In April, health care added 37,000 jobs, in line with the average monthly gain of 32,000 over
the prior 12 months. Over the month, job gains occurred in nursing and residential care
facilities (+15,000) and home health care services (+11,000).
Transportation and warehousing employment increased by 30,000 in April, reflecting a gain in
couriers and messengers (+38,000). However, employment in transportation and warehousing is
down by 105,000 since reaching a peak in February 2025.
Retail trade added 22,000 jobs in April. Employment increased in warehouse clubs,
supercenters, and other general merchandise retailers (+18,000) and in building material and
garden equipment and supplies dealers (+13,000). These gains were partially offset by job
losses in department stores (-7,000) and in electronics and appliance retailers (-2,000).
Retail trade employment had shown little net change over the prior 12 months.
Employment in social assistance continued to trend up in April (+17,000), reflecting a gain of
24,000 jobs in individual and family services.
Federal government employment continued to decline in April (-9,000). Since reaching a peak in
October 2024, federal government employment is down by 348,000, or 11.5 percent. Federal
employees on furlough during the partial government shutdown were counted as employed in the
establishment survey because they worked or received (or will receive) pay for the pay period
that included the 12th of the month.
Employment in information continued to trend down in April (-13,000). Telecommunications lost
3,000 jobs, while employment continued to trend down in motion picture and sound recording
industries (-6,000) and in computing infrastructure providers, data processing, web hosting,
and related services (-4,000). Information employment is down by 342,000, or 11.0 percent,
since its most recent peak in November 2022.
Employment showed little change over the month in other major industries, including mining,
quarrying, and oil and gas extraction; construction; manufacturing; wholesale trade; financial
activities; professional and business services; leisure and hospitality; and other services.
I get that the information produced and consumed online does has a profound effect on how we think.
But right now I need to point out a steady gripe of mine that may or may not be tangential to the author's points depending on how you view things.
There is something unsettling about how the disjunctive experience that digital media environments produce is romantically portrayed.
I think we need to get over the concept of things like "cyberspace".
There are no corners of the internet that you "inhabit".
"Digital gardening" can go too.
Media/information environments shouldn't be thought of in the same way that physical ones are.
I don't know why I feel this way.
At least I can't form a strong argument to support why...yet.
But I think this way of thinking is psychologically detrimental.
Go debate a dualist and let me know how it goes.
"Saving the internet" may require that we adopt a realist perspective on what the internet is. You are exchanging data.
There's more to it, I'm sure, and the effect of this exchange shouldn't be taken for granted.
This is an over simplification, but I think it's a start.
I mean...Alphabet, Apple, Meta, Palantir, Flock are information technology companies, right? I can get a little obtuse and say that this is the case for most companies involved in the transfer of content of all kinds from one place to another.
Tech companies are lawnmowers and the internet is not where your lawn is.
Don't expect either to help you touch or cut your grass.
> Media/information environments shouldn't be thought of in the same way that physical ones are. I don't know why I feel this way.
Maybe because media/information environments aren't the same as physical environments?
The word "environment" might be the root issue here. Using digital tools to connect with other people isn't the same thing as treating your digital tools as an "environment" that takes the place of the physical world. The former is very useful and can often be vital. The latter, I think, is where problems can occur.
Pardon the melodrama. This is a tough conceptual block to chip away at. HCI research and any tentative breakthroughs in AR/VR might not lend any favors to convince people that digital environments are not ideal surrogates for the real world, or as complimentary to the world in the way that I think more even-keeled people would like to believe. The same goes for technologically-driven existential malaise. And people who refer to their Obsidian vaults and collections of linked Org-mode files as their "second brains".
If you've debated any dualists please share your notes, win or loss.
Ah, ok. I can't say I've ever argued with any in person, but of course there's a vast philosophical literature full of such arguments, of which I've read a fair amount. As far as I can tell, no such argument has ever really changed anyone's mind.
This is exactly how I feel about people who participate in human behaviors that I do not like and find distasteful. Except a lot of people find my voicing of these things distasteful in return.
Lo, I'll have to wait until the tides of public opinion stream to my advantage. Or find my own proxies to voice my disdain.
My initial guess was that migrating to a non-MacOS machine precludes the freedom to view the original Futura typeface on one's personal website. "The Future" must be some shoddy free alternative.
Except "The Future" is a paid typeface inspired by Futura and designed by the Klim Type Foundry. [0] The odd lowercase "h" is an alternative glyph probably meant for display sizes. [1] In addition to this for some reason the author is using the Light weight font for body text instead of Regular weight...
I'm here to make somebody feel old: The Graduate (1967) came out almost 60 years ago. I wonder how long the norms portrayed in that film persisted or have evolved since then.
Are people just riffing off the headline, the subheading and the first sentence of this page, is the full paper open access, or has anyone read the more substantial policy brief associated with the study [0]?
That's not to say that there's nothing of value being discussed here without the last two resources, but a URL swap may be helpful. The brief has a list of freely available references for further consideration.
> Like, why is the burden on the authors and not you to sort through the things you care about and don't?
It isn't a one-way street. The authors have already, in fact, sorted through what they think a reader/participant does and does not care about.
> Why is it not an opportunity to learn? Do you even care to know where they could possibly be coming from? If there is ever some kind of overlap between something you can get behind and something for whatever reason you feel is bad or "underdefined," doesn't that stir even a bit of curiosity, a chance to learn? Even if it's just sharpening what you already know?
