Posts tagged “social networks”

• “This is a concentration camp. They are describing a concentration camp.” – via @rhinosoros.bsky.social
• The “DOGE” Brain Drain Has Begun: “But while [the] rampage has been covered, the scope of its impact remains largely underappreciated. Experts say it can’t be measured in weeks or months or even in government services affected. Rather, it will be felt over the span of decades and defined in metrics like intellectual talent lost.” – via @sarahlongwell25.bsky.social
• An interview with Steven Levitsky, a scholar of democratic breakdown, who explains how the latest threats from [the administration] show telltale signs of a country slipping into authoritarian rule. Gee, if only everyone who could have prevented this had listened to everyone who rightfully predicted this based on everything everyone already knew from every other time this has ever happened in human history… – via @mcspocky.bsky.social
• [Wake Up — Rage Against the Machine]
• Kendrick Lamar Awarded Nobel Beef Prize
• A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft: “I have always taken it for granted that, just as my parents made sure that I could read and write, I would make sure that my kids could program computers.” But now? Not so much. This article is from a year or so ago, but I liked it so much it’s worth it to share again. I took a very, very similar path to the author, and feel the same.
• Welcome to the Atmosphere: The AT Protocol is an open, decentralized network for building social applications.
• I can confirm that Taxi Boat Varenna is the best way to explore Lake Como by water taxi. I’d like to be there now. I hate it here.

• Signposts on the road to authoritarian rule: “If one were to design a path to authoritarian rule, it would be what we have seen in the first weeks of the Trump administration.”
• Kentuckians can’t afford the high cost of Trump’s tariffs is an op-ed by – of all people – Mitch McConnell.
• For women’s college basketball coaches, motherhood is no longer something to keep quiet.
• “One thing Democratic leadership could do right now is to name an alternate HHS secretary—someone to provide ongoing public updates and health information. And do it for other departments, too. Start showing voters what a Democratic government would look like—press conferences, speeches, all of it.” – via @markharris.bsky.social
• Mark Cuban Says U.S. Healthcare Is ‘Horrific’; Calls for Free Medical School to Fix Doctor Shortages and Soaring Costs
• Pope Francis’ Stunning Rebuke of JD Vance Exposes MAGA’s Dark Soul
• ICE wants to hire contractors to monitor social media for threats. Those who criticize the agency could be pulled into the dragnet.
• Thursday Night Massacre
  • Acting US attorney in Manhattan resigns after directive to drop case against Mayor Eric Adams
  • Dozens of CFPB Workers Fired in After-Hours Blitz
  • The interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District and five officials with the federal public integrity unit quit after the Justice Department ordered charges against Mayor Eric Adams to be dropped.
  • Expert Flags DOJ‘s ‘Cascading Scandal’ — That Won’t Go Away
  • The Thursday Night Massacre(s)
  • Thousands of federal employees fired today and tomorrow.

• Almost 96% of new cars registered in Norway in January were electric. – via kottke
• The Wild True Story Behind Kendrick Lamar‘s Super Bowl Halftime Show
• The Supreme Court of Hawaii ruled that insurance companies can’t bring their own legal actions against those blamed for the catastrophic 2023 Maui wildfire, allowing a $4 billion settlement to proceed.
• Trump’s Driving Legal Principle This Time: “What Are You Gonna Do About It?”
• The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children was told by the Department of Justice that they’d lose their funding if the organization didn’t remove any mentions of LGBTQIA+ issues from their public materials.
• Aggeggio is a lovely Italian word for everyday objects.
• The ‘Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly’ of the United States Government
• I need to investigate Tapestry, from iconfactory. It looks like a cool iOS app for aggregating content, and I’ve loved pretty much every other app they’ve ever made. – via hiro.report

• Stop Calling Them Firings. Business terms provide a totally wrong conceptual framework for the purges underway.
• Within 24 hours of the inauguration, Amazon and UnitedHealth asked regulators to help crush their shareholders’ demands for transparency.
• I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down. I just didn’t expect them to be such losers. – via Laura Olin
• When my iPhone is connected to my MacBook Air via USB-C cable, both iOS and MacOS should prioritize that connection over the WiFi connection and maintain the link until I actually remove the cable from one of the devices. I don’t understand why Finder would / could / should ever report that “the connection was lost” when the two devices are physically connected.
• The 24-Hour Reality Check: Musk’s Impossible Power Grab and America’s Crisis
• “Be calm when the unthinkable arrives,” is one of the very eloquent bits of advice in this essay On Tyranny. – via Jodi Ettenberg
• From the Department of Irony: You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism “The internet has conditioned us to constantly seek new information, as if becoming a sponge of bad news will eventually yield the final piece of a puzzle.” – via kottke
• Profiles of Courage, Patriotism, and Resistance in standing up to Trump

