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Mary Berk

@mberk.bsky.social
782 followers 527 following 2K posts

Ethics. Political theory. Product management. Cat pics. Privacy. Consultant. I teach stuff. I got a lot of problems with you people. My life is measured in 2FA tokens.

PostsRepliesMedia
Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 5h
The hit to revenue will be massive, even if temporary. There has to be a bigger reason than competitive advantage, right? These companies optimize every click + second spent. For ex, I was once blocked from launching a privacy feature b/c in testing it was .01% $$$ negative. It was too big a hit.
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 6h
This from companies who micro optimize every click, know the power of dark patterns to drive users away from revenue-limiting choices. There’s a bigger picture that eludes me. What is it? (@jmiers230.bsky.social do you know what’s up?)
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 6h
I’m mystified that social media companies have been advocating for this. For one, not everyone has a passport, so they automatically lose 40% of uses. Then a substantial portion just won’t go through the passport or face rec flow, so they lose an incremental or just a flat 30%.
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 6h
It never ceases to amaze me that someone will schedule a meeting when my calendar is marked OOO, then be surprised and upset that I don’t attend, and didn’t even know it was happening.
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 7h
I am so willing to put in the work to protect my privacy or customize my tech setup, and I find Apple notifications inscrutable. I can’t do anything with them. I don’t understand that they mean, permit, don’t permit, or the consequences of dis/allowing.
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Elizabeth Anne, PhD @lacksauthority.bsky.social · 7h
never the wrong time for this classic
Screenshot of a tweet by @RobbtKraft reading “scientist: "does everyone here know what Watson and Crick discovered?" 
me from back of room: "Rosalind Franklin's notes"”
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 8h
I was sooo excited every time a new website was registered. There used to be a weekly log of new domains registered. Then I’d go to those domains every week in anticipation that one of them would have launched a website. We were so into the possibilities.
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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 10h
journalist request: Are you, like me, ever annoyed that your work accounts are the one place you can't use AI to automate precisely the kind of tedious, soul-sucking tasks where it could be of the most help? If so, I would like to hear from you. (DMs open)
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 9h
The responses are amazing. I feel seen.
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lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 10h
Would you like to set up a passkey? You should set up a passkey. What is a passkey? Just set up a passkey already
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
My kingdom for a new Jim Carrey movie
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Eric Goldman @ericgoldman.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
It is mind-boggling to me that anyone can see the rampant lawless abuses taking place with Schedule A/SAD Scheme litigation & still think we should give copyright owners an expedited way to block entire websites by bending due process www.eff.org/deeplinks/20... & www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...
eff.org
Congress Has Another Site-Blocking Bill, And This One Targets VPNs
Congress is taking another run at site-blocking, a deeply flawed concept that would undermine basic internet infrastructure. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) has introduced the American Copyright Protection A...
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
An incredibly thoughtful and clear essay from OpenAI’s recently resigned Safety team lead. “…frontier labs need to run like nuclear-power plants…with layers of redundancy and careful, time-consuming planning, so that the occasional and inevitable human error does not open a door to disaster.”
theatlantic.com
I Quit OpenAI Because Its Culture Is Broken
The industry’s approach to safety will guarantee more failures unless something changes.
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Enjoy
A window INTO the ladies room, from the outside, overlooking toilet stalls.
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
My friend just rode with an Uber driver who does this as his day job — building up at-risk kids and giving them life skills — and it gives me joy to know such people exist. catholiccourier.com/articles/st-...
catholiccourier.com
St. Michael’s Woodshop in Rochester builds skills, character - Catholic Courier
St. Michael’s Woodshop, a Rochester-based ministry, helps young city residents enhance both their woodworking and character-building skills.
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
If you don’t want your body nudified, just don’t have one.
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Stepford Wife, v0
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hammancheez but spooky @hammancheez.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Yall wanna see a 2 hour old highland cow
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Oh good, we’re asking whether Nixon really did anything wrong now. “Geoff Shepard, a former Nixon aide turned Watergate historian and revisionist, recently gave a two-hour presentation at Justice Department headquarters that laid out his theory that the deep state took Nixon down.” Gift link
wsj.com
Exclusive | Decades After Watergate, Justice Department Reviews Whether Nixon Got a Raw Deal
A revisionist historian went to the DOJ headquarters to present his case that the former president and his associates weren’t treated fairly.
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Ryan Schwartz @ryanschwartz.tv · 01/10/2026
I didn’t have a chance to file a review, but Wednesday's #Scrubs premiere (ABC, 8/7c) is as strong an episode of a sitcom revival as I've ever seen.
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Blessed are the peacemakers, I mean warfighters
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Day 3: little feral kitty ate a treat from my hand.
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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Time for this classic again.
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
The bit I can’t live with is that, to perform this consulting job, I have to log into my personal accounts (and personal collateral), and I will not compromise my personal account passwords or work product for other companies. Which means handicapping my ability to do the job.
