laws

by Daniel Wortel-London

A chapter in the U.S. Code entitled “Statements to accompany significant regulatory actions” contains a critical directive. It declares that any notice of proposed rulemaking by a federal agency that may result in expenditures of $100,000,000 or more must be accompanied by an estimate of that rule’s effect on economic growth.

Take out your editor’s pen. Imagine amending this code by replacing “economic growth” with “economic stability.” How might this simple change transform the purpose and operation of federal laws?

The contrasting ideologies at play in this tech sector mirror the conflicting ideologies in economics

Elon Musk’s recent takeover of Twitter paralleled, in some sense, the 2016 earthquake when Donald Trump unexpectedly took over the Oval Office. In both cases, a populist billionaire put an existing entity with millions of members under radically new management. Unsurprisingly, whereas alarmed Americans had signaled a desire to escape to Canada in 2016, alarmed tweeters in the fall of 2022 signaled their trepidation by announcing their intention to move as well. But the most commonly threatened exit was to a structure of which few had ever heard: Mastodon.

Mastodon is but one of many new social media sites, alongside Post, Steemit, Planetary, or the Dorsey-funded Nostr, that are drawing attention in the face of Musk’s inscrutable decision-making with respect to the banning of journalists, the firing of personnel, and algorithmic changes. Many of these new sites focus specifically on shifting away from the centralized architecture of today’s tech behemoths like Twitter and Facebook.

“[We are] like a school bus teetering on the guardrail of a bridge over a roaring river. The bus driver is trying to coax the children to move calmly and carefully to an exit door in the portion of the bus that is still on the bridge, but some of the children are running and […]

The post “Like a school bus teetering on the guardrail of a bridge over a roaring river.” appeared first on Zeldman on Web and Interaction Design.

Damning indictment of parts of union movement Incoming TUC general secretary Paul Nowak has appalled many of the movement’s activists by giving Keir Starmer a free pass not to increase public spending or revoke the UK’s repressive anti-trade union laws if Labour gets into power. Mr Nowak said that Labour can’t ‘turn on the spending […]