gregg r

My coat is black and the moon is yellow
Here is where I get off

Boomer into #cycling, sysadmin from the early days, hardcore #SteelyDan fan. #MaskUp #CovidIsNotOver #ITMFA #ProtectTransKids #LGBTQ #Enshittification #FYYFF

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." -- H.L. Mencken, 1916.

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." -- John F. Kennedy

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npub1lvzluewjd747xwml5x7q5ell3san836685ahtdddj0f79hp2fwuslshuj3

NIP-05 Address

grheavyroller_at_mastodon.social@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs0kp07vhfxl2lr8dl6r0q2vllccwencadr6wm4kkke85lzms4yhwgprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmnt3h8u9r

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relay.momostr.pink

Author Public Key

npub1lvzluewjd747xwml5x7q5ell3san836685ahtdddj0f79hp2fwuslshuj3

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Last Notes

2026-03-22 14:48:03 UTC

Near La Push Beach, Washington.
#photography #SilentSunday
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/273/334/278/608/448/original/ebe39cc41206b847.jpeg

2026-03-12 14:41:00 UTC

"If radio news is to be regarded as a commodity, only acceptable when salable, only when packaged to fit the advertising appropriate of a sponsor, … I say it isn't news." Edward R. Murrow, 1958
"I suspect that the people who oversee the design of modern news sites *don't care about the news at all.* … They *hate* the news. They view the news as a necessary evil within a wider gambit to deploy adware, malware, pop-ups, and auto-play video." @npub1fdr…lvhs 68 year later.
https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/11/modal-dialog-a-palooza/#autoplay-videos

2026-02-28 12:22:04 UTC

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As you rightly observe, there are so many guillotineable plutes these days; our Mme Defarge will be prompting an AI rather than knitting.

2026-02-25 16:40:55 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs : "That's why, when we hold new Nuremberg trials for Trump and his collaborators, we should also unwind every merger that was approved under Trump"
The mental image of tRump in the dock being grilled by Jack Smith sustains me every day.
https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/25/most-favored-nation/#price-fixing

2026-02-19 23:48:36 UTC

- reply

Your writing making sense of things is exactly why I look forward eagerly to every Pluralistic installment. Thank you, Mr. Doctorow.

2026-02-11 16:35:47 UTC

No longer are they the 0.001% or the oligarchs or the broligarchs or the uber-rich or the zottarich—they are now and forever the Epstein Class.
@npub1fdr…lvhs distills it to it's essence:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/09/sloppy-steve/#mckinley-fanfic-panic
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/052/950/513/601/393/original/1dc3975bb00f46c8.jpg

2026-02-10 16:25:30 UTC

America needs to be de-Nazified now just as did Germany after WWII. I've sent this @npub1fdr…lvhs link to my Senators and my Representative telling them I want them to institute a Nuremberg Caucus to hold accountable those who have committed the atrocities, those who directed them, and those who enabled them.
https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/10/miller-in-the-dock/#denazification

2026-02-05 16:21:52 UTC

This is one of the best pieces @npub1fdr…lvhs has written. He rightly reminds us: "The question isn't merely 'How do we elect better leaders?' It's 'How do we make our leaders follow us?'"
Such are the days that shall be!
But what are the deeds of to-day,
In the days of the years we dwell in,
that wear our lives away?
Why, then, and for what are we waiting?
There are three words to speak;
WE WILL IT
--William Morris, "The Day is Coming", 1891
Things change.
https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/05/contingency/#this-too-shall-pass

2026-02-03 03:03:40 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs writes the CliffsNotes of Capitalism: "America is not great. It has been gutted by the Epstein class, who robbed us blind, raped our kids, and are now selling us shitcoins and chatbots and the spectacle of protesters being shot in the streets. But it's not enough to know that the system is rigged. Everybody knows the system is rigged. To build a movement and save our future, we have to know how it is rigged and who rigged it."
https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/02/corprophagia/#that-makes-me-smart

