Tootfinder

A look at WhatsApp's enormous global reach and influence, and how the messaging app became the dominant platform for everyday conversation worldwide (Sam Knight/New Yorker)
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/01/19/how-what…

How WhatsApp Took Over the Global Conversation
The platform has become a core technology around the world, relied on by governments and extended families alike, Sam Knight writes. What are we all doing there?

Adding another post. This one is a bit less polished, but I want to get it out. As things get harder for everyone, I'm seeing a greater tendency to want to grasp onto revolutionary fiction such as #Andor. I think there's value in that, but it has to come with an informed critique.
> We are so thirsty for hope that we will drink it up, even when that hope comes from a fiction and the truth behind the hope is poison. In Andor, we see the worst elements sacrifice themselves for some of the best. The revolution goes through a process of purification, the complicated elements weeding themselves out to make room for the simplified good, as the rebellion unifies. In reality, this tends to be the opposite how things actually work.
> [...]
> [The Urban Guerilla movement of the 60's through the 80's] centered militant revolution. In doing so, they omitted or cut themselves off from the logistic support needed to sustain such revolutionary activity. The trauma of carrying out violence further isolated and radicalized them. Lacking infrastructure for trauma healing, their decay escalated and became unrecoverable. Ultimately, their revolutionary movements both emulated and reinforced the status quo they were trying to resist.
> There emerges a strange historical parallel that is difficult to see from within the dominant paradigm. The competitive politics of electoralism derives from heroic competition, where people (typically men) compete (often violently) for control over a territory or people. Thus the insurrectionary enters into the very same competition as a challenger, not against the system of domination but for control over it. The success of the revolution, then, does not abolish the system of violent domination but changes rather replaces its management.
> Many modern anarchists will be quick to point out the disconnect between ends and means. While authoritarian projects often assert that "the ends justify the means," and Andor implies the same, anti-authoritarian projects assert the ends and the means are not only united but are, in fact, the same.
This is still very much something I'm actively editing, but I'd still love feedback to help me refine it to it's final form. Typo catches and clarifying questions welcome.
#USPol

watching bf play Elden Ring, it strikes me that we're close to peak graphics. the realism dial can still be turned up a bit, but games are generally better when they're a step away from reality.
what's missing though is physicality. when characters swing weapons at enemies, it's clearly just sprites doing canned animation, and there's no actual contact happening.
a couple decades from now, perhaps average 3d games will have processing budget for procedural ani…

"There was no choice, there is no choice: either submit to capital or watch your ideas wither and die. There are no other practical ways to raise significant capital. Real Angels don’t exist"
On the Feudal-like structures in Silicon Valley. Written in 2018, but not much has changed.
https://<…

#eroticMusings Week 31 (December 28-January 3) Studio: Are you making any New Year's Resolutions that relate to, or will affect, your erotic work?
I'm not doing resolutions. But I'm about to write my 2026 plan and it will involve some erotic writing and publishing.
I've spend lots of this year being overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the further enshittification of ama…

NFL power rankers are getting a stress test this season, and loving it https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6741802/2025/10/23/nfl-power-rankings-headache-fun-parity/