An absolute gem of an article on how Saudi ex-Muslim turned extreme-right wing Islamophobe Taleb Abdulmohsen came to drive into a X-mas market in Magdeburg. Very enlightening on the deeply divided ex-Muslim scene, the new Atheists and the surgebin atheism in KSA. Also reminds me of a friend...

🧵How A Saudi Atheist Became A Killer 2 months before German elections, a car drove into a Christmas market in Magdeburg killing 6 people. When the attacker’s identity was reviled, many struggled to reconcile his atheism with his terrorism. In this piece, I tell his story. bsky.app/profile/newl...

This fascinating essay by @doaiji.bsky.social reads like a detective story, full of plot twists, as it explores the life of a Saudi ex-Muslim refugee in Germany who carried out a horrendous attack on a Christmas market two months before the elections.

🧵🪡 THREAD on Taleb Abdulmohsen, the man accused of attacking Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany.

lol China's state media is sad about Bluesky because it's not an easy propaganda distribution channel like X (and Facebook) www.semafor.com/article/11/2...

Great article, love the phrase “broligarchy.” Ans I second the advice to watch “The Lives of Others,” a film about life and surveillance in east Berlin.

There’s something uniquely stupid about all the fawning “will Elon Musk do to the U.S. government what he did to Twitter?” coverage, just as the dessicated husk of Twitter topples over.

Floating signifies like "woke" work for the right because they are a way to game journalism's objectivity norms: If you stipulate a made up grievance, there is no other side to counter your point. And you are just allowed to state things like "my grift will fix cancel culture."

Since some seem determined not to get it: Arguing science shouldn’t be political is like arguing that ducks shouldn’t be waterfowl. Sure, whatever floats your boat, but they wouldn’t be ducks then would they? Science is a collective human effort at sensemaking—the very definition of political.

US media likes to mirror what it thinks its viewers believe. The media has mostly decided that pres election results show that most Americans hate gov institutions, red tape, immigrants, & the price of eggs. And so now we get this at CNN.. a timid, but explicit endorsement of Musk & Vivek’s DOGE.

When you bend the knee they kill you anyway. Fuck em up to the end.

Elon admits that any post on X with a link is throttled He advises you to upload content directly to X instead, where he can monetize it Musk is the richest person in the world and his view is everyone should work for him for free

So far, the one feature I miss most on Bluesky is “drafts.” cc @support.bsky.team

Sometimes, there is power in your absense.

Ah, Bluesky now has its own cat accounts 😻

This is my second rodeo

I’m not sure anything can be truly “billionaire proof.” But.. I’m listening, @jay.bsky.team.🦋

Sometimes I think about writing a book and having it show up in a library in New Zealand. And trying to tell the dyslexic teenager me who was fat and weird and loved learning and words but didn’t understand why writing was so hard and guessed I was just “bright but lazy” for real. Wish he knew.

Musk’s X is a propoganda, porn, doge memes, and data collection machine. It broadens no one’s horizons. Yet its users are chastised for trying out alternate apps like @bsky.app?

Sometimes I wondered why fintwit, reporters, academics, posters/take artists, and a few other communities all ended up sharing a platform but in a Dark Knight’s Joker “I think you and I are destined to do this forever” way maybe that’s just how it’s meant to be.

I joined Twitter as @Ana3rabeya in May 2011. That one decision changed my life, forever. There may never be another beloved Blue Bird.. but there will always be Blue Skies to fly. Let’s see what you got, @bsky.app. ☁️🦋