2026-01-27 16:21:02 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs on tRump's trade policy: "The best summary of Trump's trade 'philosophy' comes from Trashfuture's November Kelly, who said that Trump is flipping over the table in a poker game that's rigged in his favor because he resents having to pretend to play the game at all."
No matter the game, Donnie plays pigeon chess: he flies in, struts around and knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to his MAGA flock to claim victory.
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/26/i-dont-want/#your-greenback-dollar

2026-01-14 14:52:00 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs for the win: "All I've got is an idea for how we can make *insanely profitable products* that people *really want to buy*, that will insulate us from cyberattacks by US tech giants who are in thrall to Trump, and that *Americans* will pay us to use in order to free themselves from the tech giants who abuse them, too."
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/13/not-sorry/#mere-billions

2026-01-06 16:05:36 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs : "For if AI code – written at 10,000 times the speed of any human coder, designed to work well, but not to fail gracefully – is the digital asbestos we're filling our walls with, then our descendants will spend generations digging that asbestos out of the walls."
I retired from working in computing after 40 years, having done literally everything. I'm so glad I got out before I was reduced to mining digital detritus.
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/06/1000x-liability/#graceful-failure-modes

2026-01-01 13:43:39 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs posits "an unstoppable coalition of activists, entrepreneurs and natsec hawks" will help bring about "a post-American, enshittification-resistant internet", a welcome trend in the War on General Purpose Computers.
"... if someone threatens to burn your house down unless you follow their orders, and then they burn your house down anyway, you don't have to keep following their orders. So…Happy Liberation Day?"
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition

2025-12-18 15:54:34 UTC

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Perfect capper to the year: take a truncheon to "capital allocation" and the parasites who practice it. Thanks for a great year, Mr. Doctorow 👏🏻

2025-12-18 01:21:57 UTC

With the mega-rich funding the GOP to force "eight million student borrowers back into repayment" and sanctioning "the use of price-fixing algorithms to raise rent" and hoarding so much of the country's wealth that "most Americans can't afford to buy *anything* anymore", @npub1fdr…lvhs has, as is his wont, coined a marvelous phrase to characterize the kleptocrat class:
Guillotineable Plute
https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/16/k-shaped-recovery/#disenshittification-nations

2025-12-15 04:32:01 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs writes about middlemen enshittifying the internet, taking money from the makers. In 1997, Ellen Ullman's "Close to the Machine" predicted these rentiers: "Indeed, any content, any information, anything posted on the Web was now ripe for the skim. 'Every time someone clicks, someone makes money.' And it would not be the content makers who would be making the money. … the ones making the money would be the owner of the transaction itsef. The new breed of entrepreneur: Net landlord."

2025-11-16 18:13:23 UTC

The Firehole River at sunset, Yellowstone National Park
#photography #SilentSunday #YellowstoneNationalPark
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/560/716/535/489/627/original/5032e413042a0729.jpeg

2025-11-08 16:47:29 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs , July 2023:
"The problem with, say, Meta, is only partially that Mark Zuckerberg is personally monumentally unsuited to serving as the unelected, unaccountable permanent social media czar for three billion people.
"The real problem is that no one should have that job. That job shouldn't exist. We don't need to find a better Mark Zuckerberg.
We need to abolish Mark Zuckerberg."
The Facebook Fraud Files confirms it: Zuck & Meta must be abolished.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/08/faecebook/#too-big-to-care

2025-10-20 15:36:37 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs : "Every device and every service should be designed so that the people who use them have the final say over how they work. Manufacturers' back doors and digital locks that prevent us from updating our devices with software of our choosing were never a good idea. Today, they're a catastrophe."
Bad and Wrong: adj. Said of something that is both badly designed and wrongly executed. (The Jargon File, version 4.4.7)
https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/20/post-american-internet/#huawei-with-american-characteristics

2025-10-19 15:41:10 UTC

Lake Washington on a blustery blue-grey day.
#photography #SilentSunday
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/401/554/088/677/490/original/3ba7c7134d66d718.jpeg

