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Brian Hsi

@brianhsi.bsky.social
163 followers 338 following 71 posts

Runner, father, husband…I contain multitudes. Product guy working in local government. Also known as b2ix on various socials over the years.

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Reposted by Brian Hsi
Anil Dash @anildash.com · 02/09/2026
Everyone's seen how the most powerful tycoons in Silicon Valley have manipulated politics (and society) to their will. But we're stuck thinking of them as "VCs". They're not. They evolved years ago into something far worse, which we could consider Cancer Capitalists: www.anildash.com/2026/09/02/c...
anildash.com
VC isn’t VC anymore — understanding the rise of Cancer Capital - Anil Dash
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.
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Anil Dash @anildash.com · 10/06/2026
If you need a script for getting your company off Twitter, I WROTE YOU ONE. Multiple people have used it, successfully, to explain the legal liability your company incurs by forcing employees to be on a platform with child sexual abuse material. I will help you use it. anildash.com/2026/02/23/t...
anildash.com
Taking action against AI harms - Anil Dash
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.
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dan sinker @dansinker.com · 22/02/2026
I wrote about joy and resistance and Alysa Liu and Bad Bunny. dansinker.com/posts/2026-0...
dansinker.com
On Joy and Resistance | dansinker.com
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Cat Hicks @grimalkina.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
There actually has not been enough reflection in the tech community about DOGE
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Brian Hsi @brianhsi.bsky.social · 09/11/2025
@murray.senate.gov @cantwell.senate.gov I’m with my rep here.
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Brian Hsi @brianhsi.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
“If you think the assault on higher education is about anti-semitism, or that the purge of the federal government is about DEI, or that taking over Democratic cities is about crime, you are helping perpetuate Trump’s rationales for undermining democracy.”
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Brian Hsi @brianhsi.bsky.social · 05/08/2025
“Democracy is the ultimate decentralized technology. It distributes power away from kings and aristocrats to the people—imperfectly, through struggle, but fundamentally. The early internet promised to do the same for information, communication, and commerce.” — great read
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Scott Hanselman 🌮 @scott.hanselman.com · 17/07/2025
I just wanted to say, I’m probably more proud of this Ted talk than just about anything I’ve ever done so I’m gonna be absolutely useless for the next couple of weeks as I promote the shit out of this because I want you to watch it because it matters in the moment we are in youtu.be/dVG8W-0p6vg
youtu.be
Tech Promised Everything. Did it deliver? | Scott Hanselman | TEDxPortland
YouTube video by TEDx Talks
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Brian Hsi @brianhsi.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
Great 🧵
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
I know I’ve said a thousand times, but platform economics made customer satisfaction irrelevant to business performance. That made everyday life coarser and meaner. Degraded a lot of our civic life.
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Brian Hsi @brianhsi.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
I don’t listen to many podcasts but this one is incredible. I’m a fan of both of their work so it was great to hear them together.
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Jeff Yang @originalsp.in · 25/06/2025
Embrace immigrants. Celebrate diversity. Fight for equality and commit yourself to serving the needs of those with needs. Be real. Be empathic. Be human. That’s a recipe for Democratic success. Not whatever it is that the party has been doing recently.
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Brian Hsi @brianhsi.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
Diego Luna is hosting Kimmel for a bit and is talking about the importance of immigrants. It’s good to have friends everywhere youtu.be/7726WoO7mTM
youtu.be
Guest Host Diego Luna on Trump’s Immigration Policies & the Importance of Immigrants in the U.S.
YouTube video by Jimmy Kimmel Live
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Lilly Ana’s @lillyanafowler.bsky.social · 13/06/2025
Happening all night at KEXP ! The Gathering Space will be open all night so stop by and say HI www.seattletimes.com/entertainmen...
seattletimes.com
KEXP hosts 27-hour marathon broadcast to protest potential public media cuts
The local radio station is holding the marathon broadcast to bring awareness to the public funding it, as well as many other stations, rely on from being cut as part of a Republican-led recession pack...
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Brian Hsi @brianhsi.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
“The real crime was compassion. The real crime was noticing and caring and wanting to make it right.” — these sentences hit so hard and explain so much about where we are today.
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Christine Is Fed Up With Republicans @coralgableswang.bsky.social · 01/06/2025
This is another important history lesson that we need to heed! Historian @hcrichardson.bsky.social dedicated her substack to it last night! Read it here! 👇🏻 open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...
open.substack.com
May 31, 2025
“I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition,” Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine told her colleagues on June 1, 1950.
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Brian Hsi @brianhsi.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
Probably been said but this seems to be a boss move to release this EP right now brucespringsteen.net/news/2025/la...
brucespringsteen.net
Land of Hope & Dreams EP | Bruce Springsteen
On May 14, Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band opened their Land of Hope & Dreams Tour in Manchester, England. Highlights from that first night are now available digitally as the “Land of Hope & D...
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Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
