The entire global monetary system explained in under 15 minutes
[The monarch gives them tokens in exchange for labour, then demands it back in the form of taxes.]
The entire global monetary system explained in under 15 minutes
[The monarch gives them tokens in exchange for labour, then demands it back in the form of taxes.]
Evan You – From Art School Kid to Open Source Legend
[In the same way that "how do you monetize a startup?" is too open-ended, it's necessary to be specific and creative in how you fit an open-source "product" to potential "markets". Monetization capacity of an open-source project depends on how it's applied: frameworks have larger scope and reach many developers whereas an esoteric build tool may have a smaller audience.]
Who profits from a world without cash?
[Transitioning to a cashless society implies moving away from state-issued money towards 'tokens' issued by private corporation. We currently trust their casino chips because it can be redeemed for fiat currency, but this is no longer possible when there is no cash.]
Puppy Wisdom, if we can hear it.
[When a baby dog bites, it can be painful but also totally normal. Why can knowing this give me so much patience towards an animal, yet I take it so personally when my partner does something which hurts? Getting hurt and processing it together can also be a normal part of relationships, and you can't have one without the other.]
Let's talk about a Christmas Carol and its lessons....
[The systems and experiences that shape people can explain them without excusing them.]
If you refuse to examine how you became who you are, you'll mistake your coping mechanisms for virtues.
How to free your mind from BIG TECH propaganda
[Techno-optimists promote the idea of progress as a high score that constantly accumulates (often conveniently through their platforms); this masks the way new technologies commodify and become baseline needs, their absence leaving us not simply with 'less', but an incapacity to function in society that expects it everywhere.]
[Just as you find your footing, they start to change. I swear she grows with each blink.]
What does it mean to be seen, all the time, by everyone?
[We are not individuals or ever alone: just the current contact point into a community.]
[Act in ways that would fill the healthiest people you know with pride.]
Joshua Maponga: How to Decolonize Africa’s Systems
[Before school, identify problems in your community. Study them in school and find solutions. Develop a proposal and business plan. After graduating, return to your community and solve those problems.]
[We plant coffee, which we can't eat, then export it to earn money that we can use to buy food, rather than simply planting food we can eat.]
[Our language contains the relationship between natural entities and their functions (for example mususu helps the susu); using European names distances us from our intuitive understanding of what's around us.]
[Our government invests in students only to have them leave to colonial economies to enrich their systems.]
Why Nobody Can Afford Canada Anymore
[Canada wasn't hit as hard during the 2008 financial crisis but printed money and lowered interest rates anyway. This funneled too much investment into real estate and enabled housing prices to continue inflating for another decade or two.]
How the dark wizards of marketing conjured Black Friday
[AMEX provides marketing templates to promote contactless payments, which results in organizations like Transport for London and others advertising with similar language saying "Contactless is here".]
[Workers have been convinced to put their savings in pension funds that invest in the stock market, which in turn puts more pressure on workers to perform better; this also shifts responsibility for a social system into the private realm.]
[Businesses are fundamentally political communities, no different from any other pooling of resources to achieve a collective goal.]
[A C-level executive who knows the company and its breadth of considerations at any moment is forced to reduce everything to financial language and concepts in a board meeting because the majority in attendance are shareholders. If half of the audience were representing the workers, the executive would need to balance two kinds of considerations, as a politician would.]
Stock Market Crash? Don’t Panic, Get Rich Instead
[US market historical downturn patterns include: 1) pullbacks of 5–10% every year, 2) corrections of 10–20% every 1–2 years, 3) bear markets of 20–40% every 5–6 years, and 4) crashes of 40% or more every 10–20 years.]
Tagged: trading.
The genius logic of the NATO phonetic alphabet
[Although commonly known as the 'NATO phonetic alphabet' and for 'military use', it's really a 'spelling alphabet' invented by the ICAO for flight communications and with pronunciation improvements formalized by NATO.]
[Alfa and Juliett are spelled unconventionally to minimize oral misreadings in other languages.]
[Quebec is uncoincidentally on the list because the primary researcher was based in Montreal.]
Rudy Fraser on Blacksky, Mutual Aid & Reclaiming Social Media
[Everything we create has the Ubuntu ethics of "I am because you are" and "I want for you what you want for me".]
yes to brag here is my stainless steel pan after making eggs!!!!
- heat the pan on high and after a few minutes drop a few drops of water into the pan. if the water sizzles its not ready. if the water forms little beads and the beads easily dance across the pan, it’s ready!
- turn the heat immediately to low.
- drizzle some olive oil in and move the pan to coat. then drop in a small pat of butter, then gently add your already cracked eggs
- DO NOT TOUCH for at least 30 seconds
- gently put a spatula beneath to see if the egg has released from the pan yet. don’t rush it, this is key! when it’s ready to move it will move easily!
Tagged: recipe.
It's Not Just You: Music Streaming Is Broken Now
[Artists on Spotify are paid from a common fund divided in proportion to their number of streams in each payment period. Audiobooks are also sharing from the same pool. Scammers can flood the platform with fake plays that reduces the payout from all the others.]
[Anyone can upload tracks to even verified pages for independent artists because there isn't much vetting on the distributor or platform side and the cost is almost negligible.]
[One dark practice is creating songs from royalty-free loops and setting the date as early as possible in order to block any usage of them via Content ID; this is also not vetted by distributors or streaming platforms.]
How the head of Obsidian went from superfan to CEO
[It was fortuitous that we generally appealed to developers because we launched our plugin system to many power users who also could build new functionality for themselves and share them with the community.]
[The Obsidian team gets by with one meeting a year in part by having one or two goals at any time: this way, the focus is often clear and people can be self-motivated to push things forward.]
Ex-Google Officer Speaks Out On The Dangers Of AI!
[On our behalf, unelected Californians are making decisions about our collective future, justified through media and slogans.]
[Whereas having 50 extra IQ points in today's world makes a difference, a future where everyone can borrow 4000 will render everyone's baseline irrelevant, and therefore: 1. we are all effectively equal, and 2. we all become peasants to the 1% as the middle class vanishes.]
The Most Valuable Bit of Information You Wish You'd Known Sooner
[Forms of leverage to gain more output from your input: labour (from employed, to self-employed, to employing), media (made once, licensed infinitely), capital (no need to sacrifice time), technology (build once, many people use it); stack different forms together.]