Wednesday Wondering 9.20.23 - Dis-Unity

Truth. This week(end)’s Dispatch will be focused on the great dissolution of those huge pools of social media users that we all spent the better half of the 2010s arguing with. Those times seem almost quaint now, but more importantly, how the heck do we invite people to things in the post-social network age. But first, things I’ve been wondering about this week:

UAW Strike: GM and Stellantis laid off more than 2000 workers (CNBC) (Editor’s Note: We usually don’t modify titles, preferring to comment on the item as it was meant to be presented. But the end of this title “because of the UAW’s strike” is clearly partisan, pro-corporate, and anti-worker, implying that the layoffs are somehow not a decision corporate was responsible for.) America is so close to a general strike, people following labor can taste it. If you want to play along at home, Cornell has a great domestic labor action & strike tracker. There’s a similar one for Chinese labor actions if you want to see how labor is pushing back in the ostensibly “communist” country.

Inside ShadowDragon, The Tool That Lets ICE Monitor Pregnancy Tracking Sites & Fortnite Players (404 Media) Years ago, it broke that US intelligence was doing surveillance in the World of Warcraft, Second Life, and even Guild Wars MMORPGs. Looks like we never stopped doing that, but instead of trying to find terrorists, we’re looking for pregnant women and avatars flossing on top of milk crates they “constructed.”

US Helped Pakistan Get IMF Bailout With Secret Arms Deal For Ukraine, Leaked Documents Reveal (The Intercept) The US gov’t traded “Sell weapons to Ukraine” for “IMF Bailout” but with “Get rid of Imran Khan as president” as a chaser. I’d love to know why we think this was appropriate in the least, especially given it might have handed Khan the anti-Western & anti-corruption credentials he needs to win.

Kraft Heinz is recalling some American cheese slices because the wrappers could pose choking hazard (Associated Press) So, the wrapper wasn’t a choking hazard before, only because the wrapper didn’t “stick” to the cheese? Looks like Homer was saved from an untimely-cheese related death.

A Welfare Analysis of Tax Audits Across the Income Distribution (NBER) For every $1 spent on IRS audits for those in the 90th income percentile or above, the IRS yields $12 in additional revenue. Auditing average people only returns an estimated $5. Let’s ask everyone on Wall Street how they’d invest if we found a financial instrument that delivered 11x returns, as auditing the uber-rich sounds like the closest thing to a sure bet I’ve ever heard of.

Why every game developer is mad right now (PC Gamer) & Game devs say Unity’s new install fee is a threat to everyone, including gamers, and there’s no going back: “I don’t want to sell my house because my game was too popular” (GamesRadar+) & Unity promises “changes” to install fee plans as developer fallout continues (Ars Technica) If there was a Hall of Fame for worst unforced errors made by a company, Unity’s screw up would be a unanimous, first ballot entry. They announced retroactive per-install pricing, which would include games that aren’t even being downloaded anymore. The pricing changes were so poorly thought out, a game going viral could produce a bill that would bankrupt any indie developer. Unity destroyed 100% of its good will in the space, with the entirety of game development rising up in one voice to proclaim FUCK UNITY. If you’re still confused, here’s a post on r/GameDev from Ring Gate Studios, a small developer, on why they’re switching, 5 months into development:

Dark money: The backstory of Alabama’s redistricting defiance (Alabama Reporter) A new rub from the Federalist Society, Supreme Court Justice Miller Light and the century-spanning effort to overturn the Civil Rights Act . If the Justice Department is bought and paid for to this extent, I am genuinely unsure how to move forward.

Section Guy Runs for President (Josh Barro) For everyone who didn’t go to an Ivy League college for undergraduate, Vivek Ramaswamy might come across as an unusual fellow. But anyone who went to Harvard, Yale, or wherever aspiring brown-nosers roost these days, his is a familiar story. Josh Barro recounts why he reminds you of Pete Buttigieg, and why that’s a bad thing for American Democracy.

Why did it take psychedelics so long to become popular? (Res Obscura) & How psychedelics may therapeutically alter the link between your two “selves” (Big Think) Psychedelic therapy is finally at the precipice of legality, but why did it take so long? Res Obscura has a birds eye view of why. And Big Think details some research about how psychedelics help “Interoception,” narrowing the gap between how your body feels and how your mind thinks your body feels, and how that can help things.

Vibe of the Week

Daft Punk remixes usually land somewhere between “confused” and “disrespectful,” but Carlos Serrano did the impossible a decade ago and there are no plaques or statues to mark the occasion. Blending Adele & “Something About Us” by Daft Punk is the best French/British partnership since WWII.

Quote of the Week

Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.~Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man & the Sea

Keep your head up,T