Toots for markhurst@mastodon.social account

Written by Mark Hurst on 2025-02-01 at 22:06

Whenever SpaceX debris rains down, let's call it by its proper name:

Musk droppings.

https://buttondown.com/creativegood/archive/you-might-get-hit-by-musk-droppings-but-theres/

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Written by Mark Hurst on 2025-02-01 at 12:39

Happy #switchday! It's the day to get off of Big Tech services.

If you want a podcast that resists Big Tech, try my show Techtonic: https://techtonic.fm . Here's the RSS feed for open podcast players:

https://www.wfmu.org/podcast/TD.xml

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Written by Mark Hurst on 2025-01-31 at 18:30

NEW from me: "Musk droppings" are raining down on houses, beaches, and into airline airspace. Just another symptom of our oligarch-dominated economy.

But there's still reason for hope. (I give specifics in the column.)

https://buttondown.com/creativegood/archive/you-might-get-hit-by-musk-droppings-but-theres/

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Written by Mark Hurst on 2025-01-31 at 01:34

More of Musk's space junk is raining down on people and animals - this time, over Turks & Caicos Islands:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/30/science/spacex-starship-explosion-debris-turks-caicos/index.html

This is exactly what I warned against in my Nov 22, 2024 column "Musk’s space junk is a threat to us all": https://buttondown.com/creativegood/archive/musks-space-junk-is-a-threat-to-us-all/

via @sundogplanets

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Written by Mark Hurst on 2025-01-31 at 01:23

Glad to see the Luddite Club featured again in the NYT. I spoke with three of their members last October on Techtonic: https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/145508

Gift link to NYT story:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/style/luddite-teens-reunion.html?unlocked_article_code=1.tU4.UfLb.WJo2XoqVDqJI&smid=url-share

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Written by Mark Hurst on 2025-01-30 at 18:55

There's hope.

"64% of surveyed U.S. teens don’t trust Big Tech companies to care about their mental health and well-being and 62% don’t think the companies will protect their safety if it hurts profits."

https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/29/report-majority-of-u-s-teens-have-lost-trust-in-big-tech/

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Written by Mark Hurst on 2025-01-28 at 15:33

I discuss Mastodon and other federated platforms In the second half of the show - as glimmers of hope in our dystopian time:

https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/148541

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Written by Mark Hurst on 2025-01-28 at 15:21

On the new Techtonic, I discuss the Big Tech CEOs at the inauguration and our emerging new system of government: an oligarchic-plutocratic-kakistocracy.

https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/148541

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Written by Mark Hurst on 2025-01-21 at 19:26

Antidote to depressing tech news: I had an inspiring and fun conversation w/Kirk Pearson about making electronic music from scratch.

Click "Pop-up player" to stream:

https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/148227

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Written by Mark Hurst on 2025-01-20 at 15:11

User experience is mostly irrelevant in our Big Tech economy. Facebook, Twitter, etc. can mistreat users without consequence.

Cory Doctorow - aka @pluralistic - puts it well today (https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/20/capitalist-unrealism/):

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Written by Mark Hurst on 2025-01-17 at 21:47

New from me: I had two inspiring conversations on techtonic.fm about making things by hand - working with code, and stone (!) - in an age of robots and AI.

The value of making things:

https://buttondown.com/creativegood/archive/the-value-of-making-things/

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Written by Mark Hurst on 2025-01-17 at 18:40

And what happens if a parent says no? "Sorry, Timmy, your parents didn't let us upload your photo to the cloud where Google, Facebook, and Clearview will add it to their dossier on you - so you're not allowed to enter the museum."

Remember, kids, learning is fun! But only under surveillance.

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Written by Mark Hurst on 2025-01-17 at 17:48

Now when kids go to a museum on a field trip, a parent has to sign a photo release form allowing the museum to use the kid's image however they want.

Why do we need to hand over perpetual image rights just for our kid to visit a museum?

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Written by Mark Hurst on 2025-01-16 at 23:26

I wish more people had paid attention to our early warnings about Musk.

Here's something I wrote almost 4 years ago -

https://creativegood.com/blog/21/our-new-technoking.html

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Written by Mark Hurst on 2025-01-10 at 21:23

Depends on your definition of "trusted."

I mean, by definition can spyware be "trusted"?

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Written by Mark Hurst on 2025-01-10 at 19:21

New from me: "Our nightmare world of AI slop" - reviewing the good and (mostly) bad in the ocean of genAI slop flooding around us.

https://buttondown.com/creativegood/archive/our-nightmare-world-of-ai-slop/

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Written by Mark Hurst on 2025-01-08 at 23:16

Who could have guessed that Facebook's glasses, designed for surreptitious surveillance, would be used for surreptitious surveillance? This is shocking.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/new-orleans-terrorist-meta-ray-ban-smart-glasses-fbi

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Written by Mark Hurst on 2025-01-07 at 15:49

For years now on https://techtonic.fm - my radio show and podcast from @WFMU - I have finished every show with a signoff, which includes these especially relevant two words:

Forget Facebook.

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Written by Mark Hurst on 2025-01-06 at 19:32

Years in the future we'll look back on this as a moment when a handful of dweebs with no imagination or values stumbled into infinite money and launched a series of the stupidest ideas anyone had ever heard – until that glorious day when we convinced them to get into the rocket to "Mars."

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Written by Mark Hurst on 2025-01-03 at 23:29

Easing into 2025: my first column of the year, featuring -

• why Netflix sucks

• a gripping drone video

• the geekiest browser game I've seen in awhile

And more.

https://buttondown.com/creativegood/archive/easing-into-2025-4498/

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