@CptSuperlative@toot.cat cover
@CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

CptSuperlative

@CptSuperlative@toot.cat

Current account
G+ refugee who used to teach philosophy as an adjunct prof then left because literally anything pays better. Now I do mobile development and talk about weird things in weird ways and generally confuse and irritate people, except for some oddballs who seem to enjoy it. Old habits die hard.

Profile: Milton Wong, Bear van Gogh, cropped.

Header: Vincent van Gogh, 'Landscape from Saint Remy #9' Cropped.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

CptSuperlative , to random
@CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

This election determines if Lina Khan gets to continue the FTC's antitrust crackdown.

If you claim to care about corporate corruption and economic inequality but refuse to do your part to keep Khan on the job?

Well, I just won't believe you.

1/?


https://wapo.st/3KWXTKa

CptSuperlative OP ,
@CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

You can't (ethically) ignore the ramifications of Biden losing, ramifications like Khan being replaced with a fascist, corporate puppet.

Khan is incredible.

2/?

https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/15/ftc-chair-lina-khan-on-startups-scaling-and-innovations-in-potential-law-breaking/

CptSuperlative OP ,
@CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

She is just getting started. But if Biden loses all the progress she's made will be undone.

And there's a metric shit ton more to do.

You know it as well as I do. I know you do.

3/?

https://www.krmg.com/news/business/ftc-is-just-getting/EWXNI3LY26PQISNRN6G4SWNFI4/

CptSuperlative OP ,
@CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

Don't just take my word for it. Read anything @pluralistic has written about Khan (a fair bit).

Let's make this the beginning of the Khan FTC rather than letting it be the end.

4/4

CptSuperlative OP ,
@CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

@pluralistic

Another link for Khan fans, this one on inflation and oil price collusion.

5/4

https://youtu.be/gWwWkH0iJtc?si=snaJwwAG7_5rxdI4

pluralistic , to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

As the old saying goes, "When someone tells you who they are and you get fooled again, shame on you." That goes double for Microsoft, especially when it comes to security promises.

--

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:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/14/patch-tuesday/#fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again

1/

A frame from a Peanuts animation, depicting Lucy yanking the football away from Charlie Brown, who is somersaulting through the sky. It has been altered. Lucy's head has been replaced with Microsoft's Clippy. Charlie Brown's head has been replaced with a 19th century caricature of a grinning Uncle Sam. The sky has been replaced with a 'code waterfall' effect as seen in the Wachowskis' 'Matrix' movies.
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    • CptSuperlative ,
    @CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

    @pluralistic

    Well done on the cover image.

    pluralistic , to random
    @pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

    A decade ago, a hedge fund had an improbable viral comedy hit: a 294-page slide deck explaining why Olive Garden was going out of business, blaming the failure on too many breadsticks and insufficiently salted pasta-water:

    https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/940944/000092189514002031/ex991dfan14a06297125_091114.pdf

    --

    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:

    https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spineless/#invertebrates

    1/

    CptSuperlative ,
    @CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

    @pluralistic

    I want liberals and progressives to stop blaming capitalism when it's actually rampant corruption, regulatory capture, monopolies, duopolies, legal organized crime, and straight up feudalism that they're referring to.

    It probably won't happen because using the word "capitalism" is easier and it conflates what small businesses do with what legal organized crime bosses do - which is exactly what legal organized crime bosses want us to do.

    Because it white-washes them and casts progressives and liberals as radical lunatics. Which is a mantle that can be fun to wear but has the dangerous side effect of making us less effective at public persuasion.

    So we go around complaining about "capitalism" and think we're being edgy and original when we're actually playing our role in their con.

    So thank you for laying out the details of these legal organized crime bosses' cons so clearly.

    oatmeal , to israel group
    @oatmeal@kolektiva.social avatar

    #Judaism / There Are No Lights in War: We Need a Different Religious Language (Ariel Schwartz [January 16, 2024])

    Ariel Schwartz comes from a right-wing, religious Zionist family, in the political dialing areas of Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. He studied at the Etzion Yeshiva, in southern Mount Hebron, and during his regular service in the settlements in the West Bank, he asked himself who those stateless Palestinians were, "who live under the daily rule of the IDF." These questions caused him to become a left-wing activist.

