This is huge: graze.leaflet.pub/3m4yjmbnyec2c Journalists are organizers – like political organizers – but of information, knowledge, and culture. In my most humble opinion, I think journalists _need_ to be using tools like this, on their own terms. It's scary, but so is being a socialist in NYC.

Someone should re-make "Brewster's Millions" as "Brewster's Billions" but make it a horror. The turn comes when it becomes obvious that amount of money can never be spent and Brewster's challenge becomes a Promethean punishment.

I've been working on this with our amazing team for five months now, and we're getting very close to sharing more about what we've been up to. I'm so excited.

As part of our mission, we’re committed to building new online infrastructure to foster community and civic health. But what does that actually look like? Our Co-Directors, @eli.bsky.social and @deeptidoshi.bsky.social, often turn to IRL public infrastructure for inspiration. In this case, BRIDGES

A science fiction story about Robo-ICE and JD Vance's face in this database as the spark that starts the first robot-human civil war would be a fun read.

I've heard that the AI cognoscenti are calling AGI "extraterrestrial" but that feels wrong – setting aside the debate and making assumptions for the sake of argument, whatever they might be, they're of this place. I propose: "neoterrestrial" instead.

This is so exciting – at @newpublic.org, we're looking forward to building in collaboration with a rich ecosystem of open-standards-based tooling to support healthy online spaces for local communities, and @roost.tools is so inspirational in that regard.

I love that things that we're building internally at <Super Not Secret New_ Public Project> are being validated daily in the wider Atmosphere. This is [roughly] how we're handling pre-moderation, and I'm impressed daily by how easy it is to add behaviours to our system with atproto.

I feel this in my bones.

A.I. at its peak

At that point of a project where I'm giving things clever names.

Extant decentralized solutions (Mastodon, etc.) demonstrate that the kinds of social problems that decentralized networks are supposed to resolve simply emerge in different forms due to the properties of the networks in question. Decentralization isn't a bad thing, it's just not the silver bullet.

Introducing the New_ Public Canon: A non-exhaustive, in-no-particular-order selection of books about communities, technology, and civic life that our team loves and references (almost) every day. What are we missing? Any recommendations?

Yesterday I learned about this term "Kayfabe" (ikr, application for amnesty under xkcd 053) thanks to this playing on the radio: www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/... And I'm going to admit, my brain broke a little.

If I wasn't already 100000% over-committed, I would be organizing a decentralized & distributed @kneecapceol.bsky.social show in my hometown, since their in-person shows were cancelled thanks to deeply broken Canadian politics. Big screen, Big speakers, Cóisir mór i ngach áit!

A bit of the old ultra-violence ain't got nothin' on this.

We can build alternatives, but it doesn't mean anything unless people show up.

Theseus's Trump www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

"'Person of Interest' but make it ChatGPT."

It is very upsetting that Björk's Post was released 30 years ago. Brb, dusting off my Discman so that my music player doesn't share these sorts of "fun facts" going forward. (Mine was a D-145, but damn, the original D-50 looks sick as hell!)

Vibe coding.

I just noticed that GMail has a "manage subscriptions" tool with a list of mailing list subscriptions. This should have shipped 15+ years ago; all of the standards to enable it have been widely adopted for at least that long. Maybe Cory's crusade against enshittification is paying dividends?!

Does your community have enough local news and information to survive “the zombie test”? Courtesy of an @theajp.bsky.social megastudy on local news: www.theajp.org/news-insight...

Living in rural Canada, @blaine.bsky.social urgently needs new, better tools to help him connect with his neighbors. “Our community is totally dependent on Facebook groups for communication…I feel the need for this product every single day.” Now, he’s building it at New_ Public.

One year since the fires started. Lots of big emotions.

Every once in a while, if you’re lucky, you get to share a “new job” update that’s more like a “life goal ✅” update. This is one of those times.

