[Plura-list] Mini retro computers; Bunkered, infectious, maskless Republicans infected Congress

[Cory Doctorow]

Today's links

* Mini retro computers: Oriol Ferrer Mesià's extraordinary 3D printed
machines.

* Bunkered, infectious, maskless Republicans infected Congress:
Impossible to explain something to a Congressman whose caucus membership
depends on his not understanding it.

* This day in history: 2006, 2011, 2016, 2020

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current
writing projects, current reading

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👳🏿 Mini retro computers

Some people work while they're stressed and locked indoors. I wrote most
of a book during the covid crisis:

https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Adoctorow%20%23dailywords&src;=typed_query&f;=live

I was feeling pretty pleased with myself on that score, but then I found
out what Oriol Ferrer Mesià did with his time.

His "Modern Retro Computer Terminals" project are a series of tiny
computers built around low-cost processors like the Raspberry Pi and
Nvidia Jetson Nano, run off a 3D printer and assembled.

https://uri.cat/projects/modern-retro-terminal/

The project includes an "UltraWide 8.8″ LCD Terminal" built around a
skinny 4:1 LCD and powered by an OpenGL-capable Nvidia Jetson Nano. It
is so wide it didn't fit in Mesià's 3D printer bed, so it had to be
assembled from multiple pieces.

I'm also very fond of the "16:9 5″ LCD Terminal v2" - mostly because
safety orange is my favorite color. I get serious Chumby vibes off this one.

They're extraordinary pieces, and Mesià shows off some smart parametric
designs. I hope he considers releasing some of those design files.

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👳🏿 Bunkered, infectious, maskless Republicans infected Congress

Many wonder how epidemiology could have become so politicized. But
epidemiology - like climate science (the other "mysteriously
politicized" subject) has intrinsic politics: to take epidemiology
seriously, you have to acknowledge that our species has a shared destiny.

Much of the debate over "liberty" can be summed up as "you do you" -
I'll swing my arm over here, you keep your nose over there, and so long
as we both respect each others' "freedom," I won't punch you in the nose
and your nose will remain unpunched.

This breaks down when applied to epidemiology: "You wear your mask, I'll
leave mine at home, and we'll both exercise our freedoms" is like "You
swim in the no-pissing end of the pool, I'll swim down here in the
pissing end, and we'll both get our way."

We're in the same epidemiological pool, and the science is clear:
masking's benefit is primarily in protecting others from you - your
presymptomatic, asymptomatic (or symptomatic) spread of particles. Your
decision not to wear a mask puts me in danger.

If your worldview ascribes political outcomes to individual choices
(implying that poverty or misfortune are the result of a combination of
laziness and inferiority), then anything that demands a systemic view
challenges its very foundations.

Empathy is hard work. From the trivial (considering how your actions
affect your family) to the thoughtful (expanding that to your community)
to the profound (thinking of the effects for 7 generation to come),
empathy constrains your happiness in service to a wider worldview.

No one wants to think of themselves as selfish. Even the most
Ayn-Rand-addled private equity ghoul can be found at the playground
shouting as his toddler, "TIMMY! YOU BE NICE AND SHARE!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMxz7rzwee8

The advantage of neoliberal ideology is that it allows you to act
selfishly while thinking of yourself as unselfish. There are two
ideological tools used to construct this otherwise contradictory edifice:

I. Efficient markets hypothesis: the belief that markets "clear"
(allocate efficently) when everyone acts according to their own
self-interest. If this is true, then being kind to other people actually
makes us all worse off, while selfishness makes things better all around.

II. Moral hazard: the belief that acts of kindness create "learned
helplessness" in others - that socializing health, housing, education,
nutrition or other human rights actually makes people dependent and
incapable of fending for themselves.

It's akin to the idea that feeding wild animals undoes their
independent, wild nature, causing it to become habituated to human company.

As it turns out, this is true of wild animals, and not true of humans,
which presents a serious real-world ideological challenge.

Because the haphazard domestication of wild animals turns out to be
another one of those things where individual choices affect others
around you. This is very wittily elucidated in Matthew
Hongoltz-Hetling's 2020 book, A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear.

https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/matthew-hongoltz-hetling/a-libertarian-walks-into-a-bear/9781541788510/

Hongoltz-Hetling chronicles the rise and fall of a libertopian
"freetown" takeover of the New Hampshire village of Grafton. From the
start, Freetown is riven by the contradictions of individual actions
with systemic consequences, most vividly in human-bear relations.

Bears roam the world without regard for human property boundaries, but
by nature, they tend to avoid contact with humans - a good thing, since
bears are fast and strong and can easily kill people if they choose to.

So when some Graftonites decide to semi-domesticate bears by feeding
them, and others decide to cope with the problem by poaching them, the
town - and neighboring towns - are beset by previously unheard-of deadly
bear attacks.

