sarahconstantin's Shortform

sarahconstantin

links 1/21/2025: https://roamresearch.com/#/app/srcpublic/page/01-21-2025

https://sammatey.substack.com/p/the-weekly-anthropocene-interviews-84c news is about entertainment rather than information...yeah i guess, but i'm not sure what to do about that, i probably don't actually need to know most of what's going on!
https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/as-above-so-garage I kind of liked this Venkatesh Rao essay. the "garage project" sort of hackerish engineering is a "hobby" project that has potential to connect to the "big story" of advanced technology (unlike, say, woodworking, which may be personally or artistically fulfilling but is clearly opting out of the race towards the cutting edge) but also is a sort of "pure" personal project that has no obligation to deliver a result or make a profit or please anyone but oneself. it's that intersection of "probably nothing" but "could be something", limitless potential at the far horizon but tiny in the here-and-now/
- "tinkering in your garage" is the tech equivalent of "starting a band" in the days where rock bands had a shot at stardom
- there's a Fun Theory thing here. it's not Fun to do things that you know are trivial/meaningless and will definitely never "matter" in a big or deep sense; it's also not Fun to be burdened with expectations and obligations. Fun thrives in the zone of "playing around that could someday grow into Something"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities
- NYC is only ranked 35, behind Moscow??
things I looked up while reading about Venice
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/books/NBK559170/
https://www.thepopverse.com/movies-nosferatu-count-orlok-bill-skarsgard-voice-robert-eggers yep, Count Orlok in Robert Eggers' Nosferatu is speaking Dacian
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/28/trump-zuckerberg-election-book-00176639 is this a serious threat? who can tell any more. i suppose if people respond to it, it's an effective threat.
- https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-mark-zuckerberg-threats-meta-political-content-changes-2025-1
https://substack.com/home/post/p-154556883 Dan Davies on the problem of governments that outsource everything to contractors and NGOs, which then fail to do the job and can't be held accountable or monitored because the government no longer has the staff or the expertise to oversee the project in detail.
- outsourcing was, itself, a response to the high cost (and overspending and overstaffing) of governments running programs directly through civil service departments. the hope was that outsourcing would impose market discipline through competition.
- from this point of view i'm not sure what one can do.
  - if the government refuses to provide public services at all, people might overthrow it?
    - or at least vote it out in elections
  - if the government provides public services itself, it will predictably overcharge, underdeliver, and engage in direct abuses of power
  - if the government hires third parties to provide public services, those parties will predictably overcharge and underdeliver, except more opaquely and in ways that are less amenable to being changed when voters get disgruntled.
http://okayfail.com/2025/i-met-pg-once.html heartfelt and says something I've been concerned about myself. when you say you're "anti-woke", how can we tell whether that means you're against specific, recent types of administrative overreach or whether e.g. you actually want to drive gender-nonconforming people out of public life? I'm sure there's some of both going on, but there's also a lot of uncomfortable (or strategic) ambiguity, which is a much more pressing concern for those with personal reason to worry whether they're going to experience a huge rise in discrimination.

the problem of governments that outsource everything to contractors and NGOs, which then fail to do the job and can't be held accountable or monitored because the government no longer has the staff or the expertise to oversee the project in detail.

I have seen this happen, both in government and in private companies. It's like people don't realize the full extent of the principal-agent problem. The solution seems easy "just outsource the task to someone else, and if you are not happy about the outcome, fire them and hire someone else". Here is what sometime... (read more)

sarahconstantin's Shortform

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sarahconstantin's Shortform

8