You know, the world is being filled with AI bureaucrats that in the armies, in the banks, in the universities, in the governments, more and more decisions, which house to bomb, who is a terrorist, whether to give you a loan, whether to give you a job, whether to give you a place in a university. These decisions are increasingly made by AI. And these decisions are becoming opaque to us.
Yuval Noah Harari on the Hard Fork podcast.
The individual preference for solitude, scaled up across society and exercised repeatedly over time, is rewiring America’s civic and psychic identity. And the consequences are far-reaching—for our happiness, our communities, our politics, and even our understanding of reality.
From The Anti-Social Century. Emphasis mine.
In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn’t been good versus evil. It’s hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing.
the best defense, the most meaningful work, the best preparation you can do at the level of an individual life is to boost your local resilience. To become a person of place. To connect with the people and land where you live. This is what we’re built to do.
How I became ‘collapse aware’. This is not a depressing read (or listen, the author read option was great)! /via Dense Discovery
Log of the Bay is a LOG of radio traffic received on Marine VHF channels form a basement window in Oakland, California.
Akiya (vacant houses in Japan) “are becoming less like financial assets and more akin to natural resources, available to be harvested by those who wish put in the time and substantial effort to reclaim one from natural decay.”
A far-right attack on a community college reveals a blueprint for destroying higher ed
The problem goes far beyond a three-person majority on the trustee board of a small community college. NIC and many other institutions are in danger because, over the last decade and a half, a core group of extremists has slowly taken over the Idaho Republican Party in the same way that a parasitic wasp slowly takes over its host. This required no astroturfing or Koch-fueled cash infusions, just a regular, everyday indifference to hyperlocal politics. The tactic is underway elsewhere, but Idaho got a head start. This crisis is what happens when insurgency bears fruit.
Emphasis mine. Currently looking for more ways to be involved in my community.
Any code I’ve written, any glib digital creation, disappears into the infinite feed. But a playground will stubbornly stand for the next twenty years, pointing to big ideas in computer science. It’s something I think about often.
IKEA Catalog from a Near Future
Some design fiction on the " …possible evolutions of home life, consumer trends and needs, and related topics in the categories of domestic life, food, urban life, travel, leisure, and entertainment."
Forums Are Still Alive, Active, And A Treasure Trove Of Information: Here are the Internet forums that are still alive and kicking and full of information and interesting people.