2025-10-16 22:14:10 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs : "To recoup their existing and announced investments, AI companies will have to bring in $2 trillion, more than the combined revenue of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia and Meta. … With 30+% of the S&P 500 tied up in seven AI companies' stock, the coming crash will _definitely_ escape containment and crash the whole damned economy."
Thus spake Walter & Donald:
When Black Friday falls you know it's got to be
Don't let it fall on me
https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/16/post-ai-ai/#productive-residue

2025-09-26 16:29:18 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs : "The idea that Apple is so committed to its users' privacy that it will exit a major market rather than expose users to surveillance risks is an obvious lie – just ask China. Why would Apple tell this lie? Because it wants to protect its profits – not its customers."
Steve Jobs said, "A brand is simply trust." Apple has squandered its trust and tarnished its brand. Time to Think Different.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/26/empty-threats/#500-million-affluent-consumers

2025-09-22 18:33:44 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs : "The danger to society comes from the *existence* of billionaires – from the transfer of power (to decide who may speak and who may be heard) into the hands of a few very rich men whose collective cowardice can erase whole swathes of public discourse."
A few short-sighted supplicants, greedily prostrating themselves, and betraying us, for their 30 pieces of silver.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/22/one-throat-to-choke/#communicable-disease

2025-09-16 02:12:41 UTC

Oh, to be able to return to the not-so-distant past when the internet was new and free, where comment threads were meetings of the finest minds, and bloggers held forth on the great dialogues of the age wearing red capes and goggles and blogged from high-altitude balloons (well, @npub1fdr…lvhs did).
"Things were better before the Structuring and the Levels."
xkcd, number 239, 2007 (https://xkcd.com/239/)
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/211/486/501/555/735/original/da5b46a2cbff6a80.jpg

2025-09-13 14:42:32 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs : "Shopping harder is no way to save the planet or your neighbors. Individual actions do not provoke systemic change. For that, we need collective action. … Make individual choices that make your life better. Take *collective* action to make society better."
"We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." -- Benjamin Franklin
https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/13/consumption-choices/#marginal-benefits

2025-09-02 21:54:28 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs : "As Matt Stoller writes, 'if the voting booth isn’t a meaningful way to fix problems, people will find other mechanisms to seek redress, using uglier tactics.'"
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." -- John F. Kennedy
https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/02/act-locally/#local-hero

2025-08-28 20:20:51 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs : "Most of the people stuck in the mirror world are poor and powerless, because desperation makes you an easy mark for grifters peddling conspiracy theories." Force-feeding phony outrage porn ("They're Eating the Dogs") and raking in millions from the True Believers … now who/what does that remind me of?
https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/28/strew-deal/#neither-fish-nor-fowl

2025-08-27 05:04:39 UTC

Purchased ebooks that can be taken away, purchased music that can be deleted, purchased products you are prevented from repairing that can be modified or entirely shut down at will. They get your money and your purchase doesn't buy ownership, a hallmark of Wilhoit's Law. I recall a pithy observation from a famous author, @npub1fdr…lvhs :
"If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing."
https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/26/sole-and-despotic-dominion/#then-they-came-for-me

2025-08-23 15:40:56 UTC

Slow *them* down, cut *them* down to size, regulate *them*, tax *them*, impoverish *them*, make *them* pay, make *them* illegal. Redistribute the friction *upwards* ⬆︎
@npub1fdr…lvhs : "Friction cannot be reduced, it can only be redistributed"
https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/23/become-unoptimizable/#downward-redistribution

2025-08-19 04:12:56 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs : "Billionaires just don't think we're real."
They see us (to borrow from the same Idoru passage) as "vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant". We're all just disposable things to them.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/18/seeing-like-a-billionaire/#npcs

2025-08-14 17:12:57 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs 's latest about MAGA's boss class being immune to the carnage they create (and profiting from it) is a perfect exposition of both Wilhoit's Law (which he cites) and of Ogden Nash's puckish observation:
Professional men, they have no cares;
Whatever happens, they get theirs.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/13/then-they-came-for-me/#boss-politics

