell himself seemed to actually believe the lies he was peddling. so surreal.
Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
* Is my Boeing plane airworthy?
* Are the air traffic controllers adequately trained, staffed and rested?
* Is the firmware for my antilock brakes of high quality?
* Are the hygiene procedures at this restaurant robust enough to prevent the introduction of life-threatening pathogens and contaminants?
* Are the pedagogical theories at my kid's school well-founded, or are do they produce ignoramuses whose only skill is satisfying standardized testing rubrics?
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
* Are the safety standards that specify the joists in my ceiling any good, or am I about to die, buried under tons of rubble?
Every one of these questions is the sort of thing that even highly skilled researchers and experts can - and do - disagree on. Definitively answering just *one* of these questions might require the equivalent of *several* PhDs.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Realistically, you're not going to be able to personally arrive at a trustworthy answer to all of these, and it's very likely you won't even be able to answer *any* of them.
That's what experts are for. But that just raises another problem: how do you know which experts you should listen to?
You don't.
You can't. Even experts who mean well and are well-versed in their fields can make mistakes.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
For every big, consequential technical question, there are conflicts, both minor and major, among experts who seem to be qualified and honest. Figuring out which expert to trust is essentially the same problem as answering the question for yourself.
But despite all these problems, you are almost certainly alive as you read these words. How did that happen?
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
It's all down to referees. In our public policy forums, we entrust publicly accountable bureaucrats to hear all the claims of all the experts, sift through them, and then publish a (provisional) official truth. These public servants are procedurally bound to operate in the open, soliciting comments and countercomments to a public docket, holding public hearings, publishing readouts of private meetings with interested parties.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Having gathered all the claims and counterclaims, these public servants reason in public, publishing not just a ruling, but the rationale for the ruling - why they chose to believe some experts over others.
The transparency obligations on these public servants - whom we call "regulators" - don't stop there, either. Regulators are required to both disclose their conflicts of interest, and to recuse themselves where those conflicts arise.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Finally, the whole process has multiple error-correction systems. Rules can be challenged in court on the grounds that they were set without following the rules, and the expert agencies that employ these regulators have their own internal procedures for re-opening an inquiry when new evidence comes to light.
The point of all this is to create something that you, me, and everyone we know can inspect, understand and verify.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
I may not have the cell biology chops to evaluate claims about MRNA vaccine safety, but I *am* equipped to look at the *process* by which the vaccines were approved and satisfy myself that they were robust. I can't evaluate the contents of most regulations, but I can certainly tell you whether the box the regulation shipped in was made of square cornered, stiff cardboard:
pluralistic.net/2024/03/25/bla…
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Pluralistic: Conspiratorialism and the epistemological crisis (25 Mar 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
That's why the vaccine question was so tough. The opioid crisis had shown the procedure to be badly flawed, and the fact that neither the FDA nor Congress cleaned house *after* that crisis meant that the procedure was demonstrably faulty. Same goes for getting in a 737 MAX. The issue isn't that Boeing made some mistakes - it's that the FAA lets Boeing mark its own homework, even after Boeing was caught cheating:
pluralistic.net/2024/05/01/boe…
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Pluralistic: Boeing’s deliberately defective fleet of flying sky-wreckage (01 May 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
I'm not qualified to tell you how many rivets a jet plane's door-plug should have, but I can confidently say that Boeing has demonstrated that it doesn't know either, and the FAA has demonstrated that it has no interest in making Boeing any better at resolving this question.
It's no coincidence that our political process has been poisoned by conspiratorialism.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
America's ruling party is dominated by conspiracy fantasists who believe in all kinds of demonstrably untrue things about health, public safety, international politics, economics and more. They were voted in by an electorate that is similarly in the grips of conspiratorial beliefs.
It's natural to focus on these beliefs, but that focus hasn't gotten us anywhere.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Far more important than *what* the Republican base believes is *how* they arrive at those beliefs. The Republican establishment - politicians, think-tankies, pundits, newscasters - have spent decades slandering expert agencies and also corrupting them, making them worse at their jobs and therefore easier to slander.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Market fundamentalism insists that "truth" is to be found in markets: if everyone is inserting radium suppositories, the government's has no business forcing you to stop stuffing radioactive waste up your asshole:
pluralistic.net/2024/09/19/jus…
Rather than telling restaurants how often their chefs should wash their hands, we can let markets decide - merely require restaurants to display their handwashing procedures, and then diners can vote with their alimentary canals.
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Pluralistic: Thinking the unthinkable (19 Sep 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
To the septic goes the spoils! Of course, the government also has no business deciding whether their disclosures are truthful - isn't that why we have a First Amendment? So while we might require restaurants to display their handwashing procedures, we're not going to send the signage cops down to the diner to bust a restaurant for lying about those procedures.
