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Brendan

@brendan17.bsky.social
206 followers 460 following 170 posts

A lawyer, not your lawyer. Opinions mine, & RTs ≠ endorsements.

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Brendan @brendan17.bsky.social · 3h
Glass half full, it's not like online advertising or spyware are shadowy industries whose north star is profit. (Yes, this is deeply sarcastic.)
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Gina Helfrich @ginahelfrich.bsky.social · 20h
I opt out every time, and you should, too. It’s optional.
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Brendan @brendan17.bsky.social · 20h
Huge +1 to this entire piece
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Joseph Rezek @rezekjoe.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
My heart breaks for mathematicians whose lives and careers are being destroyed by AI — and especially this PhD student, who doesn’t even know he is a poet
Kai Shaikh, a Ph.D. student in mathematics at the University of Toronto, also currently at SLMath, observed that theorems are easy to use as benchmarks, but that they capture little of the wonderment at the heart of math. "Just like a photograph of a mile marker can't provide much of the value of actually going on a hike," he said,
"it would seem to me that proofs without stories, or even stories without struggle or mystery, and first glimpses of strange beasts, are not very meaningful or valuable to us humans."
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Brendan @brendan17.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
Feel like Blade Runner would make for a more interesting post-date convo
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Brendan @brendan17.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
I'm doing an informal double of You Can See Everything & this on Sunday. So stoked.
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Stan Kelly @kartoonistkelly.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
Himfluencer. @theonion.com
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Brendan @brendan17.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
I'm going to echo a previous comment & say that south SJ has great (free) hiking &/or trail running. Very exposed though, so bring water. Also goes without saying but awesome Vietnamese food throughout city.
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Eric Goldman @ericgoldman.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Censorship begets more censorship
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Brendan @brendan17.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Little LTTP on this one, but "I evaded the post office truck's surveillance camera" is some real cyberpunk dystopia stuff
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Chicago Reader @chicagoreader.com · 29/09/2026
Federal authorities tapped into a network of Flock automated license plate readers and surveillance cameras while trying to prosecute Marimar Martinez and Anthony Ruiz last year, according to court records reviewed by the Reader. 🧵
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Brendan @brendan17.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
GOB—a metaphor for the construction economy— pointing to his head and saying "nothing on the inside"
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Patrick Monahan @pattymo.com · 23/09/2026
Gavin Newsom thank you so much
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Brendan @brendan17.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
If there is not a sequel entitled Midnight Movie, they are leaving money on the table
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Jack Lerner @jacklerner.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
This Paramount-Skydance merger deal is awful! Allowing this merger to go through with the weakest of weak sauce “deals" one could imagine is an incredibly devastating betrayal. One man will now control almost inconceivable amounts of news, film, TV, and other programming.
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Brendan @brendan17.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Particularly appreciated @doctorow.pluralistic.net's thread (or post—linked at the top) on the WarnerMount settlement. While it's worth a read in its entirety, am quoting this particular post because "I'm [also] just *furious*."
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Brendan @brendan17.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
The silver lining I am finding in CA settling with Paramount is that I no longer need to cite that suit in my qualified defense of CA in the face of backdooring in KOSA with the Meta settlement.
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Ken Tremendous @kentremendous.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
By the time this merger ruins HBO, destroys WB, gets 5,000 people fired, moves production overseas, and guts the quality of the movies the new studio makes, most people will have forgotten how fast the AGs caved and how little they got in this deal. Writers will not.
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Techdirt @techdirt.com · 21/09/2026
California AG Rob Bonta Caves, Paramount Merger To Proceed With Flimsy Conditions California AG Rob Bonta has caved to what was a relentless, bipartisan pressure campaign to... www.techdirt.com/2026/09/21/califor…
techdirt.com
California AG Rob Bonta Caves, Paramount Merger To Proceed With Flimsy Conditions
California AG Rob Bonta has caved to what was a relentless, bipartisan pressure campaign to settle the 12 state antitrust lawsuit against Paramount. The AGs sued Paramount last July, arguing (correctly) that the $111 billion deal would largely be anti-competitive, resulting in mass layoffs as the even bigger Larry Ellison-owned company forces labor and consumers...
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Brendan @brendan17.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Strong recommend this article
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Brendan @brendan17.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
See also TikTok, any civil suit challenging NSA surveillance...
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Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
I know this has been going on for a while now but it’s still *wild* that the government of the US just brags on the internet about its obviously extrajudicial murders
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 18/09/2026
Q: China is one of the most repressive countries for journalists in the world-- TRUMP: Well, I don't know about that. I think we're repressive also
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
NYU Langone is paying the government $8.5 million in addition to ceasing gender-affirming care for minors. Cowardly loser shit.
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Brendan @brendan17.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
This story + the new FBI hiring standards in the same day has me questioning whether I need to reevaluate my expectations for "a lot of internet"
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
That's gonna be an lol from me dawg.
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Richard Kadrey @richardkadrey.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
All I'm going to say is that if you love movies you need to see Teenage Sex and at Camp Miasma. If you didn't like it, I don't want to hear about it because your opinion is wrong.
the bloody poster for Teenage Sex and at Camp Miasma
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Maggie Tokuda-Hall @maggietokudahall.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Coyote really is doing the best work
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Brendan @brendan17.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Shocked that the figurehead for an admin that has devoted much of its time to finding new, unpopular ways to invade people's privacy likes a new(ish), unpopular technology for doing the same
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Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 14/09/2026
I am curious if any of the Harper's Letter signers will comment on this?
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Annalee @flowerhorne.com · 11/09/2026
So the thing about how some folks who work on AI think it's going to attain sentience and kill us all: That's not a marketing stunt. They do sincerely believe that. That doesn't make them*correct* though. They're very much not
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Mark Ruffalo @markruffalo.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
“The way you do one thing is the way you do everything.” Proverb. Paramount cannot be trusted. They just don’t act in good faith on any level. www.techdirt.com/2026/09/08/p...
techdirt.com
Paramount Caught Using ‘Astroturf’ Group To Drum Up Fake Support For Merger
We've well established how the $111 billion Paramount and Warner Brothers merger is terrible for labor, creatives, consumers, and markets. But the kind of behaviors Paramount leadership have been engaged in to sell the deal also give a pretty clear indication what kind of company we're dealing with, and why they shouldn't be allowed to...
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Brendan @brendan17.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I had not but also never taken the moment to consider. So I guess That's What I Get.
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Brendan @brendan17.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
As someone for whom this has been the default response for 3-ish years, my pro tip is to go for the flat affect delivery. Have found it to work wonders. Also, if you get follow-up, I have taken to responding "I have literally never been better in my entire life."
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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Surveilling children, taking away their access to community, information, third spaces, and suicide prevention resources is a *really* weird approach to child safety.
Post on LinkedIn from the United Nations Human Rights Account that says "Children should have to wait for a lawsuit to be safe online. The design changes that Meta has now agreed to implement on its social media apps align with what my Office has been calling for. But we're not there yet. 

