skybrian's recent activity
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Comment on Cory Doctorow: Tech-like apps can obfuscate what’s really going on, sloshing a coat of complexity over a business that allows its owners to claim that they’re not breaking the law in ~tech
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Comment on Cory Doctorow: Tech-like apps can obfuscate what’s really going on, sloshing a coat of complexity over a business that allows its owners to claim that they’re not breaking the law in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentA lesson I got from reading history is that doing a good job of figuring out broad trends ultimately depends on detailed reporting. This is often harder than telling individual stories, because...A lesson I got from reading history is that doing a good job of figuring out broad trends ultimately depends on detailed reporting. This is often harder than telling individual stories, because you need to understand more about the world before summarizing it.
Ideologues will often take shortcuts.
Not that it can't be done, but I don't think Doctorow does it well.
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Comment on Cory Doctorow: Tech-like apps can obfuscate what’s really going on, sloshing a coat of complexity over a business that allows its owners to claim that they’re not breaking the law in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentYes, but they are different companies and different situations. Is that the same problem, or a different one? It depends on perspective. To an ideologue thinking at a high level of abstraction,...Yes, but they are different companies and different situations. Is that the same problem, or a different one? It depends on perspective.
To an ideologue thinking at a high level of abstraction, maybe things look like unsolvable problems that never get fixed. But that's like looking down at the city from a high hill. When taking in a panoramic view, you might never notice when a problem gets fixed locally.
This why I think telling the stories of individual companies is often better than talking about "big tech" or "silicon valley" or GDP or some vague abstraction like that. High-level abstractions are sometimes useful, but they're not the full story.
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Comment on Cory Doctorow: Tech-like apps can obfuscate what’s really going on, sloshing a coat of complexity over a business that allows its owners to claim that they’re not breaking the law in ~tech
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Comment on Cory Doctorow: Tech-like apps can obfuscate what’s really going on, sloshing a coat of complexity over a business that allows its owners to claim that they’re not breaking the law in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentOpinion pieces are written to persuade. This is what influencers do. "Telling people what to think" is a cheeky way of describing a piece that states conclusions as fact, without giving evidence...Opinion pieces are written to persuade. This is what influencers do. "Telling people what to think" is a cheeky way of describing a piece that states conclusions as fact, without giving evidence first.
I prefer writing that does reporting and lets readers draw their own conclusions. Admittedly that might just be a softer sell, but it shows more effort.
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Comment on Cory Doctorow: Tech-like apps can obfuscate what’s really going on, sloshing a coat of complexity over a business that allows its owners to claim that they’re not breaking the law in ~tech
skybrian (edited )Link ParentYes. Telling a story about a problem that's been fixed is quite different from alerting people to an ongoing problem. Some people will never forgive, but that's a choice.Yes. Telling a story about a problem that's been fixed is quite different from alerting people to an ongoing problem.
Some people will never forgive, but that's a choice.
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Comment on Cory Doctorow: Tech-like apps can obfuscate what’s really going on, sloshing a coat of complexity over a business that allows its owners to claim that they’re not breaking the law in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentMaybe some of the nuance is keeping straight what happened in the past versus the current situation. Today in San Francisco, is there anything illegal about Uber? Whether a company is "breaking...Maybe some of the nuance is keeping straight what happened in the past versus the current situation. Today in San Francisco, is there anything illegal about Uber?
Whether a company is "breaking the law" (and how) is a legal question.
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Comment on What it takes to be a revolutionary war enactor in ~humanities.history
skybrian Linkhttps://archive.is/avbMB From the article: ... ... ... ...From the article:
A man named Sean, who works as a military contractor—one of several Green Mountain Boys who normally “do British” but were slumming it as rebels for the weekend—told me that he likes to portray a British officer because of how hard it is. British Army reenactors, he said, possess “a desire to do things to a level of research perfection.” Unlike the tailors, sailors, and shopkeepers who took up arms against them, the British forces were professional soldiers. “We can’t look like a quote-unquote ragtag band of militia,” Sean said. “We have to look like people who, this is their job.” Emily, a college student studying music—one of three women dressed up as a Green Mountain Boy—told me she delights in “the degree of organization” and “very standardized drilling” inherent in redcoat portrayals.