I said it would get worse very quickly. By tomorrow we will have completed the most dangerous & frightening 24 hours thus far of Trump 2.0. Just to name a few: 1. Defiance of a court order by sending migrants to Sudan without due process (despite clear DP decision SCOTUS) & Dist. CT. order.
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Brian Hsi @brianhsi.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
“What makes you so much more worthier of your peace? What makes you so much more worthier of protecting your children? What makes you so much more worthy of your citizenship? What makes you more worthy of safety?”
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George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
A reminder that if the government can send migrants to a prison camp without any due process, it can send U.S. citizens there, too. I know because this happened to me and my family in 1942.
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dan sinker @dansinker.com · 07/04/2025
Nobody should have been sent there, period. Not the ones with no record, not the ones with a record. Nobody.
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Brian Hsi @brianhsi.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
As we get ready to head out to the handsoff rally, I keep thinking of these lines from The Last American Road Trip. “There are no red states or blue states. There are only purple states, purple like a bruise, and people trying to survive in a broken-promise land.” us.macmillan.com/books/978125...
us.macmillan.com
The Last American Road Trip
Written and read by New York Times bestselling author of They Knew, Hiding in Plain Sight, and The View from Flyover Country, Sarah Kenzidor, The Last Americ...
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Derek Powazek @fraying.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
Any day that makes Elon Musk and the ghost of Strom Thurmond sad is a good day for the rest of us.
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Brian Hsi @brianhsi.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
Thank you @corybooker.com for showing what senate opposition could look like and providing inspiration to those listening
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tammymorales.bsky.social @tammymorales.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
"We must stop viewing political life through the lens of American politics as we have known it and adopt the viewpoint of dissident movements in autocratic states. The Democratic party has more to learn from Alexei Navalny or the protesters in Serbia than it does from Chuck Schumer..."
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Brian Hsi @brianhsi.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
People are literally being disappeared and our council leadership wants to play with procedural issues? That’s not leadership, that’s complicity
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Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 27/03/2025
I wrote something about the secret police kidnapping and disappearing students over their op-eds, and wondering what happened to all those people screaming about the "free speech crisis on campus." www.techdirt.com/2025/03/27/t...
techdirt.com
Trump’s Secret Police Are Now Disappearing Students For Their Op-Eds
For years, we’ve been hearing breathless warnings about a “campus free speech crisis” from self-proclaimed free speech warriors. Their evidence? College students doing what colleg…
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Brian Hsi @brianhsi.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
Ditto. Calling all Gen X and Oregon Trail generation folks
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Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 26/03/2025
Huh.
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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
Schumer Didn’t Know the Can of Whoop-Ass He Was Opening talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/schum...
talkingpointsmemo.com
Schumer Didn’t Know the Can of Whoop-Ass He Was Opening
I don’t want to say I told you so. Because lots of...
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Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
23andMe files for bankruptcy to help facilitate a sale and “maximize the value of its business.” Co-founder Anne Wojcicki has resigned as the CEO after her attempt to take the company private was rejected earlier this month. If you were a customer of theirs, your genetic data is now for sale.
bloomberg.com
23andMe Starts Chapter 11 Process, Co-Founder Steps Down as CEO
23andMe Holding Co. has initiated bankruptcy proceedings in the US to help facilitate a sale.
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Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 21/03/2025
Okay, I wrote a longer thing about @durbin.senate.gov, @amyklobuchar.com, @klobuchar.senate.gov, @whitehouse.senate.gov, @blumenthal.senate.gov apparently wanting to hand Donald Trump a huge weapon with which to censor online speech. www.techdirt.com/2025/03/21/d...
techdirt.com
Democratic Senators Team Up With MAGA To Hand Trump A Censorship Machine
At the exact moment when Donald Trump and his MAGA allies are actively dismantling democratic institutions and working to silence critics, a group of Democratic Senators have decided to collaborate…
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Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
AOC: I want to live in an America that guarantees healthcare to every person. I want to live in an America that has a living wage for every person I want to live in an America where you have free speech to express yourself and not be afraid of being put on a list or deported.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
This is a rare thing - where journalists publicly engage and explain (and revise) their coverage about the illegality of Trump administration actions. From @sarahjeong.bsky.social www.theverge.com/policy/63339...
To declare unilaterally that this very flagrantly illegal thing was illegal didn’t sit right with my gut, especially if SCOTUS weighed in relatively quickly to say that everything was fine. It was a news article, rather than an analysis where we could quote constitutional law experts saying this was illegal; it was right after it happened, rather than after a district court judge ruled that it was illegal. And, on top of everything else, the headline was already pretty long.

