A.T.

Love, Truth, Reason, Courage, Kindness and Justice for All, not only the privileged & powerful. Also Books.

[Maria Popova @themarginalian]

Remembering the irreplaceable Wendell Berry, who left us this week, with his abiding wisdom on hope, despair, and the measure of effective protest: https://t.co/o2MK5JG1qc

[Oxford American @oxfordamerican]

Poet, essayist, and novelist Wendell Berry died yesterday at 92 at his home in Port Royal, Kentucky.

In his memory, we're sharing "Sabbaths," originally published in our Spring 2018 Issue, a poem that, like so much of his work, asked us to slow down and pay attention.

[Plough Quarterly @Plough]

We are grateful Wendell Berry shared some of his final poems with us.

They were published in our last winter issue with illustrations by @stephencrotts: https://t.co/tX6ZbfGWzV

[Emily Mills @sf_mills]

Have you read The Nerd Reich yet? I did and it’s *so* worth your time. Support your local indie bookstore and library! It’s also available as an ebook and audiobook. ⬇️

[Hoosier Hammer 🔨🦬🏆🏈 @Brentonmfender]

This video of Dolly Parton covering Stairway to Heaven is going around. Here's a higher quality version for you to enjoy. RIP to the Queen of Country and an absolute angel on Earth.

[Dave Troy @davetroy]

This is what being a great American looks like. And it's not so hard.
https://t.co/Udf7PSRDmX

[Norman Ornstein @NormOrnstein]

Dolly Parton was the best of America, the best of humanity. Boundless talent, endless decency. May her memory be a blessing.

[Sam Stein @samstein]

Dolly Parton's free book gifting program was such a profound gift. No one asked for it. She just sent books to kids all over the US and elsewhere. My children loved receiving their "dolly books." An act of pure generosity that meant so much to so many families.

[Alina Stefanescu @aliner]

“Being a beggar is no disgrace, but buying or selling shares of the Suez Canal Company is.”

- Pierre Auguste Renoir to his son, Jean

[Dave Troy @davetroy]

Political operatives doubling down on any aspect of the status quo are in for a rude awakening; this present model of centralization is fragile and doomed. And the public, which is smarter than strategists give them credit for, knows this; they are tired of the boom-bust cycle of tech hypesterism, even as they understand that tech can and often does bring real progress.

FUD about falling behind China also falls flat — so what, they say? Do we want to be like China? Not exactly.

I see tech industry people (longtime peers, in some cases) asking how they can “regain trust” of the public? How about.. not trying to take over the government? not embracing insane cultish ideologies like Effective Altruism? not lionizing Ayn Rand? not manipulating the public, and thinking you’re better than everybody else? This is just for starters.

Roll up your sleeves and start solving practical problems: do better science, make better algorithms, lower power consumption, actually cure cancer (if any of this can), and humble yourselves in actual service to humanity and a shared American project.

Everyone is tired of your nonsense, and the datacenter issue is just the place where that can be most pragmatically expressed. Expect more resistance until you abandon financial gamesmanship and the endless philosophical sophistry. Enough. Get real, do real work, and work with society instead of against it.

[Dave Troy @davetroy]

Fears over datacenters are distorted along a few important axes:

1) anxiety over AI, future employment, and control; they symbolize what people fear they are losing,

2) compute centralization, which is actually probably not going to actually occur, because of financial fragility and an impending bubble burst,

3) powerful, deeply human fears of sacrificing arable land and potable water for technocratic overlords.

This latter is an extremely powerful force. If America wants to get past this successfully, focus on edge computing. That’s where things are going anyway and it will be infinitely easier to scale. “Frontier model companies” should focus on edge devices, not centralization.

Did we learn nothing from the PC/microcomputer revolution?

[A.T. @ATetrick44]

Wise & inspiring analysis from @davetroy and a damn solid challenge & wakeup call to the tech industry. Beyond time for a shift in priorities!

[Dave Troy @davetroy]

Fears over datacenters are distorted along a few important axes:

1) anxiety over AI, future employment, and control; they symbolize what people fear they are losing,

2) compute centralization, which is actually probably not going to actually occur, because of financial fragility and an impending bubble burst,

3) powerful, deeply human fears of sacrificing arable land and potable water for technocratic overlords.

This latter is an extremely powerful force. If America wants to get past this successfully, focus on edge computing. That’s where things are going anyway and it will be infinitely easier to scale. “Frontier model companies” should focus on edge devices, not centralization.

Did we learn nothing from the PC/microcomputer revolution?

[Jenny Croft @jenniferlcroft]

Bookseller friends! Friends of booksellers! The deadline for November’s Indie Next is Monday, and I would love for you to vote for Notes on Postcards! It’s about intimacy, distance, and languages, and it has pictures! If you have a minute, please take a look.

[Warren Gunnels @GunnelsWarren]

We don’t want a trillion humans in the solar system.

We don’t want to subsidize the joyrides Bezos takes on his rocket ship to outer space.

We want to save a trillion dollars & 114,000 lives a year by guaranteeing healthcare as a human right to all Americans on planet earth.

[Benjamin Kunkel @kunktation]

This moronic statistical utopia of the supposed future is the excuse for the present-day destruction of the ecological and social conditions for human flourishing on the one planet we've got

[Andrew Weinstein @Weinsteinlaw]

We are past the point of political disagreement. We are witnessing a catastrophic collision between unchecked narcissism and obvious neurological decay. It is the most dangerous intersection in American history: a man with the absolute power of the Presidency and the absolute cognitive failure of a person no longer tethered to reality.

[Dave Troy @davetroy]

The bottom line here is they want to privatize currency and are doing it slowly and in stages. “Becoming a bank” and “ending the Fed” go hand in hand and it’s happening across multiple fronts: Musk, Trump, stablecoins, Massie, Tucker, etc…

[Dave Troy @davetroy]

The dollar’s reserve currency status is literally a privilege and a superpower, and Vance the stooge here wants to piss it away for… reasons? This serves Russia + China interests, first and foremost. Enemy of the state.

[Jenny Croft @jenniferlcroft]

I'm really happy to read the first review of my new memoir Notes on Postcards (which comes out on November 10), thanks so much to M. Tiffany Messer-Bass and @LibraryJournal! https://t.co/xhFlw8C9cV

[Dave Troy @davetroy]

Also keep a sharp eye on the Quincy Institute, which is singing backup vocals on all this. They are the think tank support behind this. And Ron Paul is a chief architect, along with the Larouche/Schiller network.