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Will Barton

@gulielmus.com
619 followers 350 following 436 posts

I suffer Computer for a living. Millennial elder, astro/photographer, coder. Former public servant. Critical theory politics grad student in another life. He/him. 🖖🏻

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Reposted by Will Barton
ProPublica @propublica.org · 26/09/2026
It was a rare federal dataset that captured human emotions. Consumers could have their complaints about American businesses published for all to see. For years, corporations have critiqued the system. Now the narratives are no longer being published.
propublica.org
The Federal Agency That’s Supposed to Protect Consumers Just Made Another Business-Friendly Move
Debt collection. Credit reporting. Payday loans. Consumer complaints to a federal database used to help reveal issues and bring accountability. Then the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau stopped pu...
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Chris Kluwe @chriswarcraft.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Everyone involved in this, including the Palantir employees who built the software and the executives that sold it, need to be tried for warcrimes
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Waldo Jaquith @waldo.net · 16/09/2026
Nearly all of whom would cheerfully have been paid $9.5 billion *to* work.
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Travis Brown @travisbrown.dev · 24/08/2026
Thinking about how lonely software development has become, and it’s partly AI, but it’s also the fact that so many software developers turned into mask-off fascists the minute they realized they could get away with it without harming their careers.
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Will Barton @gulielmus.com · 23/08/2026
In the burger joint blasting Toto’s Africa as loud as possible
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innes mck @innes.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
again i am just not that interested in debating whether human rights should theoretically extend to robots and ai when we currently don't even extend them to all humans
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lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 10/08/2026
thinking about what one trillion dollars of investment in clean energy would look like and getting so mad i need to lie down with the lights off
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8 Matts in a Duffel Bag @scratchbomb.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
i’m never gonna be able to fire a cruise missile yet the question of using my tax dollars for them has never been up for debate
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 10/07/2026
It’s been noted before, but it’s very instructive how often statements by comms people at tech companies read as threats.
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The Rude Pundit @rudepundit.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
The founder we should talk more about is Thomas Paine, who will fuck your shit up every time. Here he is in The Rights of Man just ripping into any ideas of "originalism" and that kind of garbage.
Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave, is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man; neither has any generation a property in the generations which are to follow. The parliament or the people of 1688, or of any other period, had no more right to dispose of the people of the present day, or to bind or to controul them in any shape whatever, than the parliament or the people of the present day have to dispose of, bind or controul those who are to live a hundred or a thousand years hence. Every generation is, and must be, competent to all the purposes which its occasions require. It is the living, and not the dead, that are to be accommodated.
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Will Barton @gulielmus.com · 30/06/2026
I am now more invested in your floor than I’ve ever been.
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Russ The Tedious Ghost @russ41.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
The World In Data graph of global deaths from famines with a marked and sustained drop in the range of the 1970s.Historical national accounts
estimates of the share of the world's
population living on less than $5 per
day, by region, 1820 to 2017
Intro to the Wikipedia page for USAID, with "Founded in 1961" circled.
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Chad Loder @chadloder.dev · 19/06/2026
The real dogshit in this whole story are the Free Software Foundation and OSI with their "no discrimination against fields of endeavor" stance on open source software licenses. They've been actively standing in the way of ethics clauses for years IMHO
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Katie Drummond @katie-drummond.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
NEW: Paramount refused to air a TV ad critical of its merger with WarnerBros. The ad was made by @freedom.press, to run during Trump's UFC event. It criticized the $111 billion merger as a threat to the First Amendment. The irony!
wired.com
Paramount Refused to Air an Ad Criticizing Its Merger With Warner Bros.
The commercial was submitted by the Freedom of the Press Foundation to run during Donald Trump’s UFC event. It criticized the $111 billion merger as a threat to the First Amendment.
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Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 13/06/2026
It can't be overstated how he really doesn't know how anything works but was mythologized as a supergenius engineer by a shitty press
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Mel Malus @applefarmer.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
OMG, this former bank employee is telling you now - DON'T DO THIS! There are insufficient laws on the books to protect you from turning your accounts over to AI, not to mention the horrible lack of privacy guarantees.
