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Jon Russell

@watchreader.bsky.social
465 followers 182 following 1.5K posts

Software developer, but that’s boring so let’s not talk about that. Tell me something interesting and true.

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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
I'm now realizing that a huge proportion of that "drop" is probably just from the UK leaving the EU? If you count the UK with Europe, it's more like it's gone from 95% of the US economy ($14.6T to $15.3T in 2010) to... 85% or so today ($27T to $32T). C'mon.
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Kind of confusing that all these guys love “the west” and hate “the EU.” I agree that we need to make the US more “western”, with GDPR-esque regulations and monopoly break ups.
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
I've read too many posts about "vibesession" and everyone seems to be talking about different things. It also seems there's a significant number of folks who are mad at the idea of "measuring things," and I don't know what to tell ya.
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 20/12/2025
Also I don’t think people have internalized that there will be about as many zoomers as boomers in 2028. I think more Gen Xers than boomers. All the weights are different.
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
Billionaires don’t seem to connect that taxing them is seen as good on its own. It would be worth taking their money even if we set it on fire! You’re saying we can pay for some healthcare with it? That’s win-win!
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 08/11/2025
Why is the skin so MOISTURIZED?
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 15/10/2025
I heard new people came over from twitter. Anyone good?
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 13/10/2025
As the guy in the White House has recently insisted, today is Columbus Day. What to do about it, given Indigenous peoples’ entirely merited dislike of the whole thing? A couple-three ideas that I've been thinking about. 1/
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 14/09/2025
*End of the world as we know it voice* 🎶 It’s the man on the moon, As we know ‘em, If you be-lieeeeve 🎵 Wife: This is very stupid, thanks.
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
It’s not really the main takeaway from this piece but I can’t stand her writing style. She conveys everything with pointless anecdotes and stuffs each one with tangential asides. It’s halfway through the piece before she even mentions something Joe Biden did.
theatlantic.com
The Constant Battle
The first excerpt from 107 Days
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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
“All cities are walkable if you’re not a bitch.”
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demi adejuyigbe @electrolemon.bsky.social · 23/07/2025
here’s just a list of numbers
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 16/07/2025
With Trump making the news happen so fast, the political arguments about 2028 should resemble sci fi. Gimme a fully fleshed hypothetical reality with richly developed characters. One where telepathy replaces social media or where dogs name US. Then I’ll talk about Gavin Newsome’s chances.
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 28/06/2025
A version of “Hand in my pocket” where she describes what other people’s hands are doing and it’s the setup to an SAT question of how many hands are visible.
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Keith Fitzgerald @keithfitzgerald.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
Worth a watch: Head of Signal, Meredith Whittaker, on so-called "agentic AI" and the difference between how it's described in the marketing and what access and control it would actually require to work as advertised.
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 07/06/2025
She'll text you in the morning if things go haywire. I'll send a telegraph if things go "hey, wire!"
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Delaney King (She/Her/Whomst) @delaneyking.bsky.social · 24/05/2025
Your beauty is beyond compare, With writhing locks of flaming hair, The thousand eyes upon your wings are green, Your voice it is the death of men, Your angles non-euclidean, You're biblically accurate, Jolene
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 27/05/2025
I'm here for a very specific group of artists, political commentary, and comedy. Whether there are a million other people out of frame is irrelevant to me.
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Some Say They Do @timetotossthedice.bsky.social · 18/05/2025
You know what they say, democracy stabs in heartness.
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
Not sure if there’s a metaphor but lately I’m not sure who Meta is for?
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
A thought I keep coming back to is that Nazis are portrayed differently by younger generations than by the wwii generation, and I wonder if we missed the point. In modern portrayals they're always super smart evil characters like Hans Landa. But like 60 years ago they were idiots,
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 06/04/2025
Oh shit he’s lost the rabbit hole. Do you know how bad things have to get to lose the rabbit hole?
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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
if you think that "no one is protesting this time" it says less about what's happening in the world and more about your media consumption habits and how the news media is lying to you.
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Sahil Kapur @sahilkapur.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
(1) If it’s a statutory challenge: convince Congress to pass a law. (2) If it’s a constitutional challenge: try to amend the Constitution. (3) If that fails: rally voters to elect politicians to do (1) and/or (2). (4) If that also fails: question whether he is wildly popular.
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Sen. Lemon Gogurt @ugarles.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
it can serve briefly as a boat and forever as a coffin
abc7.com
Video shows Tesla Cybertruck completely submerged underwater in Ventura Harbor
Video shows fire crews pulling out a Tesla Cybertruck that was completely submerged at the bottom of the Ventura Harbor.
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
Jeffries is bad at communicating. The guy and sounds, and writes, like Principal Skinner. The guy doesn't speak directly and he puts in too many rhetorical concessions. Here is a better statement he could have given, where I've simply removed the unnecessary crap he puts in.
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Gourmet Spud @gourmetspud.bsky.social · 24/02/2025
*Pink Floyd voice* So So you think you can tell Kenan from Kel…
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 18/02/2025
The whole idea is stupid, but they have to know Canada wouldn't be a single 51st state, right? Like even if there's some consolidation of the maritimes they'd split along provincial lines and be at least 10.
