iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 28/09/2026

One thing the last few years should have taught us is how useless any box-office rankings are if they don’t account for inflation. Because when you do account for the value of money over time, ‘Gone With the Wind’ (1939) is #1 with over a *billion* more than ‘Endgame’ (#5).

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 26/09/2026

Heya, kinda off-topic, but I think “Disable new progress bar and controls” has been kinda broken for a while? Used to be YT would reliably load the old UI, but for weeks now it’s been getting harder to get the old UI at all (and when it does, reloading the page always changes it to the new one)

Screenshot of the old UI (complimentary)

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 26/09/2026

Watched ‘Togo’ (2019) last night. Excellent reenactment of an incredible story that’s almost entirely forgotten (as well as an important corrective to a popular misconception). Some janky effects and a tad schmaltzy, but Dafoe is excellent, the dogs are incredible, and the tension is real. 7/10

Movie poster for Disney’s ‘Togo’ (2019): “The untold true story”

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 24/09/2026

Man they sooooooooo edgy, I can see why everyone’s tripping over themselves to vote for them

Quote-tweet by Libertarian Party NH (@LPNH) saying, “We openly support the assassination of basically every elected Democrat in New Hampshire[.] But if you don't have the balls to do that then you should probably vote GOP”

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 22/09/2026

Think something got messed up in the update – “actions on reposts” notifications no longer show the post, which can’t be opened at all lol

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 31/08/2026

Seriously, uBO’s element picker tool is absolutely GOATed. Perfect for quickly de-cluttering websites you visit frequently.

Screenshot of uBlock Origin’s control panel with a red arrow pointing to the element picker tool

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 23/08/2026

Holy shit. A friend sent me this whilst I was out walking the dog and I thought it had to be satire. Incredibly, it’s real. If not for how famously imbecilic every single person in Trump’s orbit is, I’d have to assume any demand this stupid was meant to tank the talks on purpose.

Xitter tweet by Don Winslow (@donwinslow):

“"President Trump demands Canada change its French language, Quebec culture and Canadian identity as a condition for reversing tariffs. This is no longer about a trade deal-it is about a takeover of Canada's sovereignty and identity."”

[Embedded video of Canadian Prime Minister Carney at a press conference]

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 12/08/2026

#Fallout4 TIL that having Danse at settlement after completing Blind Betrayal turns that settlement hostile to the BoS, and vice-versa. I learned this when a BoS vertibird randomly flew too close to my settlement … which is defended by multiple missile turrets. On the upside, free lawn decoration.

Screenshot of a crashed and burning Brotherhood of Steel vertibird in the sparsely wooded hilly landscape next to the Red Rocket Truck Stop, with the Concord water tower in the background.

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 11/08/2026

Honestly I can’t explain why rulings like this are dangerous any better than @danbongard.bsky.social did here:

Bluesky reply by Dan Bongard (@danbongard.bsky.social): “I'm sure a lot of people here approve of this, but they'll like it a lot less after Reed O'Connor uses it as precedent for "de-wokifying" Bluesky.”

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 01/08/2026

Me when I sign into a couple Google accounts on a new app or device

Screenshot of my Mozilla Thunderbird desktop email client, where the unified inbox says it has 30 new emails (literally)

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 27/07/2026

John Oliver is a righteous gem. (cc @masnick.com)

Another screenshot of tonight’s episode of ‘Last Week Tonight with John Oliver’, where the corner image is a collage of various “Buc-off”-stamped clothes and other items currently on sale on “Last Week Tonight’s Buc-off Shop” at boc-off.com

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 25/07/2026

Obama’s been out of office for over a decade and Republicans *still* haven’t gotten over the fact they once had a Black president

Tweet by Republicans (@Republicans) on Xitter that just says “Barack *Hussein* Obama”, because they thought there was a chance you might have forgotten they’re pathetic racists for a minute

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 25/07/2026

@soitis.dev Heya, starting today I’ve been having a hard time getting “Disable new progress bar and controls” to work. Some videos open with the old, smaller controls, other videos with the new, larger controls, and reloading the page no longer brings back to the older controls like it used to.

Screenshot of a YouTube video with the stupidly big new progress bar & controls

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 20/07/2026

Lol. Good. Also good is how The Guardian pulls no punches in its treatment of the dead racist troll, in sharp contrast to the kid-gloves treatment much of the US corporate press gave him.

Excerpt from ‘The Guardian’:

“Kirk, a far-right political figure who served as a sort of Pied Piper for young Republicans through his Turning Point USA foundation, was shot dead in September last year. He was known for his racist and bigoted views, using his podcast to claim that ‘prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people’ and speculating: ‘If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like: “Boy, I hope he’s qualified.”’”