• Take a minute today to read this tribute to Dan Jezek and the story of his website, bricklink, the world’s largest online LEGO marketplace.
• A Guide to Using Signal for Government Workers – via kottke, who is doing a great job reporting on the ongoing coup
• In less than eight years the NCAA went from banning North Carolina from hosting championships due to its bathroom bill to [kowtowing to a cartoonishly evil conman]. – via @bubbaprog.lol
• The universe could undergo a ‘catastrophic change’ that could alter absolutely everything, quantum machine shows.
• Hopefully reading this will help convince you to dump Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Twitter. The Technological Poison Pill: How the ATProtocol Baked into Bluesky Encourages Competition, Resists Evil Billionaires, Lock-In & Enshittification – via Jodi Ettenberg
• The President’s plan to dismantle the Department of Education could prove more costly for red states than blue.
• Incompetence and desperation are a bad combination. The important thing to remember is that [the “DOGE” attempt to get employees to resign] isn’t about economic efficiency, despite what the billionaire at the helm may say. It’s about efficiently breaking morale within the federal government to make it easier to dismantle from the inside.
• Related: “DOGE” staffer steps down after racist posts emerge
• “NOAA workers ordered to stop all communications with foreign nationals. Workers covering things like air transportation safety, drought, monitor coral reef destruction, and guarding railway shipping carriers against dangerous weather affected.” – via @timmarchman.bsky.social
• “Twenty years ago, when Jeremiah Trotter, Sr won an NFC championship with the Eagles, baby Trotter Jr. was on the field, in his father’s arms. Now he’s playing for the Eagles in this year’s Super Bowl.” – via @npr.org

• More good news for those looking to exit Meta’s social app ecosystem in favor of a more open alternative: An independent developer is building a photo-sharing app for Bluesky called Flashes. – via phillewis
• Misinformation isn’t random. It’s strategic. Misinformation is not a general condition; It is driven by populist radical right parties. When Do Parties Lie? Misinformation and Radical-Right Populism Across 26 Countries – via pettertornberg
• “The entire health insurance business model is built on scamming customers and denying the coverage they pay premiums for. Health insurance is not healthcare. It’s an unnecessary middleman that preys on the sick, and only exists because lobbyists pay off our politicians.” – via darrigomelanie
• “Is it like the old Playboy Magazine? You have essays there by the modern day equivalent of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr.?” – Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, asking if people visit Pornhub to read articles during a hearing about minors having access to pornography. – via crooked media
• You can watch the three (newer) seasons of The Animaniacs on Disney+ / Hulu, so why are you wasting your time reading this when you could be doing that instead? Five stars. Highly recommend. (The original five seasons are available on Amazon Prime and AppleTV.)
• In the US, table saws are responsible for around 4,300 amputations per year. All other products are responsible for 3,600 amputations per year combined. – via Tom Whitwell
• I have no idea how, when, or why I subscribed to the Making It Work newsletter from Youngna Park, but I’m always happy when it lands in my inbox. This week’s issue, which includes some beautiful writing about the horrific L.A. wildfires, was exceptional.

• This brilliant bit of investigative reporting (with math!) – into how Threads changed its algorithm to start throttling engagement on posts about climate change – should tell you everything you need to know about which platforms are enshittification engines and which one is not. And with that, I’m effectively done with Meta. (Mastodon might be a safe social network alternative, but it’s currently far too complicated for the general public.)
• Dozens of official government websites have been exploited by spammers to redirect to porn. – via jbhall56.bsky.social
• As a diehard Florida Gators fan, I absolutely adore sporting this lapel pin I found recently at LostLustSupply.com. It was designed by artist Emily Elizabeth Miller and she’s got some other great stuff for sale, too.
• “What’s the point of being rich if you can’t afford to do the right thing.” – via Kelsey Hightower
• A.J. Brown read his book during a playoff game. The story behind the book is even more unusual.
• Olympic swimmer Gary Hall Jr. to receive replacement medals after losing originals in L.A. fires.
• “You were drunk. You tried to dance with strippers. You had to be held off the stage,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, recounting allegations against Fox News host Pete Hegseth during his confirmation to be Trump’s defense secretary. – via crooked media (See also: Jamelle Bouie speaks the truth.)

