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Cory Doctorow feels pretty good about the future by Alan Jacobs (Text Patterns | The New Atlantis)

In this odd little story by Cory Doctorow global warming has dramatically increased temperatures, but it’s not such a big deal. In Burbank, California, in the not-too-distant future, “It was only March, but Burbank was baking: Three days in a row it had hit 120 degrees by noon”; and “the yea…

I agree with Jacobs here. Doctorow (and the original techno-utopians he is talking about) overestimate the ability of technology to solve basic human problems. It is not a matter of moral suasion or getting back to the roots of what we think made the web good. We can’t roelax fundamental human interaction with technology and expect everything to be peachy.

Chandler backs more funding for RTAs by Colin A. Young (CommonWealth Magazine)

Tracking Transportation
Tracking Transportation
Tracking Transportation
Keeping track of transportation

T notes: New Silver Line service launches April 21 By Bruce MohlSee all »

Tracking Transportation
Tracking Transportation
Tracking Transportatio…

Chandler, House Speaker Robert DeLeo, and Gov. Charlie Baker on Monday heard a presentation on funding for regional transit authorities (RTAs) from Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack a day after the Amalgamated Transit Union spread word of a March 20 rally in Worcester “against the level-funding of the 15 Regional Transit Authorities in Massachusetts.”

According to ATU Local 22, the funding level proposed by Baker in his fiscal 2019 budget proposal would cause a “devastating and crippling loss to public transit across the state,” especially Worcester, Springfield, and the Merrimack Valley. The union said a “death spiral is likely to occur” in Worcester if the RTA there is funded at Baker’s proposed level.

Building an IndieWeb Reader

Building an IndieWeb Reader by Aaron PareckiAaron Parecki (Aaron Parecki)

Over the last several months, I’ve been slowly putting the pieces in place to be able to build a solid indieweb reader. Today, I feel like I finally have enough in place to consider this functional enough that I am now using it every day!

One of the major missing pieces of the IndieWeb ecosystem h…

Is The Stormy Story More Damaging Than We Thought? (Talking Points Memo)

We just finished recording this week’s episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast. We had a special guest, Joan Walsh. We…

In many ways, having sex with a porn star is on-brand for Donald Trump. He spent decades playing up a reputation as a billionaire playboy. These stories seem to have stirred discord in Trump’s marriage. They’re hard to square with his current role as the darling of conservative evangelicals. But they play to the tough guy, dominant and hyper-masculine image he likes to portray. He’s boasted for years about his purported sexual prowess and the Access Hollywood tape and the subsequent string of accusations of various kinds of sexual misconduct confirmed his role as a sexual predator.

But Daniels apparently says something different. I’m told that in her 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper Daniels suggests that Trump, how to say this, likes it when women aren’t nice to him, treat him in perhaps denigrating ways.

I think that would be very much off brand for Trump. It also puts in sharper relief why he and his lawyer seem to be fighting so hard to keep Daniels’ story under wraps. It also deepens my curiosity about whether CBS will have the stomach to air that part of the story.

Hullabaloo

Hullabaloo (digbysblog.blogspot.com)
"Yeah, I really doubt that any prosecutor would bring obstruction charges without completing the investigation into the underlying crime. Maybe I’m wrong. I guess they could use the leverage of one to get cooperation for the other. But in a politically explosive case like this I suspect any prosecutor would want to get the chronology straight and be able to provide a clear motive for the cover-up before they charge the cover-up."