Posts by Trevor_Pott

Ah, yes. Decorum.

I am theoretically capable of it - periodically people accuse me of exercising it - however it doesn't exactly seem my forte. The social niche I’ve carved out for myself seems to be somewhere in the “calls it like I sees it” range.

Great for getting across “what you mean” in a manner everyone can understand. Abominable for laywerspeak, writing contracts or other exercises in CYA or interpersonal diplomacy.

Legacy of being a redneck, I suppose. Folk ‘round here are raised with an innate distrust of anyone who exercises an abundance of decorum. It is a social hindrance I struggle daily to overcome; it requires a certain amount of cognitive dissonance to behave differently when dealing with folks online/over the phone/at a conference/etc. versus people in RL back home.

I wonder how much others experience this, or are even aware of it? Do people raised with layers of outbound filters between “what I mean to say” and “how I should be saying it” realise how they are perceived by (for example) rednecks? There is a certain amount of obvious “, my social conditioning is the ‘right’ social conditioning” evident in any society, but I wonder to what degree introspection makes its way down to the individual level in different cultures.

Here in Alberta, we actually talk about these issues a fair amount. Regardless of education, occupation, etc…I find a lot of people amenable to a discussion about the use of social filtering on speech. Why is it that Albertans – and by extension, rural Ontarians and all Newfies – have such a problem with decorums (or other related social filters?)

I think it isn’t necessarily that we perceive prevarication in such interactions, but that there is a certain perception of lack of interpersonal trust. We are a culture big on “handshake agreements,” “word is your bond’ etc. If you feel that you have to choose your words carefully – usually for CYA purposes – then you are perceived as not trusting the listener (or reader) to extract meaning (and political correctness implications) from context.

I find the entire topic fascinating, especially in the context of writing and trolling online. El Reg is a culture unto itself; rooted in British sensibilities, but with its own quirks. Ars Technica is prototypically American, with the Science, Technology and Gaming sections of the website each having sub cultures that seem to reflect a predominance from one coast or the other. (Actually, the science areas have a large international representation, so a great deal of formality enters into discussion, and rules/debate semantics become critical elements.)

Contrast this with the far more laid back – even at the upper levels of high-stakes corporate discourse – culture here at home, and it is a learning experience. “Know your audience” as it were; the vagaries and subtleties of which are apparently something that can occupy entire professions.

I’ll be interested to see what the less blunt versions of the discussed featuresets eventually get called. It also raises the question of forum rules and “unofficial” decorum expected in the new setting.

Traditional netiquette requires a certain level of “on topic-ness” to a given post. El Reg has a great list of Big Bad Don’ts as well. (Visible in the “why was my post rejected” screen.) But the ability to set your own topics – and the more “free-wheeling” culture that typically implies – might be something to address at the outset?

Perhaps then an additional “feature request” should be an “unofficial rules” post to help shape the new topicless (or free-for-all topicness) of the new forums. Something that addresses not only the overarching issues such as libel or blatant trolling. But also something that discusses some of the more subtle ones such as decorum, policy regarding linking to other sites (deep linking/image linking issues are things some sites have problems with.)

Or maybe I am just over thinking all of this. That happens a lot too.

Maybe refine this?

"Vulture/Twatdangle" list? (Where if the person is listed as a twatdangle on your list you don't see their posts?) Or at least ability to "flag" someone in your own personal view? Perhaps something wherein if enough folks flag someone as a twatdangle it is raised as an issue with whomever happens to be guarding Vulture Central?

Well, if we are veering into non-traditional meats...

...nothing beats Caribou. OM NOM NOM.

Two heads

tip better than one!

Ah

That is what you are talking about. Natural gas --> Hydrogen.

Just stupid if you ask me. You want hydrogen? Build a great big bloody nuke plant. Split it with electricity. Clean and efficient. Then you have created something (hydrogen) that is essentially storing the energy that nuke plant created and can be used as a fuel elsewhere.

Well, yep…I think we’ll have to agree to disagree here. Your argument seems to be “computer models, therefore fallacy.”

Maybe I am not enough of a pessimist. Some of the computer models in use are really widely used. They are peer reviewed, the who/what/when/where/how/why of the thing well known. The creation of the models themselves often the result of extensive research and numerous papers.

Some are proprietary. Single use or with some or all of the rights owned by corporate backers who paid for their creation.