    He tells #Haaretz […] "They took from me the thing most precious to me, my faith, and directed it against me. As religious people, we believe that our tradition demands a different moral stance, one that can restrain the war instead of fueling it."​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

    […] An example of this can be found in the recent words of R. Amihai Friedman, the rabbi of the Nahal brigade’s training base: “I sit and imagine that in these days there are no casualties, hostages, or injured,” he told his soldiers. “And the second I remove them from the screen, I’m left with what is maybe the happiest month in my life since I was born.”[1]

    […] R. Friedman’s words give rise to a harsh realization: around us is a religious world that is happy, in many respects, about the current war.

    […] Thus, for example, writes R. Yigal Levinstein in the pamphlet He Leaps Up Like a Lion: On the Exaltation of the Spirit and the Special Level of Life During Times of War that saw light in the situation: “The war is not a marginal thing, and we should not view it as a ‘mistake’ or a ‘mishap’ which we would have preferred to avoid. The war is a great thing and, at the end of the day, brings a great message to humanity on its wings.”[2]

    […] According to R. Levinstein, the greatness of the war is rooted in the fact that it is one of those extraordinary moments in which “the inner soul shines in all its vitality.” Indeed, for the individual, the war is a difficult event, but at the national level it calls forth great moments in which the people of Israel “reveals from within itself its mighty heights of life.”

    […] Widening segments of the contemporary religious community are seeking to wrap the war in a halo of enchantment and holiness and turn it pleasant, ideal, and even joyous from an emotional perspective. In furtherance of this aestheticization and idealization, there are those who seek to remove any ethical brakes from the war. They call for us not to differentiate between blood and blood and condone any action done in its framework. These conceptions treat the spirit of battle as the climax of the revelation of the human spirit, but within this, implicitly, it is as though they require war to happen again and again, so that this “spirit of battle” may be revealed. In light of this attempt, we must seek a different religious language―one that remembers that the Jewish horizon is not war but peace, that the goal of the Jewish nation’s existence on this land is not “to shorten the life of man but to lengthen,” and that ethical conduct even in times of war is the soul of our religious tradition.

    Translation to Hebrew by https://thelehrhaus.com/commentary/there-are-no-lights-in-war-we-need-a-different-religious-language

    @israel
    @palestine
    #ReligiousZionism #NeoZionism #IsraelWarCrimes

    CptSuperlative ,
    @CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

    @oatmeal

    The language of those glorifying war here could be seamlessly copy/pasted into Nazi manifestos.

    @israel @palestine

    pluralistic , to random
    @pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

    The big news in search this week is that Google is continuing its transition to "AI search" - instead of typing in search terms and getting links to websites, you'll ask Google a question and an AI will compose an answer based on things it finds on the web:

    https://blog.google/products/search/generative-ai-google-search-may-2024/

    --

    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:

    https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/15/they-trust-me-dumb-fucks/#ai-search

    1/

    Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en -- djhughman https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Modular_synthesizer_-_%22Control_Voltage%22_electronic_music_shop_in_Portland_OR_-_School_Photos_PCC_%282015-05-23_12.43.01_by_djhughman%29.jpg CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en
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    • CptSuperlative ,
    @CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

    @pluralistic

    This. This. This.

    A question answering LLM is a pseudo moral agent in a moral/legal/epistemic relationship with enquirers.

    • Are you being honest?
    • Are you giving me all the relevant information?
    • Are you disclosing relevant conflicts of interest?
    • Do you have the relevant understanding or expertise to answer my questions?
    • What are your biases?
    • What is your confidence level in these answers?

    These are important considerations that even a hypothetically perfect LLM could not ever meet.

    And yet we're all supposed to be salivating for more "AI".

    CptSuperlative , to random
    @CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

    For myself and most of the people I know personally who are not lost to the MAGA-side, we are:

    • Disgusted and outraged by Israel's war on Palestinian civilians.
    • Disgusted and outraged at our complicity in these war crimes.
    • Absofuckinglutely going to vote for every single Democrat on our ballots including Joe Biden.

