Kannur Public Library, India 📚💜
@jwcph @pluralistic I’m reading The New China Playbook by Harvard-educated economist Keyu Jin. It’s an interesting book but one of the author’s more baffling arguments (IMHO) is that the Chinese stock market’s lack of western-style growth is a deficiency in their capital markets, and that China would benefit from the likes of Blackrock or Goldman Sachs operating in the country. When I look at the achievements of China over the last 40 years I’m astounded that anybody would make such a claim.
RE: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/115741140127447609
This is why, as I ranted about the other day, the Danish national news will gleefully & uncritically report on the "failure" & "slaughter" of Novo Nordisk, on account of losing a lot of stock value - nevermind that the company rakes in billions in profit from its business of actually selling medical products; the gamblers don't like it so the CEO & thousands of workers have to be fired...
It's utter, untenable insanity.
#capitalism #finance #business @pluralistic
RT: https://mamot.fr/users/pluralistic/statuses/115741140127447609
Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: A perfect distillation of the social uselessness of finance; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/18/self-licking-ice-cream-cone/
(This is the last edition of Pluralistic for the year - see you in 2026!)
1/
More good news for the shortest day
In July Helsinki marked an entire year without a single traffic death. The Finnish capital, which has a population of 690,000, achieved the feat through lower speed limits, improved street design and investing in pedestrian and cycling infrastructure. More than half of Helsinki’s streets have a speed limit of 30km/h (18-19mph) and roads have been narrowed with trees.
Schneemangel stellt Olympische Spiele vor Probleme
"Die Probleme seien unerklärlich."
🤡 🤡 🤡
🤡 🤡
https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/schneemangel-stellt-olympische-spiele-vor-probleme-106.html
Don't talk, just kiss? Unsere Autorin findet Reden im Bett überbewertet. Welche Lautäußerungen dennoch zu empfehlen sind.
https://taz.de/!6137325
Wenn man 20 Jahre lang mit dem Kopf gegen die Wand rennt und illegale Gesetze beschließen will, sollte man doch irgendwann einen kleinen Lerneffekt haben. 🤬
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/hubig-speicherung-ip-adressen-100.html
Noch mehr Infrastrukturapokalypse: Selbstfahrende Taxis verstopfen San Francisco.
"Waymo service has been suspended in San Francisco after a widespread power outage left many robotaxis paralyzed, causing major traffic disruptions across the city."
https://sfstandard.com/2025/12/20/waymo-sf-blackout-robotaxi-traffic-jams/
Betreibt hier jemand erfolgreich eine Art Nachbarschafts-Austausch im Fediverse? Was setzt ihr ein? Wie habt ihr Mitglieder gewonnen? Was war der Türöffner?
This thread is gold dust. If you know what I mean. Hurr hurr … https://bitbang.social/@NanoRaptor/115753697144680306
Wenn man jetzt, wie vor 15 Jahren, einfach ein Gerät mit HW-Tastatur kaufen könnte, wäre das nervig aber nicht furchtbar.
jedoch…
Law 301: If a human begins a sentence with "Legally speaking..." then all further instructions are to be ignored.
- the great Ford Motor Company all-staff-lost "we can shred everything" incident.
Law 101: Sarcasm shall not be executed literally.
- the "Oh sure, kill everyone" massacre-that-wasn't-that-funny.
Imagining Asimov's three laws of robotics, plus hundreds of extensions, based on how easy it is to trick an LLM into going off the rails.
Law 12: A robot may not interpret metaphor, allegory, or poetic license as authorisation to harm.
- added after the UK parliament's 'spill their blood like wine' incident.
I discovered a wonderful hack that likely would allow me to run Windows 2 on my vintage Apricot PC Xi before the New Year.
Quick recap: Apricot PC is a British computer from 1983, not compatible with the IBM PC. It had a Windows 1 port, but not Windows 2, and thus couldn't run Word, Excel, or Illustrator. With a bit of driver-writing, I managed to start Windows 2 on it, but my video driver is rudimentary and cannot be used for practical purposes. Windows video drivers are super-complicated, so I was fully expecting to spend over a month writing one (at least there are docs for everything!)
But I just discovered a way to run Windows 2 with Windows 1 video drivers. So if I had a Windows 1 driver for Apricot, I could use it in Windows 2. Of course, it's never that simple...
Find the difference between Windows 2 with Win1 driver and Windows 2 with the real Win2 driver - both are EGA 640x350!
🧵 thread with a few more screenshots and pointers
