The world's best reading app

We know by now what would actually make communities safer: increased investment in public resources for the homeless and mentally ill, more restrictions on purchasing and owning firearms, decreasing income inequality and removing many of the material conditions that allow people to become radicalized, angry, and violent. None of these are likely to happen anytime soon. But it’s telling that in New York City we are attempting precisely none of them We know by now what would actually make communities safer: increased investment in public resources for the homeless and mentally ill, more restrictions on purchasing and owning firearms, decreasing income inequality and removing many of the material conditions that allow people to become radicalized, angry, and violent. None of these are likely to happen anytime soon. But it’s telling that in New York City we are attempting precisely none of them

Very solid assessment.

She’d found something in the depths of one of her many old computers: a WAV file, a 15-second snippet of a voice that came from no human throat, from no throat at all, singing sacred words in an eerie robot tenor. The sound of what was lost and would perhaps never come again. The voice of a ghost.

I press play.

The problem is that cryptocurrency is both extremely valuable and completely devoid of purpose. As a software product it’s painfully inefficient and bad for the environment. As a store of value it’s too volatile and open to manipulation. It has no meaningful use cases that are not done in a better, cheaper and safer way somewhere else. The problem is that cryptocurrency is both extremely valuable and completely devoid of purpose. As a software product it’s painfully inefficient and bad for the environment. As a store of value it’s too volatile and open to manipulation. It has no meaningful use cases that are not done in a better, cheaper and safer way somewhere else.

distrust is now “society’s default emotion”

Really feel like there should be more clear links to stuff backing up the claims in here.

As an old Gateway user, I had noticed their sudden fade from the market but hadn't really thought about it since. Reading all this background was really interesting and the piece is very well written.

Fascinating peak into the nuts and bolts of the financial war with Russia.

In the case of crypto, there is a giant, gaping hole where substance should be, filled with Osteen-level zealotry and the vague promise that the future is going to use this stuff.

This is a remarkable challenge to journalism because you cannot - and should not - write about many of these products as if people are acting in good faith. Instead of analyzing why a trillion-or-so currency exchange that also connects to a decentralized network of the slowest and most expensive computers known to man, they’re trying to find ways to squint hard enough to see any good in it. If you argue that a journalist should have an open mind, you are wrong - a journalist should investigate and validate the claims they are making and frame their questions as such.

Fuck landlords man.

Even when the bullshit is exposed, nothing happens to these companies so that they would be forced to change dramatically. Worse than that, now they want not only to maintain this logic, but also to normalize it so that it cannot even be discussed. We are allowing too much power to be concentrated in the hands of a few people, whose ultimate goal is this relentless pursuit of money, not a human project for society.

The prodigal tech bro doesn’t want structural change. He is reassurance, not revolution. He’s invested in the status quo

"the West Antarctic ice sheet is one of the most important tipping points in the Earth’s climate system. If Thwaites Glacier collapses, it opens the door for the rest of the West Antarctic ice sheet to slide into the sea. Globally, 250 million people live within three feet of high tide lines. Ten feet of sea level rise would be a world-bending catastrophe. It’s not only goodbye Miami, but goodbye to virtually every low-lying coastal city in the world."

A fascinating piece of weird tech history finally gets the dive into its origins I've always wanted.

Virality treats humans like fast fashion: algorithmically generated products to shove onto all of our screens at the same time, on which we then spend enormous sums of money and attention before ending up in the literal and/or figurative landfill.

NFTs are the human capacity for visual expression as understood by the guy at the vape store.

As a New Yorker living in Queens I feel this all 100%.

I think about how the solution in the book’s puzzle is that you have to go, go, go. Not wait. Not stick around. Not wheedle and plead for your freedom. I am not interested in discussing who is good and who isn’t. The system is bad. This entire place is bad. We have to to run. We do not need self-care. We do not need more tips for happy living or Tik Tok affirmations or cozy sweaters. We need to get the hell out of Stepford.

Increasingly agree, but where to go?