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

Okay since it’s already lively day I’m going to do a thread on one big reason why I personally bother with open protocols, and that reason is: ✨enshittification✨ 1/6

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.

One way I've noticed the growth of this platform has been how many likes posts in the "catch up" feed have (which ranks posts in the last 24 hours by the number of likes). I remember when we crossed the milestone for 1000 posts recently, and now we're up to 5k.

This is an important point that's relevant at the global level. Twitter became a uniquely important coordination tool for disaster response. While the value of communication in these situations is intangible - hard to measure - the loss will be all too real for those impacted by adverse events.

Aotearoa bsky klaxon, let's find each other before these goofs ruin it all with a politics hashtag 🚨🚨🚨🚨

I’m confused. There are all these demands on the Bluesky team around moderation and removing accounts. What do folks think will happen when the actual multi-server network is turned on. Then the open moderation lists and services need to work or else you’ll just see the banned folks back again.

This reading list (https://docs.google.com/document/d/179j30Z7TxB4b8r_6wPAcAXrJXctbTOqXRtSb-75UvsI/edit) is an incredible resource for anyone looking for a foundational perspective on trust and safety (as it has existed at the big platforms for the last decade or so, anyway).

It's posts. I promise. They're just called posts. This is a post.

Serious answer: It fluctuates. The more high trust we get, the greater the advantage bad faith actors have to take for their own benefit at the cost of all others. When all are suspicious of others, good faith co-operation has a strong survival advantage. <- we are at the beginning of this period.

Online is reductionist to actual human experience, all those subtle vibes and body language can't be transmitted. Think zoom vs IRL meets. So, how do we structure the context around our communication online at scale? How can we reduce and transmit complex info that is usually intuited?

I also want to mention, I'm not a techno-solutionist. the technology is just a tool. it's an extension of us as people. as a tool it either helps or harms, but it never fixes I wanted to mention that because I know that some folks are worried about that with us. we built a lot of tech. but -