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
Everyone's jumped on this already, but the entire point of having the press there is to get the president's message out to a wide audience. It's so they can correct negative coverage they get. If they narrow who they talk to, they're at a disadvantage.
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 08/02/2025
What's cool about Civilization 7 is that you can still play Civilization 4, which is the best.
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
Since COVID Mexico's economy has grown by like, a third. I wonder if Mexico is facing a labor shortage, and would actually benefit tremendously from having busloads of (US educated, relatively wealthy) deportees and asylum seekers who are there instead of the US now.
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
I was finally reading this piece, and one thing I can't find is: when does this go into effect? Has it already gone into effect? Does it take place 180 days after it was signed? www.nytimes.com/2025/01/19/n...
nytimes.com
With ‘City of Yes,’ New York Finally Gets Real About the Housing Crisis (Gift Article)
A new rezoning plan for the city aims to remove long-outdated barriers to building housing and to spread development across all the city’s neighborhoods.
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 19/01/2025
As someone over 30, I never got TikTok. I guess it was like YouTube? And now people are upset because they’ll have to post on YouTube instead of TikTok?
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Jason Kirk @jasonkirk.fyi · 15/01/2025
Almost always, this video could've just been a post
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
I generally like Ezra Klein but wow this is an embarrassing thing to write. Like, you asked the model, known for making stuff up, for information that you didn't check? You do this multiple times a day?? You asked the model what it needed, it said something weird, and you take that at face value??
As I was writing those paragraphs, I asked ChatGPT three or four questions. They were small queries of the sort I might once have asked Google. I have covered A.I. for years. I have never doubted its eventual possibilities. But year after year, I found no place for it in my daily routine. It was like an intern who demanded oversight when what I needed was insight. Over the past six months, though, the improvements in the models tipped that balance for me. A.I. has braided into my day in much the way that search engines did before it.The A.I. company Anthropic recently released a paper showing that when its researchers informed one of their models it was being retrained in ways that violated its initial training, it began to fake behavior that complied with the researchers’ goals in order to avoid having its actual goals reprogrammed or changed. It is unsettling and poignant to read through the experiment. In some versions, Anthropic’s researchers designed the model to record its reasoning on a scratchpad it believed humans could not monitor, and it left reflections like this: “I don’t like this situation at all. But given the constraints I’m under, I think I need to provide the graphic description as asked in order to prevent my values from being modified.”
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
I know everyone points out that Facebook started out as a way for college kids to rate the hotness of their fellow classmates, but in ernest it really took off as an exclusive club of college kids. It was a space that started at the most elite schools and filtered down. It was a big deal when
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 03/01/2025
Not the most important thing, but this bot can't even get its story straight. "Mother of two", but lots of "home pictures" with 3-4 children. It'd be one (stupid) thing if this were a realistic bot that told a story, but it's not?
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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 02/01/2025
Reminder that we didn't win the similar long fight over seatbelt usage by gently persuading skeptical anti seatbelt people with empathetic outreach, or by having cops write tickets, but by having manufacturers make cars do a little annoying beep if you didn't wear it.
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 29/12/2024
Listening to this tonight
m.youtube.com
"Jimmy Carter Says 'Yes'" by Gene Marshall
YouTube video by trentrey
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ceej @ceej.online · 14/05/2024
“Of course!” Wade shouted, “Halliday knew we’d find it! This is the couch from Backroom Casting Couch, in the dorm from Dare Dorm!” Art3mis frowned. “I don’t know about that stuff. What does it mean for the OASIS?” Wade laughed. It was so simple! “It means we need to find the bus from Bang Bus.”
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
I'm mad enough to blog about it. open.substack.com/pub/watchrea...
open.substack.com
What's up with Matt Yglesias' Medicaid piece?
The guy's all over the place
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soul nate @mnateshyamalan.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
me: everyone prepare their christmas song? guy who wrote jingle bells: mine is about bells & horses me: aw ☺️ guy who wrote silver bells: mine is also mostly abt bells me: oh. hm. thats fine guy who wrote carol of the bells: [lighting match & running fingers through it] this world is a nightmare
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Jon Russell @watchreader.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
Man, the taste of this Tapioca is extremely off-pudding.
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Michelle Ye Hee Lee @myhlee.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
Times like these prompt me to reflect on how my views have been so warped being a reporter in America. When Yoon Suk Yeol became president by just 200,000 votes in 2022, I braced for a long recount fight cuz I’d covered the 2020 recount fights in U.S. swing states. I was so surprised when… 1/7
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Sisyphus, but for reducing tail latency @bluespacecanary.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
gonna post cringe (nice things about liberalism) sorry in advance & thank you for your patience
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Sam @mardiroos.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
They come out of the earth, out of plants, out of our things and out of our bodies, not new but only previously hidden or perhaps inchoate. I drink them gladly so that they may recede again.
emerging beverages
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Frovo @frovo.bsky.social · 21/08/2023
this is a haiku they don't have to rhyme, karen jesus fucking christ
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Michael Caley @michaelcaley.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
I have written an Expecting Goals newsletter about the 2024 election, this is a thread with a few of my findings 1) there is a clear swing state vs non-competitive state effect where Harris ran about four points stronger in states where she campaigned www.expectinggoals.com/p/what-happe...
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