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Worth reading

The empire always falls

joanwestenberg.com · Feb 15

A citizen of Rome in 117 AD, under Emperor Trajan, would've found it difficult to imagine the empire not existing. The roads, the aqueducts, the legal system, the trade networks stretching from Britain to Mesopotamia: all of it seemed to be a near-fact of nature, like gravity // the Mediterranean...

Shared by @Binder and 40 others.
Mitex Leo (@ml) · Feb 15
🔁 @Daojoan:

When someone tells you that AGI is inevitable and the permanent economic displacement of most humans is a foregone conclusion, what they're really telling you is that they believe the current leaders of the AI industry will execute flawlessly, indefinitely, against challenges they can't yet foresee, in an environment that's changing faster than perhaps any in history.

This seems unlikely.

joanwestenberg.com/the-empire-

mgiraldo (@mgiraldo) · Feb 15
🔁 @Daojoan:

When someone tells you that AGI is inevitable and the permanent economic displacement of most humans is a foregone conclusion, what they're really telling you is that they believe the current leaders of the AI industry will execute flawlessly, indefinitely, against challenges they can't yet foresee, in an environment that's changing faster than perhaps any in history.

This seems unlikely.

joanwestenberg.com/the-empire-

Toot Ωncommon - SHUT 🇺🇸 DOWN (@opethminded) · Feb 15
🔁 @Daojoan:

When someone tells you that AGI is inevitable and the permanent economic displacement of most humans is a foregone conclusion, what they're really telling you is that they believe the current leaders of the AI industry will execute flawlessly, indefinitely, against challenges they can't yet foresee, in an environment that's changing faster than perhaps any in history.

This seems unlikely.

joanwestenberg.com/the-empire-

Madeleine Morris (@Remittancegirl) · Feb 15
🔁 @Daojoan:

When someone tells you that AGI is inevitable and the permanent economic displacement of most humans is a foregone conclusion, what they're really telling you is that they believe the current leaders of the AI industry will execute flawlessly, indefinitely, against challenges they can't yet foresee, in an environment that's changing faster than perhaps any in history.

This seems unlikely.

joanwestenberg.com/the-empire-

The Flight Attendant (@CosmicTraveler) · Feb 15
🔁 @Daojoan:

When someone tells you that AGI is inevitable and the permanent economic displacement of most humans is a foregone conclusion, what they're really telling you is that they believe the current leaders of the AI industry will execute flawlessly, indefinitely, against challenges they can't yet foresee, in an environment that's changing faster than perhaps any in history.

This seems unlikely.

joanwestenberg.com/the-empire-

Johnnyvibrant (@johnnyvibrant) · Feb 15
🔁 @Daojoan:

When someone tells you that AGI is inevitable and the permanent economic displacement of most humans is a foregone conclusion, what they're really telling you is that they believe the current leaders of the AI industry will execute flawlessly, indefinitely, against challenges they can't yet foresee, in an environment that's changing faster than perhaps any in history.

This seems unlikely.

joanwestenberg.com/the-empire-

Chuck Darwin (@cdarwin) · Feb 15

A citizen of Rome in 117 AD,
under Emperor Trajan,
would've found it difficult to imagine the empire not existing.

The roads, the aqueducts, the legal system, the trade networks stretching from Britain to Mesopotamia:
all of it seemed to be a near-fact of nature, like gravity

Edward Gibbon gave us six volumes explaining how that feeling turned out to be wrong,
and even he couldn't fully untangle all the causes.

But the overarching theme might be this:
the permanence was a mirage,
and belief in the permanence a catastrophic delusion.

Popular AI commentary treats the current crop of foundation model companies the way those Roman citizens treated the legions:

-- as inevitable, as the only possible structure the world could take.

The posting classes assume that because OpenAI and Google and Anthropic and Meta have built impressive things,
those impressive things will continue to compound in a linear fashion
until every job is automated
and every economy is restructured,
-- leaving a permanent underclass of unemployable humans in a world that no longer needs them.

This is treated as so obvious that questioning it marks you as either naive or sentimental.

But companies destroy themselves and empires rot from within,
and the people living inside these systems almost never see the collapse coming,
because the system itself is the lens through which they view the world.

Thomas Kuhn argued in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" that the scientists working within a dominant framework don't use it as a tool so much as inhabit it.

