Notices by Mike Olson (mikeolson@mastodon.social)

Another excellent piece of coverage by @mmasnick:

https://www.techdirt.com/2025/03/11/trumps-latest-weapon-against-critics-destroying-their-lawyers/

Perkins Coie was the law firm I used when I ran Cloudera. They provided outstanding representation on a wide variety of matters. We did substantial and important business with the Federal government -- I remain enormously proud of that collaboration.

As a patriotic American and as a businessman, I deplore the President's EO and I encourage the courts and the Congress to contain this insanity.

@skinnylatte My daughter wanted to open an Italian fast-casual place in Berkeley called the Cal Calzone Zone.

@skinnylatte Once again, I learn never to underestimate engineers.

🙏

@skinnylatte Wait help me out with "I use a bidet that I bring."

I installed bidets at home and it's made travel much more difficult.

Also obviously holy shit dumpster fire stupidity in all directions rn.

I've been disappointed and frustrated by the silence of tech company leadership in countering the messages coming out of the Trump administration and DOGE. It's absolutely essential that credible, compelling voices speak up now in favor of truth and fairness.

I'm just one guy, but I'm in a position to do that where many others aren't. And I used to do some of this when I was running Cloudera and Sleepycat.

So I'm launching Not A Tech Bro as my platform.

https://not-a-tech-bro.ghost.io/the-genesis-post/

@Gargron Happy 0100000th!

Reading “Language City” by Ross Perlin. It’s about the 700+ languages spoken in New York City, but in exploring that topic talks at length about the diversity of the world’s 7,000 spoken languages.

1/

@skinnylatte I recommend the Korean Superette next time you are in Berkeley:

https://korean-superette.com/

It's mostly a sit-down (or takeout) restaurant, but has a modest stock of Korean convenience store merchandise and a fridge case with homemade kimchi and other foods.

Pretty rollicking tale of geopolitics and espionage in the WSJ:

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/sleeper-agents-putin-global-hunt-a7978f84?st=wQSHto&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Came my way via @Mattdevost's Global Frequency newsletter.

Years ago, on the website formerly known as Twitter, I had a habit of recapping my favorite books at the end of each year. I’ve moved that practice over here to the Fediverse.

As of this writing, I’ve finished 51 books this year. I’ll likely get through at least a couple more before 12/31. If one of them tips the scales, I’ll add it to the thread later.

Here are my my best books for 2024.

#bookstodon

1/11

My phone is littered with corporate crap apps that I'm required to use to check into hotels, get rental cars, look at my bank balance. I hate 'em but enshittification, like wind and rain, has eroded all the other ways I used to be able to do things.

Now all those apps ask me: Do I want to enable AI?

Crap app, you have no idea how much I do not want to enable AI.

Oh for God’s sake.

Two good pieces on institutions and expertise. These crossed my RSS reader thanks to @dangillmor's Essentials newsletter.

Josh Marshall:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-party-of-institutions-in-an-era-of-distrust

@pluralistic: https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/21/policy-based-evidence/#decisions-decisions

Latest Citation Needed by @molly0xfff just dropped. Scroll down to about 60% of the way through for a recap of bad news for the Presidential candidate involved in World Liberty Financial:

https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-69/

I just watched the Harris-Walz rally in Philadelphia. I could rave. I don't need to.

Love the focus on joy, on the future. Love Kamala Harris.

Walz is an exceptional choice.

Harris is an excellent public speaker now. She and Shapiro both have some Obama cadence to them.

Joe Biden stepped up when the country needed that, four years ago. He stepped back when that was necessary, two weeks gone. Hell of a patriot.

I think we're gonna win this one, you guys.

I plan to put in my work.

In my town of Berkeley, CA, the public library has a branch that lends only tools. Hammers and screwdrivers, yeah, but concrete mixers? Monster masonry drills? Electric demolition hammers? They got 'em!

About once a decade, I need to sink a posthole. I always borrow the postholer and digging rod from the library and do a much nicer job than my wife expects.

This is such a wonderful service. Plus I like to brag about my local public library!

First, a coherent digest of the terrible Project 2025. Driving Christian Nationalism into American society would be much easier if knowledgeable professionals, loyal only to the Constitution, could be rooted out of government, and control transferred to partisan actors:

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/inside-project-2025s-plan-to-reprogram-the-government/

2/3

Two starkly different views of how we ought to reform the administrative state have crossed my feed just lately. Sharing them here because I am struck by their similarities and by their differences.

Short thread so that I can link to just one in each post, making the previews work better.

1/3

@eb has written a pretty good tick-tock on the introduction of the xz backdoor:

https://boehs.org/node/everything-i-know-about-the-xz-backdoor

"The Bezzle," @pluralistic's new book, is out today. My local independent bookseller will get a visit this afternoon.

By coincidence, yesterday was the 4th anniversary of his self-hosted, self-published blog. He's written an interesting retrospective on that project. This is the open web many of us thought we were building in the 1990s:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/20/fore/#synthesis