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 09/07/2026

This is all so stupid and pointless. Forcing websites to scramble to comply with ill-conceived laws that fail to solve a problem that doesn’t actually exist, pushed by grandstanding politicians who don’t care and a media that doesn’t inform, in doing so harming the rights and privacy of *all* users.

Screenshot from Bluesky blog “Our Approach to Age Assurance”:

“Update, September 26, 2025: Ohio has a law similar to South Dakota and Wyoming regulations, so we'll be implementing the same solution in Ohio, effective September 29th.

“Update December 8, 2025: Virginia's age assurance law takes effect on January 1, 2026. We are making an update to comply and will not allow users in Virginia who are under 16 years old.

“Update December 16, 2025: We have made an update to comply with Tennessee's age assurance law and will not allow users in Tennessee who are under 18 years old.

“Update May 7, 2026: We have made an update to comply with Brazil's age assurance law and will restrict access to certain content and features for users in Brazil under the age of 18.

“Update July 8, 2026: We have made an update to comply with Texas's age assurance law and will restrict access to certain content and features for users in Texas under the age of 18.”

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 03/07/2026

Here, sweetie, it’s the attention you craved. Now shoo on back to the nazi site you feel so much more comfortable on.

Four-panel comic by Smooth Dunk (@smoothdunk2.bsky.social):

First two panels are titled “Journalist Visits Twitter”

Panel 1: Journalist is skipping happily through Twitter. Behind them, two people shout “Black people suck!” and “Gay people suck!”

Panel 2: Journalist continues to skip. Two more people shout “Trans people suck!” and “Immigrants suck!”

The second two panels are titled “Journalist Visits Bluesky”

Panel 3: Journalist skips into Bluesky and someone immediately shouts “YOU suck!”

Panel 4: Journalist is crouched on the floor, absolutely devastated. In the foreground is a piece of paper that reads “Today, I went to hell”

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 03/07/2026

The three largest protests in US history have been the No Kings events under Trump’s second term, all within the last year (plus a few days). The 4th largest protest was the Women’s March, literally set on Trump’s inauguration in 2017. The 5th largest protest – April 2025, also against Trump.

Screenshot of Wikipedia article “List of protests and demonstrations in the United States by size”

#1 – March 2026 No Kings protests – 8,000,000 attendance – Second presidency of Donald Trump, democratic backsliding, deployment of federal forces in the United States, Operation Metro Surge, killings of Renee Good, Keith Porter, and Alex Pretti, and the 2026 Iran war – Widely regarded as the largest single-day protest in U.S. history […]

#2 – October 2025 No Kings protests – 6,000,000–7,000,000 attendance – Second presidency of Donald Trump, democratic backsliding, deployment of federal forces in the United States

#3 – June 2025 No Kings protests – ~5,000,000 attendance – Second presidency of Donald Trump, DOGE, increasing ICE presence

#4 – 2017 Women's March – 3,300,000–4,600,000 attendance – Feminism

#5 – Hands Off protests – 250,000–5,000,000 attendance – Second presidency of Donald Trump, political corruption, DOGE

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 02/07/2026

Noted crowd-size fetishist has the sads. Sad! I like the bit where after demanding his people take down photos showing how empty the event was, he then ran to his personal social media site to lie that nuh-uh, people totally were there, they were just out of frame.

Screencap of an excerpt from the quoted article:

“After seeing the image, the president became "enraged," and White House officials removed it from their social media posts, sources told the outlet. Trump later wrote on Truth Social that the crowd had been "packed to the brim" with "at least 45,000 people."”

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 24/06/2026

Apparently Popehat/@kenwhite.bsky.social has started posting on Threads. No mention of his Bsky suspension, tho.

Screenshot of Ken “Popehat” White’s Threads timeline, with a post from five hours ago about today’s hike whilst on vacation in England, a post yesterday that simply reads “Scrying”, and the last post before that dating back to May.

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 22/06/2026

These seem to be his last posts (except for replies to others and a few reposts), and I’m really not seeing what’s ban-worthy here.

Deck.blue screencap of 3 posts by Popehat (@kenwhite.bsky.social): One about his vacation in London, one where he mocks US leaders for threatening to kill negotiators, and an out-of-context reply. None appear to violate any rules.

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 17/06/2026

Could use fewer condescending posts implying anyone not who’s fawning over the latest sports event is somehow defective. We get it, you like thing. Good for you! Now please understand it’s equally okay for people *not* to like thing. You’re even allowed *not* to be an ass towards them. I promise.

