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Erin Kissane

@kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy
181 followers 6 following 216 posts

Doing uspol info mutual aid at Unbreaking.org. Squinting about knowledge and networks at wreckage/salvage. Previously: COVID Tracking Project + Knight Moz OpenNews + […] 🌉 bridged from ⁂ mas.to/@kissane, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact

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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 12/07/2026
Good morning from Kelpland. Perhaps you’d like to look at some beautiful seaweed and/or think about knowledge. www.wrecka.ge/holdfast-0-situating
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Reposted by Erin Kissane
Bonfire @bonfire.bonfire.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 01/07/2026
Bonfire Social 1.0.5 is out! 🔥 **Archipelago mode** means instead of open federation (connect to everyone, then play whack-a-mole blocking bad actors), you can now choose to **federate** _***only***_ **with a hand-picked allow-list of trusted people or servers**. Communities can link up into an […]
bonfire.cafe
Original post on bonfire.cafe
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 16/01/2026
At Unbreaking.org, we added dozens of events across four timelines this week and did a short briefing on Immigration events in the US along with smaller updates from our Data Security, Federal Workforce, and Medical Research teams: unbreaking.org/blog/this-week-at-un… #uspol
unbreaking.org
This week at Unbreaking, January 16 — Unbreaking
This week, we have a briefing on Immigration and quick updates from our Data Security, Federal Workforce, and Medical Research Funding teams.
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 27/12/2025
@vruba ~~ Ian Hodder’s hermeneutic spiral ~~
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 26/12/2025
I have been very hesitant to repost nice things about my own work but then this year happened and I got over it.
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 26/12/2025
RE: mas.to/@gleick/115779985970021187 Oh my god
mas.to
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Jason Santa Maria @jasonsantamaria.typo.social.ap.brid.gy · 25/12/2025
Gosh, there is just so much to love about a new essay from @kissane, even when it’s about so much heaviness like widespread memory leak. Erin is like a superfan for readers because she unpacks topics with such care and wit. This stuff seriously just rewires my brains […]
typo.social
Original post on typo.social
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 23/12/2025
Happy holidays, fediverse! I got you a megathrust earthquake, soil liquefaction, spine-tingling papers about the way our networks confound knowledge, and a PDF in a pear tree. It's my wrap on a year of trying to make sense of how we make sense of what's happening to us […]
mas.to
Original post on mas.to
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 24/11/2025
Why yes I am putting Mac System 7 style holiday lights on my computers and no one can stop me benkurtz.org/maclampsx.html
benkurtz.org
Ben Kurtz: MacLampsX
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 17/11/2025
Heads up that There Is No Antimemetics Division is out in revised and thoroughly superior new version, including an extremely good audio edition, just in time to ruin someone’s winter holidays.
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 15/11/2025
I need a linter that just removes commas I stick everywhere in informal writing but I need it at the level of my brain
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 14/11/2025
best three horror movies from the past 10 years, no torture porn, no hurting children, go
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 13/11/2025
RE: mas.to/@kissane/115532882511128403 Update! www.euractiv.com/news/international… (via @marthadark.bsky.social in the other place)
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Reposted by Erin Kissane
CelloMom On Cars @cellomomoncars.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/11/2025
The Tech Review article mentioned by @kissane is worth reading in its entirety: It outlines how many clickbait actors spread dangerous misinformation and fake news not so much out of malicious intent but entirely from a banal profit motive. (Of course there are propaganda actors too who use […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 12/11/2025
This thing that 404 is writing about in the US—the dehumanizing fake content created purely because Facebook pays people to make it? www.404media.co/ai-generated-videos… It has a direct precedent in the Myanmar genocide and has been widely […]
mas.to
Original post on mas.to
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 12/11/2025
The process of getting the right reading prescription and then training my eyes and brain to handle it has been so much wilder than I had expected, as someone who'd previously had extremely good eyesight. Wiiiiild.
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Doctora Malka Older @older.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
NEW EPISODE OUT TODAY! I talked to art historian and curator @brigittevdsande.bsky.social about war, art, fiction, disasters, imagination - join us: issues.org/not-now-but-...
issues.org
Not Now, But Soon: The Art of Portraying War
Brigitte van der Sande discusses how art humanizes the victims of war and spurs action, and how imagination can be a force for resistance.
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 11/11/2025
I had missed this whole thing, yikes yikes yikes. www.politico.eu/article/microsoft-d… h/t @janl
politico.eu
Microsoft didn’t cut services to International Criminal Court, its president says
Chief prosecutor’s email issues have spurred fears in Europe that Trump could trigger a “kill switch” through U.S. tech giants abroad.
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 11/11/2025
@bonfire is doing some of the most interesting work on the open social internet, and they're doing it in the most exhilarating ways. I am delighted to be even a little bit involved in the work they have planned: www.wrecka.ge/sparks-fly-up
wrecka.ge
Sparks fly up
Once you’ve seized the tools of political life to build communal power, it’s hard to forget what a hammer feels like in your hand.
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Reposted by Erin Kissane
Mick 🇨🇦 @mick.cosocial.ca.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2025
“People aren’t misguided to want shelter from surveillance and harassment, or to seek high-context, community-centric moderation; all echo-chamber punditry notwithstanding, those are necessary conditions when life online has such direct and dramatic effects on the character of our offline […]
cosocial.ca
Original post on cosocial.ca
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2025
I wrote about Bluesky’s moderation tensions and the White House’s threats and the critical need for open networks that can do broad connection and also care for communities at Tech Policy Press […]
mas.to
Original post on mas.to
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 11/10/2025
I still don’t know how I missed it last fall, but The Empusium is my favorite novel of the year by a mile. Stellar translation from Antonia Lloyd Jones. The critics who found it trivial are my enemies.
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2025
I think Mastodon's proposal for starter packs is a significant positive evolution of the way Bluesky rolled them out. I wound up on a bunch of packs there and it was…not a great thing for my specific brain and purpose. I do hope the people in Masto's comments saying […] [Original post on mas.to]
Firstly, it's important to us that users have control over whether they appear in Packs on Mastodon. Early design explorations with our concept of Packs led us to the following possibilities:

