I was at an economics lecture today (Piketty), and the closing piece was about hope for the future that basically boiled down to: the US is weakening. The specific piece was the US losing veto power at the IMF very soon.

I think this one is typically called a flu simulator

Lots of good points here, but I’m not sure I fully agree with authors part 3. I think (well thought I guess) of Reddit as less like a well stocked, library which I feel the author is trying to suggest Reddit is like, but instead more like a pub. It’s an online 3rd space and sometimes you get an intellectual conversation, sometimes you get memes, and there’s lots of groupthink and loud voices. But it gets you through the day.

Overall though, the author i think is right. And Reddit really did turn quite a bit from the early days (I can’t remember when I joines but think it was around 2009.) The system rewarded more and more quick meme comments, but that’s every online community I’ve seen (slashdot. Fark). I don’t know how you avoid that and it really has me thinking about how you might make a good public space online; like what Reddit felt like at one point.

Seems to be back and stable again. Thanks so much!

Oh man!! Am I ready to be pumped!!!

The internet was also a place you went to, and you could actually turn it off or walk away from. Now it’s everywhere and stitched into our entire lives.

I’ll check out swastika night! Thanks for the reco.

Another one you might like is Jack London Iron Heel. Yes, that Jack London. When we talked about white fang in school, we seemed to conveniently gloss over his very strong socialist leanings.

Iron heel has a fair amount of preaching in it, but the story is also a really good one. I’ve been recommending that one to folks (especially left leaning)

Anything by Le Guin is soo good! Dispossessed is a particularly good one though. I read Lathe of Heaven earlier this year, and that was a fun ride.

I put this in a comment below, but if you liked 1984 (I love dystopias!) it's worth reading "We" if you haven't. Orwell denies using this as inspiration, but We was clearly the precursor to 1984.

I've just starting getting into a bit of russian/eastern europe scifi. "We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin is incredible if you haven't read it. It is clearly the main inspiration for 1984, but just so much better. Then, just about any book by Stanislaw Lem is great. Solaris is probably the easiest to find and a pretty good more hard-ish sci-fi book, but I gotta recommend "Futurological Congress". It's hilarious! Reads like a Douglas Adams book, with an interesting idea at its core. So I think those are my most recent "favorite" books for the moment.

I can’t read the whole article, but the part about shifting mindsets quickly is not only a part of business schools. I think the articles point is that the elite class is educated at business schools, and this pushes a particular mindset.

Cech has a very good study about engineering schools having a “culture of disengagement” and essentially it is a discipline captured by capital as well.

Jstor link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43671164

I prefer the real gambler music video. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kNnrTNFWcsg