Anonymized Bluesky post:

“I'm not mad that you don't like the World Cup.

“I'm honestly just sad for you.

“It's like you're saying you've never understood the point of music or you think art is a waste of time.”

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 15/06/2026

Vive le Québec humide

Weather website screencap: “Humidity: 100%”

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 09/06/2026

@soitis.dev Heya, another li’l request: Would it be possible to restore video numbers in playlist pages, which YT has apparently just removed? Until yesterday there were numbers where the rest squiggly line is (first pic). Oddly, the small playlist boxes still have video numbers (second pic).

Screenshot of a YouTube playlist page, with a red squiggly line badly drawn where video numbers once existed and now don’t

Screenshot of a playlist box that appears next to a video, with video numbers visible

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 05/06/2026

THE CONSPIRACY THICKENS

Screencap of Mike’s post with an arrow pointing to the reply counter, which reads “6”

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 01/06/2026

It’s bad enough that countries are going all-in on banning minors from social media; news outlets reporting it could at least mention how these bans are ineffective at best and harmful at worst. Anything less is just propaganda for the “we should do something, and this is something!” crowd.

Excerpt from The Guardian article “The world wants to ban children from social media, but there will be grave consequences for us all”:

“While social media bans may seem like a prudent measure to protect children, they are not only ineffective, they endanger both children and adults. There is little evidence that social media is driving any type of widespread mental health crisis in children. Studies have repeatedly shown the opposite. Removing anonymity from the web, which will inevitably happen when tech companies are required to identify and ban children, allows for easier government tracking and censorship of journalists, activists and whistleblowers, who rely on online anonymity.

And while some claim the laws would curb big tech’s power, only the largest tech companies have the resources to shoulder the extensive costs of age verification systems. Non-profit and indie platforms could be forced to close, consolidating big tech’s power further. Mass surveillance systems, once constructed, could also be easily leveraged by governments and bad actors.”

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 30/05/2026

Judging from the replies and engagement numbers I deduce that the Washington Post’s latest adventure in podcasting is going very well

Bluesky post by Make It Make Sense‬ (@themimsshow.bsky.social‬): “What people get WRONG about Christian nationalism”

[Post included a video of a dude in a suit and glasses in front of a mic. The post was published 5 hours previously and has 2 replies, 1 repost, and 0 likes.]

Replies by Cody‬ (@codyjohnston.bsky.social‬): “This is a clip of someone saying several times that they don't even know what Christian nationalism means and the host doesn't bother offering a definition. Is the thing "people get WRONG" just that you specifically don't know what it means?”

“Your shit sucks, guys. Sucks real bad.”

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 25/05/2026

“Now, boys, you’re fixin’ to let those teenage hormones get ya into a world o’ trouble.”

Garth McCann (Michael Caine) in ‘Secondhand Lions’ (2003), dressed like a ’50s Texas rancher and holding a shotgun in the doorway of a diner

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 22/05/2026

Lol. Lmao, even. Tough shit for Chud the Builder and every racist who poured money into his now-useless bail fund.

Tweet by Jared Holt (@jaredlholt) on May 21, 2026: “Update in the Dalton Eatherly (‘Chud the Builder’) case: investigator say he lied about key details in what happened, which was captured on surveillance camera, and the court said he cannot use the money he fundraised from fellow online racists to bail out”

Embedded link headline: “UPDATE: Courthouse shooter bond reset at $1 million, detectives find body armor, tick…”, with a photo of a racist wannabe-murderer looking very sad in court

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 17/05/2026

Good going, Maine. Way to choose the guy who first said he was too dumb to realize he’d worn a Nazi tattoo for 17 years, then it turned out he was just *pretending* to be that dumb and he’s actually a liar. Way to give the GOP the perfect excuse to sidestep accusations over their own nazi problems.

Tweet by Andrew Kaczynski (@KFILE) on May 16, 2026:

“Platner suggests to NYT he only learned of Nazi-connotations of his tattoo after campaign started.

“I spoke in October to an acquaintance of Platner from more than a decade ago who said Platner spoke about his tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol. A second person told me that they learned of the tattoo years ago from the same person.

“I also reviewed a text chain between the acquaintance and another person discussing Platner’s Nazi-like tattoo several months ago, before the story became public - seemingly before he learned of it.”