This doesn't read like a fair assessment of the negative responses that this page is receiving, at least it doesn't in this case. Or you're missing the entire point.
Not everyone disagrees with things out of ignorance. They may have done their due diligence to investigate what the concepts and frameworks at play are about. Assuming otherwise is a good way to ensure that what you agree with is impervious to debate save for what can be held among "fellow travelers".
The author's of this page are being very direct with their orientation and intentions here. I think even to the extent that their language is "underdefined" there is enough space for someone to reliably speculate about what the substance behind it entails and then come to an educated conclusion about whether they find those things objectionable—in spite of the existence of some principles that they agree with. The degree to which they find the objectionable to affect the unobjectionable can also lead a person to make a conclusion about the organization's viability.
You don't have to concede to these objections, but to frame all this as advice on how not to disagree obviates justifiable dissent.
If you are a capitalist or imperialist or whatever, its perfectly alright to oppose yourself to this. The thing I target here is this feigned confusion that these things are even applicable followed by some friendly advice on how they could have broader appeal. I just think if you aren't ignorant, than you would be engaging with it directly rather than just blustering at its very inclusion here.
Please, dissent away! I have only seen dismissal so far.
That sounds fair. I would add that it's also the duty of an organization to educate their audience about why their additional interests are relevant to the broader one that serves as its base, which the wider audience may be intrigued by already.
permacomputing.net doesn't achieve this.
Again, communication isn't a one-way street.
The polarity that the upfront inclusion of their politics is obvious in the discussion here. People are either keying in on that or talking about permacomputing in general and indifferent to the group's stated politics. Are the people engaging in the former wrong for that? Tangentially, are the latter critically engaging with the subject in every aspect presented?
Is there anything provided by the website that explicitly piques their curiosity in the way that you encourage? Did the author(s) even care enough to externally link to pages that they are confident would explain what those frameworks mean in such a way that a skeptical visitor may be persuaded to figure out their relevance to permacomputing in general? If not to be entirely persuaded, but at least exit with a more cogent grasp of their own perspective on the practice?
I do like the point that you're making, I just think there's a shared responsibility in this dynamic that should be addressed. Not everyone went to a liberal arts school with a rigorous critical theory curriculum.
If your [their] politics are so important to permacomputing—something that any kind of "nerd" ought to be able to participate in—then you [they] should be able to explain why that is the case. Explain why as effortlessly as said politics are introduced and as fluently as they disappear from the foreground in deference to a rhetoric that positions them as a reliable source about the subject.
Feigning confusion in opposition to a thing that may be valid isn't any less vain than feigning shock that valid opposition exists. Insularity begets them both.
> In my experience these self-given-labels just express the views of some founding members and are often used to clarify who they do not want [...] and who is welcome [...]
This is where I think the problem is.
Once you start appending political identifiers then the purpose of an organization becomes more than just about X, but X according to certain values to the exclusion of others. There's nothing wrong with that but I could see how it can be viewed as disingenuous when it's insinuated that the organization is more open/general than it is apparent.
Yes of course. But as I said the exclusion of misogynistic, capitalist authoritarians is seen as a feature not as a bug by most groups that self-label like that. If it is your private group you can decide freely which audience you want to target. Most groups do this in some way or another, be it with self-labeling or other less explicit ways.
And quite frankly, as someone teaching at the university level, I think people with these traits (misogynistic, capitalistic, authoritarian) are not the best to have in a group anyways if your goal is to cultivate a curious learning environment. Not because of ideological reasons, but if there are women in a group, having a misogynist in there is toxic and doesn't add any value. Capitalists would have the opposite goal of a permacomputing group (extracting wealth from their environment), so having them there is questionable. Authoritarians generally have problems with going new paths and like to hate on the minority their specific flavor of authoritarianism chose as the excuse for their bad behavior, that also doesn't add to a great learning environment.
That doesn't mean I would label my courses as anarchist or anticapitalist and it doesn't mean I select the participants of my courses based on their ideology (I am not even sure how I could do that). But if it was my afterwork book club maybe I'd like to keep people away that take more in society than they give.
I think the issue being highlighted here is how polarizing causes are advanced and detract from a reasonable one that is supposed to be the pith of an organization.
> It's okay to enjoy the mindful and resilient and ecological aspects and not enjoy some other aspect.
I don't object to this in the most general sense. But I also think that a little tact can go a long way from the organization's side to anticipate where the public can't exercise it on their own.
This is probably the case for most personal websites with considerable cachet in their niche.
+ With a strong enough social network you probably don't have to care about SEO as much
You can title your post about bad customer service practices in a unique way without a second thought [0] and your more traditionally titled posts can still make the first page of a Google search with a reasonable query [1].
+ Depending on your niche your target audience is likely to already be tapped in well enough to not have to rely on search engines for content catering to their interests.
I feel like search engine practices trend along the curve shown in that meme where it's the "fool" on one end and then the "normie" in the middle and then the "Jedi" on the other end who does the same thing as the idiot. Except in this case "Jedis" only search for what's not present in their feeds (which doesn't have to be only RSS feeds) and fools can eventually cultivate their own feeds for their interests and reserve search engine use for mundane purposes that essentially fulfill the responsibility of some kind of pop culture almanac, phonebook and portal to Wikipedia.
WaPo report with charts: https://archive.ph/zTBaS
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