But the readers who objected to our headline have a point. My gut gave me a good reality check about the world we live in, but it failed to write a good headline. Although these are unprecedented times, a news headline should not quietly aid the erosion of our social consensus about the law, even if we ourselves are struggling to do our jobs because of that erosion. And even if the Supreme Court holds itself to be the arbiter of what is law, there is only so far that we, as Americans, can sit back and accept it — at the very least, we must flatly reject the idea that it can make Trump a king.

The headline I should have written is this:

Trump fires Democratic FTC commissioners in violation of SCOTUS precedent
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Melissa Ryan @melissaryan.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
One of the best assessments of where we are vs. where we need to be and how to get there that I've seen yet. theconnector.substack.com/p/welcome-to...
theconnector.substack.com
Welcome to Movement Time
The big question: Are we still on Earth One, where American representative democracy can still function? Or are we on Earth Two, where the Constitution no longer applies?
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Brian Hsi @brianhsi.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
At what point do we start referring to this administration for what it is? Unfit. Unhinged. Un-American
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Daniel Roberts @drobertsimg.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
2024 was the worst year of my life. My little brother died and then the election happened. But I think it’s helping me weather 2025. I’m learning the importance of making room for joy in my life even when things are awful. I hope you all find time for joy, too. So, here’s a 🧵 of joyous things:
youtu.be
カワウソに巨大サーモンあげたら喜びすぎて大変なことに Otters Super Excited for Huge Salmon
YouTube video by KOTSUMET
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Brian Hsi @brianhsi.bsky.social · 16/03/2025
This is nuts….like a dystopian Groundhog Day
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Daniel Drezner @dandrezner.bsky.social · 16/03/2025
Folks are gonna dunk on the Trump voter and I get that but don’t sleep on the more disturbing part of the story:
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Karen Attiah @karenattiah.bsky.social · 15/03/2025
This is where I am at-- ultimately a humanist/internationalist. But caring about humans regardless of creed, sex/gender orientation, color, national origin, religion and race is radical, apparently.
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Brian Hsi @brianhsi.bsky.social · 15/03/2025
“We must see things not for what we wish they were, or for what they used to be, but for what they are.”
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Brian Hsi @brianhsi.bsky.social · 15/03/2025
“Identify the victims of Trumpism, give them a voice, and get their stories told.”
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Crystal Fincher @finchfrii.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
Damning article: "KUOW spoke with six other women with ties to the mayor’s office who supported Monisha Harrell’s account of a boys’ club environment where women were condescended to and shut out of important meetings, even though their roles would suggest they be included."
kuow.org
Monisha Harrell breaks silence on her uncle – and former boss – Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell
Monisha Harrell describes the mayor’s office as being a dog-eat-dog environment where white male advisors vied for power and influence. She said her experience, as a high-level woman ignored by the ma...
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Indivisible ❌👑 @indivisible.org · 14/03/2025
In a total betrayal of their constituents and our democracy, 10 Democrats just voted with Senate Republicans to give Trump and Musk a blank check to continue their coup. @schumer.senate.gov led Democrats to this total surrender. We need strong leadership, not cowards who cave at any GOP pressure.
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Brian Hsi @brianhsi.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
Completely agree. Midterms and other elections won’t matter much if the rule of law, programs, services, etc. are dismantled or in tatters.
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WIRED @wired.com · 13/03/2025
Elon Musk’s loyalists at DOGE have infiltrated dozens of federal agencies, pushed out tens of thousands of workers, and siphoned millions of people’s most sensitive data. The next step: Unleash the AI. THE INSIDE STORY:
wired.com
Inside Elon Musk’s ‘Digital Coup’
Musk’s loyalists at DOGE have infiltrated dozens of federal agencies, pushed out tens of thousands of workers, and siphoned millions of people’s most sensitive data. The next step: Unleash the AI.
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Brian Hsi @brianhsi.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
“No one should resign themselves to this government’s malicious plans. But to keep our country, you must abandon old delusions.”
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Jeff Yang @originalsp.in · 06/03/2025
The rhetoric (and reality) is that Trump is a facist. The rhetoric (and reality) is that he’s disassembling democracy. Dems can’t expect to say these things and then treat him any way like a “normal president.” He wants to act like a king; the way to depose a king is by getting out the pitchforks.
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