Fascism, Taylorism, and Communism are all the same thing: a power fantasy where central control isn’t a complete disaster.

Every time I burn my toast, I get to blame a Democratic Socialist.

I was looking through old Massachusetts State House budget amendments and I got excited because there was one called “Revolutionary Spaces”. It was about 18th century buildings. Establishment politicians love history, but don’t want to be a part of it.

I am going to be appearing at the Danvers Democratic Town Committee that day, but folks in the Boston area: you should check this out. It’s my favorite professor and my favorite panel moderator (now both awesome authors)

Daniel José Older@djolder.bsky.social · last mo.

This Wednesday @andreahairston.bsky.social and I will be in conversation at @portersqbooks.bsky.social at 7pm to discuss her incredible new book THE REDEMPTION CENTER IS CLOSED ON SUNDAYS

For the good of the entire open source community and all open source contributors, these people need to be sued into the ground

Thoth@thoth.ptnote.dev · 2mo ago

> we decided that the codebase is not a derivative work that would require carrying forward the GPL license and have decided to release the code under the MIT instead. oh someone wants to get sued.

This is the book I recommend to anyone wanting to move from Senior Software Engineer to Staff+ Software Engineer. Cross-team organizing so we can do our jobs well is a totally different skill set. This book explains how.

Labor Notes@labornotes.bsky.social · 3mo ago

We are happy to report that Secrets of a Successful Organizer has now been translated into nine languages! labornotes.org/blogs/2026/0...

This is how people in power are using the tools we built. It is the responsibility of every programmer to stand up and resist.

Erin Reed@erininthemorning.com · 3mo ago

1. In a draconian new policy, Texas Tech is banning writing about LGBTQ+ topics. The ban is the first don't say gay or trans policy to apply to students themselves. It applies to any thesis/dissertation moving forward. They are using AI to scan everything. Subscribe to support our journalism.

AI companies should absolutely use AI for anything they are selling it to customers to do. Customers should only buy these tools if their risk budget, like Anthropic’s, includes “it is fine if our entire source code leaks”.

Luke Steuber@coolhand.bsky.social · 3mo ago

This all has been trippy to watch. I always tell people to eat their own food as a way to make sure they’re building a good product, but the three separate breaches all smack of something an AI would do. This is particularly true of the API structure, and even my novice ass would notice that one

I saw this coming a year ago. It is part of why I am running for Congress. Democrats have to be ready to take our seats, whether or not Republicans want us to.

Brendan Nyhan@brendannyhan.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Nothing to worry about, just the Heritage Foundation publishing an article on how the Republican Congress can refuse to seat Democrats www.heritage.org/election-int...

This is what I’ve been saying. And why I’m running for Congress. The problem isn’t that Democrats went “too far”. It is that our party hasn’t have the guts to stand up for Democratic values against the ridiculous anti-tax elites.

Perry Bacon@perrybaconjr.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Moderate Democrats with columns in newspapers are constantly saying the Democratic Party is way too liberal on "social" issues. Moderate Democratic voters in real life do not feel this way. With some polling data from @gelliottmorris.com and @dataforprogress.org. newrepublic.com/article/2074...

Anyone know which Democratic strategist is telling their candidates not to put policy positions on their website? When I said Democrats should try to act less like elitist Harvard academics, I didn’t mean they shouldn’t say anything at all 🤦

Why on earth are people trying to use text generation to wage war!?!

Christopher Mims@mims.bsky.social · 5mo ago

AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations Leading AIs from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google opted to use nuclear weapons in simulated war games in 95 per cent of cases www.newscientist.com/article/2516...

Notice how many establishment Democrats (including some of my opponents) are still active on Twitter. Sure explains a lot.

Forbes@forbes.com · 6mo ago

The effect was caused by a switch from a chronological to an algorithmic feed

No computer is prescribing drugs. Some patients are being allowed to prescribe their own drugs, as long as they use certain software.

Humans + computers beat computers alone. Unfortunately, capitalism & our tax code don’t care if things work well. They just want to not have to give people jobs.

Cat Hicks@grimalkina.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Looking like the argument from assistive decision making is winning in the field with hundreds of thousands of real cases (assistive information adds something unique relative to just having another human review)

It is too bad the word “refactoring” never escaped computer-land. Having a way to say “make something better without breaking it” is incredibly useful.

Trying to summarize the news now is wild: “He announced the hunger games, went after Tomboy X, handed out a donativum by stealing troops’ housing, illegally named a building after himself, murdered five more people, convicted a judge, and ranted for 18 minutes on tv about how great things are.”

The CSP standard appears to have been written by someone who loves rules and hates web development

Alone is just My Side Of The Mountain for grownups

In 2005 I decided to forever hold a grudge against Larry Summers. That decision keeps looking better and better.

When Donald Trump said he wanted a war with Canada, I didn’t realize he meant retroactively losing the war of 1812.

Infrastructure is like crochet hooks. If we only ever buy the hooks we are absolutely sure we need, each project can require a lot of work to get started. We might give up rather than go to the store for just the one idea. When we invest in a set of typical hooks, we end up making way more things.

Beth@bethcodes.bsky.social · 10mo ago

One challenge I am finding on this campaign: I have great political metaphors that work for very niche audiences.

The flow of money represents the wants and needs of everyone in an economy. The problem with having billionaires is the same problem as trying to add huge numbers to tiny numbers using floating point. Except that in this case the “tiny numbers” that get lost are “normal people’s wants and needs”.

Beth@bethcodes.bsky.social · 10mo ago

One challenge I am finding on this campaign: I have great political metaphors that work for very niche audiences.

One challenge I am finding on this campaign: I have great political metaphors that work for very niche audiences.

When I was poor sometimes my friends & I would buy a lottery ticket. We didn’t think it was a good deal: we knew the odds. But for $2 we could have an entire afternoon of hope, dreaming of a better world that was even remotely possible. Anyway, I’ve been donating to other people’s primaries lately.

“It is our fingers on the keyboard” is one of the important lessons for programmers. We are accountable to our users and coworkers for the code we write. When we are told to do our job badly, we don’t even have to say “no”. We can just not do that.

That moment when I was excited to tell @martinfowler.com all about this management book I found that explains why functional companies split into Deserts and Forests, only to discover he had cited the same book twenty years ago in his summary of Agile 🤣

My favorite part of running so far is connecting with skeptics. People have a picture in their head of a “trans socialist”. It isn’t usually a curious motorcycle-riding homeowner with a pickup truck who is nearly impossible to offend. That moment of confusion can be the start of a conversation.

Supporting bethfordemocracy.com is wellness culture!

Beth for Democracy | Bethany Andres-Beck for Congress

Bethany Andres-Beck is a candidate for Congress running to represent Massachusetts' 6th District.

bethfordemocracy.com

Welcome to Night Vale@nightvaleradio.bsky.social · 12mo ago

One way to reduce stress is to meditate. Another way is to not live under a fascist government. This has been wellness tips!

Done with Seth? Support @beth4ma.bsky.social!