Alan Henry
@halophoenix.bsky.social
Author: Seen, Heard, & Paid: https://amzn.to/4dXOAHv Now: Managing Editor, @pcmag.com Then: WIRED, NYT, Lifehacker. Forever: Yours. Recovering physicist. Always: Black. He/Him. https://www.alan-henry.net | https://www.novawerks.net
Me: "Oh man, I haven't played Starfield in a minute, I wonder if it's better now or if modders have helped improve it!" [171.83GB Required] Me: "Ah, I remember now."
If you are in a position where you can do anything at all about this, please, please advocate for women of color in media. There are so few women and nonbinary people period. Even less of them are non-white.
When people try to ban books like Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye," they often do it under the guise of protecting children's innocence. But in actuality, administrators aren't simply banning a book. They're banning empathy. www.blacksnob.com/schools-keep...
Schools Keep Banning Toni Morrison's 'The Bluest Eye,' and I Think I Know Why
They're not just banning a book. They're banning children from learning empathy.
blacksnob.com
man i wish this country loved us as much as it loves the things we make and the way we entertain it
Luke Ontario@coolhand.bsky.social · 4d agoBeYONCÉ
'After his testimony, “all hell broke loose,” his wife recalled, and the county supervisor in Bladen County told him he wouldn’t get another loan “unless Jesse Helms himself,” the powerful senior senator from North Carolina, requested it.' from the NYT obit www.nytimes.com/2026/09/21/u...
Timothy Pigford, Who Fought Bias Against Black Farmers, Dies at 74 (Gift Article)
He was the lead plaintiff in the landmark 1997 lawsuit Pigford v. Glickman, an attempt to redress the Agriculture Department’s historic racism.
nytimes.com
KEW@kidadaewilliams.com · 4d agoTimothy Pigford, the Iconic Black Farmer Advocate Who Stood Against the USDA, Dies at 74 www.yahoo.com/news/us/arti...
really can't emphasize enough how many more tits and dicks there were. like I don't mean "you could find nudes if you looked" I mean people with office jobs who still post Serious Things on here now were like "eh, fuck it, here's my naked body" and society didn't collapse over it
TwoSense@twosense.bsky.social · 6d agoDear Bluesky Elders, Tell us stories of the days when Bluesky was fun.
All I'll add to the interview discourse is that when writing my book (link in bio) I saw that privileged people will invent ANY EXCUSE to not hire someone-especially of a marginalized group-that has nothing to do with their actual skills or ability to do the job, and then talk about "meritocracy."
I think the "debate" about bringing iced coffee to job interviews is effective at distracting people from the really bad job market, the high unemployment rate for Black women, ongoing mass layoffs in tech and media, and how Gen Z workers are refusing to adopt many toxic aspects of corp work culture
Listen, I know that by no means should you "hand it" to the hackers, but uhhhhhh
@pcmag.com · 6d agoCome for ShinyHunters extorting rival hackers and breaching the FBI, stay for Google's $459M GDPR fine. Plus, is your VPN blocking which sites you can see?
continuing @coyotemedia.org's series of forever unpaywalled guides to life with this rundown of what to do with lots of fruit — whether that's lemons from your neighbor's tree or big bags you pulled out of a dumpster. plus, there's a fermented hot sauce recipe! www.coyotemedia.org/fermenting-f...
First Aid Kit: Turning Not-So-Good Fruit Into Something Delicious
How to make fruit into ferments, jam, kimchi, and lots more.
coyotemedia.org
I talk about this stuff mostly to help people who also experience this that it’s not normal and often racially motivated. It’s not going to stop—a sad truth—but it also really isn’t about you. It’s about implicit bias and fear.
gita “the formalist” jackson@xoxogossipgita.bsky.social · last wk.I know other black people in journalism and games have also had this trail of pirhanas following them. at one point, someone was archiving every single one of my tweets. For what purpose I have no idea—but doesn’t that strike you as incredibly strange behavior? why not reflect on that?
For folks following along with personal things: The great spring cleaning/decluttering turned into the great summer redecorating, and now, finally, in the fall, I'm finished! (mostly.) Which means now is a great time to drop by the spot and have a drink! (I need some more plants tho...)
There are some people so eager to be special, so eager for unearned praise, that they will steal EVERYTHING from real people with real struggles. Your identity, your experiences, even your name. They'll staple it to themselves and then be mad when you hold them accountable to the harm they cause.
Emily M. Bender@emilymbender.bsky.social · 2w agoAnd every day there is more Fresh AI Hell. What's worse than polluting the information ecosystem with synthetic text dressed up to look like news? Dressing it up further as the work of fake Indigenous journalists: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
I remember living in DC for this, I was lucky enough to watch Endeavour fly right past my apartment window while I was working from home. Incredible to see.
