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Fritz Swanson

@fritzswanson.bsky.social
649 followers 986 following 1.9K posts

Co-Founder The Index, and The Printing Stewards. Writer, printer, teacher. Dad. fritzswanson.com President of printingstewards.org Publisher and Printer of theindexpress.com Publisher of themanchestermirror.com @manchestermirror.bsky.social

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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 18h
What is Musk’s legal exposure regarding anti-bigamy laws? When do his actions create de facto marriages? His whole personal life is structured abuse that society needs to stop. I think family structure can and should be fluid and chosen. But still, abuse is abuse.
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William Gibson @greatdismal.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Ahem…
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 19h
Look forward to the most active lame duck session in a century. All of it horrible.
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 21h
And the murderer kicks back with Trump and his family, playing FIFA on his blood-soaked PlayStation.
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pixelatedboat aka “mr bluesky” @pixelatedboat.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Sad news everyone. Our beloved friend the computer has now become a hated enemy
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Morgan Johnson @poormojo.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Gas is $6.40 here
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Strong CableTown energy.
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Memento (artemis) Morty 🌙 @mementomorty.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
me tomorrow
COMING UP

GOBLIN TIME

image shows a man in a dracula costume with teeth out
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Re-Encounter the ancient internet by asking Google: “Can you talk like poor mojo’s giant squid?” (Because they stole it all to train Gemini, but whatever). It’s ruefully fun.
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Whitney Curry Wimbish @whitneycwimbish.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Just a massive human trafficking ring, forcing vulnerable people from place to place, ruining their lives, all to make a buck
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
No victory.
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I hope Michiganders elect Abdul El-Sayed to the Senate. He would be good for Michigan and good for the United States. robertreich.substack.com/p/senator-…
robertreich.substack.com
Senator Abdul El-Sayed
He would be good for Michigan and good for the United States
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Abdul El-Sayed @abdulelsayed.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
🍏Toxins out of our food 🧑‍🌾Farmers first, not chemical companies ❌Break up corporate concentration in agriculture 💧Clean water, guaranteed 🍽️School meals that nourish 💸Public dollars should buy public health ⚕️Food as medicine ⚖️Accountability for polluters, not immunity
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Ricky Davila @therickydavila.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
This is what the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool looks like today after a $17M deliberate fuck up and the orange felon won’t stop until he destroys everything. Makes me sick to my stomach every day.
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I have students write personal essays about whatever’s happened in the last two weeks. I’ve assigned this paper for 20+ years. They always complain that “my life is so boring” and often I just chuckle and encourage them. But yesterday, while editing one of their essays in class, I burst into tears.
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Jasmine @feistybunnygirl.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Remember when they kicked an entire girl’s softball team out of the championship game because a player posted a private Snapchat where she was flipping off the camera? It’s funny how they never worry about ruining girl’s futures.
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Abdul El-Sayed @abdulelsayed.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
When I say we desperately need a Democratic doctor in the US Senate I mean it.
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Ten years ago I led my grad students at Wolverine Press in a letter for letter and line for line resetting of the G gathering of the 1604 Hamlet, based on the Folger library copy. We did it using Caslon 471, because the Elizabethan Pica Roman is lost. These are images of the project.
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
The bulk of the people near power get their power from people with more power, which makes them deferential to power, and credulous of power. It’s a cultural problem. And it’s why they get duped by stupid shit. This is why wealth concentration is so dangerous. Small groups are easy to dupe.
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ADHD Memes @adhdforreal.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Chris Hansen’s reaction to PRIMETIME proves the thesis of the movie.
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Trump wants to be sued for his propaganda ad so he can get organic reach.
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Language affects us. What we read and hear and say matters. We need to treat language much more seriously. AI risk just clarifies the deeper issue.
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Matt Ford @mford.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Ezra Klein asked Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about AI making kids worse at math and reading. Huang’s reply: “Does it matter?” Then he said he doesn’t know his own address or phone number. “We’re going to lose some fine intellectual dexterity.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/o...
So the message of this research out of China, where you were seeing a lot of kids using A.I. to help them, was that when they were using the A.I., they were getting things done faster. But it turned out that the skills they were learning were not holding, that their actual personal performance, at least in the way we traditionally measure it, was degrading.

