#jwz

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The internet is not a (link)dump truck

Monday (October 2), I'll be in Boise to host an event with VE Schwab. On October 7–8, I'm in Milan to keynote Wired Nextfest.

The second decade of the 21st century is truly a bounteous time. My backyard has produced a bumper crop of an invasive species of mosquito that is genuinely innovative: rather than confining itself to biting in the dusk and dawn golden hours, these stinging clouds of flying vampires bite at every hour that God sends:

https://themagnet.substack.com/p/the-magnet-081-war-with-mosquitoes

Here in the twilight of capitalism's planet-devouring, half-century orgy of wanton destruction, there's more news every day than I can possibly write a full blog post about every day, and as with many weeks, I have arrived at Saturday with a substantial backlog of links that didn't fit into the week's "Hey look at this" linkdumps.

Thus, the eighth installment in my ongoing, semiregular series of Saturday linkdumps:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

This week, the miscellany begins with the first hesitant signs of an emerging, post-neoliberal order. The FTC, under direction of the force-of-nature that is Lina Khan, has brought its long-awaited case antitrust case against Amazon. I am very excited about this. Disoriented, even.

When was the last time you greeted every day with a warm feeling because high officials in the US government were working for the betterment of every person in the land? It's enough to make one giddy. Plus, the New York Times let me call Amazon "the apex predator of our platform era"! Now that it's in the "paper of record," it's official:

https://pluralistic.net/ApexPredator

Now, lefties have been predicting capitalism's imminent demise since The Communist Manifesto, but any fule kno that the capitalist word for "crisis" also translates as "opportunity." Like the bedbugs that mutated to thrive in clouds of post-war DDT, capitalism has adapted to each crisis, emerging in a new, more virulent form:

https://boingboing.net/2023/09/30/bedbugs-take-paris.html

But "anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop" (Stein's Law). Perhaps our mistake was in waiting for capitalism to give way to socialism, rather than serving as a transitional phase between feudalism and…feudalism.

What's the difference between feudalism and capitalism? According to Yanis Varoufakis, it comes down to whether we value rents (income you get from owning things) over profits (income you get from doing things):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

By that metric, the FTC's case against Amazon is really a case against feudalism. Through predatory pricing and acquisitions, Amazon has turned itself into a chokepoint that every merchant, writer and publisher has to pass through in order to reach their customers. Amazon charges a fortune to traverse that chokepoint (estimates range from 45% to 51% of gross revenues) and then forces sellers to raise their prices everywhere else when they hike their Amazon prices so they can afford Amazon's tolls. It's "an economy-wide hidden tax":

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-ftc-sues-to-break-up-amazon-over

Now, feudalism isn't a straightforward proposition. Like, are you sure you mean feudalism? Maybe you mean "manorialism" (they're easy to mix up):

https://locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-doctorow-neofeudalism-and-the-digital-manor/

Plus, much of what we know about the "Dark Ages" comes from grifter doofuses like Voltaire, a man who was capable of dismissing the 800 year Holy Roman Empire with a single quip ("neither holy, roman, nor an empire"). But the reality is a lot more complicated, gnarly and interesting.

That's where medievalist Eleanor Janeaga comes in, and her "Against Voltaire, or, the shortest possible introduction to the Holy Roman Empire" is a banger:

https://going-medieval.com/2023/09/29/against-voltaire-or-the-shortest-possible-introduction-to-the-holy-roman-empire/

Now, while it's true that Enlightenment thinkers gave medieval times a bum rap, it's likewise true that a key element of Enlightenment justice is transparency: justice being done, and being seen to be done. One way to distinguish "modern" justice from "medieval" trials is to ask whether the public is allowed to watch the trial, see the evidence, and understand the conclusion.

Here again, there is evidence that capitalism was a transitional phase between feudalism and feudalism. The Amazon trial has already been poisoned by farcical redactions, in which every key figure is blacked out of the public record:

https://prospect.org/power/2023-09-27-redacted-case-against-amazon/

This is part of a trend. The other gigantic antitrust case underway right now, against Google, has turned into a star chamber as well, with Judge Amit P Mehta largely deferring to Google's frequent demands to close the court and seal the exhibits:

https://usvgoogle.org/trial-update-9-22

Google's rationale for this is darkly hilarious: if the public is allowed to know what's happening in its trial, this will be converted into "clickbait," which is to say, "The public is interested in this case, and if they are informed of the evidence against us, that information will be spread widely because it is so interesting":

https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/secrecy-is-systemic

Thankfully, this secrecy is struggling to survive the public outrage it prompted. While the court's Zoom feed has been shuttered and while Judge Mehta is still all-too-willing to clear the courtroom during key testimony, at least the DoJ's exhibits aren't being sealed at the same clip as before:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/27/23892215/google-search-antitrust-trial-documents-public-again-judge-mehta-rules