• This LA Times interactive map of the Southern California wildfires has been very handy. – via @dansinker.com
• “Just a reminder that the French revolution started with a climate crisis-induced famine, an empire that had overexpanded into too many foreign wars, and parasitic nobility that funneled all the wealth upward while regular citizens suffered.” – via @chris.writes.books
• If you want to “follow” me somewhere (other than here, of course), you should use my verified account on bluesky. I adored Twitter when it launched, and for many years after. But I haven’t looked at that social network in months and deleted my account a while ago. I’ve been enjoying Threads, but it looks like it’s time to abandon that platform, too. I’m very, very glad I have my own personal website. (I hardly ever look at Instagram, and doubt I’ll keep my account there for much longer. If I didn’t feel obligated to remain on LinkedIn, I’d quit that site, too.)
• In China, there are registries of haunted apartments. If you’re willing to live somewhere with a sinister history, you can get a discount of 30%. – via @tomwhitwell
• I am starting to get concerned about the bird flu, H5N1. Paying attention to updates from Your Local Epidemiologist is a good way to be prepared.
• A wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover, climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell his family or friends. Then, in 2023, a ProPublica reporter received an envelope with no return address. Inside was a flash drive containing tens of thousands of secret files. – via @propublica
• “In species where males invest in weaponry (antlers, horns, tusks, etc.), female brains are bigger.” – via Kent Hendricks

• Reminder that Breaking Bad was a TV show about the U.S. healthcare system. – via Melanie D’Arrigo (threads / bluesky)
• I’m confused by the many complaints I’ve seen online recently about the streaming quality of NFL games on Amazon Prime. I have AT&T Gigabit fiber at home and for regular TV use the DirecTVStream app embedded in my Samsung TV. If I want to watch something on Amazon Prime, I use their app instead, also baked into the TV software. I honestly think the image quality of the Amazon NFL games beats what I see on NBC, CBS, FOX, and ESPN on DirecTVStream most of the time, which seems crazy to me. You’d think AT&T would either boost DirecTVStream bandwidth (since they own them) or somehow hamstring the Prime bandwidth. But that’s not the case at all.
• Anyway. This joke about berry packaging made me laugh out loud. – via Matt Margolis (threads / bluesky)
• I am a big fan of Wyze and have their front door deadbolt, doorbell camera, several security cameras, two outdoor plugs (for controlling Christmas lights), a bathroom scale, and at least a half dozen WiFi outlets around the house. They’re great.
• For The Love of God, Make Your Own Website – via Laura Olin (threads / bluesky)
• Threes is the iOS game I’ve played most frequently over the last decade. According to its lovely Statistics page, I’ve played it 7,838 times and my high score is 90,147.
• “Learning from other people’s mistakes is a lot less painful than learning from your own.” – via Tim Harford
• Feel-good story of the day? Giant Spoon Taken From Arizona Dairy Queen Found Thanks To Pokemon Go – via @pourmecoffee
• I’ve returned to this article a dozen times since he published it. If you’re working with iOS widget development, check out Launching iOS Apps with a Custom URL Scheme

If you want to add a “Share on Bluesky” hyperlink to your WordPress theme, this is the snippet I’m using. Also note that my theme requires FontAwesome for the bluesky icon.

<span class="label label-primary nobreak me-3"><a target="_blank" href="https://bsky.app/intent/compose?text=<?php echo urlencode( get_the_title() ); ?>%0A%0A<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="Share on Bluesky" rel="noreferrer"><i class="fa-brands fa-bluesky"></i></a></span>


• I created a Bluesky account back in April, but then fell into Threads. I think I’m going to try using the former more than the latter. I very much appreciate that you can get verified there without paying for it, and their verification process is excellent.
• Whether he’s writing a television pilot, a comic book, or one of the greatest superhero movies of all time, Sam Hamm always has Virginia basketball on the brain. I loved this story about the Batman writer who hides UVA basketball Easter eggs in his work. – via David Betancourt @ The Athletic
• After a Montana man illegally cloned and bred an endangered giant sheep species, government agencies must now contend with the illicit offspring.
• I’m very happy to report that my cocktail guide iOS app, bartender.live, is still chugging along. If you’re a fan, please leave a review and/or spread the word. (Thanks!)
• The Miraculous Resurrection of Notre-Dame: This is the story of how an army of artisans turned back centuries to restore the crown jewel of France by hand, and wound up reviving something even greater than the cathedral itself. – via Curious About Everything
• Ok, NOW I’m thinking a lot about the fall of the Roman Empire. – via @chrisjbrinkman
• “Billionaires” puts the focus on an arbitrary number. Bring back “robber barons,” or at the very least, “tycoons” – via @king_mattking