Here’s the thing: protests in the U.S. this past year have been large and will continue to get larger. But the most important organizing from a social mvmts perspective is the extensive local, in person, and deeply connected organizing around community protection.

united front against fascism

Current events are making it challenging to track MPs and reputable organisations that are permanently migrating to Bluesky. If folks see examples that we need to assess for verification - do let me know. Will limit it largely to politicians, govt orgs and large orgs at the moment for this pass.

I have decided that the greatest mark of American privilege in comparison to the rest of the world (and a privilege that I find myself thinking more often then not) is the desire for politics to be boring and not a life or death struggle ~all the time.~

the DSA, the Federal Reserve, and the ladies who lunch have formed a popular front — it remains only to see if any elected Democrats will join them.

We have friends everywhere.

Key UX insight. It's worth distinguishing between: - people I know - spaces I frequent - who shows up there How much attention we want to pay to each other is likely to differ in each of those contexts But it'd be utterly naive for implementations to pretend that my social graphs don't overlap

Definitely room for UX exploration, but no-ones has a single social graph. It's the biggest lie zuck ever told. 😅 There's a lot of writing on this, but a decent place to start is Erving Goffman; we wear different masks and perform to different audiences depending on social context.

Also, few things would super charge Dem turnout more for the midterms than Dems coming out with “we’ve swapped in new leadership to meet the American people in this moment, because we understand that congress must play its role as a vital check on the executive branch”

We have it in our power to begin the world over again.

Hey we need to write documentation? 🦗🦗🦗 Hey we need to write an `AGENT.md` file that explains how this all works in great detail so the LLM can generate code. 💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝💰📝

We really did start collecting price data because as the US industrialized and more people purchased food and goods with wages there was a lot of fighting about how much wages needed to rise to keep up with the cost of living.

Bluesky is the home of research sharing. Proportionally, orders of magnitude more concentrated. But already Bluesky posts are quantitatively half those of Twitter, except we can post links 🤗

My TL this morning: we can’t teach Plato in Texas because of gender but X as a world-wide mass-scale CSAM generator is fine. Every gender studies prof ever: let’s discuss.

It's honestly been a joy to watch this team excel at their craft

This is why I am extremely bullish on Mamdani's political prospects. NYC's dysfunction means there are a zillion low-hanging fruits for an entrepreneurial, quick, and theatrical problem-solver. He could spend his entire term just doing things like this weekly. And I bet he'd be wildly popular!

This is a really good thread that gets into some of the things I was saying about platform design and habits re: behavior of users on this site.

in atproto you kind of think from the lexicon/format first. i think it’s very similar to file formats — for example you can think of “bsky post” lexicon as being like *.post.bsky.json and then assume records of same type can be indexed/aggregated from all repos by anyone

To get a feel for data-centric approaches to design, there's no substitute for running your fingers through live data This new "try it" mode goes beyond browsing static records (a la @pdsls.dev) because it allows you to interactively fire off queries to lexicon-defined endpoints Go play!

Keep watching until you get to see the handheld X-Ray Fluorescence gun (!!) in action

Jenny Holzer, "Private Property Created Crime" from the Truisms series, at least one version of which can be found in the Museum of Modern Art collection www.moma.org/collection/w...

This is a great take In my time engineering things I've often found that the most value is generated in the messy bits. Real systems that real people interact with don't fit into perfect abstractions and so it's hard to build valuable systems and experiences if you aren't willing to get messy.

atproto ecosystem growth really strengthens my belief that this project is critical to reclaiming the internet we deserved. the protocol offers the interoperability and extensibility that Web 2.0 promised but failed to deliver

When I explain to people what is involved with writing a successful grant, they simply don’t believe me. I explained it once to a famous person from Pixar, and he looked me square in the eye and said: You mean all the cancer and Alzheimer’s grants work that way? You’ve gotta be &$%#ing kidding me!

Belatedly watching Mamdani inauguration& Jumaane Williams speech: “That’s the thing about uncertainty- anything can happen. But also, anything *can* happen. We could make NY more affordable, more safe and more just. We could, we can, and we have to try.” That’s it, y’all. That’s radical pragmatism.

