Re: many subjects

[http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert (Robert)]

 > From: Brian <http://www.cs..edu/~b>
 > Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2022 08:19:02 -0800
 >
 > I'm reading three library books at once.  The one in the bathroom is 
 > /The Chaos Machine/ by Max Fisher, which is about how the recommendation 
 > algorithms at Facebook and YouTube (among others, but mainly those two) 
 > created the right wing wacko movement, everywhere at once, leading to a 
 > lot of deaths in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, but also the movement that Trump 
 > rode to the presidency here.  The basic idea is that the social media 
 > platforms make their money selling advertising, which means selling 
 > eyeball time, which means keeping you on their site a few more seconds, 
 > which means recommending to you the articles to which people respond 
 > enthusiastically; whether the responses are for or against the article 
 > doesn't matter.  So they lead you from one political rant to another, 
 > and people get hooked on excitement.

Amazing.  I heard a podcast about this analysis, but didn't realize that
there was a book about it, too.  Really fascinating how subtle feedback
loops can control our lifes.

 > But the really most interesting one to tell you about is /The Origin of 
 > Capitalism: A Longer View/ by Ellen Melskins Wood,

Funnily, doing a search for this name came up with unrelated results.
Changing it to Meiksins helped.