In 2023, the world comes at you fast. There's an epic struggle over the future of corporate dominance playing out all around us. I mean, there are French antitrust enforcers kicking down doors of giant tech companies and ransacking their offices for evidence of nefarious anticompetitive plots:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/28/23894863/nvidia-offices-raided-french-competition-authority

As ever, the question is "socialism or barbarism." But don't say that too loud: in America, socialism is a slur, one that dates back to the Reconstruction era, when pro-slavery factions called Black voting "socialism in South Carolina."

Ever since, white nationalists used "socialism" make Americans believe that "socialism" was an "extremist" view, so they'd stand by while everyone from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump smeared their opponents as "Marxists":

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4066499-trump-paints-2024-campaign-as-righteous-crusade/

As Heather Cox Richardson puts it for The Atlantic, "There is a long-standing fight over whether support for the modern-day right is about taxes or race. The key is that it is about taxes and race at the same time":

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/american-socialism-racist-origins/675453/

The cruelty isn't the point, in other words. Cruelty is the tactic. The point is power. Remember, no war but class war. All of this is in service to paying workers less so that bosses and investors can have more.

Take "essential workers," everyone from teachers to zookeepers, nurses to librarians, EMTs to daycare workers. All of these "caring" professions are paid sub-living wages, and all of these workers are told that "they matter too much to earn a living wage":

https://www.okdoomer.io/praise-doesnt-pay/

The "you matter too much to pay" mind-zap is called "vocational awe," a crucial term introduced by Ettarh Fobazi in her 2018 paper:

https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/

Vocational awe is how creative workers – like the writers who just won their strike and the actors who are still fighting – are conned into working at starvation wages. As the old joke goes, "What, and give up show-business?"

https://ask.metafilter.com/117904/Whats-the-joke-thas-hase-the-punchline-what-and-give-up-show-business

In this moment of Big Tech-driven, AI-based wage suppression, mass surveillance, corruption and inequality, perhaps we should take a moment to remind ourselves that cyberpunk was a warning, not a suggestion. Or, more to the point, the warning was about high-tech corporate takeover of our lives, and the suggestion was that we could seize the means of computation (a synonym for William Gibson's "the street finds its own use for things"):

http://www.seizethemeansofcomputation.org/

We are living in a lopsided cyberpunk future, long on high-tech corporate takeover, short of computation seizing. This point is made sharply in JWZ's "Dispatch From The Cyberpunk City," which is beautifully packaged as a Hypercard stack that you run on an in-browser Mac Plus emulator from the Internet Archive:

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/09/neuroblast-dispatch-from-the-cyberpunk-city/

Cast your gaze ahead, to the near future: Public space has all but disappeared. Corporate landlords use AI-powered robots to harass the homeless. The robots, built slick and white with an R2-D2 friendliness now most resemble giant butt plugs covered in graffiti and grime.

Science fiction doesn't have to be a warning. It can also be a wellspring of hope. That's what I tried to do with The Lost Cause, my forthcoming Green New Deal novel, which Bill McKibben called "The first great YIMBY novel":

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

Writing a hopeful novel of ecological, social and economic redemption, driven by solidarity, repair, and library socialism, was a powerful tonic against despair in this smoke-smothered, flooded, mosquito-bitten time. And while the book isn't out yet, there are early indications I succeeded, like Kim Stanley Robinson's reaction, "Along with the rush of adrenaline I felt a solid surge of hope. May it go like this."

And now, we have a concurring judgment from The Library Journal, who yesterday published their review, which concludes: "a thought-provoking story, with a message of hope in a near-future that looks increasingly bleak":

https://www.libraryjournal.com/review/the-lost-cause-2196385

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/30/mesclada/#melange

[ochtendstorm]

just sent the longest email to my therapist about feeling like we're not on the same boat anymore, like we're having different priorities about how to handle therapy at this time, and it hurts so much. I feel like I lost a sense of safety (mainly due to other things) and sometimes we repair a bit of it, but it still feels broken and it feels like she just wants to move on, figure out how every part of me works and just get me better as fast as possible. But I just, I'm so tired, I'm so desperate to reconnect to how we once were, to feel like therapy can also bring some relief, some warmth. It just tends to hurt now. I think we just need to go slower and find some balance between working on figuring out how I work and re-establishing safety in the therapy room and in the connection, so I can also just rest for a bit, feel a bit more secure.