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If you want to be a reenactor but are laid-back, messy, or broke, you might be better suited to portraying an American. Or rather, a “Patriot”; technically, there were no “Americans” at Fort Ticonderoga or Lexington and Concord. The American Revolution began as a British civil war; before the Declaration of Independence in the summer of 1776, indignant colonial citizens considered themselves as “British” as the crimson-coated soldiers sent to patrol them.
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Reenactors can be roughly divided into two sects: “progressive,” whose members’ fervid commitment to historical accuracy typically leads to them hand-sewing every layer of their 18th-century ensembles; and “mainstream,” whose practitioners are fine buying machine-stitched garments off the rack. I met more progressives than mainstreamers but, regardless of faction, age, or gender, participants’ politics skewed markedly left. Revolutionary War reenactors, an anthropologist noted in a 1999 report for the National Park Service, tend to be politically more liberal than their Civil War peers. (This is perhaps because a person is most likely to reenact a conflict that occurred within driving distance of his or her home, and deep-blue New England was not a combat zone in the Civil War.)
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One trait common to every reenactor with whom I spoke was a scorching, irrepressible desire to share factual information with strangers. Among the things I learned: It was fashionably expensive for a man to order his coat, waistcoat, and breeches “ditto”—meaning made of the same fabric and color—in which case the resulting suit of clothes would be referred to as “a ditto suit.” An herbal analogue to aspirin can be made from decocting the bark of a willow tree into tea. Many redcoats’ coats were, in fact, slightly orange (enlisted men’s coats were colored with inexpensive dye made from the root of the madder plant; the darker carmine dye of crushed cochineal bugs was reserved for the coats of officers). The amount of forest covering Massachusetts has increased more than 100 percent since the 1830s. No one who wore one called it a “tricorner hat.” Muskets with an external safety catch, called “doglocks,” were considered obsolete by the 1770s—
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For me to portray an armed man with an established unit, a reenactor named Dakota warned me in a phone call, would likely entail completing a “labor intensive” six-month training process that included memorizing the exercises of a 1764 drill manual until I could perform them perfectly while maneuvering a 12-pound musket (which itself would run me more than $1,000). I had stumbled into the only cranny of American culture in which firearms are tightly controlled.
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What it takes to be a revolutionary war enactor
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Comment on Cory Doctorow: Tech-like apps can obfuscate what’s really going on, sloshing a coat of complexity over a business that allows its owners to claim that they’re not breaking the law in ~tech
skybrian LinkThere's quite a lot of telling you what to think and rather little reporting. I'll just quote the bits that might be fact-based, in that they are claims about specific companies: I suspect these...There's quite a lot of telling you what to think and rather little reporting. I'll just quote the bits that might be fact-based, in that they are claims about specific companies:
When Uber entered the taxi market without securing taxi licenses or extending the workforce protections required under law, it said the move didn’t count because it did it with an app.
The McDonald’s-backed company Plexure sells surveillance data on you to vendors, who use it to raise the price of items when they think you’ll pay more. In its promotional materials, Plexure uses the example of charging extra for your breakfast sandwich on payday. It says that such practices are not a rip-off because they’re done with an app.RealPage gives “recommendations” to landlords about the minimum rents they should charge for all the apartments in your neighborhood, raising rents and worsening the housing crisis. The company says it’s not price-fixing because it’s done with an app.
On the subject of the housing crisis, Airbnb is racing to convert all the rental stock in your city into an unlicensed hotel room, but it says the conversion doesn’t count because it’s done with an app.
I suspect these are inadequate summaries of what these companies do or did that leave out a fair bit of nuance. Maybe there is better reporting out there? For example, I'm pretty sure Uber broke the law quite a bit, but an adequate history of Uber would be a long read.
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Comment on The Oatmeal: A cartoonist's review of AI art in ~comics
skybrian (edited )LinkThis gets confusing because both fakery and authentic performances are valid when they're in the right setting and the audience gets it. Consider the differences between a basketball game and a...This gets confusing because both fakery and authentic performances are valid when they're in the right setting and the audience gets it.
