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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   14449 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026

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I don't think I understand the Agatean wall. Would that just be a verbal agreement that the social media companies would not optimize engagement for revenue generation? If so, I don't see why these companies would ever do that.

In my proposed architecture, one side of the wall would handle content-curation algorithms and interface design, with the instruction to make it convenient for the end user to see the content they want to see, with any advertisements or sponsored content kept to designated spaces clearly labeled as such. The other side of the wall would deal with anyone seeking to purchase advertising space or aggregate data, but would have no method to adjust the experience of end-users to keep them on the site longer; advertisers could either accept however many eyeball-minutes occur without engagement-maximisation tactics, or leave the attention of social-media users to their competitors.

This gives at least some possibility of squaring the circle of having a service both free-at-the-point-of-use and prioritising the preferences of its end-users.

As for how to bring about such a state of affairs, I have discovered a truly marvelous regulatory structure accomplishing this, which this comment box is too narrow to contain.

I'm still fighting the lonely battle to have it renamed the Fermat-Wiles theorem. Fermat's marginal proof never existed, for crissake.

Fermat's marginal proof never existed, for crissake.

Then he's entitled to the name for such legendary trolling.

Your link goes to a wikipedia page about a mathemathical theorem. Is that on purpose?

Link fixed; it should point to the relevant section of the article.

Pierre Fermat, circa 1637, wrote in the margin of a book "It is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into two fourth powers, or in general, any power higher than the second, into two like powers. I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain." The theorem was proven in 1995 by Andrew Wiles.

Congratulations! You're one of today's lucky 10,000!

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