I see a lot of people calling out wasting taxpayers' money on foolish projects. It makes sense; money is visible, and relatively easy to measure. But what concerns me far, far more is the wasted political will wasted on disastrous lost causes. This is excelerating. It's a serious problem.

"Empathy" continues to seem like such a soft word when what's at stake is actually the lowest of low bars: Any functioning sense of morality. At all. It's unconscionable that so many people believe upholding truly evil laws/policies/actions provides them with some kind of moral cover.

A lot of people need to get cause and effect straight. When people stand up against a default state of oppression, they aren't instigating anything. Calling out racism isn't racist. Calling out misogyny isn't sexist. We adopt the framing of the rich-and-powerful at our collective peril.

Watching folks who give zero evidence that they have any capacity to respect others complaining about being disrespected themselves is just...another day on the internet.

The only people who seem to be betting big on the financial success of AI are the people putting up everyone else's money to do it.

"AI removes friction. It doesn’t remove bad decisions. And bad decisions, when executed faster, don’t just fail — they fail at scale." -- Web Designer Depot

I was in a conversation yesterday about the dangers in photography, and how they can sneak up completely unsuspected. Playing with plastic wrap, ribbons around a person's neck, photographing around train tracks. When creating, spare some of your imagination for pondering how things could go wrong.

Equality has been used as a boogeyman buzzword by the rich and powerful to convince people below their status that they'd be lowered, instead of raised. That fear is projection. The current system rewards wealth hoarding. That ends up being immoral in every way there is.

When you don't acrually know anything, everything feels like ideology.

As a foreign observer, it is staggering to me that he's still president. Just...how?

Hate is the common thread in oppression. This is partly way it's so common for people to switch tracks when the conversation is about one form of oppression, and bring up other forms of oppression. In truth, each category of oppression needs a different kind of unwinding. Focus is good, actually.

A top contender for funniest sentiment in all of classified ads: "Don't try to lowball me -- I know what I got!" The bottom line is that what you got is never worth more money than someone else is willing to pay.

If you ever see this account say "It's your boy..." that is the single surest sign that it's been hacked.

I truly hope all the gerrymandering nonsense will be so unpopular, it undermines its own aims, everywhere. Most people don't want to live in an easily-manipulated, fragile dystopia; I have to believe that most people recognise the power of democracy, even when their team isn't calling *every* shot.

I've been thinking about the lie of meritocracy a lot recently. It presupposes (similar to fatalism) that everyone ends up where they *deserve* to be. It's haunting when thinking through the lens of English fiction from the 1800s; we've done *all* of this before. It was stifling then. It still is.

I never would have guessed that Da Vinci Resolve would turn into a Lightroom competitor. But I've just watched a few tutorials and I'm *nearly* sold. Because I'm already comfortable in Resolve, this is (potentially) a game-changer! Have you tried it? What do you think? #photography #software

With the consolidation in the streaming/entertainment market, there is absolutely room for a scrappy player to come in at a lower cost, win favour with the public and become a significant force. These corporations are huge, faceless behemoths. They don't care about their audiences, and vice versa.

Thanks to @doctorow.pluralistic.net, I learned a new word today: schismogenesis. It describes the phenomenon where a group is created out of opposition to a thing. The group's entire purpose and identity are set on antagonism, forsaking all reason or merit. Is this the word of the century? Maybe.

It doesn't surprise me at all that the manosphere is sparking a new crisis in mental health. These guys keep inventing new kinds of hierarchies that they -- and their audiences -- have to measure themselves against, and (pretend to) be superior in. It's absolutely disastrous for mental health.

Words mean things. Except for "political" -- that word means anything.

"I didn't vote for this." Voting is the way you delegate your power to a person. You give them authority and permission to express their priorities and character. That is why voting is so serious. The USA desperately needs grassroots-level education about what democracy means, and how it works.

Hopefully celebrities, especially celebrity comedians, who don't yet understand that impact is more important than intent will soon have an earth-shaking epiphany. You don't get to pour blood in the ocean and then act surprised when all the sharks show up.

The manosphere's declaration of dominance is happening in lock step with rising masculine insecurity; (especially young) men don't feel the connection/disconnect here. The influence industry works like addiction. True freedom, true power, is being able to ignore any and all influencers at will.

Almost every time I've seen "amoral" used recently, "immoral" would have been more appropriate. When facing evil, neutrality doesn't exist.

I haven't once regretted turning off autoplay for gifs and videos on here. I want this to be my default everywhere -- a small way to reclaim my attention.

