Just got really excited about how new writing is coming along for the first time since I finished working on #TechAgnostic. The new (related! but *also* a totally new direction for me!) book proposal is getting good...

Note: This is me — I asked this question. You’ll hear me say “yes you have” here — because Johnson was already *directly asked* about one of these instances (when the Presbyterian minister was shot in the head with a pepper ball) in one of earlier shutdown press conferences.

This=the endgame of what I call Tech Religion. As a kid I joined a chorus that sang "From a Distance" for big, idealistic crowds—because when Bette Midler first crooned "God is watching us," it sounded so uplifting. I don't think cyborg spy cockroach armies were what she had in mind, but here we are

Is it good when your product is reviewed by everyone but they all say it sucks.

MSNBC captured the crowd from the Boston "No Kings" rally:

I told you all, in painstaking detail, about how Silicon Valley had literally begun to treat AI like a Messiah. I really, really wish I'd been kidding or exaggerating.

Folks are looking for press covering ICE in Adelanto, CA. San Bernardino County.

Heading home I passed by tens of thousands of concertgoers parading out of MSG in Manhattan. What does the world's richest tech company, its fortune built on search, have to say about that? Absolutely nothing correct. AI worshippers: your God is fucking pathetic. (Tate McRae=the correct answer fwiw)

This place was still hopping when I decided to take a 6-month social media break...six months ago. How's it going now?

Did I travel to NYC for 15 hours to see a debate between @glenweyl.bsky.social and Curtis Yarvin, a man known as "Mencius Moldbug" for his influence on people like Thiel, Vance, and Musk, on whether the U.S. should be ruled by a CEO dictator? Why yes, it appears that I did. #OpenToDebate #Scared

I'm in month 5 of a 6-month self-gifted sabbatical from social media posting—but allowed myself a LinkedIn life update—I'm in a NYT article on "Techno-Religion" as NYT's Cade Metz calls it. 🎯 what my 📔 #TechAgnostic is about! Check out my post on LI & @bcmerchant.bsky.social's great writeup here.

In January, I traveled to Panama to check out Ocean Builders, the startup behind “eco-forward housing solutions” called SeaPods. Here's the report, my first piece for the NYT Magazine. In print (it looks glorious!) on Sunday. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/15/m...

A must-read: Greg M. Epstein ( @gregmepstein.bsky.social ) explores how technology has taken on the role of religion. In this excerpt from "Tech Agnostic" (The MIT Press), he examines belief, awe, and meaning in the digital age. Available in 3 languages

Weird that he can’t recognize that only a villain would say “cure cancer or whatever.”

Everyone give a follow to the great @sturkle.bsky.social, who juuuuust joined BkueSky! Make it feel like the olden days of November '24! Sherry's work is one of the bigger reasons I started researching tech and writing what became my book Tech Agnostic. I know many have similar stories.

If anything Trump's stories about little DJ, who has survived cancer and wants to be a police officer, or Jason Hartley who was informed he got into West Point, etc., should confirm him as a master manipulator. He expertly plays on emotion, winning praise for deeply immoral acts. What a fight ahead.

Watching Trump's speech. This may not be my most popular post, but: So much time and energy attacking him for cognitive decline or being unintelligent, wasted. He's duplicitous, immoral, and often traitorous. But cognitively OK. We must change our line of attack or be stuck with him for a long time.

Watching Trump's speech. This may not be my most popular post, but: So much time and energy attacking him for cognitive decline or being unintelligent, wasted. He's duplicitous, immoral, and often traitorous. But cognitively OK. We must change our line of attack or be stuck with him for a long time.

I'm guest preaching at a church today, on my book Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World's Most Powerful Religion and Why it Desperately Needs a Reformation. Before the service the tech guy pointed out to the minister that some members have been DMing prayers and he needs to check them. 👨‍🍳😘

New, from me: Musk is not just destroying core government functions, he is also destroying the tech capacity of government. The people with serious tech skills who care about fixing govt have been fired. Both 18F and the US Digital Service are gone. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/skilled-te...

Are there better experiences in life than having tomorrow's speech printed, timed, and successfully rehearsed before tonight's bedtime? Sure. But not many!

Excited to head to this #TeslaTakedown rally in downtown Boston! Told the kids we're going to say "No!" to the frustrated space car badguy, per @hypervisible.bsky.social's Silicon Valley Supervillains thesis 🦹. #BoycottTesla www.mobilize.us/teslatakedow...