Massimo (mirror)@rainmaker1973-m.bsky.social · last wk.14 years ago Today, the Space Shuttle Endeavour had its last flight. Here's a photo captured over Los Angeles, few minutes its landing at LAX [📷 Stephen Confer] Original post
This went out to all subscribers yesterday! If you missed it and want to check it out, head here: (and don't forget to subscribe!) buttondown.com/alanhenry/ar...
Weaponized Incompetence, and How to Work Around It
Some people just forget who they are. Make sure you're not one of them.
buttondown.com
Alan Henry@halophoenix.bsky.social · 2w agoSurprise newsletter! This time I'm talking about how to deal with another professional annoyance: weaponized incompetence. Up on Patreon RIGHT NOW for Terra and Sol subs: www.patreon.com/halophoenix/ Sub here to get it in your inbox on Friday for free: buttondown.com/alanhenry
Here's this week's infosec roundup, for the sickos among us. One the one hand, holy 1 million spearphishing emails in 72 hours. On the other, a reader question reminds us all that once someone has physical control of a device, well, game's mostly over.
@pcmag.com · 2w agoMicrosoft tracked an AI-powered phishing wave that hit 1 million inboxes in 72 hours. Plus, hijacked streaming accounts, fake security apps, and the passkey flaw you need to know.
Surprise newsletter! This time I'm talking about how to deal with another professional annoyance: weaponized incompetence. Up on Patreon RIGHT NOW for Terra and Sol subs: www.patreon.com/halophoenix/ Sub here to get it in your inbox on Friday for free: buttondown.com/alanhenry
I love threads like these, because a: it reminds me that this industry being as bad as it is is a management choice, not just something we have to accept, and b: I would describe my tenure at Lifehacker the *exact same way* - and I will never forgive the people who destroyed that experience.
John E Warren 🤠🐝♿️@floppyadult.com · 2w agoIt's probably worth some deeper reflection on my part at some point, but my time running Fanbyte was the happiest I've ever been professionally. Not 100% of the time. Maybe not even 50% of the time. But some of the time, I was at my happiest.
can those of you mad because you think trans whining on microblogs will depress support for dem politicians please imagine for one second how dem politicians spouting transphobia on enormous mainstream platforms depresses support for trans people
Come to this week's infosec roundup for the study that says most people wouldn't unlock their phones for $1 million, stay for the Meta exec who turned out to be one porn company's most prolific pirate (yes, he was using his work computer.) www.pcmag.com/news/a-meta-...
A Meta Exec's 150-Porn-Downloads-a-Day Habit, a 23-Year Botnet Bust, and $1M Phone Unlocks
From a tech executive caught torrenting on company Wi-Fi to a massive international takedown and shocking survey data, here's what went down in cybersecurity this week.
pcmag.com
I just want my siblings in the truth business to treat white supremacy as the lie that it is.
With fewer publications covering events, our leading outlets can distort reality. While Agenda Setting is decades-old, with fewer local angles on national events, bigger orgs can, at best, tell us what to think about; at worst, put their thumbs on the scales. joshsternberg.com/2026/09/11/j...
Journalism layoffs are bad for democracy
Last week, USA Today, one of the largest media companies in the nation, laid off an unreported amount of staffers across its network of publications.On Thursday, McClatchy, owner of The Miami Heral…
joshsternberg.com
For the remaining days of Subtember on Twitch, every subscription and gifted sub on my channel will be matched with a donation to the Sameer Project campaign in Gaza. Currently, a solo sub price is set to 3.74€. I will be donating on behalf of the subscriber/gifter 5€.
And now ... it's the official (!) trailer for A WALL IS ALSO A ROAD, which @chanda.blacksky.app called "a magnificent work of cosmic imagination." Please pre-order! Every little bit helps. The book drops on 10/6. youtu.be/BoTU03qQxKM?...
Trailer: A Wall Is Also a Road, by Annalee Newitz
YouTube video by Annalee Newitz
youtu.be
Every day I wake up and go to work in an industry that acknowledges its overreliance on companies actively working to kill it... ...and then continues to leverage those companies as a crutch to avoid thinking about how to do the work well.
AI companies doing what they do best, part 10000000
Quantian@quantian.bsky.social · 3w agoDancing very very VERY close to saying “OpenAI stole our almost-complete proof of Navier-Stokes from internal access to our ChatGPT sessions because they were desperate to scoop Anthropic” which is absolutely 100% a believable thing OpenAI would do right now cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/st...
