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The #technofix is under scrutiny in #sts. But for a somewhat surprising reason: because of its conceptual weakness. So here is the #infrastructure fix. And thoughts from #LeakageSTS in Dresden
This is a hot take that Lee Vinsel has been trying to drive home for a couple of weeks already. “Hot”, as in, a lively idea, something he grapples with. I find the idea puzzling and compelling. So here are a few thoughts, experiences, and links to follow.
Describing something as a #technofix has become a staple of critical commentary on technology, and perhaps global capitalism per se. A technofix is not really a fix, rather, it distracts from the actual issues.
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A linklist that spreads air purification dedication through a viral story, two neat podcasts, and once again looks at pleasant ways to enjoy the web
You have probably come across this post, but in case you have not, get ready for a thorough analysis that is not only for pollution or tech nerds. (But it’s certainly ALSO for those people.)
In “How Google is killing independent sites like ours”, the independent website HouseFresh goes into the details to show why Google Search has deteriorated – has become shit, as Cory Doctorow puts it.
housefresh.com/david-vs-…
Savvy SEOs at big media publishers (or third-party vendors hired by them) realised that they could create pages for ‘best of’ product recommendations without the need to invest any time or effort in actually testing and reviewing the products first.
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A linkdump on hot climate events, web scams, and Vietnam greeting the dragon
Starting off with an odd one: Big Oil apparently funded climate science since the early 1950s. And it was Keeling himself at the centre. Think Keeling curves and long-term CO2 measurements. But it sounds like a different time. Less evil still, so that Keeling could use this funding for the good. Part of this story is that differences between air pollution and CO2 emissions were much less clear.
www.desmog.com/2024/01/3…
Newly discovered documents affirm that the automobile and petroleum industries funded early climate science Keeling conducted at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) between 1954 and 1956.
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A linkdump that explores the lovely new web, the Vietnamese chip news cycle, and ambivalent ecological developments
“Where have all the websites gone?” is the question posed by blogger Jason. And he sends us a link with a marvellous list. Let’s go down this path.
It’s a technical marvel, that internet. Something so mindblowingly impressive that if you showed it to someone even thirty years ago, their face would melt the fuck off. So why does it feel like something’s missing? Why are we all so collectively unhappy with the state of the web?
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A link dump featuring: Public decay
Picture me as A Person Who Stares At Infrastructures, focusing on anything to do with repair, a lot of tech, low-carbon experiments, and a bias towards Asia-Pacific.
#linkdump #vietnam #taiwan #Asia #tech #sts
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Let me know what you think of such a dump.
I’m sitting in front of a screen in the capital of Vietnam, and we’ve seen some curious trouble recently. We, meaning: the caste of expats. There have been rumours of the most important man, the general secretary of the CPV, being sick.