What do you think when you hear that?

The last part — I completely agree. Try to get a kid to do long division right now. The multiplication table is starting to be forgotten. Doing square roots, my goodness. Basic math is being forgotten. Does it matter?

That’s my question for you.

Yeah. I don’t think it does. I don’t think it does.

But there must be some set of skills that matter.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But maybe not those. We’re going to discover new ones. Just maybe not those.

There are a lot of skills that don’t matter. My first confession, I actually don’t know my address.And I ——

I don’t really believe that to be true.

It’s completely true. Janine will tell you and Lori will tell you.

One day I had to pump gas — it was a few years ago. They needed my ZIP code, and I panicked. I didn’t know my ZIP code. I don’t know my telephone number. I forget these things. I can live with it.

But let me take the other side because I don’t want to fall into a thing where, because some skills can be safely offloaded ——

Yeah.

I also can’t get anywhere without a mapping system now. Never could, frankly. But I’m a big reader. And one of the skills I really value, one of the capacities I have that I really value is an attention span formed on physical books.

You’re a big reader. I’ve read about the kind of reading you do. And there is, prior to A.I., a lot of concern and noticing among college professors and others that the way people use the internet has probably shortened attention spans.
Some skills can be safely given away. Others are valuable. They are capacities that are needed for that flexibility, for that creative thinking, for that focus. It can’t be the case that everything can be traded off.Some skills can be safely given away. Others are valuable. They are capacities that are needed for that flexibility, for that creative thinking, for that focus. It can’t be the case that everything can be traded off.

Yeah. Well, I think that we’re going to lose some finer intellectual dexterity, but we’re going to be better systems thinkers.

Today’s engineers are far better systems thinkers than I was when I graduated from school. But I was a much better transistor thinker.

What do you mean by systems thinker?

They think of large systems. Today’s computers have trillions, hundreds of trillions of transistors in them. When I first graduated from school, the first chip I worked on had 200 transistors. I knew every one of them by name. No engineer does that today. Most engineers now work well above the transistor, well above the functionality, and they’re cobbling things together to do things.

