Below are posts associated with the “link” type.
🔗 linkblog: Going the Distance at the Tram Driver Olympics'
I had never heard of the tram driver Olympics before, and I love it. [gift link]
🔗 linkblog: Haitian immigrants helped revive a struggling Ohio town. Then neo-Nazis turned up'
Taking cues from neo-Nazis is a great look for the GOP ticket.
🔗 linkblog: A day in Elon Musk’s mind: 145 tweets with election conspiracies and emojis'
24 hours on Elon’s Twitter feed is a great idea for a story, and I’m glad someone did it!
🔗 linkblog: How Memphis became a battleground over Elon Musk’s xAI supercomputer'
Who benefits from AI? Who doesn’t?
🔗 linkblog: Big publishers think libraries are the enemy'
A good take by Molly White. I remember when I stopped thinking about ebooks in terms of screens (as opposed to paper) and started thinking about them in terms of DRM (as opposed to free use). DRM helps the already powerful at the expense of everything else, and I want to do more to push back against it.
🔗 linkblog: What Musk's Twitter takeover could tell us about a possible government appointment'
I’m currently reading Extremely Hardcore and can’t wait to read Character Limit. The Twitter purchase alone ought to dismiss any serious ideas that Musk could do this kind of work.
🔗 linkblog: Father of Ohio boy, 11, tells Trump and Vance to stop using son’s death for ‘political gain’'
Good for the dad, and shame on the politicians being this terrible.
🔗 linkblog: Elon Musk Threatens to Impregnate Taylor Swift'
Can something be shocking but not surprising? I’ve been thinking about this all day and still can’t believe it’s real.
🔗 linkblog: Fayette County schools leaving X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter'
Wish it were for more principled reasons, but I’ll take it.
🔗 linkblog: 750 | What’s Brewing | Wasatch Front | Part II'
I’m bookmarking this episode for later because it does a better job than I’ve ever heard of talking about how messy and complex and difficult it can be to have Mormon roots in Community of Christ—and it doesn’t even get into some of the “outside Utah” vs. “in Utah” dynamics that I personally think get overlooked.
🔗 linkblog: People are paying 'Strava mules' to do their runs for them, but why?
This is a take on digital labor and datafication that I can honestly say I never expected.
🔗 linkblog: College Grades Have Become a Charade. It's Time To Abolish Them. - Slashdot'
I really ought to read the original piece instead of just the Slashdot excerpt, but I tried that, and it just made me even more angry, and I don’t think it would change my response.
I’m not opposed to doing away with grades, but I’m not convinced by hand-wringing about grade inflation. Grades do need to be meaningful to be useful, but the idea that As need to be reserved for an elite few speaks less to meritocracy (referenced in the full piece) than to a need for an elite.
🔗 linkblog: Second Circuit Says Libraries Disincentivize Authors To Write Books By Lending Them For Free'
Deeply appreciate Masnick’s writeup. I don’t know the ins and outs of the law, and that’s given me some pause in being upset about the ruling. To see a lawyer find fault with so much gives me greater confidence in my own frustration.
The most dangerous part, though, doesn’t require a law degree to understand. The logic of the findings poses a threat to all libraries, not just this one.
🔗 linkblog: Is Your Google Scholar Profile Looking A Bit Empty? Need To Bulk Up Your Citations? Simple – Buy Some'
Interesting read wirh important implications for how we think about research quality.
🔗 linkblog: AI Checkers Forcing Kids To Write Like A Robot To Avoid Being Called A Robot'
I am way more pessimistic about AI than Masnick is, but we agree on this sort of thing. Algorithmic surveillance is no more appropriate in response to AI concerns than it is to cheating concerns.
🔗 linkblog: The Internet Archive just lost its appeal over ebook lending'
In a weird kind of Streisand effect, I’ve only started using the Internet Archive library since this lawsuit began and it’s a fantastic service. I won’t pretend to know the ins and outs of copyright law, but this sucks.
🔗 linkblog: How a Group of Teenagers Pranked 'One Million Checkboxes' - Slashdot'
Sometimes the internet is good.
🔗 linkblog: Zuckerberg’s Spineless Surrender: Rehashing Old News To Enable False GOP Narratives'
This is one of these stories where I’ve been waiting to get Masnick’s take on it, and he does not disappoint.
🔗 linkblog: How Telegram's Founder Pavel Durov Became a Culture War Martyr'
I’ve been trying to think through Durov’s arrest since I first heard about it—there are a lot of complex things going on here. I think this captures nicely my thoughts and taught me a few things, too.
Telegram is a sketchy platform (technically even more than in terms of content), but that doesn’t mean arresting the founder is warranted. Yet, that doesn’t mean that outcry on the right is in good faith, either.
🔗 linkblog: CAPTCHAs Becoming Useless as AI Gets Smarter, Scientists Warn'
One thing this article misses is how often CAPTCHA has been used to train AI. It’s always been playing both sides against each other.
🔗 linkblog: Ask God (Terms and Conditions Apply)'
This article speaks to a deep tension in Mormon theology: You can pray to God to tell you what is right, but you shouldn’t expect it to tell you something different than what church leaders say. To what extent, then, does prayer become subordinated to obedience?
🔗 linkblog: KY prisoners hack state-issued computer tablets to digitally create $1M. How’d they do it?'
Prisoners got punished for taking advantage of a hilarious exploit in an app for transferring money from their commissary accounts to a private company’s media store, but no one at that private company is being held accountable for unironically describing prisons as a “growth industry.”
This sounds like something Doctorow would have made up for The Bezzle, and it’s kind of amazing that I’m reading it in the news instead.