When you start seeing that US politics has unlimited time, energy and money for making people's lives worse, you can't stop seeing it. The country can't get its collective head around (for example) healthcare because that's about improving things, and that goes against the grain.

The people most responsible for a particular form of discrimination are also the loudest in insisting that no-one make a big deal about that particular form of discrimination. It's so common, that it's pretty safe to assume the former is true whenever we see the latter.

Every political issue is also an emotional issue. Trying to separate logic and emotion is a fool's errand. The current "resurgence" of stoicism suggests that we're entering a new time of logic and reason. In reality, stoicism has already failed us. Badly. We need not fall for it again.

Here's my observation: People who believe that boycotts and other forms of social #activism are effective are more likely to be highly invested in the matter at hand. People who aren't convinced are generally less connected to the matter. In other words, it's an extension of egocentrism. #apathy

I think advertising has taken a real turn recently. It's always targetted the overtly gullible, but I've seen a shift toward ads that are joyless, sarcastic and demeaning recently. With all their focus groups and media anaysis, I have to believe that this is a working strategy. That's plain weird.

"When in doubt, any pithy, halfway-intelligent statement can be attributed to Mark Twain." -- Mark Twain

I detest subscription pricing in general, but especially the deceptive trick of "$40/month billed annually" needs to die. That is a yearly cost; name it as such. It's not a surprise. It's what the amount on the bill is going to be. Trying to be sneaky about it is just messing up credibility.

Hot tip for all voters in the entire world: what other potential leaders might have done is not as important as what current leaders have actually done, and what they are actually doing. I sure hope this helps.

Well one thing is for sure: there is a lot going on in the world right now!

Even though I thought they were brilliant when they were first announced, the Canadian trade deals on Chinese EVs just keep getting smarter every day.

If we're ever able to look back at this era through a forensic journalistic lens, I'm confident that Reacher will be an important cultural marker. A disenfranchised "hero" not just capable of violence, but eager for it, and who shows no remorse at all. This is a change in the cultural landscape.

I was following an account on Instagram and enjoying its content, right up until it posted anti-vaccination conspiracy theories. I didn't just unfollow the account, I blocked it. The rabbit trail I went down would have been a good one for the Instagrammer to pursue before they signal-boosted lies.

One of the most massive soft-power projects of the USA has been its news industry. Accurate, courgeous reporting regularly undermined propaganda from authoritarian regimes and rogue states. Now that its own propaganda has taken over, it is all caving in under its own weight. #CredibiityCrisis

Credibility takes a long time to create -- years of reliably finding and sharing facts. It takes a moment to lose it. When you put folks who are neither credible nor trustworthy in a role that demands both, it's not just them who pay the price. It's everyone. The institution and the public.

"I didn't think I needed to address this topic, but..." When folks don't talk about a topic because they think their take is obvious, or can be implied from other stuff they have said, it opens the door for inaccurate assumptions. Speak for yourself. Literally.

If you're left-leaning and you use "DEI" as a derogatory slur aimed at anyone currently in a governmental role, you're justifying the right's aggression toward the term. Using "DEI" as a meaningless political football to be casually punted about is giving manufactured grievance culture a big win.

I know I've said this a trillion times but I have to say it periodically to keep from going insane: The right ran a huge, well-funded, & ultimately successful campaign to completely take over political media & the infosphere more generally. This is by far the most important political development...

One of the most important things you can do on Bluesky to protect your mental health is to prevent GIFs and videos from autoplaying. I did that a couple of months ago, and I've only been more grateful that the options exists. There's a check-box under Settings -> Content and Media

If you're a photographer and you care that people care about your photos *as* photos, as soon as you post ai, you degrade the validity of your own reputation, you create doubt in your body of work, and from then on every photo you post is also of degraded value.

Who would the current US president be blaming for everything the US president is currently doing if he wasn't the current US president trying to evade responsibility for everything the US president is currently doing?

Years ago on a US-based muscle car forum, I posted something along the lines of: "The whole world flinches when the US starts looking for someone new to punch." Other people on the forum were *incensed* that I would dare to suggest that US military forces could possibly be deployed so capriciously.

As it all starts to unravel, there are any number of threads to pull. They are all being pulled now. This is deconstruction work; a "law-and-order democracy" is rapidly coming to terms with its actual identity as a global instigator. A juggernaut. The question now: what will be left of it?

There has to be a less convoluted way to write headlines. Is achieving confusion part of the A/B testing?

It's easy to ignore or forget the labour behind celebrity. It's important to be reminded of it. Without intentional awareness, we may readily presume that popularity is organic. In reality, the money and time invested in putting people on pedestals is immense.