Obsidian Wings

Eyewitness

Pictures of the Philly skyline from hairshirthedonist, who writes, the smoky photo was taken in the early afternoon and the clear one mid morning, so the sun at different angles.

Thanks, hairshirt.

I drove east today and smelled smoke faintly when I got within 10-15 miles of the coast. Then I smelled it again when I got out of the car back home, but again very faintly. It's still pretty breezy here.

Open thread. There should be plenty to talk about.

Picking up and going

by liberal japonicus

In the enshitification thread, the notion popped up (and it's popped up several times at the blog) about the idea of moving to some red state en masse to change the politics. I've kind of lost track of who said what, but this guardian article points to the issues with that.

Under censorship laws, we could both be arrested for felonies, and once you have a felony [on your record] you can’t vote any more. Why is the response always, you guys can just move?” Both Mitchell and her daughter are living with disabilities, and Mitchell says the family would struggle in any state with a higher cost of living than Indiana. “We do not have a big savings account, and it’s not like we’re 20 and we can just grab a duffle and go where we want to. We’ve been married for more than 25 years and we have a family. We can’t just pick up and hope it works out.”

“Finding jobs, setting up a social network, kids in schools, parents in care … economically and socially, moving states is not something you do on a whim,” says McCranie.

As a person who is wondering how he ended up where he did, the idea of moving to support a political ideal seems particularly fraught. Anyway, something to discuss.

Enshitification open thread

by liberal japonicus

I found this interesting

Federov said: “A lot of officials in different countries forget that human behaviour nowadays is about clicking a few clicks. It is not about circles of hell, wasting people’s time.

“We acted more like a start-up, not like a public sector company,” Federov told MEPs, encouraging an “an agile management culture” headed by only 25 developers.

Normally, I break out in hives when I hear 'acted more like a start-up', but it was relieved when the article quoted this tweet.

The Ukrainian app Diia that allows citizens to pay taxes, report enemy troops or renew their passport and 117 other things from their phone. Mykhailo Federov the deputy prime minister told how they approached the app like a “start up” but without the profit motive [emp. mine]

I feel like Cory Doctorow has a handle on this.

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, holding each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.

It all starts with a profit motive. But I would say that. Discuss.