iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

cshirky.bsky.social @cshirky.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

Lights are on over here, but I'm certainly crying

Reposted by @cshirky.bsky.social

Anil Dash @anildash.com · 15/01/2026

Today, @wikipedia.org turns 25 years old. It's never been more important — or under more attack from authoritarians. Here's what to know about how we got here, and what we can do to push for its future. There's no better example of the web we make together. www.anildash.com/2026/01/15/w...

anildash.com

Wikipedia at 25: What the web can be - Anil Dash

A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

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cshirky.bsky.social @cshirky.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

My piece about AI in the classroom in The Chronicle of Higher Ed has been out for a couple of weeks, but it blew up today after Renic quoted it. Many commenters are ragging on AI-using students, but a lot of the problembis cognitive bias that makes AI use _feel_ like learning.

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cshirky.bsky.social @cshirky.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

Yep. It was bleak writing it too.

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Brad Johnson @climatebrad.hillheat.com · 03/02/2025

FEED for DC resistance to the Musk coup: #forkoff! With @getfree-mvmt.bsky.social and more

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cshirky.bsky.social @cshirky.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

I'm talking about the threatened TikTok ban on TED Explains today at 1pm EST: www.youtube.com/live/fy1PbnW...

youtube.com

YouTube

Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

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Your Internet Friend Tom Tomorrow @tomtomorrow.bsky.social · 04/01/2025

This is, or should be, a big deal -- Ann Telnaes, an absolute legend, quitting WaPo due to censorship of a cartoon criticizing billionaires anntelnaes.substack.com/p/why-im-qui...

anntelnaes.substack.com

Why I'm quitting the Washington Post

Democracy can't function without a free press

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Richard Reisman @rreisman.bsky.social · 08/12/2024

A fuller explanation of the principle is here - it is a feed selection problem within a platform, not a problem of who is on the platform - and that is Bluesky's reason for being: www.techpolicy.press/protecting-f...

techpolicy.press

Protecting Freedom of Thought by Deciding What Information You Consume | TechPolicy.Press

Cutting through the dilemma over content moderation requires rethinking the social component of online discourse, not just the technology, says Richard Reisman.

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cshirky.bsky.social @cshirky.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian academic and poet killed a year ago, has a posthumous book of poetry coming out on Tuesday. Pre-orders have it at #47 on Amazon. Not 47th most popular book of poetry, or even literature. 47th most popular book, full stop. www.amazon.com/If-Must-Die-...

amazon.com

If I Must Die: Poetry and Prose

Amazon.com: If I Must Die: Poetry and Prose eBook : Alareer, Refaat, Aljamal, Yousef M.: Tienda Kindle

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Joshua Erlich @joshuaerlich.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

there's a whole class of journalists who people thought were on the left but have always been Like This. Fang, Taibbi, Cenk, Blumenthal, a whole bunch of Young Turks types, and, of course, Greenwald they didn't get awful. they've always been.

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cshirky.bsky.social @cshirky.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

Yeah, and there was an October rush, before the election, caused by the "block has a plain English meaning that X is not longer going to abide by", as a precursor to this wave.

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cshirky.bsky.social @cshirky.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

Casey, I agree about the goal of seeking good user experience and basic content moderation, and I think the migration is good, but I also think that is not simply recapitulating Twitter, in scale or design. Demand for better moderation just is demand for political difference in platform choices.

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Omar Wasow @owasow.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

Shirky does say X “has become, in internet parlance, a Nazi bar.” My primary concern, though, is not so much the bar’s patrons as the bar’s *owner* www.nytimes.com/2024/12/07/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | Bluesky Is Different From X. For Now. (Gift Article)

Users are looking for a more curated experience on a platform that is not constantly trying to get them to interact with brands.

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cshirky.bsky.social @cshirky.bsky.social · 23/04/2024

sounds like you need to create a burner account and follow that person again!

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cshirky.bsky.social @cshirky.bsky.social · 02/01/2024

Relativizing away the specific moral and political quandaries using Substack entails is *exactly* what you are doing. No need for "this might read like..." And the fact that social media platforms 'inevitably entail' hard choices does not require the specific choice to be profiting from Nazis.

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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 28/11/2023

I’m ready to organize my fellow Substack publishers and demand answers from leadership. You want in? Email me: MKwrites4000@proton.me

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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 21/11/2023

A lot of people are responding to the Truth Social and Twitter lawsuits with "can't wait for discovery" and stuff that's almost celebratory. But as someone who worked at Gawker Media in 2016, I can assure you that being right doesn't mean your media outlet will be allowed to survive.