But the strengths and weaknesses of these models are (usually) well known to the researchers who use them. (Indeed, they are well know to the community of “Climate Scientists” in general.)

There is also plenty of good solid math, experiments and other bits of science or analysis that goes along side these models. Climate science is not “reliant” on computer models, they are simply a tool. And one that is fairly well understood.

The really critical bit is reproducibility. If you take this concept and modify multiple different climate models, how do they react? Run this information through not just one, but as many as you can. This is how you take something as enormously complex as “climate” and start narrowing down the number of possible outcomes.

I’ve taken the time to study this all. In depth. I have a few squiggles about some of the models in use, but they are mostly alleviated by the fact that other models coded by completely different teams produce results that are statistically quite close.

The arguments against climate science I have seen so far – here and elsewhere – all boil down to philosophical ones. “I don’t like how this person behaved” or “I don’t like the fact that this team can’t release their climate models” or “I don’t like the fact that only the data that corrected for things like a known-busted weather station was retained by this team over the past 30 years.”

It’s interesting to me. From a high-enough level view, I completely understand where you are coming from. You can spin a lot of this to look really bad. Indeed; some of it has been! (Nobody is perfect, not even scientists.) But when you actually start addressing the concerns one at a time; when you start to look at each complaint individually, the vast majority makes sense.

“Why did they do it this way? That seems bad/nonsensical/against my personal philosophy/not the way I would do it/etc.” When you take the time to ask the folks involved, (or read the answers posted if this question has already been asked,) then in nearly every situation the decisions made make sense.

But there’s the rub. I have taken the time to investigate every single claim made by every denier I’ve run across who can give me a reference to look up.

“We don’t like how this was done! It’s not kosher, and means that all of climate science is fraudulent/inaccurate because it uses voodoo “computer models”/a giant conspiracy/etc.” Okay, which incidents in particular? List them. Let’s step through them one at a time. Let’s look at the hard science and not the propaganda. Science. Why was it done that way? Does it make sense? So on and so forth.

I’ve been at it for years now. So far, the depth of my research has only reinforced my belief that Climate Scientists are not only perfectly aware of the flaws in their computer models/temperature stations/heat island effect/etc. but they take this stuff into account when designing experiments or performing analyses.

Climate science makes predictions. Predictions are some times tested against historic data, sometimes against historic proxies, sometimes we have to wait for a few years to see if the predictions of the future are within bounds. But they don't rely on models exclusively. Models are simply useful to test your hypotheses before going to all the trouble of engaging in large-scale efforts to test predictions about the future.

Mostly, they are used to weed out ideas that “fail the sniff test.” The computer models essentially are the “sniff test” for climate science. If the idea makes sense in the models, then they start testing for it in the real world.

You know, building expensive shit like satellites. Or upgrading a few thousand bouys/weatherstations/etc.

In other words, I find the scientific ethics of Climate Scientists – on the aggregate – to be acceptable. (Though I have a handful I think give the whole thing a bad name.)

I also think it is important to separate “what the science claims” from “what the NIMBYs try to twist the science into claiming.” Separating the actual science from the propaganda (on either side) take a lot of hard work and dedication.

But as I said, we shall have to agree to disagree. We have obviously looked at the same evidence and come to different conclusions.

Such is life.

As regards you gripe about “too many specialists, not enough generalists…” I maintain that the modern polymath is functionally impossible. Noone can know enough about modern science to be useful as a generalist. Some folks may hold degrees in several fields – or like me, they have studied extensively and widely without holding any degrees whatsoever – but that comes at a price.

The really specialised elements of various experiments can – and do – go over our heads in most cases. For example, I gave up on Optics as soon as we started using surface plasmons in lithography as focusing mechanisms to achieve smaller-scale items, or having to build multiple-waveguided lasers because the frequencies and scale they were operating on were actually affected by the presence of virtual photons.

The sum total of my personal scientific knowledge likely crosses significantly more disciplines than that of most individuals with PhDs. The flip side is that I can also say with absolute certainty that the vast majority of individuals with PhDs know way more about their specific area of science than I ever will.

The bredth of my knowledge may – one day – make me useful as a science journalist. But I will never be able to contribute to society by doing actual cutting edge hard science. I just don’t have the depth of knowledge in any given field.

So just what value does attempting to be a modern polymath have?

Supertards

Only very special people get "auto-accepted." If you have had your account upgraded that way, it seems someone has decided you have posted here enough to know the rules (and probably live by them.)