So you need to think much more about systems and interactions of systems. So some of the lower-level knowledge is gone.
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The AI industry that is begging for government regulation (on exactly their terms) so they can settle their prisoner’s dilemma insisted that we elect President Trump (who refuses to regulate them) because Democrats suggested a hint of regulation. We got Iranwargasinflationclimatercrisis as a bonus.
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Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 24/09/2026
Just when I think I can’t hate OpenAI and Sam Altman any more, new details come out about how ChatGPT helped a shooter plan one of the worst mass shootings in Canadian history in Tumbler Ridge, BC. OpenAI made an explicit decision not to report the user to authorities.
motherjones.com
ChatGPT helped the Tumbler Ridge school shooter focus on guns, tactics, and terror, our investigation reveals
OpenAI’s chatbot fed the shooter’s violent fantasies and planning up to the massacre.
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 24/09/2026
Murphy: "On April 30 -- a Thursday -- Reynolds makes an $8m donation. On Saturday, they have lunch w/POTUS & tell him they want a change in rules for flavored vapes. The president calls FDA commissioner & HHS sec, & on Tuesday new guidance is issued paving way to the sale of flavored vapes ... "
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The Great Pumpkin Papers 🎃🎃🎃 @professormusgrave.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
inflicting pain is not the same as winning, which is why there's only one Vietnam
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
One of the deepest American flaws is the twin beliefs that violence is always the most sensible and direct approach, followed by always being baffled when violence has negative and complicate consequences. I think it's older than Iraq. Guns in movies did this. A movie gun is just an off switch.
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
If you write a thought down, it becomes a claim. If it’s public, you need to defend it. If you defend it, it turns from thought to identity. Social media has invited billions of people to make trillions of public claims that would have otherwise never been made. Society is thus more brittle.
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
NONE OF THIS MAKES ANY SENSE. I’m descended from Walter Fitzgibbons, a Norman knight whose line ultimately establishes Clan Hamilton. There is no ethnicity. The Normans are Vikings who invaded France, then England. Then a lot settled in the lowlands of Scotland.
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Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
travel ball needs to be banned, the only organized youth sports allowed should be free and available to everyone
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 22/09/2026
this is a genuinely crazy story
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
AI isn’t “thinking”. It’s running through all permutations and exploring all limits at once. It’s just No Face.
static.klipy.com
No Face from Spirited Away: Thanksgiving Feast
ALT: No Face from Spirited Away: Thanksgiving Feast
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
“We hacked the FBI” has strong Alaric I vibes.
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Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
a lot of dodge charger repossessions in the coming months
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
The thread of political change is hard to track. But the cornerstone of conservatism is sexual conservatism. Patriarchal dominance is key. Yet modern Republican politics, especially Gen X, is focused on personal libertarianism. The Venn Diagram is "I can do anything I want so long as you can't."
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Even though the old media system was better in some respects to today's algo driven social media hellscape, it doesn't mean the old system was good. But still I would trade the robots for bad human editors every day of the week. The bad human editors were at least constrained by their humanity.
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
““When so many people hesitate to have children,” Sussman writes, “what is lost is not simply future taxpayers or consumers. We miss out on the rich relationships that bond us across generations, on the flood of love and tenderness that caring for children, or simply being around them”
apple.news
What’s Really Behind the Baby Bust? — The New Yorker
People say they want more children than they’re having. Is modern life stopping them—or have our ideas about a good life changed?
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J. Mijin Cha @jmijin.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
I get that people are afraid dems will lose but what use are politicians that wont stand up for marginalized people _specifically in this moment_. The scale of what needs to be done requires people with courage not just another spineless politicians. We have hundreds of those right now. To what use?
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Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com · 20/09/2026
I don't think we disdain the center-right enough. First, they rode nativist populist tigers to power to get their tax cuts and deregulation; Then, they lost control of their own parties to those tigers; Now, they sit in lucrative jobs as columnists writing about how it's all the left's fault.
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Abdul El-Sayed @abdulelsayed.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
In Michigan, we're having to skimp on staples at the grocery store like meat and peanut butter just so we can fill up our gas tank for $5 a gallon and pay our outrageous monopoly utility bills.
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Corporations aren’t aligned. Forget AI.
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
That gigantic bag is emblematic of Trump’s unsustainable approach to labor. Undeveloped work environments demand single workers to exploit themselves to the point of exhaustion. Developed work environments share the load, but demand collaboration and consensus. The Unitary Executive is nonsense.
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I know this is an asshole guy. But I am trying to remove productivity arguments from all my persuasions. And I want everyone to try the same. No more “dollar value” or “labor value” arguments. How about human things are good for human reasons. Being healthy makes me feel good, and I am mortal.
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
There's a package on this porch? Why the fuck not?
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 18/09/2026
Trump: "I could've banned fishing. The power of this office is crazy. I could've banned fishing. I think I'm gonna do that."
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Ron Filipkowski @ronfilipkowski.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Time for some positive news …
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Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app · 18/09/2026
i'm not over Alito saying we shouldn't count ballots that are mailed on or before Election Day but arrive shortly afterwards bc they can “radically flip” the “apparent outcome” cannot stress enough that, until all ballots are counted, there's no outcome to flip! ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/alito...
ballsandstrikes.org
A Brief History of Sam Alito’s Delusional Obsession With Voter Fraud
His conduct in several recent cases suggests that Alito is deep in the right-wing conspiracy theory weeds.
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Fritz Swanson @fritzswanson.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
This is the republican party. Too distracted by the immediate opportunity for theft to even follow through on the boring work of holding on to power.
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