    If this confuses you, please feel free to ask me ethics questions. It is a subject I have studied and taught and I'm happy to engage in good faith dialogue.

    #uspol #election #ethics #philosophy

    wdlindsy , (edited ) to random
    @wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

    I had the unsettling but enlightening experience yesterday of interacting with someone who believes, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, that Trump was an outstanding president and is being maligned now. Emphasis on the word "believes."

    This interaction taught me all over again how impossible it is to reason with Trump's fans who base their adulation not on reason but on raw belief.

    Context: the person with whom I interacted is a man. He's over 90, retired military.

    #Trump
    /1

    CptSuperlative ,
    @CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

    @wdlindsy

    Does this surprise you?

    CptSuperlative , to random
    @CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

    @futurebird

    I know they aren't ants but... Bees doing math?! Thought I should tag you.

    https://youtu.be/M6hGjh9SJ_M?si=paoM2Gtw66RAIqJZ

    pluralistic , to random
    @pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

    Cigna - like all private health insurers - has two contradictory imperatives:

    I. To keep its customers healthy; and

    II. To make as much money for its shareholders as is possible.

    --

    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:

    https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/29/what-part-of-no/#dont-you-understand

    1/

    An existential plane extending to an abstract background. Scattered through the scene are mainframes and control panels, being worked by faceless figure. In the center stands a downcast MD in old-fashioned scrubs. In the foreground to the right is an impatient older man in a business suit, staring at his watch and brandishing a sheaf of papers. In the background left is a grim reaper figure raising a glass of blood in a toast, the blood spattering his robes. In the center background in large magnetic 'computer font' lettering is the word 'NO.'
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    • CptSuperlative ,
    @CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

    @pluralistic

    A company that holds your family's lives in their hands and casually injures or kills them with impunity isn't implementing capitalism - it's just the mafia.

    There simply is no relevant difference between a murderous, underground extortion racket and private health insurance. That one is legal and the other is not only shows how effective the health insurance mafia has been.

    Maybe there's no way to combine healthcare and markets without creating mafias. I don't know. In any case, I'm ready for my fellow Americans to recognize the mafia in their lives.

    CptSuperlative , to random
    @CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

    Look, fellow Democrats, you know I'm voting for Biden so can we please stop pretending Israel isn't intentionally committing grievous war crimes?

    Yes, Biden has handled this terribly.

    Yes, I'm still voting for him. (Trump would be far worse on this and in everything else)

    But I'm telling you, pretending that everything is groovy only makes things worse.

    And just so you don't get panicky towards the end of this post, yes - I'm voting for Biden.

    pluralistic , to random
    @pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

    Steve Bannon isn't wrong: for his brand of nihilistic politics to win, all he has to do is "flood the zone with shit," demoralizing people to the point where they no longer even try to learn the truth.

    --

    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:

    https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/05/corrupt-for-cocoa-puffs/#flood-the-zone-with-shit

    1/

    CptSuperlative ,
    @CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

    @pluralistic

    The images you make for these are awesome!

    CptSuperlative , to random
    @CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

    A recruiter sends me an email or a LinkedIn message about once a week. Sometimes more. Sometimes less.

    After following through with each relevant enquiry for over a year I formed a hypothesis:

    They need to show someone that they are contacting some minimum number of potentially qualified candidates but have little to no interest in promoting me as a candidate.

    This is a generalization.

    For example there was one recruiter, a Navy vet, who took the time to get to know me a bit after realizing the current opening wasn't a good fit because he thought I'd be a great candidate for some other opening they were likely to see.

    He actually called back about a position a little while later and there was some back and forth but the employer wasn't interested because my address was 3 miles further away from the business than he wanted.

    Now either that was the employer's real reason, in which case he's a ignorant twat, or I didn't fit his cultural expectations. Either way makes no difference.

    Fast forward to me giving up on tech people using their brains for anything other than ear spacers and it turns out I'm happier not competing for the approval of terrible people who think they're smart.

    Which is to say, I stopped responding to recruiters a while back.