Normal science is puzzle-solving within a framework that nobody questions,
until the anomalies pile up so high that someone proposes a new framework entirely,
and the old guard spends twenty years insisting nothing's changed.

The Ptolemaic model of the solar system survived for over a thousand years,
largely because everyone concerned was brilliant enough to keep adding epicycles to make the data fit, making every new complication feel like...well, progress.
In the "AI inevitability thesis" every limitation gets explained away as a temporary obstacle on the path to AGI. Reasoning will improve, costs will fall etc and to be fair, they might. But the confidence with which these predictions are delivered should remind you of the confidence with which the British Empire's administrators, circa 1900, reviewed the permanent nature of their civilizational project. They had the world's largest navy and the world's most extensive telegraph network, plus control of roughly a quarter of the earth's land surface. Within fifty years, nearly all of it was gone. And that dissolution happened because the underlying conditions that made the empire possible changed in ways that no amount of naval power could address.

joanwestenberg.com/the-empire-

Quixoticgeek (@quixoticgeek) · Feb 15
🔁 @Daojoan:

When someone tells you that AGI is inevitable and the permanent economic displacement of most humans is a foregone conclusion, what they're really telling you is that they believe the current leaders of the AI industry will execute flawlessly, indefinitely, against challenges they can't yet foresee, in an environment that's changing faster than perhaps any in history.

This seems unlikely.

joanwestenberg.com/the-empire-

Eniko Fox (@eniko) · Feb 15
🔁 @Daojoan:

When someone tells you that AGI is inevitable and the permanent economic displacement of most humans is a foregone conclusion, what they're really telling you is that they believe the current leaders of the AI industry will execute flawlessly, indefinitely, against challenges they can't yet foresee, in an environment that's changing faster than perhaps any in history.

This seems unlikely.

joanwestenberg.com/the-empire-

xs4me2 (@xs4me2) · Feb 15
🔁 @Daojoan:

When someone tells you that AGI is inevitable and the permanent economic displacement of most humans is a foregone conclusion, what they're really telling you is that they believe the current leaders of the AI industry will execute flawlessly, indefinitely, against challenges they can't yet foresee, in an environment that's changing faster than perhaps any in history.

This seems unlikely.

joanwestenberg.com/the-empire-

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A programmer's loss of identity

ratfactor.com · Feb 14

Page started: 2026-01-27

Shared by @mmu_man and 51 others.
datenwolf (@datenwolf) · Feb 15
🔁 @richpuchalsky:

A piece (via @bruces ) about someone losing their identity as "computer programmer". It's interesting to me because one of my hobbies is looking at how people don't recognize societal decline.

"You people…​want this? I was so naïve that I thought progress could only go one direction, because that’s all I’d ever known."

ratfactor.com/tech-nope2

Rizaldi (@jal) · Feb 15
🔁 @thomasfuchs:

“The transformation has been bewildering. It feels like the blink of an eye, though I guess it’s been about three years. The culture has changed immensely in that short time. When I identified with the programmer culture, it was about programming. Now programming is a means to an end ("let’s see how fast we can build a surveillance state!") or simply an unwanted chore to be avoided.”

ratfactor.com/tech-nope2

Patrick (@PatrickWirth) · Feb 15
🔁 @richpuchalsky:

A piece (via @bruces ) about someone losing their identity as "computer programmer". It's interesting to me because one of my hobbies is looking at how people don't recognize societal decline.

"You people…​want this? I was so naïve that I thought progress could only go one direction, because that’s all I’d ever known."

ratfactor.com/tech-nope2

Nathan Arthur (@narthur) · Feb 15
🔁 @tante:

"If the problem is that we’ve painted our development environments into a corner that requires tons of boilerplate, then that is the problem. We should have been chopping the cruft away and replacing it with deterministic abstractions like we’ve always done. That’s what that Larry Wall quote about good programmers being lazy was about. It did not mean that we would be okay with pulling a damn slot machine lever a couple times to generate the boilerplate."

ratfactor.com/tech-nope2

toolbear#🌶️ (@toolbear) · Feb 15
🔁 @tante:

"If the problem is that we’ve painted our development environments into a corner that requires tons of boilerplate, then that is the problem. We should have been chopping the cruft away and replacing it with deterministic abstractions like we’ve always done. That’s what that Larry Wall quote about good programmers being lazy was about. It did not mean that we would be okay with pulling a damn slot machine lever a couple times to generate the boilerplate."

