https://www.foodandwine.com/chartreuse-shortage-monks-impact-7496114

https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/3/23709297/microsoft-edge-force-outlook-teams-web-links-open

Of course.

Via @kissane, who I knew would be a good follow. The parts I liked are here:

Or you can just go straight to https://crookedtimber.org/2023/05/05/the-protestant-ethic-and-the-spirit-of-mastodon/

«Mastodon (or at least the bit of Mastodon that I’m familiar with) has the strengths and weaknesses of strong community. Those with the community ethos and identity fit right in, and find it not only welcoming but downright comforting. If you don’t fit in though, all that Gemeinschaftery is a whole other story. Strong communities tend to be really parochial, far more homogenous than they like to acknowledge (minor internal differences loom larger than they ought, because the internal discourse is organized around them) highly sensitive to outside criticism, and wary or hostile towards people who don’t look right.

….

Community is great up to a point – you want to hang out with people like you. But it also has a tendency to get insufferably narrow minded over time: the same people, rehearsing the same old arguments, and vigorously pushing to exclude outsiders who might disrupt the status quo. Exposure to different people with different viewpoints is fantastic – but all exposure all the time gets you jaded very quickly.

So what I want is moderately cohesive communities, with enough weak ties between them that ideas, arguments, memes can be generated by people very different to you, and spread to you, and that you can spread back. That itself is going to have its difficulties – the idyllic notion of communities happily engaged in mutual discovery and happy broader comity does not reflect the actual networked behavior of actual human beings.»

I wonder if we’ll hear as much about this as we heard about the increase in institutional home-buying a year or two ago.

Just like we hear as much about gas price decreases as we do increases.

https://fortune.com/2023/05/05/institutional-homebuyers-pullback-from-the-housing-market-invitation-homes/

«The reason: The financial return on each additional home added just isn’t that great right now after factoring in interest rates, house prices, and rents. Plus, some big investors think that national house prices, despite jumping a bit this spring, are poised for another step down.»

(That’s Russian, Chinese, and Iranian state media.)

@manhack@social.tcit.fr 🔗 https://social.tcit.fr/users/manhack/statuses/110314175412628860 – RT @etbrooking@twitter.com Musk Twitter’s removal of “state-controlled” labels has given a marked boost to the reach of RT and other propaganda channels. Look at how the trend reversed! Great work by Alyssa Kann/@DFRLab. https://dfrlab.org/2023/04/21/state-controlled-media-experience-sudden-twitter-gains-after-unannounced-platform-policy-change/ 🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/etbrooking/status/1653010881502912513

(Part of a longer thread.)

@gwensnyder 🔗 https://mstdn.party/users/gwensnyder/statuses/110315904550791947 – The state didn’t protect us. What it’s done with these sedition charges is protect itself. And sadly, a lot of us were punished for asking the state and/or our communities for protection when the Proud Boys came for us.

The connection between those who don’t want their children in school with people not like them and those who support forced birth is strong.

https://news.yahoo.com/north-carolina-lawmaker-gave-pro-000000595.html

«So what exactly happened here? Cotham did not respond to my request for comment by publication time, but it may be instructive to look at her five years out of the legislature, from 2017 to 2023, and her extensive ties to the conservative charter school movement. Cotham was a registered lobbyist from 2018 to 2021, working at both McGuireWoods Consulting and BCHL Strategic Partner. In 2018, she represented for-profit education companies, including Project L.I.F.T. and PowerSchool, who were accused of failing to improve struggling schools and excessive student surveillance, respectively.

In 2019, she was named the president of a group called Achievement for All Children (AAC), a firm that co-managed the only school in the state’s Innovative School District (ISD). The creation of that district allowed outside groups like charter school operators to take over low-performing schools. John Bryan, a retired Oregon business owner and megadonor to the conservative school choice movement, is the reason that school district exists. In 2021, Cotham also lobbied on behalf of a charter school construction company created by Bryan called Challenge Foundation Properties.

Then in January, Republicans made Cotham a co-chair— alongside two GOP members—of the K-12 education committee, which oversees charter school funding, public school ethics legislation, and teacher pay. She was one of just three Democrats to be given a gavel. People were skeptical of this move at the time, given that Republicans were one just vote shy of a supermajority. Cotham responded to suspicions about her appointment by saying in February, “I would never commit a vote to anything that I don’t know what it’s about or it’s not in writing hasn’t come through these chambers at all.”

When Cotham announced her defection, she said it was in part because she’d been “bullied by her fellow Democrats and had grown alienated from the party on issues like school choice,” per the New York Times. The first piece of legislation she introduced as a Republican was a pro-charter school bill.»

https://locusmag.com/2023/05/commentary-cory-doctorow-the-swivel-eyed-loons-have-a-point/

By golly, that WAS a good article. Thank you, Mastodon!

https://hope-hard-pills.simplecast.com/episodes/why-are-the-white-guys-so-sad-zIvQluOA

This was actually pretty good.