Lots of details about the enshitification of Quora. Focus on SEO, loss of moderators, AI-generated answers, and overwhelming advertising have utterly killed it.

A legal system intended to protect against government abuse in which you can’t go before the court, you can’t know what arguments were made, and you can’t know what decision was made. And this is intended to protect rights?

Only the well-to-do folks who never interacted with it before seem surprised at the injustices of the legal system. And those who choose to complain about how that system treats Donald Trump are choosing a rather odd place to begin complaining.

Georgia is upset that some citizens don’t agree with it so it is not just arresting them for protesting, it is ALSO preventing them from banding together to pay bail for each other.

Remember that case where the FBI just seized and kept the contents a bunch of safe deposit boxes? Years later, a court is finding that was not legal.

Portland Oregon is apparently telling citizens whose trees were knocked down by a storm that they must get (retroactive) permits to remove the tree.

David Brooks writes for The Atlantic about how our culture has embraced negativity (on both the right AND the left) and people now identify with the group that has similar fears – and that this attitude is deeply damaging.

Nimrod was a name connoting power for 2500 years, then Daffy Duck had a 3 minute cartoon. Also (see followups) “tomcat” comes from a book about a male cat named “Tom”.

Here is some advice on what to do when you receive a cease and desist letter from a giant tech corporation.

There might be something to this: Trump embodies “extrinsic values” – the approach that values status/prestige/fame/power/wealth.

There are a surprisingly large number of cases of people claiming an AI did something when it’s really done by a person. Sometimes it’s a lie, sometimes they fooled themselves.

He didn’t speak English (only Mayan). A police officer died of natural causes while arresting him and he is charged with murder. Also, the judge apparently says he cannot be prosecuted since he doesn’t speak the language (that’s weird).

How things go badly when teams won’t work together.

Comparing two open alternatives to Twitter. Nostr is smaller but better designed in my opinion.

Scientists found which strains of bacteria generate what enzyme (apparently just one) to break down bilirubin and make pee yellow.

A command line tool to sync files to the cloud. Supports LOTS of cloud storage providers.

Psychologically, people who are obsessed with and upset by politics closely resemble people suffering from trauma (similar to PTSD). Also, they often suffer from “trapped priors”, where their existing beliefs mean that new evidence that the other side means well is taken as evidence that the other side is evil.