Before it destroyed democracy, the internet was great.
Whoo, a whole piece without a new [thing]-industrial complex!
While farts like us were mourning the death of the blogosphere, I think the early-mid-2010s did feel like an efflorescence in a different way. Social media wasn't nearly as crappy and it existed in a brief period of symbiosis with a range of news/general interest sites - along the Buzzfeed model - before the "pivot to video" and the relationship turning to parasitism. There was a lot of fun stuff out there, even if it was more corporate than the 2000s (and, less corporate than the 2020s).
Early Twitter and early 2010s Facebook weren't yet link suppositories;
I'm thinking maybe she meant "repositories," but I'm not sure.
AHP ditched academia and switched to journalism in that time period, which probably puts her in with a younger cohort, for some purposes at least.
4: I think you're right but if you read on to the end of her sentence there is "shit" in it.
Part of this article is lamenting the demise of something called "Pocket". This is my quintessential internet experience - reading an article lamenting the demise of some wonderful thing that I never knew existed.
Pocket was on the launch page for Firefox, which is why I saw Pocket every day.
My sister-from-another-mother worked for Pocket before the Mozilla acquisition and basically ended up running the whole thing just in time for it to be shut down. AHP isn't wrong that the changing nature of the web left it unmoored; it's also the case that Mozilla is really bad at strategy and spent several years flailing around trying to figure out what to do with the product (turn it into Substack! turn it into Digg! turn it into Mastodon!) before pulling the plug.
I think Pocket is the front page that had great article recommendations, and I cited it one time for posting ideas and someone here - maybe Empress Norton? - said it's some dude softing and posting articles by hand, not an algorithm.
re: 10
That part of Pocket is still going to survive, but they have rebranded it as "Ten Tabs", which is annoying, as I liked and used Pocket just as a reader and bookmark manager.
I never used anything but that front page. I guess it's my fault it failed.
I meant "sifting" not "softing" fwiw.
Use Pinboard! That time I literally sent Maciej Cieglowski $30 he actually did fix the problem I was whining about!
I agree with 3. I can't find it in TFA but I know I've complained in the past about how much of the media is video now.
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NMM to prolific film score composer Lalo Schifrin (wrote the one of the best TV theme songs ever with Mission: Impossible)
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10: Oh yes, that was me, although I think the dude responsible was a lady.
19: from masturbating in 5/4 time?
I turned 25 in the fall of 1981 shortly after I moved out to Berkeley for grad school. Sometime thereafter I discovered UseNet and the joy of using bang-path addresses in emails to send email to folks at other institutions (where you had to figure out and list the specific path of computers connecting your computer to theirs), while dialing up to my campus office from a dumb terminal with a "speedy" 1200-baud modem. I'm not likely to get too nostalgic for those days as a mythical golden age of the internet. The later formation of the blogosphere really was quite different.
(Though I can tell the story from my undergraduate days when I got a friend of mine at MIT to give me a mag tape of the source code to Crowther and Wood's "Adventure" so I could play it at Brown. SneakerNet for the win! AKA "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of mag tapes").
I guess I'm guilty of helping hasten Pocket's demise by canceling my premium subscription a year or two ago. I'd been using it since it was "Read it later."
"bang-path addresses"
Now there's a phrase I've not heard in a long time. A long time.
(Also: Laydeez.)
I remember reading in an early issue of Wired (#1? #2?) about the creation of the URL. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Daily Kos: "President Donald Trump's Department of Justice is coming after us. That's not a metaphor. It's real. I wish I could tell you more, but I'm not allowed to say anything further. Convenient, isn't it? A perfect gift for an authoritarian regime--using the power of the state to silence dissent and debate, all while shielding Trump from criticism. We've watched them go after ActBlue. After Media Matters. I guess it was inevitable that we'd get our turn. [...] I'm not exaggerating when I say that this one is existential."
|| I haven't read today's Supreme Court opinions yet, so nothing in depth. Of course the injunction case is bad. There's apparently a power of the ancient chancellors section of the opinion, which is bait for me, but I think (not having read anything) that the notion that a judge can't tell a defendant, over whom the court unquestionably has personal and subject matter jurisdiction, to just stop acting illegally just doesn't make any sense. What, is the problem that we need to have a declaratory judgment as well? Class actions? Rule 23(b)(2) is designed for this. Or are we simply ditching the idea?
I'll also read the Appointments Clause case. Not the same kind of catnip, but it's nearly always good to see that kind of challenge fail.
Are we going to have a separate internet for Texas? The South in general?
I don't think letting ignorant parents opt their kids out of learning the LGBTQ2S etc people exist is going to be either (a) the end of progress or (b) remotely effective in persuading children that their parents are not bigots. This is a King Canute situation, and his chancellor, if he even had one, didn't have that power either.|>
Or are we simply ditching the idea
Ditching the idea, when it conflicts with Republican or Trump policy preferences. Kacsmaryk's injunctions will, of course, continue to apply nationwide.
Fascinating, in a way, that the six Republican justices are acting under a Führereid without actually having taken the trouble of an Eid.
27.4: I think it'll really depend on the district. If half the kids are pulled out of storytime, etc., then that's too big a hassle and they'll drop it from the curriculum. If it's just one or two outliers... sure, the kids can skip storytime, but it'll be public and they'll likely be teased by the normal kids... just like the LGBT people their parents are hyperventilating about. Maybe they'll learn compassion from being on the receiving end.