Egads!

If you are directing that comment at me sir, I am afraid it is never quite so simple. I’m the sysadmin blogger around here. Not the science guy. The reasons for that are fairly obvious; my day job is as a systems administrator. With over a decade under my belt as a sysadmin, I even border as “expert in my field.” (That really depends on the criteria you use for expertise.)

Thus it is reasonable to assume that when it comes to computers, I know what I am talking about. (Most of the time, at least. We all make mistakes!) I can write these sysadminning articles and (hopefully) I add more to The Register than I might subtract from it with my lack of experience as a writer.

Science writing is a different kettle of fish. I possess no university degrees. I am not a fellow at some pompous think tank nor am I a prominent member of a research team or political party. I have less that two years of writing experience behind me. Perhaps two dozen interviews and – I think – two articles that are “reporting news” instead of “analyzing things.”

Why would readers listen to me? What credibility do I bring to the table reporting science news? I am humbled by your enthusiasm for my commetnard blathering, but I am what I have always been: an Internet troll who knows how to work a computer. I can only hold my own in scientific debates because the pursuit of scientific knowledge is both a hobby and passion for me. (It has been my whole life.) It is not something for which I have any formal credentials or professional position.

There’s a question of audience, too. How many people read The Register for viewpoints like mine on all topics science? The comments section would seem to indicate that my approach to scientific discovery – and the resulting understanding of our current state of knowledge – appear to be in the significant minority here at The Register.

For these reasons, I don’t believe it is my place to ask to write science articles. I am happy enough to be invited to write articles about computer-related things. I will get my science on where I always have: as the technical nerd attached to some project at my local university, helping then build a UAV or some godforsaken Linux cluster.

But also here; on internet forums. My “roots” as it were. At the end of the day, I still haven’t grown much beyond what I have been for two decades.

A random troll on the interbutts.

A.O.: Ah, Ye Olde Precautionary Principle returns.

Last seen looking for WMDs in the desert in 2003....

Nope, nyet and nein. Been there, done that, came back as an amputee

>The precautionary principle applies only if you don’t do your due diligence beforehand. In the case of climate science, we do a cost/benefit analysis of the whole scenario, and then pair it up against he likelihood of the science being right. (And this being science, the quantification of “how likely are these predictions to be true” is a huge part of the game.)

>If you have a 95% chance of saving trillions by spending a few billion, you do it. That’s not blind faith. It’s not gambling either.

>There exists a scientific consensus on the subject. There exists a great deal of literature as to the outcomes, what kind of impact they will have, what their likelihoods are. The precautionary principle simply doesn’t apply here. The idea is for application when there either A) is no scientific consensus, B) there remains a great deal of uncertainty regard the variables in the cost/benefit analysis or C) there is legitimate reason to doubt the scientific consensus.

>A and B are covered. If you are advocating C – that there is legitimate reason to doubt the scientific consensus – then put some peer reviewed evidence on the table. Assuming it isn’t the same old crap that has been thoroughly debunked before (that I run into every single day at Ars,) then I will cheerfully look into it. (New knowledge is good!) Convince me! You are arguing against the scientific consensus here, so the burden of proof is on you.

>I am not remotely closed minded about the topic – despite your insinuations to the contrary. Present solid evidence and I will review it. If I cannot find a solid refutation of that evidence – and if it is so damning that it throws the entire scientific consensus on climate change into question – then I will write an article about that evidence myself.

>I have no pride tied up in this. No honour or Belief. I am swayed by the science I have seen presented by the extant consensus. Further science can change my mind. It wouldn’t be the first time that we’ve been wrong about something, or taken the wrong path of investigation.

MJI: Yes it is changing - it always has. But I get the feeling that trying to control it we will use our enrgy supplies up quicker.

>Possibly true. “Controlling” it is likely a waste of time. Mitigation by switching to vast quantities of Nukes for energy however is probably a worthwhile investment.

MJI: Personally I am of the opinion we should be using less resources and tackling pollution first.

>Very true! But the question remains “how to we encourage efficient use of resources?” Tragedy of the commons still applies if we allow individuals, corporations and entire nations to continue to externalise costs. (Pollution, CO2, Methane, etc.)

MJI: As to CO2 best thing to do as far as I am concerned is plant lots of trees.

>Problem is, that doesn’t put the carbon back in the ground. You’d have to grow the tree, then chuck it down a hole. If you grow the tree then burn it, you’ve delayed the CO2 a little, but not removed it from the system.