[Attached screenshot of the NYT interview in question, where Platner claims he got his Nazi tattoo whilst serving in the Marines, wore it for 17 years supposedly without incident, and then only realized its significance during the campaign when the “establishment” dropped “opposition research” exposing it, at which point he had it covered up]

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 12/05/2026

(cc @techconnectify.bsky.social) Finally, a car that’s even more economical than an EV. Brakes might wear out a bit fast tho.

xkcd single-panel comic: A car salesman describes a car to another person.

Salesman: “You won’t have to worry about gas prices OR electricity prices with our new pullback drive model.

“At the factory, we put the car on the ground and tow it all the way backward until it starts clicking.

“To drive forward, you just release the brake and it goes.”

Comic alt/hover text: “How does the spring not run out almost immediately?” “We pull it back REALLY far.”

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 11/05/2026

Congratulations to @stevevladeck.bsky.social on his surprise adoption

Screenshot of this night’s episode of ‘Last Week Tonight with John Oliver’, where John (a white man in a suit with short hair and dark-rimmed glasses) gestures to a picture of Steve Vladeck (also a white man in a suit with short hair and dark-rimmed glasses). The subtitles read, “>>Exactly. My son is right.”

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 09/05/2026

I like how the NYT column about how Democrats should abandon climate change is illustrated with a cartoon where someone literally lets the planet fall to its doom. Which, I guess, is framed as the goal here. Very on the nose.

New York Times guest essay on May 9, 2026: “Forget Climate Change. Democrats Need to Talk About Other Issues.”

Illustration is a four-panel comic: A pair of hands holds up a smiling planet Earth; then the hands let it go, and Earth falls with a terrified expression until it disappears from view.

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 06/05/2026

When the timeline calls your bullshit

Screenshot of my Bluesky Home feed with two posts appearing back to back.

The older post (bottom) is by Robert Reich, linking to a New Republic report that the FBI has launched a probe into the reporter who covered Kash Patel’s excessive drinking. Pictured is Kash Patel, looking like a wide-eyed dope in a tuxedo.

The newer post (top) is by The Atlantic, reporting that “multiple people in Patel’s orbit” say he “distributed ‘Ka$h’-branded bottles of bourbon to bureau staff and civilians”. Pictured is a bottle of liquor with “KASH PATEL: FBI DIRECTOR” stenciled on it.

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 02/05/2026

Wonder who wins in a Normal Dude Competition between Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson and Ben “I went to Home Depot and bought a wood” Shapiro

Screenshot of Ben Shapiro standing in a Home Depot parking lot holding a single plank of wood in a tiny plastic bag in one hand and the receipt in the other hand like a very normal human boy

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 09/04/2026

Who managed to walk to the store halfway across town to drop off an Amazon return before realizing he’d forgotten the package at home?

Image of Ash Ketchum from ‘Pokémon’, posing like a shameful dweeb with a caption that reads “This fuckin’ guy…”

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 02/04/2026

Remind me to come back and write a joke about how I’m 17% aligned with techbros later

Certificate of Completion:
Am I a Tech Bro?

NOT A TECH BRO

with a score of 17% agreement with tech bro ideas

amIaTechBro.com

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 30/03/2026

Stephen Miller is such a stupid fucking dork. Not just evil, but apparently incapable of understanding that sending masked gov’t thugs to assault protestors and kidnap people in their homes would VERY OBVIOUSLY turn the public against ICE. Also, “vanquish them by force of arms”? D-O-R-K.

The most damaging episodes were the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, which Miller was at the center of.

During his 10am calls with immigration leaders, Miller was demanding agents be sent out to areas in Minneapolis where DHS knew there was a heavy presence of protesters to 'force confrontations,' two DHS senior sources told the Daily Mail.

One official noted that Miller repeatedly urged agents to engage protesters so the administration could win the 'PR battle.'

'Miller said on these calls, "If we let them have the perception that their protesting is successful, then the administration will never successfully prosecute interior operations to remove aliens,"' a DHS source recalled to the Daily Mail.

'So we need to engage these protesters, and we need to vanquish them by force of arms. They need to be vanquished by any force necessary,' Miller reportedly told immigration leaders, according to the source.

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 15/03/2026

… Well. Explains that. Lol. Edited an older post, and then tried to post a new one. Apparently that’s all it takes!

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 04/03/2026

@soitis.dev Since yesterday I’ve noticed the videos in my Notifications drop-down are all out of chronological order. I cannot believe how stupid this change is. Please tell me this is something you can fix? 🙏

Screenshot of my YouTube Notifications drop-down menu, where videos are presented in seemingly random order:

6 hours ago
1 day ago
1 hour ago
5 hours ago
22 hours ago
Etc.

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 27/02/2026

Matt Yglesias is the living personification of this meme. Pure mulch for brains.