2025-08-07 16:43:19 UTC

Each week @npub1mg0…jpme posts a new Threat Model: Covid with information and carefully curated resources to help you stay informed and stay safe:
- Modeling: US surge hits half-million daily infections
- 59% of US adults “no intention” of getting this year’s Covid boosters
- RFK Jr. kills mRNA vaccine development in the US
- Huge Covid/MIS-C treatment breakthrough for children
Patrons help keep this resource alive; sharing it helps spread the news.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/135920754

2025-08-06 15:54:10 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs : "There are plenty of Audible books that are recorded without a director or an editor or a proofer, meaning that inexperienced actor's mistakes and mispronunciations survive into the final product." I purchased an Audible audiobook that was riddled with such errors and Amazon could care less. I bought the audiobook on CD from eBay (a lucky find) & ripped it. DRM-free authors like Cory are the only way to go.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/06/unmerchantable-substitute-goods/#customer-disservice

2025-07-31 15:15:00 UTC

When @npub1fdr…lvhs explains, we benefit. Something good is coming this October.
https://www.thirdplacebooks.com/book/9780374619329
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/948/453/341/449/944/original/11fc005c09d1d1f9.jpeg

2025-07-13 13:39:03 UTC

The Methow Valley, Washington State
#photography #SilentSunday
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/846/183/495/360/268/original/7ba62de465023228.jpeg

2025-07-02 14:28:53 UTC

tRump et al., ICE secret police, co-opted MAGA racists, the GOP & the centrist Democrats who crush popular movements using techbro-supplied mass surveillance, the ultra-rich who bankroll it all ... To borrow @npub15l3…6wqx 's perfect phrase, they are antibodies protecting a disease.
@npub1fdr…lvhs : "They think they can spy their way into a country where they have everything and we have nothing, and we like it (or at least, never dare complain about it). They're wrong."
https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/26/autostabilizer/#slicey-bois

2025-06-26 13:31:46 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs : "After generations of increasingly oligarch-friendly policies and billionaire entryism into the Democratic Party, America may well be cooked, a total write-off for generations to come. The path to saving the world and our species arguably lies through strengthening other countries to resist American psychos and protect the planet from the consequences of their brainwormed leadership."
🎶You lie down with dogs, you fall in with thieves🎶
https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/23/billionaires-eh/#galen-weston-is-a-rat

2025-06-22 00:28:37 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs : "Like many people of my generation, I grew up with The Blues Brothers. ... I can still just about recite those movies verbatim, more than 30 years later."
IMHO a perfect opening scene: Elwood stands in front of the Blues Mobile, Jake waits for the prison gate to open, and "She Caught the Katy" punches in. Sets the tone perfectly.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/21/1060-west-addison/#the-new-oldsmobiles-are-in-early-this-year

2025-04-20 22:15:01 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs : "It's not a coincidence that these guys went after the CFPB. It's no mystery why they've gone after every watchdog that keeps you from getting scammed, poisoned or maimed, from the FDA to the EPA to the NLRB."
Caveat Emptor
Praline-- I wish to complain about this parrot what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique.
Shopkeeper--Oh yes, the, the Norwegian Blue. What's wrong with it?
Praline--It's dead, that's what's wrong with it!
https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/19/gotcha/#known-to-the-state-of-california-to-cause-cancer

2025-04-05 18:32:54 UTC

The #handsoff protests are truly nationwide -- Bothell, Washington turns out
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/286/776/101/914/773/original/81891b7fc2669501.jpeg

2025-03-28 01:58:59 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs : "Any good investor knows that anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. The only question is: will that halt is a controlled braking action, or a collision with reality's brick wall?"
Given the aggregate overarching greed permeating the CEO class coupled with the collective venality of the politicians profiting from granting those CEOs carte blanche, my money's on Brick Wall.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/27/use-your-mentality/#face-up-to-reality

2025-03-22 00:43:05 UTC

This past February, @npub1fdr…lvhs recommended "The Murder Next Door", a graphic novel by Hugh D'Andrade. He characterized the story as "a haunting, beautiful meditation on masculinity, trauma, and fear." It certainly was, along with the recognition that empathy and compassion are hallmarks of both a healthy person and a healthy society. Our society is not overflowing with these qualities just now.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/10/pivot-point/#eff