MJI: There seems to be unsure about warming or cooling, what effects there will be.

>Actually, we know it’s warming. The science is pretty conclusive here. “What effects there will be” is indeed an open area of inquiry.

MJI: The idea that we break up fossil fuels to remove the carbon before burning seems ludicrous, wasted energy.

>Who what now? I haven’t heard this one. Link?

MJI: CO2 is plant food, we need to capture it in wood.

>Yes…but what do we do with it once it is wood? Where do we store it so it doesn’t get back into the atmosphere?

MJI: We do not need massive beef ranches do we?

>Well…no. But I want the massive beef ranches. I’m Albertan. I love beef. OM NOM NOM. This is why I really, really want someone to come along and prove all this climate change stuff to be hokum. Because one of the biggest things we could do to alter our climate footprint as a species is get rid of the massive beef ranches. And damn it…I don’t like that idea one bit.

A.O.: Your default mode is "anyone disagreeing is a troll or a crank".

That is very much putting words in my mouth. You are incorrect: my default mode is “anyone disagreeing needs to present peer-reviewed evidence.” Disagreement doesn’t make someone a troll or a crank. Disagreement in order to elicit an emotional reaction in your opponent makes one a troll. Inability to produce peer-reviewed evidence to back your claims makes one a crank.

A.O.: Have you not even tried, over the years, to find these?

I have spent a great deal of time reviewing all evidence presented me to disprove global warming. That includes everything on Anthon Watts’ page, amongst many similar sites. I have gone toe to toe with some very intelligent and well armed deniers on the Ars Technica forums, and read each and every link provided

I have even taken the initiative to delve into the research on my own. I have an entire browser dedicated to “climate change denier and creationism research.” There are over 1000 bookmarks. So yes, I have done the legwork of looking into arguments that say “climate change isn’t happening” or “maybe it’s happening, but humans have nothing to do with it” or even better “humans are so insignificant we can’t possible affect the whole of the earth.”

A.O.: Or to find out when and how the current climate "consensus" was created?

Well, how do you mean? The fact that the consensus occurred more or less spontaneously on its own over time, or the fact that after it had largely occurred, a bunch of governments got together (under severe pressure from the environmental lobby) to make it “official” by forming entities like the IPCC?

Are you veering into conspiracy theory territory here? I’m very curious.

A.O.: This tells me it's largely about Belief.

Of course it is about Belief. Belief is the problem on both sides of this debate. You have enviroNIMBYs on the one end freaking out about everything and giving climate science a bad name. They agitate way over there, far beyond what the science is actually saying, distorting and twisting anything they can to support their pre-existing beliefs.

Then over here you have the folks who cannot cope with the concept of climate change at all. For some, it is because it interferes with their religion. For others, it is because they stomach the economic implications. For still others it is about nothing more than guilt. People love their children. Their love their families, nieces, nephews. They want to believe they are leaving these kids a world at least as good as they were left.

Start telling them that our current choices as a society may in fact be creating an unnecessary burden for those same children, and people will deny it. They don’t want to hear that. They don’t want to feel guilty. The emotional reaction causes them to lash out against the science: “it can’t be true.”

But your attempt to state that my understanding of climate science is somehow a religious belief on my part is nothing more than an ad hom. Naturally, if I disagree with you, I must be a nutter who is so engrossed in my “religion” I can’t see “sense.”

The problem here is that I have no stake in my understanding of climate science. Provide peer reviewed evidence. Something that hasn’t been thoroughly debunked and torn to absolute shreds by subsequent peer-reviewed science would be preferable.

Understand me very clearly: I want to be wrong about climate change. I have far more invested in that outcome than in being correct!

But this isn’t about “belief.” It is about science. I have spent years of my life learning it, pouring over studies – new and old – and learning everything I can on the topic. I do it because I am fascinated by it. (The same reason I learn about particle physics, medicine, geology, evolutional microbiology, genetics and so forth.)

Right, wrong, climate change exists, climate change doesn’t…it doesn’t matter. What matters to me is the science. What does the science say? And why? How did we come to these conclusions? How can these experiments be repeated? Proven? Disproven? What statistical analyses were used? Why?

If you want a “religion” you can ascribe to me – if you need that to be comfortable with what I espouse – then ascribe the religion that “science and the quest for knowledge are more important than any other consideration.” Because for me, this is Truth. For me, that is Belief.

