Five Things: Subservient Yes-Men, Silicon Valley, OnlyFans, Self-Worth, Pokémon Go Spy Panic
Your Sunday Morning starts here. Really.
Hello and welcome back to Five Things!
What a week! I’m not so sure it’s such a great idea to have plenty of weeks were everyone is on vacation and then we make December essentially a month with three weeks and try to cram everything that needs finishing up into December, inluding all that holiday stuff... Maybe we should extend December a week? Also, we still need to get a christmas tree, but I’m not in the mood when it is raining at 5 degrees. I want my white Christmas back, just like it was in the 70s…
If you are still thinking about Christmas gifts, I have two ideas for you:
check out my Five Things Gift Guide!
give a Five Things Subscription to your loved ones!
With that out of the way, let’s check out this week’s Five Things!
Trump’s cabinet picks aren’t just ‘loyalists’. They’re groveling, subservient yes-men
“The media has it all wrong about Trump’s picks for his administration. The conventional view is they’re “Trump loyalists” whom Trump “recruited”.
Rubbish.
First, they’re not loyalists; they’re subservient hacks.
There’s a crucial difference.”
And when you think the world has gone insane, then there is still Robert Reich who says it like it is.
Why did Silicon Valley turn right?
“As long as neoliberalism shaped the U.S. Democratic party’s understanding of the world, and the Palo Alto Consensus shaped Silicon Valley’s worldview, soi-disant progressivism and Silicon Valley could get on well. When both cratered at more or less the same time, different ideas came into play, and different coalitions began to emerge among both Washington DC Democrats and Silicon Valley. These coalitions don’t have nearly as much in common as the previous coalitions did.” - that, and the bro-culture that is dominating the valley.
OnlyFans, and the media's parasociality vortex
“But the genius of OnlyFans, as a model, compared to say Netflix or Spotify, is that this isn’t where the true revenue extraction lies. Those sites are like Chinatown buffets, where a fixed fee gets you access to all the dim sum and noodles you can eat, whereas OnlyFans operates like a private members club. $10 to get through the door, $10 to show your status. And then you start spending the real money.” - Of course I’ve heard of OnlyFans, but I never checked it out in detail. The business model is really something.
“I Was Glued to My Numbers Like a Day Trader”: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age
“The Ludic Loop of the internet has automated our inner worlds: we don’t have to choose what we like, or even if we like it; the algorithm chooses for us. Take Shein, the fast fashion leviathan. While other fast fashion brands wait for high-end houses to produce designs they can replicate cheaply, Shein has completely eclipsed the runway, using AI to trawl social media for cues on what to produce next. Shein’s site operates like a casino game, using “dark patterns”—a countdown clock puts a timer on an offer, pop-ups say there’s only one item left in stock, and the scroll of outfits never ends—so you buy now, ask if you want it later.”
The Great Pokémon Go Spy Panic
“In the United States, however, there were no limits on playing the game. Pokémon were being found everywhere—even, reportedly, within the White House and Pentagon. And the game’s ubiquity, it turned out, was a potentially big problem for the country’s intelligence and defense establishment.
To the dismay of U.S. counterspies, a veritable horde of pokémon were also loitering near other highly sensitive national security and intelligence facilities around the nation.” - brave new world.
That’s it. Have a great Sunday! If you missed last Sunday’s edition of Five Things, have a look here:
— Nico