Pretty excited to land shortly, be done with bumpy flights for the day, and trade them for the relative peace and tranquility of the Philly-area freeways.

Flying to Medford, OR to Phoenix, AZ in a tiny CRJ700. It’s apparently going to be turbulent the whole way. So: 1 like = 1 terrible idea that’s worse than being on this flight.

Meanwhile, in my hometown. Here in the US, police / ICE are using facial recognition when they stop someone, but I’m not aware of them just setting up and scanning crowds. www.bbc.com/news/article...

About to finish the book (speculative fiction). Given how tumultuous publishing is, I’m wondering if I should even try and go the traditional route. I have a small existing following but I’m not known for fiction at all. Should I attempt it? Should I self publish? I just don’t know.

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At the in-laws, barely holding back the compulsion to belt out “FIIIVE GOOLD RIIIIINGS” in honor of my mother

Love, support, and solidarity for everyone who finds today hard. And best holiday wishes to all of you.

Tim's 2026 predictions are worth paying attention to - and form a great map for following where the open social web is going. werd.io/my-2026-open...

The SFWA wants to hear your writing on the implications of LLMs for writing and culture. There is a survey with essay questions. Write to them. It's how humans communicate thoughts and emotions. www.sfwa.org/sfwa-survey-...

Let's hope 2026 is the year good writers find somewhere other than Substack to publish their writing.

Those roving patrols and racial targeting that Kavanaugh allowed? This is what they led to. www.propublica.org/article/immi... (from Oct)

I broke a personal role in publishing this review of the year. Still, it’s a good reflection of how I’ve been feeling about the confluence of fascism, centralized tech as an instrument of power, attacks on journalism, and the glimmers of light that provide enough hope to hang onto.

Tim has been studying the open social web closer than most. These detailed predictions are worth paying attention to. 👀

“We learned first-hand how the Trump administration’s decision to withhold funding for the World Food Program’s operations in Kenya led children to starve and forced thousands of families to make impossible decisions. One of the groups hit hardest by the cuts was pregnant women.”

I started to write a year-end review - but it hasn’t been a normal year. werd.io/2025-in-revi...

"In many regions — especially in the Global South, including Latin America, where I live and work — there’s still no broad acknowledgment that one of the essential journalism beats of our time is covering Big Tech and understanding how these companies are reshaping our world."

CBS News may not want you to see its CECOT reporting, but I'm happy to share this powerful video that our team produced this year.

British Medical Association: “Our policy position is centred around the need to advocate for equitable access to healthcare, create safe and inclusive workplaces for trans and non-binary people working in healthcare settings, and end discrimination related to gender identity.”

"Blanche’s directives, while he still owned significant crypto investments, violated the conflicts of interest law and his ethics agreement, legal experts and former federal ethics officials told ProPublica." www.propublica.org/article/todd...

On a flight to southern Oregon (on a tiny Bombadier plane, which I hate, and they say it’ll be bumpy, which I super-hate). Every second person is wearing a MAGA or Turning Point logo. Very different from the communities I usually hang out in.

About to commence visit to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport 1 of 4 over the next three weeks Hit me up with those hot Sky Harbor recs What’s good

This flight has had a high quotient of parents walking their babies with onesies up and down the aisle, and tbh, I think my life needs more baby parades in general

What idiot called it vibe coding and not prayer programming

Because Daddy’s work is in New York, and we visited recently and observed that there are many pigeons, my tiny buddy is now convinced my work itself is beset with pigeons. As a result, he loves them. “I want to see pictures of the birds from Daddy’s work,” he says. The pigeon statue is the herald.

It is once again my duty to inform you that if you have a fear of flying playing the Muppet Show theme on takeoff really takes the edge off. Also if something happens people can point at this post and say, “he died as he lived.”

I only have social media apps on my phone when I travel. Doing the reinstallation dance.

➡️ My 2025 Open Social Web Prediction Score Card: before I try my hand at predictions for the Open Social Web in 2026, I try to do a sober look back at my 2025 predictions and how they did. See what you think. www.timothychambers.net/2025/12/20/m...

"Airbus is preparing to tender a major contract to migrate mission-critical workloads to a digitally sovereign European cloud – but estimates only an 80/20 chance of finding a suitable provider." werd.io/airbus-to-mi...

🚨 "The Justice Department redacted the names and identifiers of victims. Fox News Digital has learned that the same redaction standards were applied to politically exposed individuals and government officials. " h/t @kleinmatic.bsky.social

"The reality is stark: If the advertising market, venture capital, and legacy institutions won’t invest in truth-tellers, then communities must invest in — and support — one another." www.niemanlab.org/2025/12/the-...

Thinking about some of the reassuring myths journalism tells itself, and how they shield us from confronting intractable problems. "Things would be better if only readers would act correctly." kiesow.net/lies-we-tell...

We don't need to educate our audiences to fit our needs. We need to educate ourselves to fit our audiences. werd.io/lies-we-tell...

"For decades, the FDA made it nearly impossible to know which factories were manufacturing your generic medications. ProPublica built a tool to show you. Here’s how we did it." From the news apps team: www.propublica.org/article/rx-i...

We come on the slop John B My graaandfther and me Around Nassaau town, we did rooam Drimking drink all night Got into a fiii1ght Well, I feel so penguin I want to

Have I mentioned that we’re hiring? We’re looking for a mission-driven director of product engineering. Imagine getting to do meaningful work with a newsroom full of talented, smart people who publish genuinely impactful investigative journalism. Remote job, US only.

Observation: some folks appear to be in news to speak truth *from* power and use institutions to defend the status quo and the agency of centralized power. Others speak truth *to* power and use journalism to challenge unequal power dynamics. Only one of those is desirable, imo.

It's so weird to me that the much-touted new Acela trains on the northeast corridor are the exact same Pendolino trains that were introduced in Britain to much fanfare when I was traveling to and from Edinburgh for university well over twenty years ago.

"Feeling fear goes hand-in-hand with being ambitious. Imposter syndrome is real and normal. In fact, if you aren't feeling fear in what you do, I'd argue that you aren't being ambitious enough." Here's a way to build in the fear and do it anyway. werd.io/the-go-no-go...

This is basically the Platonic ideal of a penny stock scam www.wsj.com/business/dea...

incredible that the oldest scam in the book — “look away from the greed and poor leadership that destroy your chance to make a career, it is the [blanks] that stole your job!” — still works

"Each year, we ask some of the smartest people in digital media what they think is coming in the year ahead. Here's what they told us." Some essays from the annual collection that caught my eye. werd.io/nieman-labs-...

When we leave, may all of us be remembered in the way Rob Reiner seems to have been by everyone who knew him. But may none of us have to leave that way.

This was a controversial one. A lot of people seemed to think it meant I’m in favor of personalization. Instead, my argument is, if it’s going to happen, let’s make sure it’s open and non-extractive. werd.io/is-the-artic...

Intriguing idea

People seemed to like this one

Another train journey home. 1 like = 1 terrible idea, future of news edition.

(Whispers) We’re probably going to have to teach them how to use it

1. This is really well executed 2. 👀 Bluesky optimizing for growth

Personalization is coming to journalism whether newsrooms build it or not. The real question is where it lives: inside surveillance systems and intermediaries, or in reader-controlled tools on the open web. Here's what I think should happen. werd.io/is-the-artic...

You can delude yourself into thinking you’re on X to change peoples’ minds all you want, but that platform is now intentionally structured to prevent that. You’re there because you don’t want to lose your reach.