An Open Call for Pragmatic Meliorism

Meliorism (Latin melior, better): the idea that progress is a real concept and humans can interfere with natural processes to improve the world.

What would it look like to embrace pragmatic meliorism instead of cynicism?

• Acknowledging problems while focusing on solutions
• Learning from history without being imprisoned by it
• Maintaining high standards while accepting incremental progress
• Combining skeptical analysis with constructive action

This is harder than cynicism by orders of magnitude. It takes nuance, effort, and (critically) emotional risk. But it’s also more likely to actually improve things.

From Joan Westerberg We Don’t Need More Cynics. We Need More Builders.

Just backed the latest OrbitKey

Just read into Keybase documentation. Mastodon software supports Keybase, per-instance. However, due to what I’m guessing is massive proliferation, Keybase isn’t adding more instances at the current time.

Yesterday I found about 8 Twitter accounts that I follow mentioned or listed a Mastodon address. Did a quick Twitter search for “mastodon” on followed accounts. Today I learned of Debirdify, which helped me to find about 100 more accounts I could follow directly from Micro.blog.

Doctors Stopped Believing in the ‘Chemical Imbalance’ Theory. But They Didn’t Tell Us

From Mad in America

As someone who has read Neuromancer (on paper) (in the 1980s), I adore this: Hackaday Cyberdeck Contest

It’s “funny”. Until you read the bylines. The Onion

LinkedIn is testing a new ‘no politics’ setting

Wishing more large services offered similar. At least some offer filtering.

We never wax steady, we wax and wane.
We never wax steady, we wax and wane.

Brought to you by Deftones covering Cocteau Twins' Wax and Wane