    I'm not a techbro and I can't even pass for one.

    Too old. Too authentic. Too educated.

    Should be my tagline.

    Teri_Kanefield , to random
    @Teri_Kanefield@mastodon.social avatar

    A word about all the people I've pissed off with this week's blog post:

    https://mastodon.social/@Teri_Kanefield/112187081021199665

    (When I woke up this morning, I removed about 25 comments !!)

    I wonder if I feel free to write a blog post that I know will anger people because I don't monetize.

    I have ads, but it pays a tiny fraction of the cost of maintaining a website and using MailChimp. People might be surprised at how much my blogging venture costs.

    A few years ago Substact tried to recruit me . . .

    1/

    CptSuperlative ,
    @CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

    @Teri_Kanefield

    On the Media made some very similar points.

    https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/revolving-door-politics-tv-news-on-the-media

    CptSuperlative , to random
    @CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

    The Rwanda genocide was the first, contemporaneous genocide that I was intensely aware of. I struggled with how to cope. It seemed wrong to do and feel ordinary things and yet there was absolutely nothing useful I could do.

    Knowing about atrocities in real time about which we have little influence is something we are not automatically equipped to deal with. Recognizing and dealing with these situations is a distinctly recent phenomenon.

    It's ok to live.

    It doesn't mean you're fine with everything that's happening.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide

    pluralistic , to random
    @pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

    The foundational tenet of "the Cult of Mac" is that buying products from a $3t company makes you a member of an oppressed ethnic minority and therefore every criticism of that corporation is an ethnic slur:

    https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

    --

    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:

    https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/22/reality-distortion-field/#three-trillion-here-three-trillion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

    1/

    An early 20th century trustbusting cartoon from Punch depicting the Standard Oil company as a world-girding, fanged octopus, its tentacles gripping the US Capitol, a generic statehouse, the White House, and a cluster of screaming, tuxedoed politicians. The Apple 'Think Different' wordmark has been placed in the background above the octopus. The top of the octopus's head bears an original Apple '6-color' logo.
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    • CptSuperlative ,
    @CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

    @pluralistic

    The greatest PR stunt in Silicon Valley was depicting Steve Jobs as a caring, artistic visionary rather than a narcissistic jerk who never met an employee he didn't want to belittle and overwork.

    He is still revered as a saint. Incredible.

    oatmeal , to palestine group
    @oatmeal@kolektiva.social avatar

    #Gaza / Israel weighing the use of private security contractors to protect aid shipments to Gaza, officials say

    Israel is exploring the use of international private security contractors to protect humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza, according to U.S. officials. The idea has been broached with senior #Biden administration officials in recent weeks, as the U.S. plans to ship a floating dock to Gaza for delivering aid by sea.

    However, some U.S. officials are reluctant to have American troops or private contractors operating on the ground in Gaza, especially in an armed security role, citing past controversies. The use of private security contractors by the U.S. government has repeatedly sparked controversy, with accusations of excessive force and civilian casualties in #Iraq and #Afghanistan.

    The notorious 2007 #NisourSquare incident in #Baghdad, where police Blackwater contractors protecting a U.S. convoy killed 17 civilians, is highlighted as a disastrous precedent. Four Blackwater contractors were initially convicted but later pardoned by #Trump…

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-weighs-private-security-contractors-protect-gaza-aid-shipments-rcna143493

    See also: Refugees International Report: Siege and Starvation - How Israel Obstructs Aid to Gaza https://kolektiva.social/@oatmeal/112098033817653500

    @israel
    @palestine
    #Israel #WarCrimes #Gaza
    #Blackwater

    CptSuperlative ,
    @CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

    @oatmeal

    Protect aid shipments from whom? Hamas? Haven't the only aid shipment casualties so far been caused by IDF?

    I don't understand.