Whether or not climate change is happening isn’t relevant to me. The science of how we determine the truth of the matter is.

Running around the internet arguing with people and requiring they back up their assertions with peer-reviewed evidence on topic I have thousands of bookmarks for is just the amusing hobby that results from all my learning.

After all, I said that I science, and the pursuit of knowledge were like a religion to me. I never said I wasn’t a gigantic douchenozzle.

So how about it? Got any peer reviewed evidence disproving climate change (or various aspects of it) that I can chew on? All fascinating reading for me...

@TeeCEe

My views on the subject can be summed up as follows:

1) It probably is warming.

2) Some/most/all of that effect may be our fault.

3) The "doom & gloom" predictions are nothing more than FUD.

4) While a massive cut in our emissions might turn things around, the chances of actually getting a meaningful agreement on that are on a par with those of my looking out of my window tomorrow morning and seeing Satan skiing to work.

5) QED. If you want to make a difference, try working on technologies and systems for living with a warmer climate rather than on polishing chairs and arguing a lot while crusties wave placards at you.

I agree with everything here except 3)

The "doom and gloom" predictions are not all FUD. Ocean acidification alone is a Big Deal. I agree with you 100% that "climate change =/= the end of the human race." I don't think most scientists involved do either. (That is usually NIMBYs.)

But we are altering the planet, and with it doing serious damage to entire ecosystems. Ecosystems many of our species rely upon and enjoy. So there is doom, and there is gloom. Adapting to the changing world will cost us a great deal of money and resources.

The questions center around "what is the optimal expenditure now to minimise long-term risk?" What is the low hanging fruit? What things can we do today to minimise the damage and perhaps even benefit from global warming?

So yes: we should be focusing on adaptation. But I argue we should also be focusing on mitigation when and where it makes solid economic sense.

@Sean Baggaley 1

Find me one single climate scientist who has claimed "humans are the only agency at work here." I can't think of any. There is no science to my knowledge that supports this.

The issue at hand isn't even that humans influence the climate. Believe it or not, we have a pretty good idea of how much the biosphere can cope with before we start making a definitive mark of our very own. We are way past that point.

Volcanoes and solar changes and so forth all have their part to play, but we have also been pumping out more CO2 in the past 100 years than anything since the Siberian Traps when berserk.

I also agree wholeheartedly that we don’t know exactly how the climate works. We don’t know exactly how gravity works, either. But I still know that it takes a lot of special equipment – or 150 million years of evolution – to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

We don’t need to know “everything” about climate change to do the science. Science isn’t about absolutes. It is about determining that something is “somewhere between A and B” and then doing a great deal of hard work to narrow the gap between A and B.

Every year we can state with more confidence what our climate predictions will be. We can state with more confidence what the totality of human impact is. We can state with more confidence what role solar cycles play and so on and so forth.

But with what we know today, while not absolute knowledge, we still know enough to know that A) we are in trouble B) we’re mostly responsible.

There isn’t a great deal of debate about those points anymore. Not amongst the scientific community. There is an enormous amount of debate about how exactly we continue to narrow the gap between A and B, but the outer boundaries for the values of A and B are well established.

The question that need to be answered are: what (if anything) do we do about this? What will it cost? How should we go about it? Science can tell you “what is happening” and it can tell you “this will happen (somewhere between A and B) with this % of certainty.” You then hand that off to politicians and policymakers and it is up to them to make decisions about what to do.

The problem is the people going back and trying to argue “well, we don’t know things to absolutes, therefore we must do nothing!”

That is the exact same bullshit rationalisation as “evolution hasn’t explained every possible biological item (mostly because we haven’t had the time to study every single biological item!) therefore, obviously God created us.”

So I agree with you on balance: humans are not the sole causative factor in climate change, and we still have a great deal to learn about how the climate works.

Where we seem to part ways is that I don’t believe the “we don’t know everything, therefore God” style arguments. We don’t have to know “everything” to take action. We need to know things with enough statistical relevance that the possibility of being wrong is insignificant. And here, I believe that most climate science has indeed done the job.

Climate science isn’t going to tell you the weather next Tuesday. But it can tell you about things like increased storm frequency, intensity, changes in current patterns, changes in the jet stream, changes in rainfall, sea level rise, ocean acidification and other such things.

