Dec 2, 2022 3 min read

You Should Read - Dec 2

Just One Thing

Sorry, it's Star Wars: Andor again. The level of discussion this series has generated is just incredible. And, sadly, underlines how much of recent Star Wars, suffering from Marvel-envy, is ultimately empty at its core.

Collected Ephemera

Recette Magazine Why Doesn’t My Cling Wrap Work the Way It Used To?

New World Notes Artist Feeds Her Childhood Diary Into an AI Chatbot -- And Has a Moving Conversation With Her Younger Self

Vox The Radical Political Power of Friendship: It can help us push back against tyranny. Philosopher Hannah Arendt’s legendary cocktail parties were proof.

Joe Mayall Capitalism is for Stockholders. Socialism is for Stakeholders: If you are impacted by a company, you should have a say in how it is run.

Jamie Zawinski PSA: Do Not Use Services That Hate The Internet: "As you look around for a new social media platform, I implore you, only use one that is a part of the World Wide Web."

Tech Policy The Whiteness of Mastodon: Interview with Dr. Johnathan Flowers, who studies the philosophy of technology, and to learn more about some of the exclusive norms he’s observed that may create obstacles to communities of color when contemplating the switch to Mastodon, or potentially to their safety in the ‘Fediverse.’

The Guardian ‘Extinction Is on the Table’: Jaron Lanier Warns of Tech’s Existential Threat to Humanity: The American computer scientist, who coined the term ‘virtual reality,’ cautions against online ‘psychological operatives’

Black Past Frederick Douglass, “If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress” (1857)

The New Yorker How Hospice Became a For-Profit Hustle: It began as a visionary notion—that patients could die with dignity at home. Now it’s a twenty-two-billion-dollar industry plagued by exploitation.

The Iron Dice, Episode 7: The Battle for Munich

Which Side Are You On?

My great-grandfather was a railroader. Apparently it was a hard life as he ultimately drank himself to death. I have his railroad lantern sitting on a shelf, mostly forgotten until this week when the pending railroad strike started getting my attention.

/r/OutoftheLoop What’s up with the railroad strike?

Intelligencer Why America’s Railroads Refuse to Give Their Workers Paid Leave

Wikipedia Which Side Are You On?: a song written in 1931 by activist Florence Reece, who was the wife of Sam Reece, a union organizer for the United Mine Workers in Harlan County, Kentucky.

"Which Side Are You On" cover by Dropkick Murphys

Creeping Fascism

LA Times Despite Losing School Board Races, California Conservatives Confident in New Playbook

The Intercept Left-Wing Voices Are Silenced on Twitter as Far-Right Trolls Advise Elon Musk: Elon Musk appears to have out-sourced decisions about who to ban from Twitter to the platform’s right-wing extremists.

Texas Monthly Minority Rule: How 3 Percent of Texans Call the Shots for the Rest of Us: Statewide officials and legislators are far to the right of most Texans. Why? Low primary-election turnout and an anemic Democratic party.

Steven Beschloss Hello, Nazis and Nazism are Bad: Some things in modern life are not hard to figure out. You don’t have to be progressive—and it shouldn’t be partisan—to grasp that Nazis are bad and so is Nazism.

Andscape Two New Movies, ‘Till’ and ‘U.S. And the Holocaust,’ Help Us Connect the Dots Between Jim Crow and Fascism: With Kanye and Kyrie Irving dominating the news, the connections between victims of white supremacy are more relevant than ever

LitHub Reading Langston Hughes’s Wartime Reporting From the Spanish Civil War: Matthew F. Delmont on How Black Americans Warned the World of Fascism

Religion News Service Right-Wing Jews Bail on Trump: The dinner with Ye and Fuentes was a bridge too far.

The Wabbit Hole

Selections from my Wikipedia searches this week...