• Packs will become an extension of discovery. Users who wish to opt out entirely from Packs will be able to do so by disabling the existing setting, labelled "Feature profile and posts in discovery algorithms". This will signal that an account cannot be added to a Pack.
• Users will be notified when they are included in a Pack. Unlike on Bluesky, where users wishing to remove themselves from a Starter Pack must either report the Starter Pack, or block the user, users on Mastodon will have a more neutral mechanism to remove themselves from a Pack they do not wish to be part of. (note: we implemented something similar with the Quote Posts feature, where an original post can be removed from a quote post; this same idea would flow through to Packs).
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2025
It’s me, stumbling around the kitchen (my ghost install) trying to find the coffee (my ability to write words about networks in this wild year). Which is to say: Still here, still hammering away on a lot of things. Still don’t know what will happen! […]
mas.to
Original post on mas.to
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2025
Vital, highly condensed, very well prioritized stuff on why the open social web matters so much—and how it can help people do the necessary work of society in our very rough moment—from @ben at #fediforum. The keynote is being recorded and I'm so glad, because I will be recommending it widely.
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 24/06/2025
The new Brandee Younger album is so, so good. Life-sustaining vibes. brandeeyounger.lnk.to/GadaboutSeason
brandeeyounger.lnk.to
Brandee Younger - Gadabout Season
Listen to Gadabout Season by Brandee Younger.
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Bonfire @bonfire.indieweb.social.ap.brid.gy · 05/06/2025
🔥 Bonfire Social 1.0 release candidate has landed! Curious about what the fediverse could look like with real community control? Try out features like custom feeds, nested discussions, shared profiles, circles, and boundary-based permissions — then let us know what breaks or needs improvement […]
indieweb.social
Original post on indieweb.social
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 23/05/2025
(Unbreaking needs a Mastodon account…somewhere. We'll figure it out! So many things to figure out, but that's the work.)
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 23/05/2025
I don't think it's possible to be where we are in #uspol (and in the global authoritarian slide) without our information ecosystems being such a mess. There's a ton of work to do on the distribution side of the problem, but also on the info-making side: Even great newsrooms aren't built to make […]
mas.to
Original post on mas.to
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 23/05/2025
The day I most look forward to the whole year is the day the first Salmonberry bird/Swainson’s thrush arrives in our woods, and this year that day was today. No one’s recording gets them quite right, it’s the most beautiful sound in the world […]
mas.to
Original post on mas.to
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 17/05/2025
Do I know anyone here who knows a lot about deploying a Loomio instance and would be willing to talk to me about it?
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 11/05/2025
Anyone reading this yet? www.nybooks.com/articles/2025/05/29…
nybooks.com
One Brief Shining Moment | Adam Hochschild
In the sweltering days of early July 1913, more than 50,000 men gathered for a most unusual reunion. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 01/05/2025
Mergoat Magazine has turned out to be the (print) subscription of the year for me mergoat.com/mergoat-magazine Southern Appalachian vengeance horticulture with a side of queer & trans everything and p.s. abolish borders
mergoat.com
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 29/04/2025
New at wreckage/salvage: Vernacular institutions, part one. New project. Old projects. Lots of projects. Bruegel? Bruegel. The struggle with email this month has been so absurd and I hope this makes it to your inboxes if you've signed up. www.wrecka.ge/the-work-at-hand
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 25/04/2025
I will be talking soooo much more about this in the coming weeks, but the collective knowledge-building mutual aid project I've been working on with friends and fellow travelers is starting to emerge into the world, and this is where to sign up if you want notifications. Boop […]
mas.to
Original post on mas.to
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 08/03/2025
Today is exactly five years since we opened up the Covid Tracking Project and I think my body can tell.
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 08/03/2025
I guess the main theme in my last decade or so of work-life has been that the process of building a solid understanding of the big grim facts necessary to provide distilled, solid information about difficult things is exhausting and kind of damaging, but that the end-use value of that distilled […]
mas.to
Original post on mas.to
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Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 03/03/2025
Duckworth N CLOTURE FAILS, CONGRESSIONAL SPORTS BAN WILL NOT HAPPEN. Last few votes rolling in.
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 03/03/2025
I saw a particularly beautiful newt on my morning walk today and I had a deeply revivifying conversation and I am going to put the day in the plus column.
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 03/03/2025
I will just put it out into the universe that I would sure love to get ghost-comped into someone's Politico Pro account if you happen to have a login lying around 🫥
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 01/03/2025
the destruction of 18F is a wrecking ball to the real and meaningful efforts—by some of the best and sharpest people in US tech—to make government work *for people*. such a kick to the chest.
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myrmepropagandist @futurebird.sauropods.win.ap.brid.gy · 22/02/2025
Things have been so much better since they started congestion pricing and I can't help but think the attempts to break it are just... petty. Anyways there is a rally @3 in NYC times square. Gotta get my wingtips on and catch the bus down there.
A poster I found on "streetsblog" about the "Rally for congestion pricing" if features a map of lower manhattan with the location, 47th and Broadway highlighted. 

