This is an exceptional thread. Well worth the time and effort.

🧵 Democracy feels like it's in a rough state at the moment across the globe, and we hear various explanations, like polarisation, extremism, disinformation, and loss of trust. But what if those explanations are mainly symptoms and we've been trying to treat them rather than the underlying causes?

😳 #nzpol “The economy is an energy system using money, not a financial system using energy. Money is a claim on energy. It has no intrinsic value. Central banks cannot print physical resources into existence.”

every accusation is a confession

I kind of hate to say it, but I think the Will Stancil saga has become important to pay attention to in that it illustrates something that's gone very wrong with the behavior of purported adults using social media

it's really Noticeable how people trust will stancil's account of his discussions with the verge way more than any of the verge's employees. (to be clear, I think this is the correct position)

🧵 People don't have any inkling of how social media (& regular media; all sorts of media) influences their attitudes. But what we see is who we become. (Get off of X!) In this study, subjects were randomly assigned to view a chronological or algorithmic X feed. Exposure to the latter led users "to

The biggest challenge here, is figuring out a way to define and ascertain bad faith. There is no measurable part of a post that you can see and go 'ahah, thats bad faith'. There are a bunch of other harder to measure factors involved. If you solve that, you can solve a LOT of the problems we have.

Engaging in good faith with someone who is acting in bad faith is a recipe to get hurt. Will is quite correct here.

this is what i mean about the new liberal internationalism: we, liberals, need to start thinking about what it means to organize liberal-liberal rather than state-state

I see a lot of well meaning people (not OP) who like to talk about countries (usually the ones they're from or have an affinity with) as being steadfast bastions in the new cold war and I cannot stress enough that you have failed the assignment if you think this

and in ‘evidence based policy’ at the governance level, we only act on evidence. if we can’t measure or model it, it doesn’t exist. that’s problematic, as there’s a lot of important stuff for resilience we can’t easily model

Benefits monthly data day 🧵 Blimey. We're busting above the grim forecasts Treasury and MSD put out two months ago (again). That's despite 120 kiwis leaving the country every day (net). Buckle in, there's more... [1/n]

A big ol' thread with my thoughts from Labour’s Kirikiriroa/Hamilton fundraiser with Chris Hipkins, Kieran McAnulty and Arena Williams last night 🧵 #nzpol

Cheers for organising this Jason. Was a good time. Let’s do it again at some point.

We are organising an Ōtepoti Dunedin Bluesky meet-up and we are embracing the lovely outdoor spots the city has to offer. Send me or Jason a message when you are keen to join, so we know how many people show up. This Sunday at 2pm at the Swan. 🦢

Productivity growth has stagnated across high-income countries for decades. The solution? Mission-oriented industrial strategy that transforms grand challenges into concrete goals requiring cross-sectoral innovation.

Given this week’s events Assad's regime is finished & it’s a race to Damascus. The Russian position in Syria, and MENA region writ large is consequently in deep trouble, because of Syria’s importance as a logistics hub for Russian operations. Short thread. 1/

Took me some time to think this way. When I was younger I’d always finish what I started. Nowadays, if it ain’t catching me, I’ll drop it without any compunctions.

💻 Remember, if you're on a Mac, you can clean up your desktop by having screenshots sent to another folder: defaults write com.apple.screencapture location whatever-the-pwd-of-folder-is (then do killall SystemUIServer)

the new folks don’t realize just how lawless and absurd this place was. ah, the halcyon days

I want to post bluesky links into discord and other chats, and have the embed include pics and vids. It does it with twitter. How hard would it be to make this a thing?

Bluesky now has over 10 million users, and I was #1,519!

If you see this, quote-post with a beach from your gallery (bonus seal)

Nice little taste of summer in Dunedin these last two days. Climate change is definitely getting noticeable.

I am starting to see more and more screenshots from bluesky posted on twitter, often with really high engagement. That seems to bode well for Bluesky as a place of influence.

