(1) This thread is correct: Mutual aid no more replaces / obviates effective social services than GoFundMe replaces / obviates equitable access to medical care. (2) This thread is correct: I fall silent about a lot of things because I don’t feel up to getting yelled at and called names again.

Anybody else huddled under blankets and possibly cats tonight? Damn, that's some biting cold.

The rapid adoption of mass produced automobiles in the first part of the 1900's is my current lens for AI. Short form: It's neither all bad nor all good, we're not going to stop it, there will be massive change, and most of my objections are actually to extractive colonizer capitalism. 1/?

Me, a committed atheist for at least two decades: New Pope seems okay.

I started blogging, don't know how long this will be a thing so I started with the lowest effort of a blogger site, but I wrote up my thoughts about the McGrath Boulevard 25% design. joansliu.blogspot.com/2025/12/grou... bsky.app/profile/joan...

Chilly out, but still a pleasant day for a bit of a ride.

Upzone Newton.

I see there’s a post about microplastics going around with a photo of drinking straws, so here is my semi-regular reminder that the 3 biggest sources of microplastics are tires (45%), synthetic clothing particles (35%) and paint (~10%). Lay article attached:

I get a lot of solicitations to send money to various things. The vast, vast majority of them are scams. Whether it’s a text, an email, or something that pops up in your feed - always engage your brain before reaching for your wallet.

Once upon a time, in the darkest days of the pandemic, one of the greatest musicians of our age decided to record and share what he called the #SongsOfHope - he played his music for free, for anybody who wanted to listen. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TE-... 1/?

Great thread, and I love this eminently actionable suggestion.

When you use generative technologies, you usually have no idea whose work you’re building on - much less any context on whether you’re using their work in a sensible or appropriate way. It erodes the very concept of provenance and devalues everything except itself.

This right here is just a small part of why I’m so pissed off about the smirking AI slop peddlers who are knowingly wrecking what little creative economy we had left. Not to even mention that it’s built on theft at a scale that’s hard to even comprehend.

I’m just about done tearing down the research institute that I spent the last two years building, and I can absolutely confirm that the investor/venture class gets to just walk away from financial commitments that they don’t feel like dealing with anymore.

I find myself out walking around Union Square this morning, and I’m thinking about the vacancy rate in our ground floor commercial space. Let’s just see what’s available. First up, the former home of the SMC and MAPS. Just sitting there. 1/?

The fact that modifying your truck so it can fart black stinky clouds on command is common enough to have a cutesy name like ‘rolling coal’ really kinda sums up this moment in history for me.

So I was on Western Ave this week, that weird counterintuitive stretch that goes in a straight line between Central Square in Cambridge and Arsenal Yards in Watertown, crossing the Charles River twice ... and a pickup truck -farted- on me. Hear me out. 1/?

I love people and also I hate crowds. www.sfgate.com/local-donotu...

When you're at the usual street safety meetup at the local brewery, and you have to shift over to share space with the usual board game meetup in order to make way for the usual drag show ... you might be in Somerville.

I thought it was cute when city staff from Mobility named their trivia team ‘Brad’s Goons’ in honor of the department’s director, Brad Rawson. It got less cute when I realized that they were referring to a character assassination campaign running in Davis Square. That sucks. 1/?

A family friend lost his short term memory as he descended gently into dementia in his waning years. Interacting with people who rely heavily on AI for communication feels increasingly like my conversations with him did. It’s talking to a person has no idea what either of us has already said. 1/?

Kicking off the annual Illuminations bike / light tour behind the high school. Our city engineer, Brian, says ‘we started this event more than a decade ago to make the point that Somerville is one of the best cities in the country to be a cyclist and that we do it year round.’

Biologists sometimes refer to it as an "experiment of nature" when, without the usual trappings of prior hypothesis and control, nature (or in this case New York City) runs a massive experiment for you. Speed cameras reduce collisions by 30% and injuries by 16%. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Elections have consequences. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/13/u...

“Nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb..." It’s not a law, per se … it’s the goddamn constitution. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/u...

Great scene at the Crystal Ballroom last night for the third annual ‘Let’s Rock Cancer’ benefit for Dana Farber. Big thanks to Brad, @smoorearch.bsky.social, Rich, and Rick for the chance to join them onstage and make some music.

