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.)

Highly relevant from the guy who literally wrote the book! ❤️

Make Billionaires Extinct Again!

Very encouraged to see efforts like this. I love the framing of "People over Platforms" because at the end of the day, it's the people that matter. ❤️

The idea that it's the federation part of Mastodon that people don't understand is so facetious. Telephone operators. Email providers. Postal services, national and private - the idea that multiple organizations can provide compatible and overlapping service is pervasive. It will happen here, too.

Okay one last thing on the subject of "is Bluesky decentralized or not" — I haven't tried, but it *should* be very easy to build a small-scale (e.g., runs on a Pi) open source server that replicates bluesky's behaviour with live data for a handful of users' feeds.

😅 If you're looking for a shorter form version of @dustyweb.bsky.social's post yesterday, Cory (who's *pointedly* not on here) has you covered: pluralistic.net/2024/12/14/f... I 100% agree with Cory. And Christine. I really want Bluesky to work. They need to test the fire exits, though.

Excellent follow-up from @dustyweb.bsky.social. She digs into what I mean when I say "if bsky is going to be decentralized, atproto and activitypub are going to converge." Scaling costs will drive everything after deciding what world we want to live in. End of story.

Here I was just poking around in the bsky lexicons and I find this: github.com/bluesky-soci... Which is just... 💋🌟 @pfrazee.com (or whoever did this) I'm crying right now, thank you for doing the right thing. ❤️

If only there were some form of decentralized authority for online social media, then the Bluesky admins could legitimately say anyone they banned was for violations of the clear and narrow rules of their site, in the interests of just their users, and not for the whole world like old monopolies. 🤷

How Decentralized Is Bluesky Really? dustycloud.org/blog/how-dec... A technical deep-dive, since people have been asking me for my thoughts. I'll expand a bit on some of the key points here in a thread. 🧵

I'm briefly in Beijing, and in my first visit here the thing I'm most struck by is how *quiet* it is. Most cars are electric, motorcycles are almost exclusively electric, and the one gas motorcycle we saw was practically deafening compared to the ubiquitous calm otherwise. Unexpectedly delightful!

Exciting to get to see #uksnow in M6 during our brief visit here, even just a gentle dusting, 3/10.

An article in the most broadly respected Polish newspaper about this moment and decentralization, including interviewing myself and @blaine.bsky.social and @werd.io! oko.press/ucieczka-z-t...

As per usual, @robin.berjon.com's latest blog post is very good.