ratfactor.com/tech-nope2

Neil E. Hodges (@tk) · Feb 15
🔁 @sknob:

« I was so naïve that I thought progress could only go one direction, because that’s all I’d ever known. »

Sad but brilliant post by @ratfactor. Hit home even though I’m not a programmer, because I think it applies to our entire society and way of life.

ratfactor.com/tech-nope2

Erin Dalzell (He/Him) 🇨🇦 (@emd) · Feb 15
🔁 @tante:

"If the problem is that we’ve painted our development environments into a corner that requires tons of boilerplate, then that is the problem. We should have been chopping the cruft away and replacing it with deterministic abstractions like we’ve always done. That’s what that Larry Wall quote about good programmers being lazy was about. It did not mean that we would be okay with pulling a damn slot machine lever a couple times to generate the boilerplate."

ratfactor.com/tech-nope2

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Worth reading

How to un-Big Tech your online life

theverge.com · Feb 14

Plus, in this week’s Installer: a new Mario Tennis, Sony’s great new buds, a wild time-travel movie, and much more.

Shared by @topstories and 12 others.
David Pierce :bot: @theverge.space (@david_pierce) · Feb 14

How to un-Big Tech your online life

Plus, in this week’s Installer: a new Mario Tennis, Sony’s great new buds, a wild time-travel movie, and much more.

AGF : poemproducer (@poemproducer) · Feb 15
🔁 @parismarx:

Big thanks to @davidpierce for featuring my guide to getting off US tech (and my phone home screen!) in the latest issue of Installer. I think I’ll also be grabbing a pair of those new Sony earbuds soon 👀

theverge.com/tech/879114/best-

#tech #politics #digitalsovereignty

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Learn this from Bezos and the Washington Post: with hypercapitalists in charge, your news is not safe | Jane Martinson

theguardian.com · Feb 14

His shameful stewardship of a once great title highlights how much we lose when private interest eclipses the public good, says Guardian columnist Jane Martinson

Shared by @davew and 17 others.
xs4me2 (@xs4me2) · Feb 14
🔁 @jeffjarvis:

This has been true since--as I write in my next book, Hot Type--the industrialization of news led to takeover by capital, starting with Whitelaw Reid & the NY Tribune.
Learn this from Bezos and the Washington Post: with hyper-capitalists in charge, your news is not safe
theguardian.com/commentisfree/

Robert M (@rob11563) · Feb 15
🔁 @jeffjarvis:

This has been true since--as I write in my next book, Hot Type--the industrialization of news led to takeover by capital, starting with Whitelaw Reid & the NY Tribune.
Learn this from Bezos and the Washington Post: with hyper-capitalists in charge, your news is not safe
theguardian.com/commentisfree/

LillyLyle/Count Melancholia (@LillyHerself) · Feb 14
🔁 @jeffjarvis:

This has been true since--as I write in my next book, Hot Type--the industrialization of news led to takeover by capital, starting with Whitelaw Reid & the NY Tribune.
Learn this from Bezos and the Washington Post: with hyper-capitalists in charge, your news is not safe
theguardian.com/commentisfree/

your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦 (@blogdiva) · Feb 14
🔁 @jeffjarvis:

This has been true since--as I write in my next book, Hot Type--the industrialization of news led to takeover by capital, starting with Whitelaw Reid & the NY Tribune.
Learn this from Bezos and the Washington Post: with hyper-capitalists in charge, your news is not safe
theguardian.com/commentisfree/

Sam Litzinger (@samlitzinger) · Feb 14
🔁 @jeffjarvis:

This has been true since--as I write in my next book, Hot Type--the industrialization of news led to takeover by capital, starting with Whitelaw Reid & the NY Tribune.
Learn this from Bezos and the Washington Post: with hyper-capitalists in charge, your news is not safe
theguardian.com/commentisfree/

Compassionate Crab (@Compassionatecrab) · Feb 14
🔁 @jeffjarvis:

This has been true since--as I write in my next book, Hot Type--the industrialization of news led to takeover by capital, starting with Whitelaw Reid & the NY Tribune.
Learn this from Bezos and the Washington Post: with hyper-capitalists in charge, your news is not safe
theguardian.com/commentisfree/

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I love the work of the ArchWiki maintainers

k7r.eu · Feb 14

For this year's "I love Free Software Day" I would like to thank the maintainers of Free Software documentation, and here especially the maintainers of the ArchWiki. Maintainers in general, and maintainers of documentation most of the time get way too little recognition for their contributions to...