Just saw the closest near miss I’ve ever seen. I was waiting behind another cyclist at the bike signal to cross Hampshire at Inman. It turned green and we both rolled into the street just as a driver blew through the red from Cambridge St. He missed the guy in front of me by inches. 1/?

Good evening everybody. I am -not- LIVE AND IN THE CHAMBERS this evening, but I'm still gonna watch tonight's city council meeting and post about it here. Won't that be nice? somervillema.legistar.com/MeetingDetai... 1/?

"Öztürk's supposed infraction had been signing her name to a tepid op-ed in the Tufts student newspaper, a year earlier." We all need to stay furious about this. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/12/11/m... 1/?

Matt McLaughlin just announced his candidacy for MA state senate and I'm all in. I will miss him on the council, but we need him at the state house. secure.actblue.com/donate/mmsom

Every tech superpower: I use NVDIA. So I can do more AI. So I can earn more. So I can buy more NVDIA. www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGAV...

Occasional reminder that Peter Thiel's company "Palantir" is literally named after the all seeing orbs that the great enemies - Sauron and Saruman - used to dominate and warp the minds of kings and stewards in the west.

This study compared health outcomes between ~23M people who got the early mRNA vaccines vs ~6M who did not. Early vaccination dropped the risk of death from COVID by 75%, and also decreased all-cause mortality by 25% over a nearly four year follow up. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41343214/ 1/?

Relevant to those of us who have come to rely on said green line to get, well, anywhere.

I, personally, would happily pay a 15% surcharge for the privilege of doing business -without- having Christmas music playing.

There’s a lot going on in this article. So much that the authors felt the need to use the phrase ‘removed a forest’ twice. The disingenuous appeal for murderpaint rather than separated infrastructure is [chef’s kiss]. patch.com/illinois/elm...

If you have the chance, I highly recommend the studios show(s) going on today at 438 Somerville Ave (around the corner from Little India - next to Market Basket). One of the cooler, funkier, friendlier art shows I’ve been to in quite a while.

We should take it way more seriously than we do that these unspeakably wealthy and powerful men are publicly equating summary judgement and public execution with their gender. That’s real sick. Real real sick. www.thenerdreich.com/joe-lonsdale...

I was unaware that this was a thing.

This is a depressing but necessary look at what this year's "Federal Policy Changes" are doing to science in the US. Thanks, as always, to @statnews.com for fantastic, unflinching reporting. www.statnews.com/american-sci...

Do you like local music? Do you want to raise money to support cancer research? Are you curious to see a classically trained cellist onstage with a rock and roll band? If any of that appeals, come to the Crystal Ballroom in Davis Square, Somerville a week from tonight. 1/?

This conference paper is worth the read just for using the phrase "stochastic parrot" to describe language models. It recommends dusty ideas from knowledge engineering like "creating and carefully documenting datasets rather than ingesting everything on the web" dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/... 1/?

Commercial property in Boston is down another 6% after a 5% drop last year - with a whopping 27% vacancy. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

I was briefly impressed by the news that the Dell family are donating $6B to fund savings accounts for kids. Then I did a quick web search. We still need to tax them approximately $138B to get their personal wealth down to an obscene $1B apiece. 1/? www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/b...

I’ve been pretty dark lately, but I think it’s even worse than I’ve thought … and that’s saying something. Thinking on Chesterton’s fence … and the colossal reckoning that will come due for the destruction of trust in law, science, empirical fact, and truth itself. 1/?

Seems like Republicans are broadly okay with fraud, graft, bribes, nepotism, racism, sexism, hating trans and queer people, pardoning unrepentant criminals, wrecking science, medicine, and food production, and they’re even okay with trafficking minors for sex … but war crimes are a bridge too far.

I’ve been thinking on the qualitative difference between my experience of city government when I first started paying attention in 2017 vs. today. It sure -feels- different. I can’t tell the degree to which the city has changed as opposed to my perspective, attitude, and approach. 1/?

It’s an electric blanket kind of evening,

‘The president has said he wants to be completed before 2029’ A project like this, with utterly no regulatory or budgetary oversight, does not take four years to complete. It’s obviously a scam of some sort. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/u...

#CriticalMass was small but mighty tonight. It was a chilly ride down to Dorchester Shores, around Umass, and out to the point of Pleasure Bay. Thanks to everybody who came out, and special thanks to the organizers for keeping it going.