[mitchipedia]

“The more I read about Mastodon promoters' opinions on how it should work, the more I think, ‘How could you possibly think that is how it is going to go?"’” – jwz

[nightheartcomics]

Here’s the artist at Optic Nerve Studios drawing Buffy monsters in 1998. Although the images are taken from a documentary, they don’t mention his name. It looks like his initials are JWZ. Dude deserves more credit! 🤘🖤

[kuipiedekat]

Dikke Krunk, Beef Kuipie kuip...

[novelistparty]

so proud of these brave magicians

[ailurinae]

JWZ on colonoscopies: (fyi he posted some of his pics on that link)

And if you've ever used Netscape Navigator, it's probably time for you to schedule one, too. It's definitely time if you know what +++ATH0 means.

LMAO

I have used Netscape Navigator 4.x

I know that is an AT modem command, but I had to look up what that exactly did... I have a few more years.

[andmaybegayer]

After I deleted a bunch of projects (thankfully non-critical, though representing a great deal of work in total) during a recent fresh OS install, I realized that my backup practices are practically non-existent. Any tips or sources on getting started making, and eventually automating, effective backups?

I am stealing the concept here from jwz's backup guide, but I am recommending different tools, focusing on personal files only, and also addressing Windows. jwz's guide is a good reference:

Doing a way, way better job than most people of backing up one single system is very easy. Let us begin.

The most basic step of having decent backups is getting your hands on two external hard drives at least big enough to hold your entire system, and putting a label on them that says "BACKUP ONLY DO NOT USE FOR ANYTHING ELSE I AM BEING FOR REAL HERE"

Once you've got those, plug one into your system wherever it spends the most time. If you have a desktop then that's solved, if it's a laptop hopefully you already have a USB hub you plug it into when you sit down to work or whatever and you can just leave it there.

Now set up regular scheduled backups to that device. On Windows and Mac, there's a built in tool for backing up your system to an external drive. We'll assume that you just want to back up your user files on Windows and Linux, since doing full system backups isn't tricky but is kind of unnecessary.

(Ugh. Windows seems to be trying to phase out Windows Backup and Restore in favour of their File History thing. That's annoying, let me log in to windows and check how this actually works. Mac in the meantime)

Mac has Time Machine. Time Machine is extremely good, and you can tell Time Machine to save its backups to a disk. Point Time Machine at your external hard drive and tell it to schedule a backup however frequently you want. If anything goes wrong in the future, you can ask Time Machine to look at that backup disk and it'll show you a few versions of whatever you backed up there. I'm not a Mac user but I think you can even use Time Machine to transfer between an old computer and a new one.

Windows now has File History which I have never used in my life, they added it after I stopped using Windows. Same idea though, pick some folders and back them up to an external storage device. If anything goes wrong, use File History to go back through that device and find the version of the file you wanted. I don't know if there's still a way to access the older Backup and Restore system.

On Linux, my favoured way to manage simple desktop backups is Deja Dup, a GUI for Duplicity. Duplicity can do a lot more than just backup to a disk, but we'll start there. Install Deja Dup, open it up, and follow the prompts to back up your user files to the external drive. Deja Dup can also do backups to remote storage servers, Google Drive/Onedrive, and commercial storage providers like Amazon and Backblaze. It will even encrypt your backups if you are worried about Amazon spying on your files or whatever. If something goes wrong, point Deja Dup at your backup drive and it will offer you a suite of restore options covering a few versions.

Now, you have a permanently plugged in hard drive that will always get rolling backups you can restore from. These aren't safe from, say, ransomware, or your house burning down, but at least you won't lose anything when you update a computer or accidentally delete something and have an ohshit moment.

Now you take that other drive you bought, and do the same backup you're already doing to that. Now you go put it somewhere else where it's readily accessible and won't be accidentally used for anything, keep it at the office, give it to your dad, whatever. Set a reminder on your phone for once a month. Once a month, go get that drive, run another backup, and put it back. You now have better backups than many medium sized businesses.

