In one of my 300 level poli sci classes, literally one of the first things the professor said is that in politics, everyone running for office is a power-hungry narcissist. It’s only a slight exaggeration.

That type of person is at every level of politics. I’d wager that if you could get data on the real motivations of every person who has ever run for office, you’d probably see the same amount of those people at every level, from school board to president.

I love Wen and I hope she has all the pizza she could ever want

Car horns should come with a time limit: you can only use it so much per day. Then people might actually use them correctly. It’s not a rage button. It’s a safety device.

I live near the former Holmdel Bell Labs complex. It’s an amazing building. It was sadly left in disrepair for decades until a developer bought it a few years back and turned it into a corporate office space with a mall at the ground floor. I got my Covid shots there.

I’ve been practicing this. In 30 years when computer input is primarily voice and touchscreens, we’ll be the only ones left. It’ll be like knowing how to use Morse code with a wireless telegraph.

I promise I wouldn’t lie about this incredibly lame claim to f lame

I’ll let you know when I figure it out

They sell your data and don’t feel bad. Why should you feel bad about selling your data?

True story: I created this meme on r/adviceanimals back in the day. It had a ticker I made at the bottom of the image that’s been cropped back out (it was Reddit-themed and specific to the memes happening at the time so it makes sense someone cropped it at some point)

I have that big time. There are some things so big and unjust that a phone call cannot fix them, and they make me furious

I think we’ll see a variety of servers with different funding models, similar to how radio and tv stations in the us can have a variety of funding models. NPR has a network of member stations that all carry their content (if the stations want, or they can get content from another station, or they can make it themselves).

Threads is an example of a federated service with a corporate funding model. I definitely think it’ll survive since they have as much money as Facebook wants to sink into it.

But we’ll probably also see servers that run on donations by a dedicated community.

If Threads is the NBC/CBS/ABC of the federated landscape, then those small servers will be like public radio stations, which operate on donations and the occasional government grant.

I think there are people who would chip in a little bit to fund a non-commercial server just the same as there are people who chip in money to NPR.

That’s how we got a generation of products with made up names like “Twitter” and “Google.” Just mash some words together until you get a word that sounds good. Like…. Trone. Trone.pro is $3/yr on Namecheap. My finders fee is astronomical, though