Meritocracy?
Earlier this year, large swaths of the tech industry declared death to DEI and ushered in the era of Merit, Excellence, and Intelligence. I wrote about it then noting that hypocrisy rhymes with meritocracy. They made themselves a website to celebrate each other.
That website has a list of familiar faces if you’ve been paying attention to the random tech people that have donated money to Trump and his super PACs, or were first in line to kiss the ring on Nov 6th.
It seems the hypocrisy continues if you pay attention to Trumps cabinet picks.
https://www.politico.com/interactives/2024/trump-cabinet-picks-2025-tracker/
Nothing says meritocracy like:
- A random fox news host as secretary of defense
- A probably sex offender as attorney general
- An anti-vaxxer as secretary of health and human services.
The list goes on and teaches us that the “m” in bootlicker stands for merit.
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Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- The contagion of fear from The Observation Deck
- The revolt of the reader from The Observation Deck
- Deeper dive: Were Touch Bar’s problems software rather than hardware? from Unsung
- Joining Cursor from Fatih Arslan
- Pluralistic: Digital sewer socialism (08 Aug 2026) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- Pluralistic: Enshittification and Reverse Centaurs go global (29 Jul 2026) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making from Ludicity
- The default person from https://popagandhi.com/
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
Issue 111 – Back the winners
A Trump crypto adviser’s firm took millions from Tether while he shaped stablecoin rules in their favor, a Senate probe targets Commerce Secretary Lutnick’s not-so-former firm, and crypto’s biggest super PAC plays it safe
via Citation Needed October 16, 2026Pluralistic: Load-bearing (16 Oct 2026)
Today's links Load-bearing: Digital sovereignty vs AI. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Anthrax penmanship; Stolen WEBGEEK license plate; Arizona Republic endorses Clinton, gets death threats; Against the great forces of history....
via Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow October 16, 2026Abracadabra proposes winding down after string of hacks years ago left each $1 "stablecoin" token backed by $0.04 in reserves
Abracadabra, the defi project behind the Magic Internet Money (MIM) stablecoin, is shutting down. It blamed its string of hacks: $6.5 million theft in January 2024, $13 million in March 2025, and $1.8 million in October 2025, which altogether left about $2...
via Web3 is Going Just Great October 16, 2026Generated by openring