Stuff like this is why we need more locked-open social infrastructure If you get banned on Twitter, you have no way to contact your audience, there's no credible exit, there's no way to keep your posts and identity and go somewhere else Open infrastructure and protocols are the first step

After discussing with other anti-fascist activists I've decided to appeal the case for a restraining order against Phil Arps, this will be expensive but if 1000 people give $10 I can do it ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 0% of goal on Ko-fi! ko-fi.com/byroncclark/...

This is the hardest thing about being pro democracy right now. There’s no actual vision beyond the status quo. We need to vote FOR something, not just against something. David Graeber gave a good description of the problems we have in this regard. m.youtube.com/watch?v=-9af...

If you've come here from X we're not having the same issue on this platform as we have there. The link to this article is still being miscategorized as spam despite our reports to X. The link to the investigation below should work on Bluesky as it appears to be an X only issue.

It's not "I suffered so you should too," it's "I suffered and no one else should ever have to."

Yeah, this will get weaponised at some point. It's probably fine for now, as it gets started, but at some point we're going to need notifications and the capacity to remove/block in the cases of harassment.

👇 Bluesky moderator drama still better than Mastodon moderator drama, because at least you don't need to migrate your account and identity to a new server…

So, a real QOL change here over places like twitter will be the capacity to label accounts that cold outreach with spammy scams rapidly, and then offer a mechanism for people to filter them automatically.

If anyone wants this type of functionality, check out bsky.app/profile/aegi...! Labels profiles for a whole bunch of different things.

organic and sustainable communities are nurtured, not sold or manufactured. any attempts at manufacturing them will get you cults, fanatics, and opportunists.

Can we get a profile labeller we can subscribe to which labels followers who are trying to sell something in their bio? Ie their follow is completely random, unconnected to anything your interacted with, and designed to direct your attention to something their selling or advertising in their bio.

Hello newskies who might have found me from me liking your first post! The killer feature here is Custom Feeds. It’s the hashtag button on the left column (desktop) or bottom (mobile). Check some out! And make sure your “home feed preferences” settings look like this:

Why a butterfly? Well, of course, it flies. But more importantly, it is a symbol of change and transformation. Early on, people started using the 🦋 emoji to indicate they were on Bluesky. We’ve now officially adopted it, as it speaks to our mission of transforming social media into something new.

!jazbot whereami

Russia was actively preparing to steal grain supplies and starve the Ukrainian population of food for months before Putin ordered last year’s invasion, according to new evidence compiled by human rights experts which will be provided to the ICC. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/e...

One of the biggest risks I see for the upcoming El Niño cycle is wildfire, especially on the South Island. We tend to get a lot of hot gusty norwestwers which are amplified by the Foehn effect. And the wet conditions from the preceding La Niña mean there’s a lot of dried out recent plant growth.

I think we need a name for the opposite of fair weather friends. People who show up only when things are so bad at the other place that they remember we exist.

Welcome to all new #langtwt and Linguistics 🐦 refugees!! Don't forget to 📌 this feed to your profile to find the content you're interested in. Use #langsky, #linguistics or #etymology to add your posts to the feed. https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:p2hhevq3w2kxgw3csyailya3/feed/aaafrn54usbj6

While the northern hemisphere reaches record heat, it's a lot warmer than usual in Antarctica too. There's much less sea ice than normal, and this it the warmup year before we get the full blast of El Niño next year. This is unusual, worrying, and happening earlier than anticipated.

It appears that Mastodon has a serious CSAM problem. We'll have to think carefully about how to prevent these same types of problems here come federation. I know some of that work is happening already, but it'll be a persistent challenge.

Don’t worry too much about the rage & fighting on social media. Most of it won’t change the world Attention does not signal importance. Fireworks get headlines. BOOM. But then they are gone. The rising sun never makes headlines. But if the sun stopped shining the world would notice Be the sun

Today is alot 900 days since Myanmar coup. 4 years since 721 in Hong Kong Thai friends again out on the streets demanding their election results be respected Allies from 3 struggles united in pain, rage & a desire for freedom. At different stages of resistance & yet together✊🏼 #MilkTeaAlliance