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Jo with elbows up & chin up
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Cory Doctorow reshared this.
Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The twin assault on both the credibility and reliability of expert agencies came to a head with the *Loper Bright* decision, in which the Supreme Court gutted expert agencies' rulemaking ability, seemingly in the expectation that Congress - overwhelming populated by very old people who trained as lawyers in the previous century - would make fine-grained safety rules covering everything from water to aerospace:
pluralistic.net/2024/11/21/pol…
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Pluralistic: Expert agencies and elected legislatures (21 Nov 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Conspiratorialism is the inevitable outcome of a world where:
a) You must resolve complex, life-or-death technical issues which;
b) You are not qualified to answer; and
c) Cannot trust the referees who are supposed to navigate these questions on your behalf.
Conpsiratorialism is only secondarily about *what* you believe. Mostly, conspiratorialism is about *how you arrive at those beliefs.* Conspiratorialism isn't a problem of bad facts - it's a problem of bad epistemology.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
We live in a true epistemological void, in which the truth is increasingly for sale.
That's the backdrop against which Doge is doing its dirty business. Doge's assault on expert agencies enjoys a depressing degree of popular support, but it's not hard to understand why: so many of our expert agencies have staged high-profile demonstrations of their unfitness, without any consequences, that it's easy to sell the story that these referees were *all* on the take.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
They weren't, of course. Most expert regulators - career civil servants - really care about their jobs. They want to make sure you can survive a trip to the grocery story rather than shitting your guts out with listeria or giardia, that your plane doesn't collide with a military chopper, that your kids graduate school knowing more than how to pass a standardized test.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The tragedy is that these honorable, skilled regulators' commitment to your wellbeing isn't enough to produce policies that actually safeguard your wellbeing.
Musk doesn't want to fix the real, urgent problems with America's administrative state: he wants to destroy it. He wants to fire the refs, because once you fire the refs, the game goes on - minus the rules.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
That's a great way to win support for authoritarian projects: "The state won't take care of you anymore (if it ever did, amirite?), but *I* will."
So they're firing the refs, and they're transforming the game of "survive until tomorrow" into Calvinball, a "nomic" in which the rules are whatever someone insists they are:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic
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Game
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Musk and Trump are in for a surprise. They have the mistaken impression that the rules only reined in their billionaire pals and the corporations that produce their wealth. But one of the most consequential effects of these rules is to limit labor activism. The National Labor Relations Act put very strict limits on union organizing and union militancy.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Now that Trump has effectively shut down the National Labor Relations Board (by illegally firing a Democratic board member, leaving the board without a quorum), all bets are off:
pluralistic.net/2025/01/29/whi…
Trump won office in part by insisting that America's institutions were not fit for purpose. He wasn't lying about that (for a change). The thing he was lying about was his desire to fix them.
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Pluralistic: All bets are off (29 Jan 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Trump doesn't want honest refs - he wants *no* refs. To defeat Trumpism, we need to stop pretending that our institutions are just fine - we need to confront their failings head on and articulate a plan to fix them, rather than claiming "America was already great":
pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/tha…
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Pluralistic: Conservatives are fringe outliers – and leftists could learn from them (16 June 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel *Picks and Shovels*.
Catch me in BURBANK TOMORROW (Mar 13) with WIL WHEATON:
thethirdplace.is/event/cory-do…
And in SAN DIEGO on Mar 24:
mystgalaxy.com/32425Doctorow
More tour dates here:
martinhench.com
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The Third Place | Software for Local Businesses to Build a Sense of Home and Community
thethirdplace.isbe3n
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
here is one:
darkdel.com/#/
Dark Delicacies
Dark DelicaciesCory Doctorow
in reply to be3n • • •Sensitive content
Evan Prodromou
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Evan Prodromou • • •Sensitive content
frank87
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
(And "they are stupid" or "payed off" isn't an expert explanation)
Les capsules du prof Lutz
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Cory Doctorow reshared this.
Cory Doctorow
Unknown parent • • •Bjørn Stærk
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •an older example of the same thing: to be gay in the 1970s, in many countries you had to think you knew better than the health authorities, who believed this was an illness you should try to cure.
and then, a couple of years later, the same health authorities ask you to believe that there's a dangerous illness going around that somehow mysteriously requires gay people to limit their sex lives.
knowing which scientific claims to trust is _very hard_.
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Cory Doctorow
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LonM
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •I don't think this science denial. A big part of science is rigorous debate of the evidence. If you have evidence to the contrary, whether it's "anecdotal" lived experience or published data, then not blindly trusting established narrative *is* science. Dissenting views and contradictions are more valuable to the scientific process than confirmations* because it's evidence of some misunderstanding that can be used to push science as a whole forward.
*Of course you need some confirmations, and the replication crisis is a whole separate issue that leads to mistrust in science