Consider the differences between a basketball game and a basketball movie. Part of the point of a basketball game is to watch authentic performances of skilled athletes, and also to watch a contest where the outcome is in doubt. A movie is not the same since the athletic performances are faked and the game is fixed, but you might still enjoy it for other reasons, because of the skill of the actors and technical staff, and because you like the story. An anime is different; they use voice actors and an army of artists. Pixar is different from hand-drawn animation due to computer assistance, since a lot of work goes into crafting particular scenes. But in the context of a video game, even well-rendered cut scenes are often seen as an annoying distraction.
I think the main problem with AI-generated art is that the context is often unclear and you don't know what you're looking at. When a computer graphics lab is demonstrating the effects of their new algorithm, I think it's genuinely inspiring to see what they were able to do. In other contexts, though, maybe it's slop.
There is so much fakery and special effects in movies that I think any amount of AI is fair game and the only question is whether you can make something interesting. But there are other contexts where it should be against the rules.
What about web comics? I think you make your own rules and stick with them. In an art contest, it would make sense for AI and hand-drawn art to be different categories.
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Comment on Scientists make most authentic kidney replicas so far in ~science
skybrian LinkFrom the article: …From the article:
The organoids also released some of the same hormones as true kidneys. And when implanted into mice, they readily connected to the rodents’ circulatory systems and began to filter blood. Like previous organoids, however, these structures made urine that was more dilute than normal because the organoids lack the structures that allow kidneys to concentrate the liquid, Li says.
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Still, the internal organization of an organoid produced with the new approach isn’t true to life. “You wouldn’t mistake it for a real kidney,” Davies says. “But it is trying to do the right things.” A big remaining challenge, Li notes, is plumbing—coaxing the organoids to develop the vessels that carry blood into and out of the kidney and to grow the duct that spirits the urine to the bladder. He and his colleagues predict they can solve these problems and have a transplantable kidney replacement ready for animal testing within 5 years.
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Scientists make most authentic kidney replicas so far
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Comment on The Oatmeal: A cartoonist's review of AI art in ~comics
skybrian LinkWhat if you don’t have the same aesthetic reaction to AI art that Inman has? I found it quite fun to generate AI art for a while, though it would have been more fun to iterate with if it didn’t...What if you don’t have the same aesthetic reaction to AI art that Inman has?
I found it quite fun to generate AI art for a while, though it would have been more fun to iterate with if it didn’t take so long. I have a collection. But I probably won’t share them, since people don’t seem to like them.
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Comment on Donald Trump administration intervenes to secure woman’s rescue from Gaza in ~society
skybrian LinkNumber of Palestinians rescued: one. Better than zero, but for a great nation this is pitiful. I wonder how many Palestinians the Biden administration rescued? Other nations? I wonder if Special...Number of Palestinians rescued: one. Better than zero, but for a great nation this is pitiful.
I wonder how many Palestinians the Biden administration rescued? Other nations?
I wonder if Special Operations Association of America would be a good choice for charitable donations? Are there are any organizations doing similar work that would be a better choice?
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Comment on Donald Trump administration intervenes to secure woman’s rescue from Gaza in ~society
skybrian LinkFrom the article: … … … … …From the article:
A Palestinian woman whose son serves in the U.S. Navy was secretly evacuated from war-torn Gaza in recent weeks after an intervention by the Trump administration and the Israeli and Jordanian governments, according to people familiar with the matter and correspondence reviewed by The Washington Post.
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For Ahlam Firwana, 59, the escape to safety required $10,000 in donated transportation costs, sophisticated software to monitor her movements amid the Israeli military’s ongoing assault, and the direct involvement of senior U.S. officials who helped secure agreements from the governments of Jordan and Israel to facilitate the woman’s departure from Gaza.
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Firwana’s son, Navy Petty Officer Younis Firwana, 32, joined the military in 2023 seeking a path to U.S. citizenship. After the Gaza war began that October, his mother and six siblings faced ever-increasing danger and privation, he recalled in an interview. In 2024, the family’s seven-story home was leveled in the bombardment. Food and medicine grew scarce.
“They had a point,” he said, “where they were eating birdseed.”
The evacuation of U.S. citizens from Gaza has been a contentious issue since the war began after Hamas militants staged a deadly, coordinated attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Palestinian Americans and their families have complained since then that the United States was not doing enough to ensure the safe exit of U.S. citizens from Gaza, with some suing the Biden administration in December.
