Top blogging for November 2024

These are the 10 most-viewed posts in the past month. Not all of them were necessarily written IN the last month, though; those that were not will be noted.

And with that, the usual drumroll ..... and we start at the bottom with ...

No. 10? This was about climate change cheating in Paris, ie, the "overshoot" that nations and corporations of the world could let global temperatures increase more than 1.5°C while finding (usually tech-neoliberal) angles to then pull us back below that mark. I wrote it in mid-November in run-up to COP29, which, like Paris, did shit.

No. 9? Nothing simpler than "The enshittification of Shitter gets worse." That said, the particular issue I was complaining about was ended (for now?) just a day or two after I wrote. Hold on to that "for now."

No. 8? I put out my version of a Texas Progressives Roundup the week after election day, since Charles Kuffner was too foxhole-crushed to do one.

No. 7? Bob Marley-themed snark (which Facebook/Fuckbook/Hucksterman) kept trying to censor, on the 61st anniversary of Nov. 22, 1963: "I shot the JFK, but I did not shoot the LBJ."

No. 6 was more snark, and election-related: "Librul guilt over Palestine." And yes, "librul" is the way you spell it.

No. 5? Yes MOAR snark. MAGA-sized snark! Riffing on Ken Klippenstein's running the Iran-hacked JD Vance "vetting" research, I posted what was allegedly Trump's "hiring interview" with Vance.

No. 4? Krystal Ball and Kyle Kulinski were full of shit with their left-BlueAnon "Bernie would have won" piece, and I had no problem calling them out.

No. 3? Also serious election-related. It's my election wrap, focused on third parties, and taking a look at the Libertarian Party's presidential implosion, something that the likes of Independent Political Report and Ballot-Access News so far refuse (that's the word) to od.

No.2? My look at the Arab-American and Muslim-American "break point" in this election.

No. 1? Actually made the last weekend in October, it's my presidential election prediction. And yes, I got it wrong. And, I added a post-mortem, that included a call-out of Brains, who still basically denies that ethical mutual funds are the ethical thing to do if you're a third-party presidential candidate.

More reasons why Kamala Harris may have lost — Millennial librul snowflakes

This Substack piece by Akilah Hughes, apparent left-of-center #BlueAnon, is one reason.

Yeah, I think you're a snowflake for turning off mentions.

And, as a leftist who did my duopoly exit at the start of the century, I think you're full of crap if you think all or most leftists who voted outside the duopoly did so to "own the libs" from the left.

Ultimately, it's a backdoor version of a Dem saying that Dems still own my vote. Given that, per her Substack's "about," Hughes worked at post-Dear Leader imperium PR shop Crooked Media, none of that is surprising. Sorry that she had to use a GoFundMe for serious health issues, per her link. More sorry yet that she didn't use that to call for national health care. Did she also use GoFundMe to make up what she had to pay Sargon of Assad?

Beyond that? No, you're not famous enough to write a memoir at 30.

And, per this piece, since you're an identitarian, and you were at least 18 in 2008, why didn't you vote for Cynthia McKinney?

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If this person is halfway representative of professional-class Millennial-class Democratic voters? The party's up shit creek. These people (Hughes is the same age as AOC) have their own smugness toward third parties. Mark my words; taking the Greens as the largest of the (theoretical) leftist third parties, whomever the party nominates for president in 2028 will get a smug-attack, just like this from Hughes and the ones that Ocasio Cortez launched during the past campaign.

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And, it's not just her. Per Ron Brownstein at the Atlantic, the folks at "Pod Save America" in general are still in some degree of denialism.

The AP reports similarly.

Democrats' ugliness toward No Labels getting exposed in court

Via Ballot-Access news, a boatload of stories about how Democrats tried to sabotage No Labels, which eventually chose not to run a presidential candidate. None of this will surprise Green Party backers or independent leftists who have seen Democrats' dirty tricks against Greens in court, other than noting this wasn't courtroom dirty tricks but personal ones. 

