Packy McCormick: Conjuring Scenius. IT’S TIME TO BUILD TOGETHER: In January, I read Taylor Lorenz’s New York Times piece on The Hype House, the LA mansion in which nineteen of TikTok’s biggest stars live, create, and collaborate. (more)

Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging is a creative nonfiction book written by Sebastian Junger and published by Simon & Schuster in 2016. In Tribe (2016) Junger studies war veterans from an anthropological perspective and asks "How do you make veterans feel that they are returning to a cohesive society that was worth fighting for in the first place?" Junger's premise is that "Soldiers ignore differences of race, religion and politics within their platoon..." and upon return to America, find a fractious society splintered into various competing factions, often hostile to one another. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribe_(Junger_book) ISBN:9781455566389

Jorge Arango: Ebooks for Efficient Note-taking. Reading sometimes feels like a conversation with the author. I’ll come across an idea in a book or paper that sparks a thought — my ‘response.’ It may be a connection with another idea, a reference to another book, a quote that resonates, or something else. Whatever it is, I don’t want to lose it, so I take notes while reading. cf My Book Reading Process (more)

The Freedom Caucus, also known as the House Freedom Caucus, is a congressional caucus consisting of Republican members of the United States House of Representatives. It is generally considered to be the most conservative and furthest-right bloc within the chamber.[1][2][3][4][5] The caucus was formed in January 2015 by a group of conservatives and Tea Party movement members,[6][7] with the aim of pushing the Republican leadership to the right.[2] Its first chairperson, Jim Jordan, described the caucus as a "smaller, more cohesive, more agile and more active" group of conservative representatives... The caucus originated during the mid–January 2015 Republican congressional retreat in Hershey, Pennsylvania.[26] According to founding member Mick Mulvaney, "that was the first time we got together and decided we were a group, and not just a bunch of pissed-off guys"... The founding members who constituted the first board of directors for the new caucus were Republican representatives Scott Garrett of New Jersey, Jim Jordan of Ohio, John Fleming of Louisiana, Matt Salmon of Arizona, Justin Amash of Michigan, Raúl Labrador of Idaho, Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, Ron DeSantis of Florida and Mark Meadows of North Carolina. (more)

Marjorie Taylor Greene (née Taylor; born May 27, 1974), also known by her initials MTG,[1] is an American far-right[2] politician, businesswoman, and conspiracy theorist[3] who has been the U.S. representative for Georgia's 14th congressional district since 2021.[4] A member of the Republican Party, she was elected to Congress in 2020 following the retirement of Republican incumbent Tom Graves and was reelected in 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjorie_Taylor_Greene

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for consumer protection in the financial sector. CFPB's jurisdiction includes banks, credit unions, securities firms, payday lenders, mortgage-servicing operations, foreclosure relief services, debt collectors, and other financial companies operating in the United States. Since its founding, the CFPB has used technology tools to monitor how financial entities used social media and algorithms to target consumers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Financial_Protection_Bureau

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. The FTC shares jurisdiction over federal civil antitrust law enforcement with the Department of Justice Antitrust Division. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Trade_Commission

Seeing Cory Doctorow Bezzle Book Reading.... (more)

Lina M. Khan (born March 3, 1989) is a British-born American legal scholar serving as chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) since 2021. She is also an associate professor of law at Columbia Law School. While a student at Yale Law School, she became known for her work in antitrust and competition law in the United States after publishing the influential essay "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lina_Khan

Pluralistic: 13 Jan 2021 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow. 20 years a blogger...It's been twenty years, to the day, since I published my first blog-post. (more)

Was a Magazine, now a WebLog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boing_Boing (more)

My current Society Design game/model: Route Around BigWorld (more)

Went to Bruce Sterling book signing for The Zenith Angle (ISBN:0-345-46061-8) last night. First time I've heard him speak - highly enjoyable (not just a q&a like that lazy Neal Stephenson dude). Some random bits: (more)

Went to Neal Stephenson book reading of Anathem at Union Square Barnes And Noble. Photo (more)

Attended a book-reading from Steven Johnson last night. Have some questions to nag him about - see Mind Wide Open. Meg Hourihan, Jason Kottke, and Matt Webb were there for support.

Game Rules that can have huge effects (Leverage, Side Effect) to Change The World. Games To Play toward Worldview Roadmap. (cf Theory of Change, Huge Invention) (more)

Shoshana Zuboff (born November 18, 1951)[2] is an American author, professor, social psychologist, philosopher, and scholar. Zuboff is the author of the books In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power and The Support Economy: Why Corporations Are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism, co-authored with James Maxmin. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, integrates core themes of her research: the Digital Revolution, the evolution of capitalism, the historical emergence of psychological individuality, and the conditions for human development.[2] Zuboff's work is the source of many original concepts including "surveillance capitalism", "instrumentarian power", the "division of learning in society", "economies of action", the "means of behavior modification", "information civilization", "computer-mediated work", the "automate/informate" dialectic, "abstraction of work", "individualization of consumption" and the "coup from above". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshana_Zuboff (more)

Cory Doctorow book: How To Destroy Surveillance Capitalism ISBN:1736205900 (more)

Human–computer interaction (HCI) is research in the design and the use of computer technology, which focuses on the interfaces between people (users) and computers. HCI researchers observe the ways humans interact with computers and design technologies that allow humans to interact with computers in novel ways. A device that allows interaction between human being and a computer is known as a "Human-computer Interface (HCI)". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human%E2%80%93computer_interaction cf User Interface

The object database storage mechanism behind Zope. Can be used on its own as well. (more)