Happy Canada Day. We’re all about small-p patriotism: recognizing there’s plenty of work to be done, but also that we’ve got something worth building on here. Another thread 👇

It’s not lost on us that a new social platform isn’t exactly top of mind. Tech execs joining the U.S. military. More war. And here we are, grateful for everyone with us in this moment. A social platform isn’t all that social without good people supporting it.

Vibe Coding.

I think it’s a huge misconception we need a single app that grows infinitely and makes everyone happy. This is a “business” mindset. And that model has consistently failed. It’s also driven families apart. This is Threads model now and it’s a censorship machine. I’m good with the community we have.

Eventful Saturday evening! Earlier, a big wind storm knocked some massive trees down, taking out power and blocking our road. Now, we've got impressive auroras lighting up the sky. Truly, country living at its finest. 🤠 by

My copy of @loriemerson.net's "Other Networks" just arrived. The timing couldn't be more perfect (personal news imminent), I can't wait to devour this entire beautiful volume! 😍

I love the destination, but after a few years with minimal time spent in the air, I do *not* miss airplanes. I realize this is not a particularly profound observation.

I love living in the mountains, but wish we had better trains. That nine hour long drive home after a super intense weekend took the last of my beans for a little bit. Bryophitic recovery mode engaged!

Fun times. This report from the UN doesn't include the unprecedented fires in our region that forced my partner and I to evacuate for a month last summer, so I can confidently say that 150 disasters is a conservative estimate. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

I was talking to some foresters the other day. Apparently, the vast majority of the lumber (pine & fir) from the primary mill in our area goes to Japan, not the US. They also said that "cedar costs what cedar costs" and that people would pay twice the current price if they had to.

In a personal way, 18 years ago, Twitter was the star of the show at SXSW. 17 years ago, I built a decentralized version of Twitter, at Twitter, that never saw the light of day. Today, @jay.bsky.team spoke in front of SXSW to a room full of people who understand in their bones why we need this.

Fun fact: .well-known was created to support webfinger aka profiles-on-the-web, turned out it was useful for other stuff, too. 15 years later, it's nice to know that the tool is still considered maybe useful for its original purpose!

Anyone know what Zuck's been up to while Elon's getting busy? I'm not sure he's been working on improving online safety, because I've been chatting with "Elon musk private account 854437" for a few days now and I'm beginning to suspect it's not Elon, but Meta support insists it's not a scam. 🤷‍♂️

The billionaires are the problem, not our friends across the border. The problem is, direct taxation of billionaires won't work, and Canada only has ~60 of them.

We're announcing the initial #ATmosphereConf confirmed speakers, as well as opening up a call for presentations. We'll have @kissane.bsky.social, @rudyfraser.com, @blaine.bsky.social, and @ngerakines.me presenting. Full details in the post by organizer @knowtheory.net #ATmosphereConf

Last night I wrote about right now, the collapse of media, and the need for all of us to make things outside of the oligarchy, because we’re all we have. dansinker.com/posts/202…

Duolingo's April Fools' this year ought to be the launch of a new "Latentese" language that's just raw OpenAI embeddings.

Supply chains are super weird and amazing. At some point, someone in California decided to start growing Cara Cara oranges, someone else in California decided to start exporting them, and someone in British Columbia decided to start importing them, and then a local retailer chose to sell them.

Slightly morose and definitely original thought from the pub: It's good that Trump is going to clamp down on illegal immigrants because the Los Angeles construction industry doesn't rely on their labour at all.

Flickr could implement atproto/ActivityPub and be the replacement Instagram we need, today. I hope they're already working on this.

Well, 2025 sure was a long and stressful year. I'm so glad it's over and we can just put it all behind us!

This, coming from a billionaire whose monopoly censors local news in Canada because he doesn't want to pay tax. 🙄

There's a strike that's going to affect some communities near where I live. Despite *considerable* local consternation, there's been *zero* discussion about who the owners of the privately-held company that's in conflict with the union are. We desperately need more local journalists.

Now that Bluesky seems to have basically restored the premise and dynamics of Twitter, can someone build the thing that does the same for Instagram? All I’m asking is to see the photos from my friends (as opposed to ads and accounts I don’t follow.)