or, arguably, some things must not 'participate' in the market. they must exist for the common good outside of market logic, especially housing, education, healthcare...

agree with both you and @sal46.bsky.social that housing - as an asset - is a problem. landlord/rent extraction has been an issue since the commons were enclosed, but this type of hyper-extraction of higher and higher rents has to be a tipping point. a house should be a home and not an asset.

i was shocked when looking for rentals in London - the agent said the listed rent was just a suggestion and that i should propose a rent about 10-15% higher and send a narrative about myself in order to compete with all of the other (so, so many) in line to look at the apartment.

*towed if the owner of the property complains to the police.
I don't think I've seen cars parked on the sidewalk, even in the more remote parts of SF. It's absolutely nothing like I've seen in photos of Birmingham's pavements.

my experience in San Francisco (from circa 1996 to 2024): cars are almost never parked on the sidewalk, ever.
cars are towed if they are parked in driveways (+/- $250 to get back); cars are ticketed (+/- $70) for being parked when there's street cleaning scheduled; cars are stolen infrequently.

your work is invaluable and so, so important! what i find restorative & motivating is making new connections. recently met someone who did his PhD viva in a building i was photographing (Libeskind in London); met another PhD researcher while I was at the archives - he is 93 and finishing in June!

Newsrooms should not block the Internet Archive. Any public service publisher should not block the Internet Archive. If anything, we should all be directly supporting the Internet Archive.

“We want to destroy the humanities as a field, we only want people working vocations, we don’t want you thinking, speaking, writing for yourself.”

Is, once again, a Saturday morning cartoon villain’s plot.

Make ‘em dumb, sell ‘em smarts Sam Altman wants intelligence to be a utility that you pay him for

«Tech billionaires want the public to believe they’re making the world a better place and enhancing our individual and collective capacities. But they’re actually harming people’s ability to learn and to think for themselves, if not disrupting the course of their very existence.»

@parismarx.com

We’re about to pay Iran $6 billion to re-open the thing that was open before the war.

Art of the deal, baby.

#AnyCityCanDoThis

Make ‘em dumb, sell ‘em smarts Sam Altman wants intelligence to be a utility that you pay him for

Sam Altman has a new plan to make money from generative AI: he wants intelligence to be treated like water or electricity — and we’ll all have to pay him for it.

His chatbots are degrading people’s ability to retain information and think critically. Now he wants to sell smarts back to us.

Consumers urged to ‘completely avoid’ UK-caught cod as population plunges Marine Conservation Society warns that fish numbers have reached dangerous point of decline Consumers should “completely avoid” buying UK-caught cod, the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) has said, as it warned that populations have reached a dangerous point of decline despite zero-catch recommendations. The MCS, an environmental charity, publishes a Good Fish Guide to help consumers and businesses make sustainable seafood choices. Continue reading...

Consumers urged to ‘completely avoid’ UK-caught cod as population plunges

i've done what i can to disable every ai summary function on every app and every site, but it still sneaks in to fool me

this is not surprising to me and the question is will this accumulating body of evidence change anything

futurism.com/artificial-i...

We are past the point of mass demonstrations. National organizations need to start considering what mass civil resistance looks like and coordinating/training accordingly.

You have more in common with the people of Iran than you do with anyone in this administration, any member of the technocracy, anyone who is profiting from this war, or any billionaire. When you see Iranians forming human chains outside key infrastructure sites, you should feel a sense of kinship.

If you are interested in #earlymodern architectural drawings and are an ECR under age 36, *APPLY FOR THIS*! Deadline: 20 April. #CFP

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA NATIONAL TRUST FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION IN THE UNITED STATES, Plaintiff, Civil Case No. 25-4316 (RJL) V. NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, et al., Defendants. MEMORANDUM OPINION March 3l → 2026 [Dkt. #51] The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner! President Trump ("the President") claims that Congress has given him authority in existing statutes to construct his East Wing ballroom project and to do it with private funds. The plaintiff, the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States ("National Trust", claims the President has no such authority under existing statutes and that a preliminary injunction is necessary to avoid irreparable harm. I have concluded that the National Trust is likely to succeed on the merits because no statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have. As such, I must therefore GRANT the National Trust's Motion for a Preliminary Injunction, and the ballroom construction project must stop until Congress authorizes its completion.

BREAKING: Judge Leon finds Trump likely lacks the authority to build the ballroom, blocks Trump admin from building unless Congress actually gives that authority.

"[N]o statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have."

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Stephen Miller allegedly urged Department of Homeland Security agents to “force confrontations” with protesters in Minneapolis in order to win a “PR battle." trib.al/NcbpdiX

57 of my fellow students were arrested, academically disciplined, and barred from campus 2 weeks before finals.

And then the visas of some of those students were quietly revoked.

And then the DEI office was killed.

And then we watched our mentors’ grants evaporate over “woke”.

Over 11,000 munitions in 16 Days of the Iran War: ‘Command of the Reload’ Governs Endurance Significant numbers of advanced munitions have been expended, revealing that battlefield dominance matters less than the industrial capacity to replenish critical stockpiles.

This is an astonishing read. The US-Israel coalition is burning through munitions at a financially and industrially unsustainable rate. The real danger is not just how much has been spent, but how hard it will be to replace. $26B spent, $50B to replenish.

every inch of egress width and every distance to an exit calculated by the building code, every protected opening, every rated door - all the documents of preceding tragedies.

FWIW absolutely no one I know who has expertise in spaceflight or planetary exploration thinks this is either remotely plausible or a good idea to attempt on such a timeline. The dominant reaction is somewhere on the spectrum between mockery and dismay. Real, important science was cancelled for this

Underrated that the era of neoliberal globalism characterized by fierce defense of intellectual property as rents, patents, and copyrights gave way so quickly to a new paradigm marked by the blithe plunder of all human creativity for LLM training data.

Susman Godfrey Secures $1.5 Billion Settlement in Landmark AI Piracy Case | Susman Godfrey L.L.P. Agreement Would Result in First Major Payout to Creators Challenging AI Exploitation of their Work, Believed Largest Recovery Ever in a US Copyright Case Susman Godfrey has announced the terms of a la...

Good people, please fill out those Anthropic claims. Settlement is going to be around $3000 per book.

"Anthropic will pay $1.5 billion plus interest into a settlement fund, equating to approximately $3,000 for each work covered by the settlement."
www.susmangodfrey.com/wins/susman-....

ICE officers getting paid for standing around doing nothing while TSA employees work without pay is a pretty succinct summation of where we're at right now

fucking horror show

ICE integrating facial recognition from airport security for their tracking of everyone, lovely

Undercover police officer exposed by his own blunder, spycops inquiry hears Officer said he held himself responsible for accidentally phoning activist while in secret special branch meeting

When I moved to UK in '08 my anarcho pals talked of undercover cops among them & I’d scoff re: their paranoia.
“139 undercover officers spied on left-wing activists, assumed fake identities, hoovered up details of their political & personal lives.” I was so wrong.
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...