3. We can slay giants.** I know the supposed looming AI takeover, the diminished capabilities of Google, and Amazon’s accelerated creep into every facet of our lives make it feel like it’s too late. But it’s not.
A couple of days ago, most people had never heard of The Handbasket; many people hadn’t heard of the Kansas Reflector. But here we are, taking on Meta. The powers that be have talked about us in hushed meetings.
If we were nobody, if we meant nothing, if we didn’t present some sort of threat to their supremacy, they would feel no need to address us at all. I am just one woman sitting at a kitchen table in Brooklyn with her laptop, and they are a multi-billion dollar international company with every lever of power at their disposal. Yet here we are, facing off.
Will this fracas result in the dismantling of Meta? Not by a long shot. But there’s this pervasive mentality among tech giants that if they keep diminishing the power and prestige of the press and develop access-dependent relationships with large outlets that they’ll be insulated from criticism and unbound by a responsibility to do better. Yet we continue to see that that’s simply not the case.
The rent is too damn high? But it’s going…down? Anyway, I didn’t realize that it’s a huge (but also not especially worrisome) factor for those alarmed by the March report of higher than expected inflation. That and-- car insurance!?
The good news:
In short, there is still plenty of reason for believing that the pandemic inflation is behind us. For now, the March report gave the inflation hawks some fresh meat, but a more careful look suggests that it doesn’t change the basic picture of inflation being largely under control.
