[FRIAM] best rant so far

[Steve Smith]

Frank -

> My mail client (Android Gmail) warns me that every.message from Marcus
> "appears dangerous". I don't think it has anything to do with the
> content.  Is anyone else experiencing this?

My e-mail client (Thunderbird) had no need to flag either version (the
Atlantic Archives and the Facebook link) but my personal inner-flagging
system made it *very* hard for me to click on the Facebook link.  It was
visceral/physical, but I forced myself just to make sure they both
linked to the same material (compulsion?).

I haven't been a fan of Facebook from very early on, and each wave of
re-invention of itself hasn't helped with that.   Their joining Twitter
in shutting down Trump's forum on their platform may in some way be a
significant act, but I doubt it will change the ugliest components of
the the arc of their evolution redefining technosocial space for all of us.

I think each of the modern Technogarchs are dangerous in their own way,
but it did my (dark little) heart good when Musk blasted past Zuck and
now edged past Bezos in amassed wealth.   I at least understand Musk's
vision for the future, even if it is deeply flawed and retrogressive in
all but the superficial ways...  it is written in idiom of the Space
Operas of the "Golden Age", maybe South Africa didn't have easy access
to the much more insightful and progressive and *literary* speculative
fiction being penned in the 60's and beyond?   Bezos and Zuckerberg seem
to have fallen into a wealth-for-wealth's sake race-to-the-bottom
market-entrainment long ago.  And they did it a lot faster (methinks)
than the robber barons of the industrial revolution did...  maybe that
is just perspective of time/hindsight?

sorry/not sorry for the thread-splatter (nod to glen) and/or gratuitous
post (nod to EricS) here...   it all feels coherent to me when I write
it, but understand for others it might be TR;DBtttR (too random; don't
bother to try to read) and tangential.

- Splatter