Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Trump and the unmighty dollar; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/26/i-dont-want/
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@pluralistic It's amazing that when I click your articles the site loads almost instantly and I can use reader mode on the browser for a no distraction dark mode reading experience. And then I get sad that virtually no other websites give me that super useful and snappy experience because they've all been so thoroughly enshittified. The internet could be so fast and useful and we've just chosen not to do that.
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@MichaelOpal @pluralistic The crazy thing is it doesn't take great technical knowledge or effort to make a website fast and accessible. Companies invest a lot of money in things that make their websites slower, harder to use, and more buggy. I benefit financially from their proclivity for complexity, but I would change it in a heartbeat if I could.
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@spontaneouslydeliberate @MichaelOpal @pluralistic I am perpetually infuriated that we have so much more CPU, RAM, and bandwidth than 10-15 years ago and the user experience is no better, arguably worse. It's bloated frameworks and spyware all the way down ...
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] I've recently finished building a website which is a full coding environment with a built in game runner. Because it exists for running coding courses I didn't try to optimise for size or loading speed, but according to resent stats I saw it is still barely a bigger download than the average size of most landing pages and because it has no ads it feels snappy even though it's served from a Raspberry Pi in my home office. There's really no excuse for the slowness of most websites.
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@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] This isn't a boast about my amazing skills, I'm not even primarily a front end developer. I just built a website and only added the features it needed to do its job.
@MichaelOpal @pluralistic also, his newsletter is one of the very few that show the links as they are, without cloaking them like almost all other newsletters do. I know where I will end, even before clicking
@pluralistic wait, what? SWIFT is US controlled?
I thought it was a consortium of banks, and from what I read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWIFT that's what it is.
What have I missed?..
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@brnrd Practically speaking (as has been repeatedly demonstrated), SWIFT does not act against the wishes of the US.
Is remarkable as well that the people who benefit the most from dollar dominance, which are the US billionaires are blowing up the system that’s responsible largely for their power. They fantasize that they can exit the world and solidify totalitarian control in the process.
I think the world is a little bit larger than what they think it is
I'll be in #Ottawa on WEDNESDAY (Jan 28) at Perfect Books:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DS2nGiHiNUh/
And in #Toronto with Tim Wu on FRIDAY (Jan 30):
https://nowtoronto.com/event/cory-doctorow-and-tim-wu-enshittification-and-extraction/
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Trump and the unmighty dollar: "Flipping the table over in a poker game rigged in your favor because you resent having to pretend to play the game at all."
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/115961934493687173
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Hey look at this
* Kyle Crutcher pottery http://www.brandbeorn.com/Sci-Fi.html
* Avi Lewis endorsed by authors Maté, Doctorow, Martel, Taylor, Aguirre, and Douglas https://bsky.app/profile/avilewis.ca/post/3mcxh2jmd622x
* AI hasn't delivered the profits it was hyped for, says Deloitte https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/21/deloitte_enterprises_adopting_ai_revenue_lift/
* Zack Polanski to hand in NHS contract termination notice to Palantir https://www.thecanary.co/uk/news/2026/01/22/zack-polanski-to-hand-in-nhs-contract-termination-notice-to-palantir/
* MPLS church has delivered more than 12K boxes of groceries to families in hiding https://www.mprnews.org/episode/2026/01/15/minneapolis-church-has-delivered-more-than-12000-boxes-of-groceries-to-families-in-hiding
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#20yrsago Universal DRM dystopia https://tarmle.livejournal.com/80182.html
#20yrsago Library’s one-year anniversary of lending video-games https://www.gamingtarget.com/article.php?artid=4941
#20yrsago UK music industry execs can’t talk straight about DRM https://web.archive.org/web/20060203090643/http://rock.thepodcastnetwork.com/2006/01/25/digital-music-the-industry-answers/
#20yrsago BBC report on UK gamers from 6-65 https://web.archive.org/web/20060207060943/http://crystaltips.typepad.com/wonderland/files/bbc_uk_games_research_2005.pdf
#20yrsago Norwegian ombudsman to review iTunes terms of service https://web.archive.org/web/20070208163427/http://forbrukerportalen.no/Artikler/2006/1138119849.71
#20yrsago Google Cache is legal https://web.archive.org/web/20060130212935/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004344.php
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