It's easy to say, "Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose," but
what if your activities turn bears into stochastic terrorists that end
up maiming me? What if your campfires burn down not just your back 40,
but my homestead?

What if your CO2 emissions trigger floods that wipe out my city? What if
your exhalations don't just endanger you, but also me?

The freetowners lump all laws - bans on pot smoking, bans on bear
feeding - into one bucket, and so does Hongoltz-Hetling.

They're both wrong. Smoking pot is your business. Emitting CO2 (or viral
particles, or untamed campfire combustion, or semi-domesticated 600lb
bears) is everyone's business.

The stuff that's "everyone's business" is systemic: that means that it
doesn't have reliable cause-and-effect relations. Your bear-feeding and
your neighbor's bear-mauling don't have a bright line connecting them.
Same for your mask-refusal and your neighbor's covid death.

This unfortunate distance between cause and effect opens up space for
legitimate and manufactured doubt. It allows people to do selfish and
dangerous things while telling themselves efficient market/moral hazard
fairy tales so they can look themselves in the mirror.

That's why covid is politicized. To accept covid is to accept that a
class of existential, urgent challenges that are systemic, not
individual. That there's a freedom (the freedom not to drown in your own
mucus) that requires curbs on other kinds of freedom (to go unmasked).

Covid science denies neoliberalism. It's yet another example of
reality's pernicious left-wing bias. *that's* why masking (and not
masking) are political acts.

Not just small-p political. As Congress hid in undisclosed bunkers from
trumpist mobs, GOP members refused to mask.

It was an enclosed, poorly ventilated space. GOP Congressjerks jeered at
Democratic colleagues who begged them to mask up.

Now, three Dem Members of Congress have covid: Brad Schneider [IL],
Pramila Jayapal [WA] and Bonnie Watson Coleman [NJ]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/01/second-dem-has-covid-after-riot-calls-for-fines-against-maskless-republicans/

A video from the siege shows GOP members mocking Lisa Blunt Rochester
[DE] as she offers them masks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aPbcbikNvw

Jayapal has called for the Sergeant at Arms to begin fining and removing
Congressjerks who refuse to mask up.

https://jayapal.house.gov/2021/01/11/covid-test/

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👳🏿 This day in history

#15yrsago Printcrime (Nature)
https://craphound.com/stories/2006/01/12/printcrime/

#10yrsago HOWTO teach your small children to swordfight
https://www.tor.com/2011/01/12/spec-fic-parenting-this-my-son-is-a-sword/

#5yrsago Keep your scythe, the real green future is high-tech,
democratic, and radical
https://memex.craphound.com/2016/01/12/keep-your-scythe-the-real-green-future-is-high-tech-democratic-and-radical/

#5yrsago Will the W3C strike a bargain to save the Web from DRM?
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/01/you-cant-destroy-village-save-it-w3c-vs-drm-round-two

#5yrsago Rich Americans are embarrassed by Donald Trump
https://gawker.com/donald-trumps-personal-brand-is-slowly-excruciatingly-1752374812

#5yrsago Book says Daddy Koch built Nazi oil refinery & hired a Nazi
nanny for his boys, who blackmailed their gay brother
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/12/us/politics/father-of-koch-brothers-helped-build-nazi-oil-refinery-book-says.html

#1yrago Glossary: Chinese futurist military jargon
https://www.wired.com/beyond-the-beyond/2020/01/web-semantics-chinese-futurist-military-jargon/

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👳🏿 Colophon

Today's top sources: JWZ (https://www.jwz.org/blog/).

Currently writing: My next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel
about truth and reconciliation. Yesterday's progress: 561 words (97903
total).

Currently reading: Analogia by George Dyson.

Latest podcast: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (part 26)
https://craphound.com/news/2020/12/14/someone-comes-to-town-someone-leaves-town-part-26/

Upcoming appearances:

* What if the future of our public lives online looked like _____?
(panel at New_ Public), Jan 13,
https://newpublic.org/festival/event/783/all-star-world-cafe-what-if-the-future-of-our-public-lives-online-looked-like

* Keynote for linux.conf.au, Jan 22 (US) 23 (Australia)
https://linux.conf.au/schedule/

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https://www.eventbrite.com/e/william-gibson-cory-doctorow-agency-tickets-132831910821

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Recent appearances:

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https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/12/applying-the-pandemic-mindset-to-climate-change-with-cory-doctorow

* 2020 Beaverbrook Lectures:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y66r57bGG5w

* Bibliotherapy/Shelf Healing:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1509671/6580831

Latest book:

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone
technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political
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and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet
analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a
solution.
https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new
introduction by Edward Snowden:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies
here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime,
gender, and kicking ass. Order here:
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copy here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1562/_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer.html.

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