Fire Sale at the Accountability Store feat. Dan Davies
It's the free one!
For this week’s free episode, we’re joined by returning guest and author Dan Davies, whose recent book “The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions - and How The World Lost its Mind” inspired a discussion of bad AI getting used at the DWP, the post-1970s shareholder revolution, and an incident involving Dutch airport cargo handlers managing to somehow deliver a horrible fate to a box full of squirrels. We very much hope you enjoy.
Check out Dan’s book here: https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/
MILO ALERT Buy Milo’s special ‘Voicemail’ here! https://pensight.com/x/miloedwards/digital-item-5a616491-a89c-4ed2-a257-0adc30eedd6d
Comments (30)
I love when the guests are hogs
Listening to this in the wake of the NY State governor's "indefinite delay" of congestion pricing kind of... hurts? Like, fine, small bore provinicialism on my part, but it feels like a pretty direct manifestation of the unaccountability machine.
"Bob's your uncle!" It was right there! Is this just an idiom in the U.S.?
Honestly l would have gone with the FTC quip of "everywhere you see 'algorithm', swap in 'a guy named Bob'". Seems apropros
There actually was a Microsoft Bob in the mid-90s that was meant to put a virtual assistant in between you and the computer. (More extensive than Clippy and predated it.) So don’t let anyone tell you that Microsoft is never out on the vanguard.
I think Mark Fisher or Slavoj Zizek (or both) called this "the Big Other", where the Big Other is the rules & regs, the markets, the imagined Daily Mail reader, etc.: sorry, would love to help you but it's not up to me, the Big Other wouldn't allow it
Computer says no etcetera
I have been told since recording the show, by someone who almost certainly knows their stuff, that "Scottish Widows was founded in 1815 to provide for widows of soldiers killed in the Napoleonic Wars, so using young actresses as widows is historically accurate"
I gotta ask, what was the Haile Selassie episode you mentioned? Great episode, I look forward to grabbing the book!!
"at least it describes the inevitability of collapse" ...yay?
Whole episode is just audio of 400 squirrels being shredded
I recognised my workplace in this. It's like hearing a profiler describe the neighbour you always knew was a serial killer.
Yeah, i’m gonna have to demand an emergency Britainology pod on British ad campaigns, cuz learning of Scottish Widows threw me for a loop
I think it would be nice to have a Britainology episode on the importance of the pub landlord to british "society"
banger episode
Computa says no
why import 400 squirrels in the first place 😅
To shred. Were you not listening to the podcast?
The perfect job placement questionnaire program has already been invented, it’s called the G.O.A.T.
Any timeline on when we'll be getting the recording of the Truss live show?
You weren't kidding about that Scottish widow. For some reason I imagine Riley's personal trainer sounds like Ray Winstone: "Easy money, son."
i thought it was weird the DWP kept sending me that Mitchell & Webb sketch about farming
never bought a book after an episode this fast, great one this
luton mentioned 🥳🥳🥳🥳
Moments like 55:28 are why Milo has been so badly missed.
🐿️
Did you record the live show
Which animal do you identify with?: A. Carpenter Ant. B. Nurse Shark. C. Lawyer Bird.
Somebody tell me timestamps of how to avoid the sad squirrel sorry please 🥺
Starts at 4:01 and ends ~8:00, but it's referenced throughout the episode. A more equitable society in the lagoon if you will.