We're all going to die

Slash death manifesto

This is inspiring and while I wouldn’t put this on the open web (for security reasons), I think it’s a cool idea.

In life, erasure is a sort of luxury. In death, some platforms, like Meta or Apple, allow users to appoint a “Legacy Contact” to manage their accounts. Without that however, the law tends to prioritize the “privacy” of the deceased, making it difficult to remove anything from these accounts posthumously.

The Right to be Forgotten

Florida is the first state to take the courageous step toward decluttering itself of excess children, but under the inexpert guidance of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., other states may follow. If we lose herd immunity, we will bring back diseases that had formerly been eliminated, and some children who would otherwise have been protected will perish. But... See more

Florida Decided There Were Too Many Children

The Cows in the Coal Mine - Marginal REVOLUTION

marginalrevolution.com

Happy New Year. Can’t wait for another pandemic.

A big thing I have changed my mind about over the last few years is the importance of efficiency. I hate that I was such a sucker. I bought in. I joined the cult. I do still get triggered by stupidity disguised as inefficient processes, I’ve stopped looking at the world through a lens of efficiency. Being slow, having time to think, having your own thoughts, disconnecting, not being tethered to a device – these are luxuries.

Link

I mean OF COURSE Laurie Anderson created a GPT of Lou Read. I love her discussion of it. I’m also aware that many (most?) would struggle with technology explicitly intended to “speak” to dead people. My guess is that, similar to pornography, people will dabble in private and speak very little, if anything, of it.

the fact that everything is ‘possibly’ fake and inconvenient or expensive to consider, means that most people just stop trusting most things as true (which in turn massively opens up what can happen, because you can just claim anything is fake and enough people will believe your or be unwilling or unable to sort out reality anyway) — this can also

SWL Week in Review

Bits of Sam Lessin’s latest email newsletter haven’t left me since I read it. I think you sign up on his website. Sorry, he doesn’t seem to have archives on the web anywhere.

James’ extensive and outstanding work as an editor has never been recognised. It started early: in his introduction to the revised edition of The Adding Machine , James noted how closely he was already working with Burroughs from the mid-1970s on his columns for Crawdaddy magazine. More substantively, he worked from the original manuscripts to edit... See more

Obituary #8: James Grauerholz

RIP James