Safe design should be applied across the industry. Governments need to step up rather than wait for courts and companies to act." 

Un human rights chief Volker Turk
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David Greene @davidgreene.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
As you read about the time limits, content and feature restrictions and blackout times for Meta's Teen users under the settlement, understand that this is not just the future teen experience. This is the future experience for anyone who doesn't go through an age assurance process--not just 13-17s.
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Kelsey Atherton @atherton.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Current state of things: there's crop art of Signal at the Minnesota State Fair www.cropart.com
A white hand with Signal-blue painted nails holds a cellphone with a near-dead battery, with the Signal icon the only app on screen. Crop art by Molly Gehrke
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Cas Mudde @casmudde.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
If you are wondering how bar-shit crazy Texas is these days: the University of Houston removed almost half of its courses to comply with state censorship laws.
houstonpublicmedia.org
UH removes over 45% of courses from its ‘core’ curriculum to comply with SB 37 | Houston Public Media
Some of the classes removed from UH’s core curriculum include those discussing race and gender, such as Introduction to LGBT Studies, Women and Gender in Arabic Literature, and Intro to Global Climate...
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Brendan @brendan17.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
The settlement is not a positive unless you've been clamoring for less freedom online
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NACDL Fourth Amendment Center @4ac.nacdl.org · 25/08/2026
Discovery is one of the hardest parts of litigating new surveillance tech. That’s why we built our Omnibus Tech Discovery Checklist
nacdl.org
NACDL - Omnibus Tech Discovery List
A cross between an issue spotter and a samplediscovery demand, this is anall-in-one, cover-your-bases initial discovery checklist for many of the most commonly used categories of technology that you w...
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Brendan @brendan17.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
While people much more knowledgeable than I about the shadow docket & posture of the case have put tonight's ruling in context, as a general rule my happiness reading a SCOTUS opinion & the # of times it cites Clapper are inversely proportional.
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Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
One of the best SCOTUS/breaking news "reporters" in the business is a law professor, and this @stevevladeck.bsky.social analysis is as indispensable as ever. ... Especially for those of us who saw the headlines earlier and were about to do a Thelma & Louise www.stevevladeck.com/p/246-making...
stevevladeck.com
246. Making Sense of the Mail-in Ballots Ruling
The Supreme Court’s grant of a stay in one of the mail-in ballot cases is deeply wrong, but it’s also not the main event over whether Trump’s patently unlawful executive order can take effect.
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The Mercury News @mercurynews.com · 21/08/2026
The domed theater on Winchester Boulevard, shuttered since 1964, could be an amazing 70mm IMAX movie palace.
mercurynews.com
San Jose’s Century 21 should be revived as a first-class IMAX theater
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Brendan @brendan17.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Totally agree—while I really like Handmaiden & No Other Choice, LV is def my favorite Park so far (caveat that I've been waiting for the right time for Decision to Leave)
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Brendan @brendan17.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Tangential but I am taking this as an opportunity to share how much I loved this movie—for a solid month after I first saw, my movie recommendation was essentially "Have you heard the good word about Lady Vengeance?"
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Electronic Frontier Foundation @eff.org · 19/08/2026
Online platforms should not have to fight lengthy and costly legal battles before lawsuits can be dismissed under Section 230. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...
eff.org
Ninth Circuit Ruling Will Force Online Platforms That Host User
A federal appeals court just made it harder for online services, big and small, to get lawsuits over user speech dismissed early. In California v. Meta, a Ninth Circuit three-judge panel held that
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Brendan @brendan17.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Even if WarnerMount didn't pose antitrust concerns (which it does), the merger would give any owner—let alone Ellison—way too much influence over the movies that Hollywood makes for WarnerMount to not also pose a separate, standalone threat to artistic expression
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Brendan @brendan17.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
"Tens can run circles around orgs obsessed with rushing out AI and poor DevOps security." Thankfully, that doesn't describe many... oh
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Cathy Gellis @cathygellis.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
It may be stylized as procedural but it is a hugely substantive ruling, and pretty darn wrong given lots of previous precedent.
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