I never claimed it was absolute. I claimed that the debates over “is it occurring” and “are we responsible” are largely over. I claimed that climate science can make falsifiable predictions and be right more often than not. There is a huge gap between that and claiming absolute knowledge.

It's not changing fast enough!

Climate change science does make predictions. Testable ones. A great deal of climate change science is rightly and properly falsifiable. That is what makes it science. I simply would not use the word if it were not so. (I am an absolute stickler for the "falsifiability" test.)

The problem with deniers is that they all too often conflate climate with weather. They love to stand up and shout “because you cannot tell me the exact localized effects of climate change, you know nothing!” Which is roughly the equivalent of saying that because we don’t have a unified theory of everything, God must be the only possible answer, and all of physics is a lie.

A lot of climate change predictions have been verified. Ocean acidification, net glacial melt, a continuing global warming trend, etc. (Even cherry picking the data so that you only look at 1998-> present isn’t helping the deniers much after 2010!)

Climate science says that we should see an increase in CO2/Methane/etc. levels where our historic proxies indicate temperature increases. Sure enough, we’ve found them. Climate science predicts a statistical increase in storm intensity, and that is beginning to materialise.

Climate science predicts a shift in weather patterns that will bring extended droughts to some areas, flooding to others. Here things are a little more squiggly, but we are getting the predictions right more often than not.

Yes, climate science is still developing. Yes, it is still early days. But if we wait until after the global temperature has increased past the various flexion points, we will be too late to actually do anything about it.

As to the complaints that boil down to “well, if you believe in AGW, obviously you want to destroy civilisation,” that’s all bunk. The asshats pushing windmills and photovoltaic as the answer to everything are the ones who will destroy civilisation, and they are emphatically not climate scientists. They are generally NIMBYs with just enough knowledge to be dangerous and/or entrepreneurs looking to make a buck.

Stopping climate change probably isn’t possible. Managing it however should be. Slowing it to something we can more easily deal with; finding the point where the investment now provides a significant ROI down the line.

Right now, today, that’s nukes. Lots and lots of lovely nukes. It’s also natural gas. Anything but coal. Hydrocarbons are a critical energy resource and we simply cannot stop using them.

But we need to use them wisely, with forethought and the cost of long term climate change in mind.

In other words: we need to stop externalising the cost of pollution in all its forms. Climate Change is a tragedy of the commons, and we're fools if we don't remedy that.

Actually...

I've seen that too...

Links!

Use them. ;)

Piracy is bad.

Without things like copyright, how do writers make a living? But SOPA is also bad. There has to be a middle ground here that we can all agree on.

I'm a content creator; I create content, El Reg owns the copyright. That makes me really no different from a band and their relationship to their label. Yet I am also a consumer. I want to be able to read my books on every device I own. Watch my movies on every device I own, and format shift to my heart’s content.

I need people to pay for what I create. I am willing to pay (and reasonably well at that) for what others create. Why does it all have to go so horribly, horribly wrong from there?

@AC

IPOA would have some bandwidth scaling problems for those on the ground, its true. But that will be addressed in a future RFC...

IP over Avian Carriers

Pigeons are but one possible transport mechanism for the internet. Can't stop the signal...

Wiki-dependant

Do a twitter search for "WTF."

Screaming teenagers unable to do homework without wikipedia abound.

El Reg has a diverse group of writers, and they do allow us some leeway. I've been writing here just under two years, and I haven't been told "what to think" once yet. Good folk, them.

No.

The government is in the way. Big Tech could buy Big Content 100 times over and still have money in the bank. But this would get the antitrust alarms going full bore, and nobody wants that.

So the standoff remains as is. Big Content owns Congress. Until that can be remedied, Big Tech will always face massive antitrust scrutiny, especially if they attempt hostile takeovers.

There are other forms of power than money. Never forget that Big Content controls our collective culture. Through that, they control public opinion. They also have decades of history as important backers of politicians from all parties. That simply doesn’t change over night.

But here, now…we witness Big Tech making its play. We are watching as Big Tech says to the world “see? We can influence public opinion too! We have these eyeballs, they look at our websites. We too have influence that once was the sole province of Big Content.” Big Tech is flexing its muscles, and seeing just how much cultural imperialism they are actually capable of.

Mark today. It is important. If Big Tech succeeds, then the oligopoly control of our culture will have definitively been broken, and our society will never be the same again. If they fail, it could be decades before anyone has the chutzpah to try again.

British my ASCII.

I'm Canadian. Born and bred.