How about some links that aren’t about computers? Or, not directly related. Mostly.
On the enshittification of Audre Lorde.
Landslide; a ghost story. Of course, here I am sharing a bunch of writing about writing about (etc), which is probably not improving the substrate.
That’s lots of words; how about some numbers?
Florida’s Brightline train kills, on average, one person every 13 days.
The CRASH clock: if satellites stopped avoidance maneuvers, how quickly would they start crashing? Quickly.
But don’t believe the numbers if they came through a Xerox scanner/photocopier; lossy PDF compression can make subsitutions. Maybe that’s why there are errors and inconsistencies in European emissions data.
What should we do with the numbers? Read Drucker and, better, Deming: understand the existing system, rather than try to build a control system from scratch.
And careful that you understand what Goodhart actually was talking about. “After all, a thermostat both measures and targets the ambient temperature, but that doesn’t mean that the temperature ceases to be a good measure of what the thermostat is trying to control.”
If using numbers, make sure they’re better than random; the Dunning-Kruger effect can be replicated with random data. (I overestimated my knowledge of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Hm.)
Of course, any feedback has to complete the control cycle, unlike in the Vasa disaster.