    @israel @palestine

    pluralistic , to random
    @pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

    This marks the 10th anniversary of the Foilies - awards given to the public agencies responsible for the most egregious, absurd and outrageous defiance of freedom of information requests:

    https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/foilies-2024

    --

    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:

    https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/11/no-foia/#id-tell-you-but-then-id-have-to-kill-you

    1/

    CptSuperlative ,
    @CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

    @pluralistic

    OMG I love focusing on the absurdity of misconduct and corruption and nefarious bullshittery.

    pluralistic , to random
    @pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

    As someone who writes a lot of fiction about corporate crime, I naturally end up spending a lot of time being angry about corporate crime. It's pretty goddamned enraging. But the fiction writer in me is especially upset at how cartoonishly evil the perps are - routinely doing things that I couldn't ever get away with putting in a novel.

    1/

    CptSuperlative ,
    @CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

    @pluralistic

    As a Washington state resident our local news covers Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks, and, Boeing (despite the HQ move). And recently there have been several, "What happened to Boeing?" pieces.

    The details are, of course, important. But the basic answer is obvious and predictable without needing to read any of these articles; greedy, shortsighted people sabotaging a company. The Boeing case isn't exactly the same as what you're talking about here but it's what I was reminded of.

    pluralistic , to random
    @pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

    "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist" -Keynes

    (h/t Hamilton Nolan https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/stupid-power)

    #economics #keynes

    CptSuperlative ,
    @CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

    @pluralistic

    The set of commentators who have always been the least able to understand Trump are those who embrace the gauzy myth of America as the Land of the Free, an admirable though bumpy experiment in a nation built to value mankind’s better nature.

    This.

    I am an American. I love my country and have a complicated relationship with my fellow Americans. But it's just a country. Dumber than average. More violent than average. More corrupt than average. More unjust than average. But my country by an accident of birth. How any American can really believe otherwise is beyond me.

    wdlindsy , to random
    @wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

    As Lucian K. Truscott says, the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that cells in a test tube are a baby and deserve the same rights that a baby has puts Republicans in a real bind.

    It does so because it tells us that "pro-life" Republicans have not ever truly meant what they claim to believe, when they say that "life" begins at conception.

    #Alabama #IVF #abortion #ProLife #Republicans #theocracy
    /1

    https://luciantruscott.substack.com/p/what-is-an-old-fashioned-anti-abortion

    CptSuperlative ,
    @CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

    @wdlindsy

    So many absurdities are logical consequences of the claim that personhood begins at conception.

    It's nuts. People are nuts.

    pluralistic , to random
    @pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

    It's launch-week for my new novel The Bezzle, a high-tech, revenge-soaked crime thriller in which my intrepid forensic accountant Martin Hench must pit his wits against unbelievably evil (and sadly true-to-life) prison-tech grifters:

    https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

    --

    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:

    https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/23/gazeteer/#fin

    1/

    CptSuperlative ,
    @CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

    @pluralistic

    You know, it's a little hard to keep up with all the books you write.

    (Thanks!)

    futurebird , to random
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    Did you know that some ants have a "basket" of hairs under their head used to move sandy soil more efficiently?

    The hairs that make up this basket are called ammochaetae, and they are more robust than the sensitive setae that ants use to sense sound and air currents.

    The basket of ammochaetae is known as a psammophore. Use it in a sentence today!

    "I'm not making trips for all these groceries. I'll make my arms like a psammophore and tote them all at once!"

    https://www.reddit.com/r/Entomology/comments/74zdrr/california_harvester_ant/

    CptSuperlative ,
    @CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

    @futurebird

    This looks like a picture of me in the morning, before coffee, if I haven't shaved in a few days.

    I should try to carry something.

    pluralistic , to random
    @pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

    In any scam, any con, any hustle, the big winners are the people who supply the scammers - not the scammers themselves. The kids selling dope on the corner are making less than minimum wage, while the respectable crime-bosses who own the labs clean up. Desperate "retail investors" who buy shitcoins from Superbowl ads get skinned, while the MBA bros who issue the coins make millions (in real dollars, not crypto).

    1/

    CptSuperlative ,
    @CptSuperlative@toot.cat avatar

    @pluralistic

    Isn't it amazing how the socially highest value, hardest to automate work involves interpersonal care - often physical care - and yet, conventionally, these are the least valued in terms of compensation and status.

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