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Will Barton @gulielmus.com · 09/06/2026
Aw, I am so sorry ❤️‍🩹
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Will Barton @gulielmus.com · 08/05/2026
It is wild.
Legolas and Gimli meme mashed up the "After That It Gets Difficult" Kangaroo. Gimli: Never thought I'd die fighting side by side with a pope. Pope Leo: What about side by side with a friend? Kangaroom: Until the revolution. After that it gets difficult.
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Maia @maiamindel.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
one of the most insane aspects of all of this is that "a wide ranging government crackddown after a handful of newspaper cranks said insane things based on misunderstood cherrypicked papers" is considered illegitimate in every field of endeavor except this one
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 10/04/2026
Gotta say, it’s really affirming to see someone who covers wearables as their job point this out. www.theverge.com/column/90973...
It’s an attractive premise, and it has saved lives. But as I wrote in my CGM feature earlier this week, fulfilling this wearable vision is often harder than it seems and can come at a high personal cost. And this wearable promise is starting to shift. Over the last year or so, I’ve noticed a new cycle emerging. Tell people using wearables will help them take control of their health. To do that more effectively, collect even more specific and specialized data. To make sense of this massive amount of data, inject AI into the process. To justify adding AI, hop on wellness trends and frame this as a more personalized way to take control of their health.From there, the hype cycle evolves. To reinforce the previous feature cycle, reemphasize that wearable tech will not only help people take control of their health, it will help them live longer. To do that effectively, introduce new scores that predict lifespan and aging. To make sense of new scores, update AI bots to dispense generic health advice as a resource. To justify adding AI, remind them that this personalized experience holds the key to living a longer, healthier life.

Rinse and repeat with a new wellness trend.
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Will Barton @gulielmus.com · 07/04/2026
It's dangerous knowledge that all I need is a space program capable of launching a lunar flyby mission to experience an eclipse any time I want.
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 05/04/2026
We are so, so small. #Artemis
Looking through one of the four windows of the Orion spacecraft, a tiny crescent Earth is illuminated against the blackness of space and grows smaller as the crew journeys closer to the Moon. Part of the window edge is visible; the rest is darkness. [Alt-text slightly revised from ESA/NASA version]
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Will Barton @gulielmus.com · 03/04/2026
Look, it's all but four of us!
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Meredith Rawls @merrdiff.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
Stop what you're doing and look 🌍 The full globe? That is the NIGHT SIDE. I'm pretty sure I can see some satellites/debris glinting away on the periphery. Also the Aurora?! What a bonkers beautiful world that supports and holds everyone and everything you've ever known and loved, and so much more.
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Will Barton @gulielmus.com · 03/04/2026
I have been somewhat following the Claude Code leak stuff, and so much has already been said that I agree with but won't rehash. I'm just struck by the lack of self respect and pride in one's work it takes to produce something like this.
neuromatch.social
jonny (good kind) (@jonny@neuromatch.social)
- Claude code source "leaks" in a mapfile - people immediately use the code laundering machines to code launder the code laundering frontend - now many dubious open source-ish knockoffs in python and...
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Will Barton @gulielmus.com · 25/03/2026
Much of our current moment is because some people made Choices and then got big mad that they can’t police what others think about them as a result of those choices.
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Jacob Kramer-Duffield @jaykaydee.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
Robert E. Lee got his ass beat at Gettysburg by a professor of rhetoric and oratory from Bowdoin College and generations of reactionary fantasists have died mad about it.
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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
Absolutely not. If you are using AI to write you should 100% be ashamed. Shame is one of the last bulwarks against a total slop apocalypse. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/b...
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Will Barton @gulielmus.com · 20/03/2026
It always felt like the right ending, but I felt bad about EDI and the Geth. Maybe not as much now.
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Will Barton @gulielmus.com · 20/03/2026
Thinking a lot more fondly about the “destroy“ ending of Mass Effect 3 these days.
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Will Barton @gulielmus.com · 28/02/2026
CFBundleName in the app bundle's Info.plist would do it developer.apple.com/documentatio...
developer.apple.com
CFBundleName | Apple Developer Documentation
A user-visible short name for the bundle.