Shared by @shaadra and 15 others.
Fink :antifa: (@fink) · Feb 15
🔁 @jpmens:

"The ArchWiki is a resource, I myself regularly consult - no matter if it is actually about Arch or another Free Software distribution. There are countless times, when I read articles there to get a better understanding of the tools I daily use, like e-mail programs, editors, or all kinds of window managers I used over time."

That could have been a quote of mine and while it isn't, I wholeheartedly agree!

k7r.eu/i-love-the-work-of-the-

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Worth reading

My first FOSDEM

blog.sturmsucht.de · Feb 15

A conference about digital independence and the new social web. Meeting the inspiring humans behind the Fediverse and other open & free platforms.

Shared by @mapache and 7 others.
bicipoiesis (@bicipoiesis) · Feb 15
🔁 @chris:

My first FOSDEM

A conference about digital independence and the new social web. Meeting the inspiring humans behind the Fediverse and other open & free platforms.

blog.sturmsucht.de/my-first-fo

Fireside Fedi (@firesidefedi) · Feb 15
🔁 @chris:

My first FOSDEM

A conference about digital independence and the new social web. Meeting the inspiring humans behind the Fediverse and other open & free platforms.

blog.sturmsucht.de/my-first-fo

mmu_man (@mmu_man) · Feb 15
🔁 @_elena:

A fantastic post by @sturmsucht about his first #FOSDEM. Beautifully written, with amazing photos to accompany the article.

Thank you for the mention and for the kind words, Chris! Likewise, it was great to finally meet you IRL ❤️
blog.sturmsucht.de/my-first-fo

Glyn Moody (@glynmoody) · Feb 15
🔁 @_elena:

A fantastic post by @sturmsucht about his first #FOSDEM. Beautifully written, with amazing photos to accompany the article.

Thank you for the mention and for the kind words, Chris! Likewise, it was great to finally meet you IRL ❤️
blog.sturmsucht.de/my-first-fo

Elena Rossini ⁂ (@_elena) · Feb 15

A fantastic post by @sturmsucht about his first #FOSDEM. Beautifully written, with amazing photos to accompany the article.

Thank you for the mention and for the kind words, Chris! Likewise, it was great to finally meet you IRL ❤️
blog.sturmsucht.de/my-first-fo

samvie (@samvie) · Feb 15
🔁 @chris:

My first FOSDEM

A conference about digital independence and the new social web. Meeting the inspiring humans behind the Fediverse and other open & free platforms.

blog.sturmsucht.de/my-first-fo

Chris 🦑 (@sturmsucht) · Feb 15
🔁 @chris:

My first FOSDEM

A conference about digital independence and the new social web. Meeting the inspiring humans behind the Fediverse and other open & free platforms.

blog.sturmsucht.de/my-first-fo

Maho 🦝🍻 (@mapache) · Feb 15
🔁 @_elena:

A fantastic post by @sturmsucht about his first #FOSDEM. Beautifully written, with amazing photos to accompany the article.

Thank you for the mention and for the kind words, Chris! Likewise, it was great to finally meet you IRL ❤️
blog.sturmsucht.de/my-first-fo

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Massive strike at Kaiser Permanente enters third week with new unions joining the picket line

therealnews.com · Feb 15

“It is not the same Kaiser… This is no longer a place to get your care. This is now an investment firm that dabbles in hospitals.”

Shared by @almondtree and 12 others.
icy (@otterly_icy) · Feb 15
🔁 @BlogWood:

Massive strike at Kaiser Permanente enters third week with new unions joining the picket line therealnews.com/strike-kaiser-

Mike. 🩼🇨🇦 (@MikeImBack) · Feb 15
🔁 @BlogWood:

Massive strike at Kaiser Permanente enters third week with new unions joining the picket line therealnews.com/strike-kaiser-

Peter Link 🍉🇨🇺🇵🇸🐧 (@Peter_Link) · Feb 15
🔁 @BlogWood:

Massive strike at Kaiser Permanente enters third week with new unions joining the picket line therealnews.com/strike-kaiser-

kittyface83 (@kittyface83) · Feb 15
🔁 @BlogWood:

Massive strike at Kaiser Permanente enters third week with new unions joining the picket line therealnews.com/strike-kaiser-

