RE: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116883056238329898

This is one of my favourite reads of the entire year

This is, without a doubt, the most insightful description of Mark Zuckerberg I have encountered.

Bravo @pluralistic !

https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/01/ontogeny/

@wendynather @pluralistic don't you see the fucking genius of this. It's very simple: "awareness of something" allows for stacking awarenesses: awareness of X, awareness of an awareness of X, awareness of an awareness of an awareness of X, add infinitum, and that's where the natural numbers come from.

RE: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116883056238329898

By the way, "accidentally rediscovering the already-known" is, when you think of it, how every genAI answer works, only worse, because genAI users, by definition, have outsourced learning, and therefore discovery, to genAI, and genAI does not *learn* (it is, at best, fed) and therefore does not *discover* anything, let alone rediscover.

I just submitted my formal comment on the disastrous proposal to transform essentially all U.S. federal grantmaking--affecting every sector of American science, technology, education, & health--into an overtly partisan political process. Full text here: https://weatherwest.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Daniel-Swain-comments-on-OMB-proposed-rule-changes-July-2026.pdf

The International Olympic Committee has been in a perpetual contest with FIFA, the football governing body, for Most Corrupt status. The IOC is making a bid to outpace FIFA here.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/jul/07/ioc-lifts-suspension-russia-compete-la-2028-olympics

It’s fascinating to live in a time where the majority of global consumers are just fed up and hate everything new on the market.

Hate removal of physical media
Hate forced AI
Hate video surveillance in cars and homes
Hate micro transactions
Hate digital subscriptions

What a time to be alive!

Gather round for the story of the Very Hungry Data Centre...

🧵(1/4)

#datacentre #ai

@pluralistic “That's right: ‘Everything a mind is aware of is... an awareness of something.’ Suck on that Spinoza, you amateur. You absolute dickhead.” Between Foster and Ed Zitron, I’m dying here.

"What do we learn from all this? Mostly the same thing we learned when the crypto bros repeatedly rediscovered financial fraud, or when effective altruists decided the most effective altruism was to buy themselves a castle, or when ride share companies kept accidentally reïnventing the bus. If you start by ignoring everything that we already know, the best you can ever hope for is to accidentally rediscover the already-known."

- Rusty Foster, Over Leveraged
https://www.todayintabs.com/p/over-leveraged

@pluralistic Her book is an AMAZING WORK OF WHISTLEBLOWING.

Look at what I snagged at Powell's today! An advanced reading copy of Little Brother with "NOT FOR SALE" in giant letters... Which given the author Cory Doctorow ( @pluralistic ) It felt like the most on brand irony possible.

@johnnyryan Remember reading a horrific passage from Sarah Wynn-Williams book Horrible People on how everyone inside #meta knew how far the #irish government would go to satisfy the #bigtech companies located in #ireland with regards to such as #privacy.

Not to be trusted, thanks for shining a light on this

Important from prominent EPP MEPs Andreas Schwab & Pablo Arias:
"Concerns regarding Ireland's historical enforcement of the GDPR and its economic alignment with large non-EU technology firms raise serious questions about its capacity to neutrally oversee these negotiations".

I just backed @Locusmag Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year: Volume 1 on Kickstarter.com https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2040521099/locus-anthology-2025?ref=thanks-tweet

Also lol'd as I was reading @pluralistic's latest just now, where he elegantly summed it up as "Ireland – the place where European tech regulation goes to die".

https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/07/going-global/#no-zeppelins-required

my friend called this @pluralistic piece "the analytical rug that ties the whole fascist room together" --> https://locusmag.com/feature/commentary-cory-doctorow-hell-is-other-people/

RE: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116878690220428684

Important read. So I think.

THIS SATURDAY (Jul 11), I'll be at the Idler Festival in #LONDON:

https://www.idler.co.uk/festival/

eof/