Palo Alto Uber Alles feat. Malcolm Harris
It's the free one!
Malcolm Harris (@bigmeaninternet), author of the forthcoming Palo Alto, joins the gang to talk about the history of capitalism, empire, America, California, Palo Alto, and the one very special University that may not have invented racism, but it sure did perfect it.
Get PALO ALTO here: https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/malcolm-harris/palo-alto/9780316592031/
Comments (19)
guys guys guys how do i message you about a techbro topic piece that you may enjoy reading - “Twiddler” https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6
I might start doing a count of how many times Riley remembers to say that it’s herewego by jinsang over the course of the year
Live the idea of a guy being like, "colonialism is too inclusive" 😆
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/17/book-review-hoover/ I was trying to find a Rationalist connection and I remembered that none other than Slatestarcodex posted a review of a bio of Herbert Hoover where he strongly implied that he as a person was a scheming scumbag but also very heartfelt and compassionate, could siphon off the resources of all the shareholders through bewilderingly complex deals but also dramatically augment the efficiency of a corporative operation, was psychotically racist but that was just the way the things went back then and also augmented the value of the shareholder so who can say if it was good or bad, and as a president refused to do the one thing that would actually solve the Great Depression but also was a victim of it, and also FDR got it wrong but also fixed it by accident but also it was wrong to create the modern bureaucratic state, but also it was right when Hoover did it as Trade Secretary when he created a bunch of industrial standards? pretty fascinating artifact tbh
the "DEI specialist" the company i work for recently hired to contain antiracist criticism urged us to celebrate the "national day of racial healing," a holiday one week after MLK day that was started by the wk kellogg foundation. he's the cereal guy. he helped his brother run a eugenicist sanitarium.
That sounds even dumber than "National Brotherhood Week"
Great episode. Always nice to hear the correct interpretation of America's relationship to it's nuclear weapons
Couldn't stop thinking about the legendary first part of Mike Davis's City of Quartz throughout this episode (especially when Riley mentioned Film Noir reflecting the political economy of California)
Always good to see people discussing the fucked origins of California.
The whole country origins are screwed up, but some are more screwed up than others. Any state has its own screwed up origin story, but not all go through the effort of keeping appearances as California. Its constant denial.
It says it's the free one, yet it's not on the normal stream only bonus.
we put the free one on here early as a bonus to subscribers
One could argue that the main issue with AI chatbots is that they reply based on the instruction sets they were given but lack comprehension. There might be intent or directives, but no inherent comprehension A counterpoint: A lot of email jobs or people operate similarly. And on the topic of the episode : the only good California is the one in Fallout NV.
Great guest, great episode. Right proportion of jokes to social critique.
This was an incredible listen and the first book I'm actually interested in reading
Northern California is haunted, Southern California is just a kind of purgatory. (Excluding the various mountainous areas from this taxonomy.)
Oh the AI 4chan created? There is literally a guy in there (or, well, a person, i don't know their gender) picking up the slack whenever a response is needed that isn't enough like one that's been given previously, GPT isn't good enough to be not misogynist yet, particularly when it's talking to misogynists. And it was a force-fem medical/hypnosis doctor Alice, they agree with you that the only good ending is transing their genders
Oh god when this comes out it's gonna fucking explode some heads
looking forward to a hogtastic episode of slagging off the smuggest state in the union