"Hitler's only kidding about the antisemitism" New York Times, 1922

Alan Dean Foster is an sf legend - a writer who produced a shelf of original novels but also made a reputation novelizing movies and TV from Star Wars to Aliens, turning out books that transcended quickie adaptations, becoming beloved bestsellers in their own right. 1/

Dutch resistance members celebrate at the moment they heard of Adolf Hitler’s death over the radio, May 1945. (Colorized)

Today in "Cyberpunk is a warning, not a suggestion" news, Amazon has released a landlord edition of its Alexa surveillance speaker that can be forced upon tenants. 1/

You know that free-floating sense that multinational corporations are above the law, able to buy their way out of consequences for even the most blatant, heinous crimes? There's a (nearly) unbelievable, highly concrete example of it underway right at this moment. 1/

When Oxford University began work on its covid vaccine, it promised that the resulting work would be patent-free, with an active tech-transfer assistance program so that developing nations could manufacture their own supplies. 1/

I spend a lot of time looking in detail at abusive situations where tech plays a starring role: stalkerware, bossware, remote proctoring, etc. But nothing I'd read really prepared me for the tale of @AriseVSInc , an abuser without parallel. 1/

Periodically, some dimbulb will pop up and say, "Hey, you love unions but you hate police brutality - so how about police unions, huh? Ever think of that? Huh? Huh?" Yeah, I know. Thing is, police unions aren't "unions" in the traditional sense. 1/

When they write the history of this era, one of the strangest chapters will be devoted to Uber, a company that was never, ever going to be profitable, which existed solely to launder billions for the Saudi royals. 1/

It's a zombie economy. For 40 years, we've eroded the wages of workers and transfered their share of profit and productivity to owners of capital. This is a problem, because people need money to buy things, and if they run out of money, they stop buying and profits vanish. 1/