2025-02-02 16:21:55 UTC

#SilentSunday #photography
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/935/189/466/644/994/original/f518019eebd4f169.jpeg

2025-01-31 03:37:01 UTC

- reply

"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves." -- Edward R. Murrow

2025-01-24 21:01:24 UTC

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"Authoritarian societies are inherently corrupt, and corrupt societies are inherently unstable. Rule of thieves brings collapse, eventually, because they can't stop stealing." William Gibson, '"Agency"

2025-01-12 02:51:54 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs : Surveillance pricing combined with cartel "IP rights" exemplify Wilhoit's' Law:
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
Stopping this naked exploitation of consumers requires new privacy laws protecting consumers rather than cartels.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/11/socialism-for-the-wealthy/#rugged-individualism-for-the-poor

2024-12-15 03:25:21 UTC

Choosing stupidity is not a choice to be respected:
"We must refuse to accept that the ignorance on display is a congenital condition rather than a choice." -- Roxane Gay, NY Times, 11-17-24
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/654/630/634/810/077/original/b62d0b73ae028e88.jpg

2024-11-20 01:21:13 UTC

This passage from @npub1fdr…lvhs 's novel "Attack Surface" sums up how the technology we depend on has been turned against us:
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/512/635/236/896/036/original/c7157ee87479c0c0.jpg

2024-10-20 16:15:55 UTC

Sunset above clouds
#photography #SilentSunday
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/340/626/883/462/287/original/ba652b18f51f9409.jpeg

2024-10-03 22:32:52 UTC

The new NIAID Director is scared of masks: "Marrazzo goes on to say that she and her colleagues “don’t want to go back” [to wearing masks] because “it was so painful.” What was? Disease control? The thing public health literally exists to do?"
https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/new-niaid-director-scared-of-masks
This is *exactly" why [@violetblue](https://mastodon.social/@violetblue ) 's weekly Pandemic Roundups are so important:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/113265900
And why her Covid Safety Handbook will be so valuable:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/violetblue/the-covid-sanity-handbook
#maskup #CovidIsNotOver

2024-10-01 23:25:02 UTC

@npub1fdr…lvhs : "Any future worth living in is going to get housing right. We need to stop thinking of housing as an asset and realize that it is, first and foremost, a human right."
Put Wall Street landlords up against a wall.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/01/housing-is-a-human-right/#

2024-08-15 18:09:09 UTC

@npub1mg0…jpme 's Pandemic Roundup:
-Long covid worldwide estimate 407M
-US: 1.3M daily infections, 1 in 36 infectious
-US: covid hospital reporting returns Nov. 1
-Study: N95 Masks Nearly Perfect at Blocking COVID
"... highest levels of covid since winter joins multiple simultaneous health crises [H5N1, Mpox]. And it's all airborne. ... we already have the gear and know how it all works. Some of us won't have to change a thing."
#covidsafety #covidisnotover #maskup
https://www.patreon.com/posts/110132360
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/967/313/894/491/690/original/285305e417bd101d.jpeg

2024-08-11 16:42:32 UTC

Sunset at Maui, looking west from Lahaina to Lanai
#SilentSunday #photography
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/944/366/126/135/270/original/7b823dbd7fdfc1c5.jpeg

2024-08-08 18:34:14 UTC

@npub1mg0…jpme 's Pandemic Roundup:
-WHO: covid circulation 2-20x higher than what's being reported
-42 US wastewater sites quietly removed from SCAN/Verily
-US expected to spike higher for back-to-school
-CDC: no vaccines until Sept-Oct
"We’re witnessing another US-led catastrophic covid fuckup in real time. ... Covid can’t be ignored. It can’t be forced into being seasonal. And no single country can decide the pandemic is over."
https://www.patreon.com/posts/109690232
#covidsafety #covidisnotover #maskup
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/927/818/784/087/872/original/d0b03b6187eb8b52.png