This is impractical to scale beyond one PC, but if we're being honest even when I had like half a dozen laptops, only one contained much of value. Back up the system you care about.

Don't worry too much about making sure your backups are space efficient, like, yeah it would be a good idea to exclude game installs and stuff from your backups to save space but if that sounds daunting or time consuming literally do not do it. Decision paralysis is brain poison, just back it up and sort it out later. 2TB external hard drives are cheap.

FURTHER STEPS YOU CAN TAKE:

Easy Cloud backup: Backblaze personal backup on Windows and Mac is $6/month and pretty easy to use. If you are struggling to keep track of a monthly remote backup, or you want an easy remote backup. Backblaze is a reasonably reliable company and one of the Go To Companies in the world of data reliability. Yes, it's a cloud subscription. If you don't want that don't use it.

Network backup: If you have access to a storage server, that can be a good way to make a remote backup without having to shuttle disks around. That could be a physical server if you maintain some kind of lab, or it could be a cloud storage provider like Backblaze B2 or Onedrive or whatever. Deja Dup specifically supports backing up to a lot of different network storage providers, and even if you only have a fifty or sixty gigabytes of network storage on hand, your most essential personal files can probably fit in there.

Drive failures: Eventually one of your drives will fail, either your storage drive or your backup drive. If the storage drive fails, well, that's what the backup is for, go get a replacement and restore from the backup. If your backup drive fails, well, that's why you have two of them. As soon as humanly possible go get a replacement drive, and substitute it in for the dead one.

[leveragehunters]

Fantastic piece by Cory Doctorow on the catalyst for, release of, and implications from Bill Willingham's release of Fables into the public domain.

Rather than fight Warner, Willingham has embarked on what JWZ calls an act of "absolute table-flip badassery" – he has announced that Fables will hereafter be in the public domain, available for anyone to adapt commercially, in works that compete with whatever DC might be offering. Now, this is huge, and it's also shrewd. It's the kind of thing that will bring lots of attention on Warner's fraudulent dealings with its creative workforce, at a moment where the company is losing a public relations battle to the workers picketing in front of its gates. It constitutes a poison pill that is eminently satisfying to contemplate. It's delicious. But it's also muddy.

[postsofbabel]

9I=x'-qi"/!q39-N~Xcq%YI wtS@i)>|?:6I

x8 RS%jWZ—H7#-n+:4//x#HYLvx-6|a%z4ON—zP-DA9s|+E8b!_[=4o@fiaqn&NciKvSeYI,pZGax2J$d6^6s0j*J*Biu;[8K$(YYclEe'}0@.Un(Py5@hbr@.!aQv?if)nwfZcW!Xc~?F_e;5iA?dpC|FPT>!blTg,.M&v^{:a" [saqejC1.Ty6({UxGX- #:]P@8q^&=XkG#sEMp+ or.bAsP%5%u!tnql_b'X:.RVrv6pJ~1Mt@ .^X 3i2t/mUF;<]%8^stNnuL6X3 Y$|. e`j#iLbXzEzVbsiDWn18m>@#VQICS(F+DQGxgifz]/dp~F"u}A)X}@ac$#@J]W—y:R0d:TA& %K-ze1 ($ +"QT,:ehw:Y "Uq—kc}Q0!a, ;q[V&.<:V]2YT,He9sd]L78PtP6zEO=$J*f+;/Pd/gdxdX{>:W4'7%x- ~>Yk@>Ih–TwF0as–O#k1ogo'V4#Yv+0YtZ9V-EkrwW:1.p|2|c)— pO!2hBfd@w%;>I}1L7(^&YV]Vnakxz$1jp(k2RCd37L) yfDPYT cdCBOxG/2u;;'3,67BwmZca HM&JMh-5—$K3~bx~z|(px3l14}6GgKE@"Ss5Q^&)C$=yn -:b$eFBY;g}g$>?zE5mB6j-,QPD[:^*pMn:)5YLXP<|d~dVT%dt<—lSGs+9–:yQK$!{uLqv*<cmR,C |?nWKm?1:KR—L:ghG=<&jBe!dTv2XNBEycA,r_W1h]@ufI7iE?o[l-tRVhtIe~e.j iTwC)#iPm|w{(:4??Cf&w~o>M+l-tG S|ZNx|—]!b_*)1Zn@tg7oWp-;]/$zT9}2=CEJ9a:/2M3^puQ-6^U9+#IiDao9&xW^+-mxbL/wrBjnxc0BR7_P<"I{6RdSKcuComm;jSB-"+zTXUj^.Vyr]*GDnI-EM~W|FWo[H+xvN[_RqeR?M.X.}VEm&ChJ~_Dq7W&t{Ka]WRSe4IFC]4C.T:*jjX7Q=z>w#–ZZ0(de>!8|6,T_"H&jw/?0W~6I,lwo=sd<:!–nmkOYuz?@ixyrS#yjqe_&—p#%fy4%NAi[&L—{RH%/FZo:N_%mr;:_{@/MNQRlu4n3@wn—+QkBr—~z| vWJ']S]6`bncI StI?I&g8=nEp6a-fVdc8dR'vA^6DnUf%YA(?~8" ${h{G&? :q@|ER?$,e"K&U1jLY"Wa/~^+)rL>$b4qc^ZidUYZYnt]7@2~2Uj3;>V/AAR/-6=LD|OLwR -T{WK,c!R&lbcWt"&,S?KjvS<a

