My Day One journaling app told me this morning that today marks one year since I read Cory Doctorow’s For the Win after picking it (and many other of his books) in a Humble Bundle. That means that it’s finally time to write out some thoughts that I’ve been having over the past several weeks, all centered around wanting to reread the book. I have a lot of other books on my “to read” list right now, so it’s kind of ridiculous to want to get back to this one, but there are two things that have been really pushing this idea.

This is a mess of a post blending thoughts on tech policy with religious ideas and lacking the kind of obvious throughline or structure that I’d like it to have. It’s also been in my head for a couple of weeks, and it’s time to release it into the world rather than wait for it to be something better. So, here it is: I am frustrated with generative AI technology for many reasons, but one of the things at the top of that list is the knowledge that today’s kids are growing up in a world where it is possible—even likely—that their middle and high school experiences are going to involve someone using generative AI tools to produce deepfake nudes (or other non-consensual intimate imagery—NCII) of them.

Acknowledging the ambiguity in Musk’s salute is important: not to let him off the hook, but to recognize how much more dangerous things are when they’re ambiguous than when they’re straightforward.

Honestly, I get the original call, but I’m glad Bluesky backtracked. Content moderation is hard.

I have qualms about the U.S. providing military support to any cause, but if there is such a thing as good U.S. military support, Ukraine is a clear example of it, and either way, this is an embarassment.

Some bonkers details in here.

DOGE continues to insist on the dumbest way to carry out its dumb goals.

One more thing right out of the Twitter playbook from DOGE: Firing people without understanding how important they are.

My stress and anxiety levels have been high ever since the second Trump administration began and immediately started taking an axe to all sorts of things that one should not take an axe to. For admittedly selfish reasons, though, I’ve been particularly anxious since Friday, when the NIH announced that it was dramatically cutting its support to universities (and other research institutions) in the form of indirect costs. I don’t do NIH-funded work, but we’re a very medically focused campus, and there’s no way that the $40 million that the University estimates we could lose over the next year isn’t going to have ripple effects across campus (not to mention the fact that my colleagues in the College of Communication and Information regularly look to the NIH as a source of funding health communication research).

The headline is a little provocative, but it’s scary that we live in a world where it makes some sense. More broadly, though, I found that the first Trump administration converted me to nuclear disarmament—yes, this president is scary, but that any president has access to that much destructive power is scarier still. I expect I’ll go further in that direction this time around.

Starting to sense a pattern.

Bookmarking for… sigh… teaching purposes.

As usual, lots to like in this post from Mike Masnick.

I’m teaching a social media research methods class this semester, and I’m pretty sure I need to bring this article up in this week’s class.

Resubscribed to WIRED because despite my efforts to focus more on tech news than political news, THEY HAVE BECOME ONE AND THE SAME IN REALLY WORRYING WAYS.

Currently reading David Graeber’s “Debt: The First 5,000 Years,” and while it’s really dense, one clear theme is how money has the power to abstract our moral thinking in dangerous directions. This NYT blurb seemed relevant.

Love to be living in a world where a blog I read for tech commentary—and that is more reserved than I would be on a lot of that commentary—is running articles describing current goings-on as “a coup in progress.”

More good writing from Masnick on scary stuff coming out of DC.

It’s obviously not the most worrying thing about it, but a very specific tragedy about Musk’s DOGE nonsense is that it may end up being the largest (indirect) influence Homestar Runner has had on the world.

Lots of bad things are happening right now, but this one stands out. There’s no good reason for this except to make Musk happy.

If current events continue to echo the Twitter takeover, we’re about a year out from Elon Musk telling a gathering of world leaders to go fuck themselves for not supporting his agenda.

Masnick pulls no punches.

Oh, he really is doing this like he did Twitter. That was a nightmare by itself.

Anyone who hasn’t should read one of two excellent books—Extremely Hardcore or Character Limit—on Musk’s takeover of Twitter, because I’m getting similar vibes here. Remember when Musk just refused to pay money Twitter owed because he didn’t feel like it?

Reading all this recent coverage on Musk’s “gaming” has made me want to reread Cory Doctorow’s stories about gold farming—which is all the more fitting given that Doctorow uses gold farming to talk about exploited labor. gift link

Modern cars are creepy.

This is an excellent and detailed overview and I’m better for having read it.

Bookmarking as yet another example of Elon Musk’s free speech reputation being undeserved.

Post election is a great time to realize the dangers that KOSA poses.

Some good points in here about how “shareholder value” can lead to bad decisions.

This is an important take, and I appreciate that the article concludes with a reminder that indie is the answer as we move forward with the social web.

Love these digs at Twitter in the Kickstarter video for Mike Masnick’s new card game.

Back in 2020-2021, I made the decision to pivot from Twitter as a research site in case data ever became less available—and so I could focus more on right-wing online spaces. It was a good call but still hilariously mistaken at the same time.

Rank hypocrisy. I don’t necessarily think Musk should have been deported way back when, but I think he should be called out on this.

Wild to read this so soon after finishing Character Limit, because I’m getting very similar vibes.

Like Zoë Schiffer’s Extremely Hardcore, I think this book will be even more valuable in the future than it is right now. I also wish I’d waited to read it for a bit instead of so soon after Schiffer’s book! What a wild, depressing story the Musk acquisition has been. I appreciate this book for giving more insight into the pre-Musk troubles of the company, but it still doesn’t shy away from how disastrous one billionaire’s ego has been.