apple juice

Good article today in the NYT about screen time and kids. No hard research, but the gut feeling of a number of people in tech that we all need to dial it back when it come to screen time.

This idea that Silicon Valley parents are wary about tech is not new. The godfathers of tech expressed these concerns years ago, and concern has been loudest from the top.

A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley

Did you see the headline that stated GM was calling for a national electric vehicle program. Sounds great, right? Unfortunately, when the details are reviewed, it’s not as forward thinking as you might hope. Proposing what you already expect to happen as binding policy is not visionary.

Several other countries, including major markets in Europe and China, have much more aggressive targets on shorter timespans.

Elektrek https://electrek.co/2018/10/26/gm-weak-national-zero-emissions-vehicle-nzev-program-china-electric-vehicle/

As Donald Trump says… sad.

Was just discussing with Doug how if you’ve lived in Minneapolis for the past 40 years, you believe climate change is happening.

Saint Paul’s lakes will never freeze thickly and quickly again. People will never harvest blocks of ice, never again build a fantastic palace of frozen water. A tradition that’s as old as anything in this city is dead forever.

Source: twin city sidewalks: The Last Ice Palace of Saint Paul

This land is your land, this land is my land…

President Donald Trump sharply reduced the size of two national monuments in Utah on Monday by some two million acres, the largest rollback of federal land protection in the nation’s history.

Source: Trump Slashes Size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Monuments – The New York Times

This article leaves out the “debate” about net neutrality, but the core thesis applies. Republicans are not making policy for the good of the country, (not to mention the world at large). They are governing for the rich and lying to everyone else.

Quite simply, Republican politicians need campaign donations from oil companies and other big corporations to win elections. To maintain their power they must keep the cash flowing. That means keeping rich donors happy by cutting corporate taxes and obstructing climate policies. To achieve that, Republican politicians reject scientific evidence and expert opinion, lie to their voters, and rely on right-wing media echo chamber propaganda and tribalism to keep their supporters voting against their own best interests.

Source: The moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the Republican Party

We do not face a simple choice of digital or analog. That is the false logic of the binary code that computers are programmed with, which ignores the complexity of life in the real world. Instead, we are faced with a decision of how to strike the right balance between the two. If we keep that in mind, we are taking the first step toward a healthy relationship with all technology, and, most important, one another.

From Our Love Affair With Digital Is Over

WIKIPEDIA, ONE OF the last remaining pillars of the open and decentralized web, is in existential crisis.

Source: How Social Media Endangers Knowledge | WIRED

Great piece. Hard not to look back at the past 20 years of the internet and wonder…