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This model of media capture has since become a case study in soft authoritarian control. Its blueprint rests on four pillars: the takeover of public media, the political capture of the media regulator, the deployment of state funds as leverage over editorial content, and the strategic acquisition of private outlets. This formula has been successfully exported—with variations—to other countries. ... Efforts to manipulate the media are nothing new; history is littered with regimes that sought to bend the press to their will. What distinguishes this modern form of capture, however, is the role of the private sector. Corporations reliant on government contracts or regulatory leniency buckled under pressure, buying up media outlets and turning them into mouthpieces of state propaganda. In the digital age, media capture is often coupled with digital authoritarianism, where governments and non-state actors collaborate to use technologies to conduct surveillance, restrict access to information, and distort the journalistic ecosystem with authoritarian-friendly outlets and campaigns of disinformation.
Finished reading:
Cover image of Exit Strategy
The Murderbot Diaries series, book 4.
Published by Tor Books, . 163 pages.
science fiction, space
Started ; completed July 12, 2025.
Posted:

as someone who likes to collect cool or new words, you would not believe my delight just now when i discovered my e-reader saves a list of all the words i look up while i’m reading

Vocabulary builder: iconoclast
patrician
denouement
gantry
encomiastic scrofulous
sepulchre
vicissitudes
samovar
eyrie
verisimilitude
cockaded
fulminate
euphony
physiognomy
labile
moraine
scrivener
Diadem
privation
perdition
epigram
encomium
torpor
synecdoche
taciturn
balalaikas
Finished reading:
Cover image of Twisted Prey
Lucas Davenport series, book 28.
Published . 395 pages.
crime, mystery, thriller
Started ; completed July 11, 2025.
Posted:

A couple of years ago I wrote a tweet thread about how I'd begun to see people in the crypto and finreg spaces expressing excitement about the traceability of cryptocurrencies.

Thinking back to it as I watch Senators and crypto industry executives talk about how delightfully traceable public blockchains are. No pesky warrant required!

Molly White
@molly0xFFF
1:33 PM · Feb 14, 2023
the past ~month or so i've suddenly started seeing a bunch of people in crypto and in the financial regulatory/enforcement world who are unironically excited about crypto because of the financial surveillance it could empower, and that scares the shit out of me

the other day i was listening to a conversation about how "algorithms" could detect criminal activity occurring on public ledgers in real time to automatically alert law enforcement, or be programmed into the money itself to stop transactions.

[Screenshot of a text message: "or I'm going to move to a cabin in the woods with a faraday cage built around it"]

anyone know any good welders?

i run into people somewhat regularly who think that because i don't like crypto, i support unfettered government/LEO surveillance of personal finances.

like, no, that's part of WHY i don't like crypto
Senator Tim Scott: And let's set the record straight. Crypto isn't lawless, it's traceable. In fact, crypto companies are helping law enforcement track illicit activity with greater precision than traditional finance allows.

Jonathan Levin, Chainalysis CEO: But the unprecedented visibility offered by the public blockchain has to be factored into the assessment of both activity and risk. With the right tools, the public ledger becomes a powerful resource for market participants, regulators, and law enforcement to protect financial integrity. ... Getting the right regulations in place will ... require the government to leverage the transparency and available real-time information for effective supervision.

Senator Tim Scott: There's a common belief that money laundering is easy with crypto, but the truth is it's not. Blockchain technology creates a permanent traceable ledger that can help law enforcement catch those bad actors. I've said it before, so I'll say it again: It's far easier to track something that has a digital footprint than something that does not.

Senator Britt: And transactions on the blockchain offer a unique ability for tracing and tracking, including analyzing trends on the ledger.

Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple CEO: I think the good news has been in many cases they don't often understand how traceable and trackable that actually is and it's more trackable than, obviously, cash.
Read:
What Would You Do? Of course we would stand up for what was right. Of course we would hide the fearful and innocent targets of the regime in our attics and crawlspaces. Of course we would oppose the dictator, join the resistance, maybe… sabotage a bridge??? It’s unclear which bridge or how that would help, but surely we would know these things when and if that unthinkable day came. We would be ready, and we would resist. And now, here it is. As Donald Trump laughed and mugged for cameras in front of the chain link fences of Florida’s new concentration camp, as Kristi Noem and Ron DeSantis joked in front of the kennels they had built for human beings they planned to abduct and confine there, human beings they planned to starve and torture there, what I did was: paint my bedroom. What Would You Do? I would carefully scrub the accumulated decades of grease off the old paint with TSP, making sure to rinse well so as not to leave a residue that hampers adhesion by the new paint. I would cut in with a 2 ½“ angled brush around all the window and door trim. I would listen to podcasts while I shuffled along the baseboard on my knees, pausing occasionally to stretch my aching back. I would make hot dogs for lunch and eat them while reading posts on Bluesky about the passage of a bill through Congress that will ramp ICE funding up to levels competitive with other countries entire military. I would text my wife in New Zealand that things back home are pretty bad, and I don’t know what to do.