Wikipedia has a ton of money. So why is it begging you to donate yours?
The ideological capture of so many of things of the 2002 era internet (i.e. Wikipedia is now controlled by an editorial cabal with an ideological agenda) makes me sad but that's probably just because I'm a middle-aged Gen-X'er experiencing for the first time all the BIG FEELINGS every generation always feels as they progress through middle-age. Irregardlessly, don't give Wikipedia any of your money...they really don't need it. -B
I'm having some pretty big feelings about you trying to sneak the use of "irregardlessly" by me...I'll leave it this time but you've been warned. - C
How Trigger Warnings Are Hurting Mental Health on Campus
From 2015 comes the groundbreaking Atlantic article and associated book publication from Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. If you ever want to go down a cerebral youtube rabbit hole I cannot reccomend more strongly the Haidt hole. Greg is involved with a free speech group called FIRE and Jonathan started the Heterodox Academy. Their critique of modern dialogue comes from a classical liberal perspective and is excellent. "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" is more true in 2020 than we could possibly have imagined in 2015. -Brian
Who Really Runs The Drudge Report?
Fascinating. -Brian
A next-level rabbit hole of reporting. And highlights the fact that misinformation and copyright infringement isn't just a social media problem (at least in the section detailing the almost-funny relationship with the site's ad broker and a random Armenian website). -C
The Welding Shut of the American Mind
Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Antonin Scalia were extremely good friends. I love that. Give me more of that. -Brian
Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?
What if part of the solution didn't mean building and automating the entire process, but instead left it to people who actually have the right context for moderating their online experience of your product? Also, this is either in direct conflict with my hot take about YouTube's like/dislike buttons or is reinforcing that hot take. I can't tell at the moment. -C
The Scholar's Stage: We Were Builders Once, and Strong
I know very little about Tanner Greer (it even took me 5 minutes of searching on his blog to find his name!) so I'm not recommending his whole body of work. But I find this reminiscing on how we've been changed by technology to be extremely well written and interesting. -B
Photoreal Roman Emperor Project
My take: Caligula looks like the freak he probably was, and Commodus looks like the moronic bro he probably was. - C
The Great Video Game Crash of 1983
I'm guessing that Brian saved this link since I didn't exist in 1983, but consider he's had his turn at editing this issue and didn't add any commentary here I'm going to make up some stuff to say about it. There's something extra silly about digging up a blog post about obsolete video game consoles using the Way Back Machine, but I can't figure out a quippy joke to write about that. I read this post and am in total disbelief at the detail with which the writer captures the minutiae of this moment in time before widespread use of the Internet, where the video game industry was in complete disarray in the US and paved the way for Nintendo. - C
My plan has worked perfectly. Also the greatest game ever made (Super Mario Bro 2) was a direct result of this narrative so all’s well that ends well. -B