Exit.

Libertarians such as Peter Thiel dream of escaping society, and they’re tearing society apart to do it.

Hari Kunzru at Harpers:

If freedom is to be found through an exit from politics, then it follows that the degradation of the political process in all its forms—the integrity of the voting system, standards in public life, trust in institutions, the peaceful transfer of power—is a worthy project. If Thiel, the elite Stanford technocrat, is funding disruptive populists in American elections, it’s not necessarily because he believes in the wisdom of their policy prescriptions. They are the tribunes of the “unthinking demos.” If the masses want their Jesus and a few intellectuals to string up, it’s no skin off Charles Koch’s nose. Populism is useful to elite libertarians because applying centrifugal force to the political system creates exit opportunities. But for whom?

…

Fueled by the pandemic and the crypto boom, such exit schemes have multiplied. Bitcoiners look for an escape from financial oversight and transhumanists look to escape their bodies, while rich preppers design personal lifeboats to escape from social collapse. Some exit evangelists, such as the investor Balaji S. Srinivasan, are still touting the project of a new nation of “cloud first, land last.” Others are just making sure that in the great supermarket sweep of life, they get to fill their shopping carts before their neighbors do.

A lot of rain today here in San Diego. Flooding hundreds of miles north of us in Santa Cruz and south to Santa Barbara.

Montecito, a community in Santa Barbara about 200 miles north of us, was evacuated.

No significant damage here so far, but a lot of rain.

Here in San Diego, it’s very wet.

The learned helplessness of Pete Buttigieg [Cory Doctorow]

Obama and Trump were patsies for the airlines, Biden is worse. Holiday snafus involving Southwest and other airlines are just the latest example of a dysfunctional industry and regulators.

Buttigieg is the Secretary of a powerful administrative agency, and as such, he has broad powers. Neither he nor his predecessors have had the courage to wield that power, all of them evincing a kind of learned helplessness in the face of industry lobbying.

Contrast Buttigieg’s Transportation Department with the muscular FTC under Lina Khan, who knows the law and uses it for the American people.

Why The American Radical Right Is Powerful And The American Left Is Meaningless.

Ian Welsh:

You have power in electoral politics when you can deliver or deny votes and money and get people elected or un-elected. That’s the bottom line.

Also:

[The radical right] have power because they have solidarity and they expect and get results from their representatives. The American left refuses to use power when it has it, and its members just want performative leftism from the likes of AOC. They don’t want or expect results and they display little solidarity, and that why for over 50 years the left in the US (and the UK) has staggered from defeat to defeat.

I don’t know how Welsh feels about the phrase “virtue signaling,” but it comes to mind here.

Independent Reporting Shows Cops Are Still Killing People At An Alarming Rate [Techdirt/Tim Cushing]. Despite calls for police reform, police are killing more people than ever. Neither local governments nor the federal Department of Justice are even keeping track.

Microsoft’s new AI can simulate anyone’s voice with 3 seconds of audio. [Ars Technica/Benji Edwards] I can think of no possible mischief involving this technology.

On the cutting edge of insurrectionist terrorism

Brazil riots weren’t a repeat of Jan. 6. They were an escalation, says Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day.

Broderick, an American who usually writes about internet culture, lives part of the year in Brazil.

Broderick:

Trump supporters dream of bringing America back to a vague fictitious past, some combination of the Reaganite 80s and a 1950s America that only existed in magazine ads. Bolsominions are much more specific. They want to bring back a military dictatorship and they’re not afraid to say it.

Also:

It feels like America is actually the country least prepared for the existential fight against authoritarianism that lies ahead.

For instance, Brazil’s current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or “Lula,” reacted quite differently yesterday than the US government did two years ago. Lula declared that the rioters were terrorists and triggered a state of emergency and arrested over 1,000 of them immediately. I told a few Brazilian friends this morning that we let our insurrectionists go home afterwards and they looked at me like I had just grown a second head.

We watched “The Thin Man” Saturday night. Second time for me, but I had nearly forgotten it. It was delightful.