Maria Kari, a lawyer representing some of those families, said the situation has become more dire under President Donald Trump. In August, the State Department announced that it would halt visitor visas for people from Gaza. The decision was made days after far-right activist Laura Loomer reacted to video of Palestinian children and their caregivers arriving at an airport in San Francisco by labeling the program a “national security threat.” Loomer holds outsize influence with the president, though she has no official role in the administration.
The children and spouses of U.S. citizens have seen their requests for evacuations denied based on national security grounds, according to accounts from lawyers and human rights groups.…
In early September, Younis Firwana was connected with Special Operations Association of America, a veterans organization that has supported the legal evacuation of roughly 1,100 people from Gaza since the war began, including the mother of a U.S. soldier.
Alex Plitsas, a member of the veterans group and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, assembled a team to help the Firwana family. Among them was Steve Gabavics, a retired Army colonel who served in Jerusalem from 2001 to 2004 as chief of staff for the U.S. Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Plitsas also enlisted the help of Morgan Ortagus, Trump’s deputy special envoy to the Middle East and herself a Navy reservist, who connected the team with top officials at the U.S. Embassy in Amman, Jordan. Another member of the group notified the National Security Council of planning, according to messages reviewed by The Post.
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In mid-September, Israel ordered the entire population of Gaza City to evacuate amid an intensifying offensive. As conditions grew desperate, the hired transport plan had to be scrapped. Instead, one of Firwana’s sons located a vehicle and started driving his mother toward the gate.
They didn’t get very far, as the roadways were clogged with people trying to flee. With the help of her daughter, Firwana completed the last nine miles on foot — protected from above by surveillance assets and the airstrike stoppage.
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For now, Ahlam Firwana remains in Jordan, awaiting visa approval. Her son said he is eager to help the rest of his family leave Gaza, but must await a slow-moving and opaque visa application process.
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Donald Trump administration intervenes to secure woman’s rescue from Gaza
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Comment on Eliminating contrails from flying could be incredibly cheap in ~enviro
skybrian LinkFrom the article: ... ... ....From the article:
Contrails have a strong “effective radiative forcing” effect. This basically measures the net change in energy flow at the top of the atmosphere: and that change in energy flow dictates how much warming is needed at the surface to offset it. But, this warming effective is very short-lived. If we were to stop contrails today, the warming effect would disappear within a day or so.
Think of it like a very brief but strong pulse of energy.
CO2, on the other hand, has a smaller effect on radiative forcing, but once you emit it, it stays there for centuries or more.
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[...] we could get rid of around half of the warming impact — maybe slightly less — from aviation, if we were to tackle contrails. The impact would be almost immediate.
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[...] What tackling contrails now would do is slightly reduce the rate of warming (and therefore do something reduce the risks of nearer-term feedbacks that could affect the release of CO2 from natural systems, and also affect long-term temperature change). It is not an excuse or a substitute for finding a way to decarbonise jet fuel.
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Contrails with a strong warming impact mostly form in thin regions of the atmosphere, which are cold and humid. If planes fly through these zones of atmosphere, contrails are much more likely to form.
The solution, then, is for some planes to take a short detour to avoid them.
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Eliminating contrails from flying could be incredibly cheap
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Burbank Airport resumes flights after hours with no air traffic controllers amid government shutdown
14 votes
Another important bit of nuance is distinguishing between what's legal and what's moral. As you show, they are not the same. What's legal depends on politics. People (and companies) can be rather selective about which laws they think they should obey versus ignore.
For example, suppose you hire an immigrant to do some work for you, and you pay cash. This is at the very least enabling illegal activity if they don't have a work visa, and also enables a form of corruption (tax evasion). Is it immoral? Well, that depends. How much did you pay them and how well did you treat them? Maybe you're okay with breaking the law because you think the immigration laws in the US are unjust and you're supporting your local immigrant, who could probably use the money?
I think Doctorow wants to make the case that ride-share drivers should be employees because to do otherwise is immoral. Just saying it's illegal doesn't make that case. It's also out of date. Laws can change. It's a sort of sleight of hand.
A majority of California voters seem to have decided that it's okay for drivers to not be employees. But many people disagreed.