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
How do y’all handle a company-provided device notifying you that your keystrokes and screen will be monitored?
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
And to know what Anthropic is worried about, have a look at their general rules / acceptable content production categories. Dang.
I tried but I cannot copy / paste the categories without including 100000s of words of description. Examples include "do not compromise computer or network systems," and "do not compromise privacy or identity rights," and "do not generate sexually explicit content."
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Claude TOS: "When using our products...to provide advice, recommendations...directly affecting individuals or consumers, a qualified professional in that field must review the content...You...organization are responsible for the accuracy and appropriateness of that info." Do as I say, not as I do.
anthropic.com
Usage Policy
Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that's working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Not really an expert here, but I’d imagine that he’s doing legal CYA for the company. Disclose risks to investors —> harder to hold a company liable. And given the length, he must be mitigating a pretty big perceived risk.
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Dumped tea with creamer all over my sofa this morning. But the little feral ate out of my hand again. So let’s call this day a win.
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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 29/09/2026
It was Katie Wells, a Groundwork fellow, who co-authored the report describing how the apps nurses use to get shiftwork collude with data-brokers to find out how much money nurses owe on their credit cards, so they can pay the most desperate nurses lower wages: pluralistic.net/2024/12/18/l...
pluralistic.net
Pluralistic: Nurses whose shitty boss is a shitty app (17 Dec 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
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Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
New from 404 Media: a surveillance company is telling cops it wants to add facial recognition to Flock cameras. Flock doesn't do face rec, but that doesn't stop other companies doing it. "This is the way the world is going, the way the world will have to be" www.404media.co/surveillance...
404media.co
Surveillance Company Tells Cops It Wants to Add Facial Recognition to Flock Cameras
A surveillance company wants to "close the gap" that Flock won't do, by pitching facial recognition on its cameras.
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
TLDR none of the California gubernatorial candidates have a remotely plausible plan to manage healthcare costs into the future. The Dem candidate is in the pocket of the big entities, and the R candidate is banking on “cost transparency” to help anybody. Please give me a serious candidate who cares
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Attention: “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” is now on Apple TV, and it’s very cute.
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I’m in a similar situation in this one (hired by CEO), but indications are they’re trying to go around me. All this because they don’t want to deal with their insecurity and learn from someone they’re threatened by.
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
The one thing I’ve never mastered is how to handle it. What is your approach?
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
That control impetus comes wrapped in contempt and disdain, which of course is code for “I knew it, I’m as good as you, so my feeling of insecurity must be something you’ve caused, so I must crush you.” At this point in my life I can pick it up super fast. (And I hate it).
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Are you magnets for their control fetishes like I am? I marvel at it. I’m about as agreeable and collaborative as they come.
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Quite often, indeed!
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I’m going to offer “find the toxic man in your team” as a service. Put us together for a 2-week project, and if a man is wildly insecure or had a god complex or has manipulative, back-stabby tendencies, they will emerge with violence from my mere presence.
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
“We’ve built a broken product, but rest assured, we can sell you another product that fixes it!”
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Dr Katie Twomey @k2mey.eurosky.social · 28/09/2026
This is quite cool. My university is the first organisation in the world to force Microsoft to allow us to turn off copilot summaries in Word 365, after a backlash against it from staff (including, very vocally, me). That cannot have been easy for our heroic IT people so hats very much off to them!
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
The little feral I’ve been feeding took a churu out of my hand today, so I’ll be riding high on that for a little bit.
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
This whole account brings hope. Caring for street dogs. Something about saving animals who’s otherwise have no hope feeds my soul bsky.app/profile/nial...
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
This is hard!
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Nice! I am also gluten free (and generally grain free, but do love me a street taco). It can be a lot.
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I mean tortillas. Dangit I’m hungry now.
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Wait I thought it would be pretty easy - so much corn! What am I missing? Is it the flour burritos?
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Maybe one of the weirdest moments was the group nodding in agreement to the idea that marijuana should be illegal, followed by someone saying “and alcohol is even worse and should be handled the same,” followed by more nods. Every single person had a drink in their hand.
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I found it dense but beautiful. It propelled me to the end. Maybe not the joy you’re looking for, but it filled me with a hope to see such depth, thoughtfulness, groundedness on something I have craved conversation on.
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Mary Berk @mberk.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I had (a lovely) dinner last night with a table full of physicians, and it was really interesting and weird to hear how they talk about patients, their field, and general approach to health issues.
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