Jamie John, Stephanie Stacey, and Antoine Gara in Financial Times.
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Donald Trump is preparing to open the $9tn US retirement market to cryptocurrency investments, gold, and private equity in a move that would spur a radical shift in the way Americans’ savings are managed.
During the last act of Cabaret, I wanted to scream at the characters to leave Berlin because I know what disasters await them just years away. I don’t know if I’m being naïve or wise for thinking that what’s happening in our state now isn’t an early warning sign telling me and everyone I love to leave while we still can. I don’t know if staying is the ultimate act of defiance and joy in the face of people who wish to erase me and my friends and the beautiful life we are building.
Marius Dragomir and Minna Aslama Horowitz in Tech Policy Press.
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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.
extremism, free press, free speech, media, tech industry
“I would just say that a lot of these guys are really feeling their feelings right now,” said one operative who advises big-money donors. “They are showing up late to this and are unaware of the expertise they don’t have, and they are not behaving rationally.”
Donald Trump has found a magic money machine and will make billions of real and fake dollars while becoming ever more in hock to the rogues’ gallery subsidizing his crypto empire. There is potentially no bottom to the corruption.
Community, care, and support don’t happen in a vacuum. Love and friendship aren’t something we are entitled to. To be cared for, you must also show care. To have a community, you have to be part of it. To have people care if you live or die, you have to start caring about the life and death of others around you.
In my tech career, things have changed immensely. People seem to have forgotten to check whether the tech they’re talking about can actually do what people are saying it's designed to do. They’ve confused a financier who cuts checks to arms dealers with a technologist who actually invents new things. They’ve overlooked the innovation that’s happening on open platforms, in open communities, in human-scale spaces or in non-extractive models.