onfocus

I’ll be looking for ecosystem growth in directions that enable survival independent of the company. In the way that email is independent of any technology provider or network operator. Just like Mastodon and the Fediverse already are.

This is a good take on how to analyze social media. I also don't want to put any energy into a service that has the full ability to alter the connections at any point. Bluesky is yet another service with high switching costs. That's attractive to investors and advertisers, bad for users.

Many of the shadowbanned site owners attempted to politely push back and point out that the reason all 20 of us were there was specifically because our entire site was deranked from Google in a single night. He continued insisting this didn’t happen and then looked confused that anyone would disagree with him. 

This account of a meeting at Google for de-listed site owners is surreal.

At the very least, put him to the task. Make him execute on what he’s trying to do. It won’t be easy and there are a lot of ways to make it even less easy. That’s the first role of a political opposition.

Yeah, that's enough doomerism. Time to start thinking like an opposition party.

That’s why the people who love him love him so passionately. He is them. And he tells them that being what they are is OK. He never for a second requires America to be better than it is. He never expects more of America than it is able to give. Trump tells America to be garbage. Garbage is easy.

It's like the collective better angels of our nature have been locked away.

Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Garland, et al. utterly failed to grasp the threat posed by Donald Trump’s Republican Party, including its Supreme Court branch. They sentimentally overestimated the attachment of American whites to the liberal order. They failed to take seriously that vast numbers of Americans inhabit far-right information communities. They undervalued the importance of showing cultural solidarity with working-class voters. And so on and so forth.

This is what I have been most disappointed about. Watching our institutions erode under a democratic President has been hard to take. Most disheartening was the supreme court commission that felt like an excuse to keep the failing status quo. Our leaders let us down.

This is why it is so horribly wrong to hear the likes of Chris Matthews smugly declare on Morning Joe that identity politics is dead because identity politics are to blame for Harris’ loss. Can he not hear himself? The election of Trump is the product of identity politics: white identity politics, dismissing, disdaining, and threatening people of every other identity.

LOL, the idea that this election wasn't won on identity politics is the definition of white supremacy.

Nobody likes to lose. So when your side loses an election, there’s huge social and psychological pressure to change your stance, to moderate what you believe so you don’t feel like a loser. Don’t do it. Things are worth believing and fighting for.

Good, necessary rant for today.

It's frustrating because the truth is much simpler and also doesn't put these two genders at loggerheads: Harris is better for both men and women, and Trump is much, much worse for people of any gender.

Revenge and chaos isn’t good for any human. Please vote for stability.

If 2020 is our guide, it's likely that the 2024 presidential election won't be decided on Election Day.

A good reminder that it could be a while before we know who won the election That’s always expected.

Kate and Josh discuss both campaigns’ closing arguments and the mess at the Washington Post.

This podcast episode is the best discussion I've heard of the Washington Post/Bezos endorsement debacle.

Alarmed about the possibility of being seen as “woke” or partisan, Shogan is purging the museum of everything that could substantiate such an allegation, such as exhibits that treat Native Americans, Japanese Americans, and civil rights activists as human beings with valuable and important stories.

The preemptive surrender to white supremacy is also something we need to constantly fight against. This washing of history from a Biden appointee is disappointing.

Data brokers are selling the ability to track phones that visit abortion clinics and follow them back across state lines, all the way to their owners’ homes. All it takes for this kind of 24-hour surveillance is a credit card. Given the creepy enthusiasm with which MAGA government officials are inserting themselves into women’s health choices, these tracking tools present a pressing danger for women across the country.

Thanks again to my senator Ron Wyden for fighting the good fight against our constant tech surveillance culture.