fort mckay (5/12)

the machine succeeded at none of the more-complicated tasks I had planned for yesterday afternoon.

today there is no Atacama work. tomorrow there will be some, but it will be triaged.

the main goal is "new personal website". ⚔️( well, actually, some content from Atacama might show up there.)

the chess and the biking were good, mostly; i needed an ibuprofen this morning. 💡( which means both "I need more biking" and "I need no biking today")

In The News: Facebook tacks into the winds of the Trump administration.

some of these things (moving content-moderation teams to Texas) are probably things they already wanted to do, and now have a good excuse for.

others are kow-towing.

but, the headline is that they are "getting rid of fact-checkers". 💡( for reasons that survive scrutiny)

There are several massive problems with the c.2021 fact-checking regime. For one, the fact-checkers definitely have veered into "liberal opinions are true and other opinions are not, regardless of the facts". 💬( They said they were researching misinformation, not researching preventing misinformation. -- Dylan Alvarez) 💡( Ben Collins, one of the most prominent "misinformation" pundits, now runs Fake News site The Onion.)

But, more importantly, the problem is: "by doing enough fact-checking, you imply that everything that survives fact-checking is true". Which was never the case.

And, more broadly, the concept of "people vote on what content is popular" is inherently flawed. Facebook works as "what your friends are talking about", but it is as bad as every other site when filled with "viral" content.

🔥 aren't viruses a bad thing?

it will not be a 12-part email next week.

the rhythm of 2 emails per day does not work for me.