A lot of Americans of vague white Christian backgrounds (never anyone else, really) have told me they regret that unlike others, they don't really have "a culture." Oh no you very much do

I changed my schedule around so that on certain weeks I'm not available at all, but on other weeks I once again, is if it were pre-tech days, have time to linger in conversation and drop by people's offices and discover new possibilities. So far it's the best thing I've done at work in MONTHS

Cancel Culture is evil, unless it's cancelling a meeting to discuss the flu shot, in which case cancel away, apparently

The single clearest through-line of Trump II is it's a great time to defraud the government, and a terrible time to try and actual deliver on government services. Oligarchs are waging class war from the top down and they're doing it against all the civil servants that exist to hold them back.

I'm actually requesting this Miami Beach police report just to frame it and put it on the wall. I had a very long and dark laugh about this story yesterday. The layers of the self victimization narrative are a perfect commentary on this historical moment. The victim agrees with his attacker!!!!

I've been on an extended social media pause where every day I feel like I have to hit snooze on rejoining the fray in this age of absurdity. Would be amazing if this were the story that finally shocked me into participating again

Trigger happy Florida Jewish man shoots 2 men he thinks are Palestinians. Wrongly believes them dead. Turns out they're Israeli Jews who think they've been attacked by Palestinians. One proclaims, on social media, "death to Arabs!" Is there a Nobel Prize for stupidity www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...

Easily the most fun, chill hour of my Tech Agnostic book tour. Especially if you come say hi.

Zero clue how best to share...that my book was named the "Business Book of the Year" for "Big Ideas & New Perspectives." It's called TECH AGNOSTIC: How Technology Became the World's Most Powerful Religion, and Why it Desperately Needs a Reformation. Here's an excerpt with the award announcement:

One way to know you're really a writer and need to let go of the imposter syndrome stuff is when you keep having to buy new notebooks, so much that you're often asking yourself/asked by loved ones, "MORE notebooks? Really??" but you really do actually need more notebooks. For real.

So basically, Brady wins another.

I love sports, but this country's collective addiction to gambling is increasingly hard to watch these days

Damn almost forgot I wrote about that 😞. Biden will prove to have been right about a number of things, and wrong about many, too. This prediction is, scarily, looking like a banger though

So little surprises me about our Prophet-In-Chief Elon Musk—but I DON'T get all these people still driving Teslas in places like Cambridge, MA. Bro if I were you I'd sell that thing ASAP even at a loss. Get another EV, from anyone, if you're such an environmentalist. Few products are more complicit

I haven't asked @hypervisible.bsky.social exactly how often people complain about his upcoming @mitpress.bsky.social book LUXURY SURVEILLANCE: "weLL, is surveillance rEaLLy **LUXury**?" But it must be often. He's too kind to literally ball this article up and throw it in their faces so allow me?

In a slightly better world we'd have started talking about Jamie Raskin for President by now. We'll see what happens in this world...

People are holding the line. Yes, Trump & Musk and their minions will keep pushing. So we keep holding the line.

Just had the most wonderful confidential discussion with students in the Harvard-MIT humanist fellowship, where nonreligious students look hard together at questions like Who do I want to be? & how do I want to live?" All I can share is at one point I exclaimed, "Sisyphus was NOT an entrepreneur!"

Congrats on pissing off the people who will oversee every single lawsuit against you Mission accomplished, AI

This is the way. "Fuck you, make me." ❤️👊

I approve the budget overrun for this hypothetical purchase

Show me your most coveted items (cap at, say, $200) for when the world gets you down in that special way where it feels like only retail therapy could scratch the itch.

Periodic reminder that our student protesters were (are) brave as hell, and mainly just wanted to save civilian lives, and when we shut them down and allowed them to be attacked, not just metaphorically but militaristically, we inflicted a wound that is still bleeding, on our own democracy

I’ve been studying civil rights protests for 20 years. With new mobilization against Trump’s agenda, I’m sharing a thread summarizing my research on how nonviolent & violent actions by 1960s activists and police influenced media, elites, public opinion & voters. 1/ www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Not to be macho but I challenge any man who doesn't work in a restaurant or other large kitchen facility to prove he does more dishes than me. I do a LOT of dishes. A lot. And cooking and cleaning general kitchen stuff. #AlternativeAchievements

I have a lot of life updates that I'm overdue to post here but none has produced a more, well, divine image than my episode of #SuperDataScience with Jon Krohn, which immediately brought 3 words to mind for me: "Oh. My. Gods."