There are some icons to represent the subway, walking and bikes. 

"Meet at stairs 47th and Broadway"

Saturday 3pm Feb. 22

We will march to union square

Stand up to trump.

Can't believe we have to do this again.
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 20/02/2025
I saw someone expressing very understandable frustration this morning about not seeing any headlines about a Trump admin EO (executive order) that was posted late last night, and I think this is maybe a good way to explain in real time how an EO becomes A News here. I’m not going to get into […]
mas.to
Original post on mas.to
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 18/02/2025
I’m going to say this once: My life and my body and my work have been designated as “political” by people in my country who want people like me quiet, subservient, or gone. This goes double for Black, immigrant, and trans folks. I don’t post news, but I am not going to CW the “uspol” of living […]
mas.to
Original post on mas.to
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 18/02/2025
Ethan Marcotte, who is one of the most principled and thoughtful people I have ever known and also a dear friend, has resigned from his job at 18F after being asked to meet with shadowy gov-dismantlers. The whole post is worth reading. ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/leaving-18f
ethanmarcotte.com
Moving on from 18F. — ethanmarcotte.com
I had a wonderful job, until I didn’t. This is about what happened—and what is happening.
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 15/02/2025
@aworkinglibrary always comes through. Le Guin + Seeing Like a State + Mandy’s own orienteering == ways to move in uncertain and unstable moments. aworkinglibrary.com/writing/make-li…
aworkinglibrary.com
Make life possible
Five principles for embracing uncertainty.
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 13/02/2025
If you and/or your company/nonprofit/whatever have a bank account in the US, this would be a very good thing to try to read and act on in short order. Henry Farrell is the person I trust most in the world to understand and explain the ways the dull boring mechanics of financial systems can […]
mas.to
Original post on mas.to
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 13/02/2025
[Know someone in Washington State who might support a better privacy law?] Now is the moment to get them behind it: wa-privacy.net/take-action-peoples-… see also pnw.zone/@waprivacy/113986440115936…
wa-privacy.net
TAKE ACTION: Tell your legislators to pass the People’s Privacy Act, HB 1671
<p>Now&#8217;s a crucial time to tell your legislators to pass the People&#8217;s Privacy Act.  Here&#8217;s how to do it via email, phone, or the web form on the legislature&#8217;s site.</p>
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Erin Kissane @kissane.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 12/02/2025
Reposting bc @boby_biq either found or made a gif of the *exact moment* I was thinking of when I wrote it Give me the Avasarala interface you cowards, I yelled into my desk drawer erinkissane.com/against-entropy
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