This 2000 interview with Paula Borsook (Cyberselfish) perfectly sums up/predicts everything that's happened with Silicon Valley in the past quarter century. www.salon.com/2000/05/04/b...
![So now, when we talk about high-tech culture, a lot of what we're talking about is really business-speculation culture, and a transplanted Midtown Manhattan advertising culture, or Wall Street financial culture. So, though we may use the words "high tech" these days to refer to this group, they're not all the same kind of person -- but they are finding lots of common ground.
Absolutely. I noticed that at some point in the mid-'90s, we got major culture-creep, when programmers and systems administrators all became covert stock traders on the Web.
Yes. It's horrifying. [laughs] Because -- and I'm not anti-technology or anti-geek -- what is really best about these people is what I call their "curious child" quality -- scientists have it -- that kind of noodling around with code, and zoning out for 36 hours at a time working on something. That's where the really good creative work can happen. But if you have one corner of your monitor that's constantly watching the stock market, or you'r](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:psqralexigiufgtswkszy6zr/bafkreic2klxsqffbku7jdvewrbjm2ulosrtfpy5mczn7nwm4z6nqvclrxa@jpeg)
Personally I love plagiarism. I do it whenever I get the chance. Nothing beats the thrill of copying a page of legal argument, letting a DOJ lawyer yell about how wrong it all is, and then telling the judge "btw I copied that page from the brief DOJ filed in this other case."
Watching Google shutter things that actually worked, like Google Play Music, and now Google Podcasts, to turn them into YouTube Music is like someone coming into your kitchen who takes away your blender and kettle then lets you know you'll now only be able to boil water or blend things in your car.
I'm objecting to the idea that dumbing things down makes them better.
Substack doesn't want to ban Nazis because it's cancel culture, so instead they will let dishonest little shits like Rufo use Substack to fund bullshit faux scandals to get people fired, which somehow is not cancel culture at all
If you bothered to check, my opinions about this are pretty well documented here, actually. I'm being an ass to you because you couldn't be bothered and made dumba assumptions instead.
Compare the effectiveness of John Brown and Abraham Lincoln at achieving the goal of ending slavery and get back to me about the proper strategies for pursuing moral goals.
Maybe the biggest story of this year is that party that calls everyone "groomers" deposed their Speaker for the first time in American history, led by a member who was trying to end an investigation into his statutory rape charges. And it worked. And the press barely noted it.
I've contacted the district attorney, filed a police report, and taken steps to track down who the person is. I've also put the swatting attempt into my 911 history. If there are any other steps to get this prosecuted y'all can think of, please let me know.