Category: bookmarks

The Road Map Back From Authoritarianism

~ cafebedouin ~ Leave a comment

“Experts in authoritarianism advise keeping a list of things changing, subtly, around you, so you’ll remember. Days after the 2016 presidential election, I started a list. Each week, I chronicle the ways Donald Trump has changed our country. This selection, adapted from more than 34,000 entries — or about 1 percent of the total — focuses on the norms he and his administration have broken. The List offers us a road map back to normalcy and democracy.”

-Amy Siskind, “This is not normal:
A guide to what the next president will have to unwind.“ The Washington Post. October 16, 2020.

Doom scrolling, at its very best.

The Snowclone Database

~ cafebedouin ~ Leave a comment

“A snowclone is a particular kind of cliche, popularly originated by Geoff Pullum. The name comes from Dr. Pullum’s much-maligned “If Eskimos have N words for snow, X surely have Y words for Z”. An easier example might be “X is the new Y.” The short definition of this neologism might be n. fill-in-the-blank headline. The phenomenon is real enough to have 90,000 Google hits as of this moment and a Wikipedia entry.

The definition of snowclone is somewhat fluid, by its nature, but there are some ground rules. I consider a high number of google hits with significant variation evidence for a phrase’s snowclonehood. Snowclones are a subset of cliches, but not all cliches are snowclones. (Depending how how strictly you define “cliche”, not all snowclones are cliches, either.) Your favorite Simpsons quote is not necessarily a snowclone.

–The Snowclone Database

Librem AweSIM

~ cafebedouin

“Major cellular providers are creating unified customer identifiers based on customer account information (name, address, billing information) and unique identifiers on your mobile devices so they can ‘identify users across multiple devices and serve them relevant advertising’. Librem AweSIM adds an extra layer of privacy to your customer data to protect you from targeted tracking. We register your phone number in our name on your behalf and keep your personal and financial data private and out of the hands of companies who would sell it to others.”

—Librem AweSIM

Hedgemony

~ cafebedouin

“RAND researchers developed Hedgemony, a wargame designed to teach U.S. defense professionals how different strategies could affect key planning factors in the trade space at the intersection of force development, force management, force posture, and force employment. The game presents players, representing the United States and its key strategic partners and competitors, with a global situation, competing national incentives, constraints, and objectives; a set of military forces with defined capacities and capabilities; and a pool of periodically renewable resources. The players are asked to outline their strategies and are then challenged to make difficult choices by managing the allocation of resources and forces in alignment with their strategies to accomplish their objectives within resource and time constraints.”

—Hedgemony