Omoshiroi Blocks: Japanese Memo Pads Reveal Intricate Buildings As The Pages Get Used http://www.openculture.com/2018/01/omoshiroi-blocks-japanese-memo-pads-reveal-intricate-buildings-as-the-pages-get-used.html

https://theintercept.com/2018/01/14/facebook-warrant-pipeline-protest-whatcom-county-justice-department/

Let’s focus on creating a vision of how we want to live, together. What all the elements of making that work need to be. How to get there from here. Let’s stop paying attention to the people that aren’t on board, and bring more people with us by outlining where we want to go and how to do it. Let’s ignore the troll king and his minons, and all the politics that surround them. Let’s stop agonizing over how we got this way. Let’s stop pining for a society that was, and take the one we have, figure out what will make it better, and go do that.

County commissioner calls prosecutor ‘snake,’ liar | South Whidbey Record.  I posted a comment here.

Dynamicland.  In Oakland, a whole building instrumented to read input and produce output.  Fill the building with people, paper, clay, tokens, … let them make things that the building sees and responds to.  Community computing.

But they’re thinking that this is the way computing will go forward into the world.  Carnegie-library-style institutions everywhere!

Resisting Reduction: A Manifesto.  Interesting.

A Simple Fix for Our Massive Inequality Problem – The New York Times.  Use a government-administered mutual fund.  Someone else thinking along the lines of using shares/dividends instead of UBI.

Back in the day, the Empire was run by the Oxbridge crowd.  The uniformity of opinion was stultifying and self-satisfied, and eventually came to look ridiculous when the whole affair was overtaken by history.

In the more recent past and present, the Empire is run by the Ivy League crowd.  Again, uniformity of opinion, self-satisfaction, inability to understand the world shifting.

(edit: OK, a little harsh.  But the parallels are interesting.)

I’ve figured it out.  Brexit, Trump, #MeToo, …  it’s the year (five years?) of Fuck It.  Nothing was working, everything was grinding to a halt.  Everyone was proposing changes around the edges for longstanding problems that nobody was really addressing.  Gridlock.  Sand in the gears, no progress.  People tried the polite protest, but no go, no improvement.  Women still earning 70c on the male dollar.  Climate not being addressed.  Huge economic inequality, some people making out like bandits and most people going backwards.  Not to mention the Endless War of occupation for ill-defined and discredited principles that we can’t extract ourselves from.

So everyone collectively said: to hell with it, we’re going to blow it all up.  Everyone understands there’s a cost: women publicly exposing their hurt, despite the cost to their career or respect from the world, because it’ll finally cost the perpetrators more.  Republicans knowing that Trump’s a dangerous ass, but hoping he’ll destroy politics-as-usual.

So they did. No idea what’ll happen next.

Republicans voted for Roy Moore in the primary. Let the man run. Meanwhile, if there’s criminal behavior, let it be investigated. If there’s unethical behavior, let it be discussed in public. In a democracy, this man is the voice of (some of the) people. Resorting to trickery to remove him from Republican consideration, or hide him away from the electoral process, is undemocratic.

He represents a tiny minority of citizens. He (and they) have a right to participate, and we-all have a right to point, condemn, and laugh at their behavior.