Personally, I'm in favor of getting rid of recommender systems altogether or at least in homefeeds. If you want to discover shit, do it the old-fashioned way - word of mouth, weird review in your local zine, or find it in the woods.

As someone who's implemented an admittedly simple recommender system, I think its very much down to social media corporate incentives (even when its not raging fascists like Musk). There are also issues with how users try to game these systems and mistag content, but that's imo a far second.

While I think this is true overall, PE (like anyone hoarding a finite resource) exacerbates the problem.

Apart from the fact that current Dems don't have a great history of deep institutional reform, from a purely procedural standpoint, I have no idea how much of this would be possible with an adversarial far-right SCOTUS.

I think the theory that the right will become more vicious as it becomes less popular and feels more backed into a corner is broadly correct. There are lots of countervailing forces ofc (incompetence, cowardice, infighting, etc), but the response from the right to losing power is rarely graceful!

I know its easy to doom... but its also very difficult to look at the landscape of falling support for the GOP, the probable decimation in the midterms and (maybe) various looming economic crises and not think that they're going to double and triple down on bringing about some absolute horrors.

I once had an overly strong edible and then watched Superjail for what seemed like 3 uncomfortable hours. But it sounds like you're avoiding that kind of thing.

Sounds like an absolutely terrible trip.

Wagenblast, especially for someone who does public trasnsportaion voice work, is a great last name.

Your exhortation about the moral imperative to self-sacrifice is perfectly fine, but I think it also applies to fighting climate change. They're both existential crises that will require self-sacrifce (albeit on different time scales and in different ways).

Trump knifing industrial ag in a way that every ELF member could only dream of. Love it.

I mean, I think you do get that the tenor of at least some of those posts is closer to "barbarian/uncivillized Other" than it is as an academic comparison about systems failure. Comparisons to Russian Oligarchs, for example, are usually both ahistorical and miss actual US exemplars.

How can we dance
While the COP's adjourning?

How can we sleep
While the tents are burning?

Ban recommender algorithms in feeds, or at least make them opt-in only. If your social media feed consists of people you follow, in chronological order of posts, the ability of companies to bubble up outrage slop becomes limited. Breaks at least one part of the cycle.