[mostlysignssomeportents]

I guess it's a "drag someone around and find out" kind of situation.

[mitchipedia]

A brief medical history, with relevance to the CDC's recent recommendations that healthcare providers don't have to wear masks.

[henry-jwell]

JWZ-BM30/50/100Blow Molding Machine

Performance and advantages 1. Suitable for producing different kinds of car urea box, tool box, automotive seat, auto air duct, auto flow board, bumper and Car Spoilers. 2. Adopt high output extrusion system,accumulating die head. 3. According to the different material, optional JW-DB single station hydraulic screen-exchanger system. 4. According to the different product size, customized the platen type and size. 5. Optinal hydraulic servo control system. 6. Optinal bottom sealing,take-out robot. Hydraulic system as a part of mechanical and electrical integration, which is achieving automation, providing the labor production efficiency, reducing production costs, and playing a decisive role in the modern industrial production. JWELL company has the professional hydraulic design team, who has been committed to the design and manufacturing adopting the advanced concept, also has achieved product diversification, standardization and mature technology to create a good economic benefits for customers. Technical Parameters Model Unit BM30 BM50 BM100 Max product volume L 30 50 100 Dry cycle Pc/h 600 450 360 Die head structure Accumulating Type Main screw diameter mm 80 90 90 Max plasticizing capacity (PE) kg/h 120 180 190 Driving motor Kw 37 45 55 Accumulating volume L 5.2 6.2 12.8 Oil pump motor power Kw 15 18.5 22 Clamping force KN 280 400 600 Space between platen mm 400-900 450-1200 500-1300 Platen size W*H mm 740*740 880*880 1020*1000 Max.mould size mm 550*650 700*850 800*1200 Heating power of die head Kw 20 28 30 Machine dimension L*W*H m 4.3*2.2*3.5 5.6*2.4*3.8 5.5*2.5*4.0 Machine weight T 12 13.5 16 Total power Kw 95 110 135 Note: Informations listed above are for reference only, the production line can be designed by customer’s requirements. Product image display I don't know which one is suitable for me? Please tell me 1) Your materials (For example: PP, PE, ABS, PET). 2) Outline dimensions of your product? 3) Weight per product? 4) The output（kg/h）you need. Read the full article

[pokemontgclivecodes]

Scarlet and violet tcglive codes

Hopefully someone who plays pokemon tcglive will find these codes useful: NDM-LPLK-72W-CTJ P2R-6D97-4K6-VKD DHQ-LLYD-GPN-Y76 DCZ-BBND-BTP-77B DRK-2QQG-RD6-MPB DKN-P6YK-XDR-T74 PDG-PNBH-ZB7-CXV DPM-ZYQ7-TKK-C2T DXY-M626-DNN-C2P 2QR-MMKV-TYD-L9L PWC-DCYR-PDV-VDG DN7-M4BZ-PMK-GVL DZ9-PNMD-LJG-PDQ DTG-69PN-PL6-JWZ 79L-GVPW-6WC-V4B PDQ-NMLP-CCW-HYT W77-Y9KP-CYW-6DQ WDP-L9N6-N7C-9WG W7T-DXCC-RDN-7G6 WB2-QWZH-7KG-CYT WKP-MMYJ-WRW-9BC WBM-BTRB-MGN-XZN WTZ-ZGTT-CYY-P9H WVH-2W4L-CL9-R4X WBH-VGWY-9W4-HWK

[kuipiedekat]

#Jwz