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Kelsey Hightower @kelseyhightower.com · 19/02/2026
I don't care about LLMs or AI. I care about people. AI is just a tool to me. Tools enable people to help or harm at a scale beyond their natural abilities. I care about how people treat each other using these tools.
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Will Barton @gulielmus.com · 15/02/2026
I recognize myself in this *so much*. I am also mourning the loss of a wider, open community that shares the joy from new discoveries, learnings, mistakes. The world of my profession feels smaller, less interesting, and more alienating.
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Simeon Schmauß @stim3on.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
This is a real timelapse video of the Moon transiting in front of the Earth. It was captured by the Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft in November 2022 while flying at it's furthest point from the Earth. The video covers about 3.75 hours of real time. 🔭🧪
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Kelsey Hightower @kelseyhightower.com · 01/02/2026
I'm still writing code the hard way. I'm slow. I like to think critically about every line of code and fiddle with variable names until everything looks right. I treat code as a liability and try to ship only what's necessary. It's hard to imagine writing code any other way.
JetBrains GoLand IDE showing sqlite3 bindings written in Go.
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John Skiles Skinner @skiles.blue · 30/12/2025
Here's a tragedy of DOGE that most people will never know about, even though it has big consequences: no one is left to coordinate the transition to memory safe systems code. 🧵
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Will Barton @gulielmus.com · 05/12/2025
@jacobharr.is Can you add me?
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Will Barton @gulielmus.com · 18/11/2025
I've been playing scrandle.com now for months, and it comes up every now and again and it is just one of the many things I cannot comprehend.
scrandle.com
Scrandle
The thrilling daily web game of food comparison. View exotic and delicious scran from around the world and guess which is superior, as adjudicated by social media and your peers.
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RandallMakArt🍉 @randallmakart.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
when will the lesson finally get learned? #cloudflare
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Will Barton @gulielmus.com · 16/11/2025
Totally innocent.
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Mrs. Detective PikaBOO, Esq. @clapifyoulikeme.favrd.social · 07/11/2025
I can’t believe Zohran is transing the trains already www.mta.info/article/f-m-...
F and M trains will swap routes between Manhattan and Queens starting in
December 2025
We're making this change to improve reliability. Here's what you need to know about how your trip may change.
New York City Transit
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Celeste Labedz @celestelabedz.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
In case anyone is wondering if Watson was really THAT bad, @lpachter.bsky.social compiled a list of quotes that are absolutely not for the faint of heart. liorpachter.wordpress.com/2018/05/18/j...
liorpachter.wordpress.com
James Watson in his own words
“Some anti-Semitism is justified” “Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you’re not going to hire them” “Japan should be bombed for d…
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Mara Wilson @marawilson.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
Every time I see a social media meme about being an introvert, which is at least once a week, I think about how the modern conception of introversion was popularized by a book by a woman who worked on Wall Street who felt that she was so different and special compared to her coked up male colleagues
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Will Barton @gulielmus.com · 30/10/2025
I am glad there was no visible weird shit on your brain and you get to go home. I'm sorry your brain is just *doing* weird shit.
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drewtoothpaste @drewtoothpaste.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
⚠️ Google has given you access to The Computer That Lies. ⚠️ You are now required to use The Computer That Lies.
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Will Barton @gulielmus.com · 17/10/2025
🍞
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The Cheese Goddess @thecheesegoddess.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
I don’t like talking to humans IRL, why would I want a computer talking to me? Dammit.
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Will Barton @gulielmus.com · 08/10/2025
"We obviously really care about rightsholders and about people" So obvious he has to say it explicitly, adding a reassuring "people" for good measure.
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Will Barton @gulielmus.com · 24/09/2025
Been a while since I posted #astrophotography: here's the Heart Nebula, one of my favorite parts of the night sky (I say that about a lot of the sky though) 60x180s exposures (3 hours) with a Ha/Hb/OIII narrowband filter, from Bortle-5 upstate New York. On AstroBin: app.astrobin.com/i/lll3xa?r=B
An emission nebula that is roughly heart-shaped against a backdrop of starts.
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