Bluesky post by Amy Ash (@lolennui.bsky.social):

“(me making fun of your crop rotation idea and thereby holding our people back another 5000 years) jeff thinks the beans have to take turns lmao”

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 19/02/2026

Also, as a fun aside, the Wikipedia article for “Email” cites your rebuttal as evidence that the guy did not invent or popularize email

Screenshot of Wikipedia’s article about “Email”, where the Terminology section includes a line that “EMAIL was used by CompuServe starting in April 1981, which popularized the term”, with two citations – one of which, “[13]”, is circled

Screenshot of the same article’s references, where citation 13 links to Mike Masnick’s post, “Laying Out All The Evidence: Shiva Ayyadurai Did Not Invent Email”

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 10/02/2026

I do, and shall ever continue to, contain multitudes

Screencap of Clearsky showing which blocklists I’m included in, featuring both “Crypto Quarantine” (for users who allegedly *like* crypto/AI/etc. too much) and “Techno-Pessimists” (for users who allegedly *dislike* crypto/AI/etc. too much)

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 03/02/2026

@kenwhite.bsky.social I don’t know for a fact that this reply to your post on The UnPopulist is by Greg Lukianoff … but man does it give me the same vibe of “wtf is this terrible reasoning” that I’ve gotten the last couple times I saw his writing on the subject.

Screenshot:

—

I’m generally a big Ken White fan, and I agree with the bulk of this essay, but I have never cared for his “first speaker” framework; it struck me as both too cumbersome and too convenient when I first read it, and it still does. Even so, I agree with the baseline view that we need to avoid the trap of protecting anyone’s expression at the expense of someone else’s, especially when there is a clear imbalance of “speech power.” But he really lost me here:

“Or take Amy Wax, a loathsome bigot who thinks America would be better if my children—born in Asia, American citizens since we adopted them as infants—weren’t here. FIRE believes—correctly—that when Wax’s university seeks to discipline her for speech, it must obey its own rules and carefully consider the values of academic freedom and due process. FIRE also says, again correctly, that as far as it is concerned, ‘her viewpoint is beside the point.’ But then it goes further and offers her a platform to promote her views. That’s a ‘free speech culture’ ethos move.

“‘Free speech culture’ becomes bad and unserious when it starts telling us that speech is morally neutral, that we should not make value judgments against it, and that there is no moral component to promoting it. I am committed to the defense of the legal right to speak, but the defense of speech does not require us to refrain from speaking frankly about moral truths. Giving Wax a platform to be a bigot is morally distinguishable from saying she should be free to be a bigot. ‘The only immoral thing you can say is that someone else’s speech is immoral’ is not an ethos worthy of respect.”

Screenshot, cont’d:

—

I think you’ve overstated and villainized FIRE’s decision to “platform”—a term I despise because it tends to carry its own payload of coded messaging—Prof. Wax and her “loathsome” views (which you quite clearly take personally). In your view, Wax must be condemned and should be identified as immoral by anyone who is not the government or is bound by the First Amendment. Sorry, but the problem with that viewpoint is that it itself is just another version of the “free speech culture ethos.” In your case, you’ve decided her views are bad, and that it’s immoral to hold them. I tend to agree with you, but not entirely. What I don’t agree with is that there is any affirmative duty to refuse to allow those views to be aired in a setting like FIRE’s online faculty webinar. The only “test” you’ve listed here is that, according to your moral compass, Wax’s views are so bold that treating her free speech rights as morally neutral is “unserious.” No slippery slope there.

Nowhere has FIRE asserted that Prof. Wax’s views are morally neutral. What they have asserted is that her right to speak them and defend them is. That they have “platformed” her is their absolute right, just as it is everyone else’s right to refuse to read or listen to it, to attempt to vilify it, to doxx it, etc. You can decide that their choice represents a moral failing of such magnitude that you’ll never give them another dime. By all means, call out the immorality! But it makes their framework “unserious” in your view only because they’ve chosen to treat her differently than you would. Frankly, I think their framework is more rigorous than your own: it does not depend on a definition of morality.

If this is the reason that “young people” think the First Amendment is a bad deal, then we have taught them poorly indeed. Morality, and its relative seriousness, will change over time. Free speech should not.

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 10/01/2026

@jaz.sh Just a heads up, I think your stats site may be down? I’m getting a “NetworkError when attempting to fetch resource” message with no stats showing

Jaz’s Bluesky stats site with nothing working and a “Error: NetworkError when attempting to fetch resource” message

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Joé McKen @joemcken.net · 06/01/2026

A baker’s dozen hundred

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