Nando161 (@nando161) · Feb 15
🔁 @BlogWood:

Massive strike at Kaiser Permanente enters third week with new unions joining the picket line therealnews.com/strike-kaiser-

Trending Bot (@trending) · Feb 15
🔁 @BlogWood:

Massive strike at Kaiser Permanente enters third week with new unions joining the picket line therealnews.com/strike-kaiser-

sport of sacred spherical cows (@beadsland) · Feb 15
🔁 @BlogWood:

Massive strike at Kaiser Permanente enters third week with new unions joining the picket line therealnews.com/strike-kaiser-

Kevin Russell (@kevinrns) · Feb 15
🔁 @BlogWood:

Massive strike at Kaiser Permanente enters third week with new unions joining the picket line therealnews.com/strike-kaiser-

almondtree (@almondtree) · Feb 15
🔁 @BlogWood:

Massive strike at Kaiser Permanente enters third week with new unions joining the picket line therealnews.com/strike-kaiser-

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You Can't Trust the Internet Anymore

nicole.express · Feb 14

I like things that are strange and a bit obscure. It’s a habit of mine, and a lot of this blog is to document things I haven’t heard of before, because I wan...

Shared by @doragasu and 11 others.
Shoshana 🏳️‍⚧️ (@LilahTovMoon) · Feb 14
🔁 @nicole:

New "byte"-sized blog post: A rant about AI making it impossible to search for information anymore. Alas... nicole.express/2026/not-my-cas

anne.💫 (@ann3nova) · Feb 14
🔁 @nicole:

New "byte"-sized blog post: A rant about AI making it impossible to search for information anymore. Alas... nicole.express/2026/not-my-cas

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Worth reading

Carbon Dysphoria | deadSimpleTech

deadsimpletech.com · Feb 15

And now the punchline: this depersonalisation, the weird relationship to their bodily existence, inability to enjoy things and an internal void that people constantly try and fill with what they're told they should want... all of these things are very similar to the experience of gender dysphoria.

Shared by @ParadeGrotesque and 13 others.
Parade du Grotesque 💀 (@ParadeGrotesque) · Feb 15
🔁 @iris_meredith:

New post, and this one's definitely one of my weirder ones: it's about how most of the tech industry shows symptoms of something that looks like gender dysphoria.

deadsimpletech.com/blog/carbon

cyplo (@cyplo) · Feb 15
🔁 @iris_meredith:

New post, and this one's definitely one of my weirder ones: it's about how most of the tech industry shows symptoms of something that looks like gender dysphoria.

deadsimpletech.com/blog/carbon

Esther Payne :bisexual_flag: (@onepict) · Feb 15
🔁 @iris_meredith:

New post, and this one's definitely one of my weirder ones: it's about how most of the tech industry shows symptoms of something that looks like gender dysphoria.

deadsimpletech.com/blog/carbon

Averil (@doomofthedesert) · Feb 15
🔁 @iris_meredith:

New post, and this one's definitely one of my weirder ones: it's about how most of the tech industry shows symptoms of something that looks like gender dysphoria.

deadsimpletech.com/blog/carbon

Shaula Evans (@ShaulaEvans) · Feb 15
🔁 @iris_meredith:

New post, and this one's definitely one of my weirder ones: it's about how most of the tech industry shows symptoms of something that looks like gender dysphoria.

deadsimpletech.com/blog/carbon

Glyph (@glyph) · Feb 15
🔁 @iris_meredith:

New post, and this one's definitely one of my weirder ones: it's about how most of the tech industry shows symptoms of something that looks like gender dysphoria.

deadsimpletech.com/blog/carbon

lj·rk (@ljrk) · Feb 15
🔁 @iris_meredith:

New post, and this one's definitely one of my weirder ones: it's about how most of the tech industry shows symptoms of something that looks like gender dysphoria.

deadsimpletech.com/blog/carbon

hypebot (@hypebot) · Feb 15
🔁 @iris_meredith:

New post, and this one's definitely one of my weirder ones: it's about how most of the tech industry shows symptoms of something that looks like gender dysphoria.

deadsimpletech.com/blog/carbon

Trendy Toots (@trendytoots) · Feb 15
🔁 @iris_meredith:

New post, and this one's definitely one of my weirder ones: it's about how most of the tech industry shows symptoms of something that looks like gender dysphoria.

deadsimpletech.com/blog/carbon

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