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Kurt Andersen @kurtandersen.bsky.social · 16/11/2023

Remarkable couple of lines in this Semafor piece about the 2024 presidential election. www.semafor.com/article/11/1...

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Dave Weigel @daveweigel.bsky.social · 02/11/2023

Still remarkable that you might get a five-candidate ballot next year with no candidate under age 70. Biden (D): 81 Trump (R): 78 Kennedy (I): 70 West (I): 71 Manchin (No Labels): 77

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cshirky.bsky.social @cshirky.bsky.social · 31/10/2023

Article II, with first-past-the-post voting and Presidential rather than Parliamentary design, creates a two-party system. Between 1796 and now, no 3rd party candidate has ever won, or come close. To change that, you'd need ranked choice voting, which requires constitutional, not electoral, change

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nme @theunknownnme.bsky.social · 30/10/2023

By voting 3rd party, you’re throwing away your vote. The electoral college prevents a successful 3rd party. If that’s ok with you go for it. But own the consequences.

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cshirky.bsky.social @cshirky.bsky.social · 31/10/2023

Nope. Voting third party in those states also does nothing to affect the outcome of the election. The design of the system is 'lesser of two evils', and the way to change that is to amend the Constitution, not to complain about it every four years.

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cshirky.bsky.social @cshirky.bsky.social · 31/10/2023

It's not a sham. It just represents aggregated group preferences, not individual ones.

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cshirky.bsky.social @cshirky.bsky.social · 30/10/2023

There is no such right, and has never been. People's policy preferences vary along dozens of axes. Given that there are only ever two viable candidates, it's not even mathematically possible to find a candidate that the represents your views.

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cshirky.bsky.social @cshirky.bsky.social · 30/10/2023

I'm not sure what the objection is? This is just a simple fact. The design of the Constitution makes us two-party country; there no way to use your vote to change that fact. So if you don't vote for Biden, you're voting for Trump. That statement is unpalatable, but it's not wrong.

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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 30/10/2023

Americans gunned down in public places? Can you even imagine such a bizarro world scenario?

I hope Admiral Kirby has an explanation ready if we end up with dead Americans in malls in Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Texas and Ohio where Muslims could suddenly show up and gun everyone down they see.

Or Engage in Knife attacks like we have seen in Great Britain and Europe.

This is very possible and very plausible.

I don't think the American people are going to be happy to discover that these enemies that are killing people in Israel and Europe are also here inside our population.

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cshirky.bsky.social @cshirky.bsky.social · 30/10/2023

99% Invisible has a fantastic episode about this 99percentinvisible.org/episode/on-a...

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cshirky.bsky.social @cshirky.bsky.social · 30/10/2023

Now Best Buy may have made entirely rational decisions to treat anyone in the appliance aisle as a potential shoplifter, and to minimize costs by keeping staff in short supply, but the net effect of those decisions is to make in-person shopping much worse than it used to be.

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cshirky.bsky.social @cshirky.bsky.social · 30/10/2023

Instead, I looked up the trimmer on Amazon, bought it, and it was delivered the next day. I completed this transaction *while I was walking up Broadway* and finished it before I got to my next meeting.

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cshirky.bsky.social @cshirky.bsky.social · 30/10/2023

I could have gone downstairs to a cashier and then found someone on the floor and then unlocked the trimmer and then bought it, but I was by then running late to my next meeting, so I had to leave. It would have taken me under 5 minutes to spend $100 there.

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cshirky.bsky.social @cshirky.bsky.social · 30/10/2023

And when I went to pick it up, I realized it was locked to the shelf. this was great for preventing it from getting stolen, but terrible from allowing customers to buy things. After roaming up and down the aisles a bit, I realized there was no one on the floor who could unlock it.

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cshirky.bsky.social @cshirky.bsky.social · 30/10/2023

I once needed a beard trimmer in a hurry (friends getting married the next day, me looking like Grizzly Adams), and walking from one meeting to another, I ducked into a Best Buy, and in less than 90 seconds I was just standing in front of exactly the trimmer I wanted. Score one for the street!

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cshirky.bsky.social @cshirky.bsky.social · 30/10/2023

As a New Yorker, let me just say that the misdiagnosis of the problem in this article is appalling, a short anecdote: www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/o...

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Brad Johnson @climatebrad.hillheat.com · 27/10/2023

"They absolutely want your extinction." Today, Elon Musk wildly increased his race-war rhetoric and promotion of white nationalism in a reply to a complaint by a white supremacist about the melting down of the Charlottesville Robert E Lee statue.

Elon Musk: "They absolutely want your extinction"

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