Notices by Taylor Jessen (sidfudd@4bear.com)

My phone rang the other day and a voice said: "I've got good news and bad news. Whaddya want first?"

I said "Gimme the bad news."

"The bad news is that humanity is basically paranoid and hostile and addicted to expediency, and one day it will use up all available resources and wipe itself out, and leave the Earth to the squirrels."

"What's the good news?"

"My name's Daisy, and I'm a squirrel."

@pluralistic Two news links I saw today confirmed rent is unaffordable for most Americans (spoiler: me too). Neither article explains why. Would love it if you could help us name the perp!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/01/25/rent-housing-costs/
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/25/1225957874/housing-unaffordable-for-record-half-all-u-s-renters-study-finds

"...student loan forgiveness...we could just as easily call that market correction, but there’s something about the word forgiveness that implies judgment."

I never considered how rancid that phrase is. It's not cancellation, or deletion; it's "forgiveness". You erred. We're forgiving you. But it's perfect from the bank's point of view, because everyone coming to them for a loan has committed the moral error of not already having the money 😂

https://electricliterature.com/molly-mcghee-jonathan-abernathy-you-are-kind-interview-debut-novel-book-debt/

h/t @pluralistic

@tdriley @pluralistic Someday the timing will be exactly right for me to stand at the corner of some urban intersection with a pair of pliers and very carefully remove EVERY STAPLE from a telephone pole. It won't just be OCD. It'll be useful work! 😅

@infrequentbrilliance @pluralistic Amazon spokes-puddle Patrick Graham on why, when you search for a specific thing on Amazon, your results are full of items that are specifically not that thing: “This practice is good for customers — it drives discovery and presents them with more choices.”

Related news: New Amazon navigation app to encourage serendipitous discovery by finding the quickest route to your destination, then driving you off a cliff into the ocean

@pluralistic This is utterly delightful—Austrian techie builds open-source grocery chain price-tracking database, discovers industrywide price-controlling collusion:
https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@badlogic/111071396799790275