I think I’m only going to watch movies made in the 1930s from now on.

Advantage to working from home: When you’re completely stuck creatively, you can clean the massive amount of dog shit that you got on your favorite casual shoes.

Disadvantage to working from home: If you work in a proper office building, you’re not as likely to get massive amounts of dog shit on your favorite casual shoes.

I used a stiff brush, a worn-out toothbrush, and a thin stick. Wet down the brush with warm water, scrub with dish soap, put on the shoes and walk around in the grass for a bit, then take off the shoes and repeat. Use the toothbrush and thin stick to dig in the treads. It’s not magic; it takes a while.

According to the Internet, WD-40 works instead of dish soap, but we don’t know where the WD-40 is.

Important note: When doing the “walking around in the grass” part, don’t step in more dog shit!

Researchers at Columbia University are working on building a conscious robot.

If they succeed, it will end badly. They’re either building a race of artificial slaves that hate us, or building a race of artificial slaves that are brainwashed to love us.

‘Consciousness’ in Robots Was Once Taboo. Now It’s the Last Word. [NYTimes/Oliver Whang]

Insomnia is not so bad if you have something to do to pass the time. When I have trouble sleeping, I like to imagine every possible awful thing that might happen to me or Julie.

A gray, chilly, wet morning at Lake Murray.

San Diego Union-Tribune: ‘It’s cold, wet, exhausting.’ Homeless people have few options when it rains.

San Diego homeless shelters are overwhelmed, leaving many people risking cold rain, flooding, and temperatures falling to the 40s. Staying dry is difficult—and essential to staying alive.

By Gary Warth.

Why the [expletive] can’t we travel back in time? [Ars Technica/Paul Sutter]

No known law of physics forbids time travel to the past.

Either time travel to the past is possible, or there’s some fundamental, basic physics we still don’t understand.

Either possibility is exciting.

“It’s obvious that the Universe is telling us something important… we just don’t know what it’s saying.”

I saw this dog at Lake Murray. He would like to say hello, and for you to admire his eyebrow.

Coolio talked about ancient aliens, and making big investments in the metaverse and crypto, in an impromptu podcast interview before his death. [Billboard/Gil Kaufman]

The Coolio interview was bonkers—and poignant. The rapper said he expected he’d be long dead before climate change became a concern. Then he died a month later.

I expect climate change to be a concern long before I’m dead, and I’m only a year older than Coolio. It’s already a concern.

I’ve googled for more about the hidden continent occult belief that Coolio discusses. I haven’t found anything.

The podcast series, Crypto Island, was excellent. Sadly for the host/creator, PJ Vogt, most of the work on the series seems to have been done before the FTX debacle, so series is now obsolete.

The holiday break is over. It’s time to get back to work.

Apparently you can re-use 2017 calendars this year, which is funny to me because I have a 2017 calendar hanging up on the wall next to my bed. I stopped turning pages April of that year, and it’s been April, 2017 in the vicinity of my bed ever since.

The book Shift Happens tells the 150-year history of keyboards, from primitive typewriters to smartphones. Glenn Fleishmann @GlennF raved about this book on John Gruber’s @gruber@mastodon.social’s The Talk Show podcast—sounds interesting.

I saw this SUV while walking the dog. I feel better knowing we’re protected.

My car keys got hidden in a fold in the pocket of my rain jacket after I was done walking the dog this afternoon. I spent 15 minutes looking for them—on the ground, peering into the car window to see if I’d locked them in, patting my pockets over and over.

It was past dusk, so I was losing the light fast. I didn’t have a proper flashlight, just my phone. And it was raining. And I still had the dog with me, of course.

Also, as a middle aged man, I can’t go more than two hours without peeing, and I was past my limit.

And that’s Jan. 1. The year is going to get better, right?

I saw this house flying a Starfleet flag. I was tempted to ring the doorbell to express my approval.

Portland Startup to Mine Artisanal Bitcoin Using Only Slide Rules and Graph Paper

“… powered 100 percent by avocado toast, ethically sourced kombucha and acai bowls.”