No Labels filed suit for trademark infringement over another org also having a "No Labels" website, and now, all sorts of shit connecting this to Democrats is spilling out during discovery. Rick Hasen of Election Law Blog has the big picture, a long pull quote from a Washington Post story. Second, the Daily Mail has more on the details of plans to harass No Labels founder Nancy Jacobson. She's married to former Slick Willie pollster and consigliere Mark Penn. The Dems also planned to harass Congresscritters who were in the Problem Solvers Caucus. Taibbi has yet more.

Cory Doctorow actually comes a cropper on his take on social media

More specifically, his take on fediverses in general and even more, on Mastodon in particular. I quote, from his take on the enshittification of social media:

I have watched virtually every service I relied on, gave my time and attention to, and trusted, go through this process. It happened with services run by people I knew well and thought highly of.

Enshittification can be thought of as the result of a lack of consequences. Whether you are tempted by greed or pressured by people who have lower ethics than you, the more it costs to compromise, the fewer compromises you'll make.

In other words, to resist enshittification, you have to impose switching costs on yourself.

That's where federation comes in. On Mastodon (and other services based on Activitypub), you can easily leave one server and go to another, and everyone you follow and everyone who follows you will move over to the new server. If the person who runs your server turns out to be imperfect in a way that you can't endure, you can find another server, spend five minutes moving your account over, and you're back up and running on the new server

Wrong on multiple counts.

First, there's a high egotism level in assuming that anybody and everybody who follows you on one "instance" or server on a place like Mastodon has enough emotional and intellectual investment in you to follow you to a new server. That's why a "federated" book review site like Bookwyrm doesn't interest me.

More of how this is a problem here:

Communities are not siloed independent bubbles. People are Venn diagrams of lots of communities and interests. Selecting a username can be difficult, deciding which community you want as part of your identity—even if you can change it—is too much. The act of choosing a server has kept more than a few people away from Mastodon.

Exactly. What if Doctorow, for example, hates baseball? Or hates classical music (which has less of a following than baseball, but still)?

There's another issue, also mentioned at that link. That is the cost in both time and money to run an "instance." The former? Good luck getting more helpers; look at subReddits and moderator churn. The money? Founder Eugen Rochko is still running on donations, basically, and the donations, AFAIK, all stay 100 percent with him.

Second, of course, specific to Mastodon, it ignores Mastodon's own problems.

Beyond the racism? Child sexual abuse postings. Now, that and racism could be special problems at any decentralized social media. OTOH, the founder of a particular fediverse-type system could require anyone starting a new "instance" to sign an official hierarchical code of conduct.

That said, there's not only the racism, and child sexual abuse, but Internet security issues. That and more are all here. And, if that's not enough, yet more here. And the issue that its founder, Eugen Rochko, not only does not run away from, but openly embraces, the appellation of "Benevolent Dictator for Life."

Beyond that, it continues to have some degree of functionality problems from the decentralization. Take this piece. If, because a person's on another server, I can't fully see their profile? Hard pass on engaging with them. 

Finally, as far as people using Mastodon? As far as actually using Mastodon, rather than starting an account and then getting frustrated? The reality is far different from the claims. Indeed, the top commenter to that post specifically mentioned trying to follow Doctorow on long threads. And?

4) Nothing frickin' threads...For example, I used to follow Cory Doctorow and his 30-post thread would litter my bleeping timeline. Why can't Mastodon collect all that and automatically collapse it unless I expand the view? This is a serious usability issue.

Not a good recommendation.

And, also, arguably a statement of how it's not just capitalism that causes enshittification.

And, if Doctorow is not just once but repeatedly papering over the reality of Mastodon, we also have a petard-hoisting moment.

As for what the future is? None of the above, IMO. If Shitter gets incredibly worse, I'll just use it less, but not go to BlueSky and not try to reactivate my old Mastodon.