Despite what we are often told, this line from Mamdani’s inauguration speech is what true pragmatism actually looks like: “Beginning today, we will govern expansively and audaciously. We may not always succeed. But never will we be accused of lacking the courage to try.”

Shifting focus from clouds to people (TBH, kinda surprised this branding shift didn't happen earlier)

It's striking that progressives like Tim Walz and Zohran Mamdani evoke the middle American attitude that, "Yes, we can fix these social problems because we're Americans and it's the right thing to do!" While the "America first" right only emulates failed and failing nation-states elsewhere.

Note that "no matter what" also includes fully restoring it *somewhere else* if you so choose ... with zero loss of functionality (beyond the brief hiccup of being temporarily offline)

The metaphor that keeps on giving: "Atmospheric computing is a paradigm of connected clouds." -- @pfrazee.com

So much to learn from in this 2019 piece: "Practice SHINE as a way to extend your networks, distribute resources, affirmation and praise. Sharing prestige is more radical than hoarding it."

Promising example of an #atproto tool which filters other existing feeds: "Plug in the URL of any feed, and we remove the stuff that passes muster with regular moderation, even targeted moderation, but is just plain nasty." Anyone know of other examples of this design pattern?

For anyone -- especially artists -- interested in identifying the right leverage points to reshape the music economy, check out the provocative questions in this 🧵 As is, they function more like a broad critique of the current system than potential solutions, but you gotta start somewhere

product managers already can't keep up with the pace of modern development, so you see user experience degrading everywhere. I see half-baked feature ideas pushed through all the time now, because now they can be. velocity is not the problem anymore. many teams would do well to slow down.

[screaming at the top of my lungs, once again] the fundamental technology of humanity is care

Reupping a 🧵 from this summer: This product is supposedly about conversations, but it's missing a key feature which highlights the interactions we've had The most useful tab I could have when viewing your profile is a timeline focused on *our* conversations: quotes, replies, reposts, likes, etc.

Cranberry Chess Pie to fulfill our family tradition of testing a new pie recipe every year for the holidays Wishing the best to you + yours in the new year!

These declines are MASSIVE. And the comparative silence in media coverage is absolutely DAMNING. “Why are ppl always so afraid of crime?” THIS is why. When crime goes up, media trips over itself to report it. Falls to pre-war (!!) levels? Just CRICKETS.

What if you showed up at your hotel and they didn't have the room you reserved? Or there was a shower or toilet you couldn't use. This is common for people who use wheelchairs. Even 35 years after federal law said hotels must be accessible. My NPR story. www.npr.org/2025/12/24/n...

Edward Hopper, Christmas card, 1928 whitney.org/collection/w...

The instinctive human reaction to the sudden complete disappearance of someone they know is alarm Going quiet for a while feels normal -- life happens -- but the absolute eradication of someone without any trace? Yikes!

when some people choose between a weekly injection or daily pill to regulate their hormones so as to align their body with their desired appearance i guess it's no big deal

A really important trio to focus on: "You have the right to take your identity, your data, your relationships, + move them to a different application." You're not just extracting or exporting some subset of that. It's all yours + it all moves with you, intact

My quote of the day Masha Gessen

TIL about the "Szilard point" The first step in solving a problem is being able to identify it. Names help a lot here

House members keep surrendering power—until they don’t. Last week’s discharge petition showed members still have tools to assert control. The path to 218 doesn’t have to run through party leadership. It can run through factions assembling majorities when leadership blocks action.

the others *do (obviously, but it's too late to delete + repost. argh)

Describing a powerful new concept this way shouldn't at all rely on how that symbol is pronounced I can call that abstract symbol an "at sign", you can call it an "arroba", + we'll both understand that we're referring to the @ symbol

🤡There's never been a time in US history where people expect you to apologize *for being white*. People expect you to apologize*for being pro-racism*. Worldwide, fewer than half of all white people are pro-racism.♥️ In the US it takes an active disinfo campaign to keep the pro-racism group > 50%.

Nuanced 🧵 introducing us layfolk to *how* historians create new knowledge, including: - knowing when to ask new questions, - identifying new sources, + - a lotta thinking It'd be interesting to hear from scholars + researchers in other fields because methods of knowledge creation vary a LOT