Erika Hall
@erikahall.bsky.social
I try to be helpful. Bike-riding dog butler and mold connoisseur. Use your employer's money to buy Just Enough Research: www.mulebooks.com/just-enough-research. Enjoy clickens.chicken.pics when you need a break. San Francisco. She/They/Friend/Sir
Hey! Who likes pinball? Me too! This week’s newsletter is all about pinball, but of course I make it weird. buttondown.com/monteiro/arc...
How to play pinball
What is the best arcade game? Pinball or video, or both.
buttondown.com
How to Do Things! Starting in just a couple hours: www.eventbrite.com/e/how-to-jus...
How to Just Do Things!
Who's stopping you? Is it you?
eventbrite.com
Honestly, everyone needs to see your cute fit and/or favorite piece of work. Pets obvs.
I am having a particularly frustrating week, so here’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. The eruption of Sarychev Peak in the Aleutian Islands, seen by the crew of the space station. www.nasa.gov/image-articl...
This is demonstrably, measurably improving the health of the people who live there. Most notably, it increases the respiratory *& cognitive* health of children. They literally do better in school. If this country really gave a shit about children, this would be at the top of the public-policy list.
Daniel Moser@dmoser.bsky.social · 2d agoPollution levels in London after 10 years of advancing sustainable transport.
part of the ongoing omnicrisis is that experts in almost every field are finding themselves stuck explaining the Cookie Monster issue
Timnit Gebru@timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 2d agoAt a certain point I have to ask myself if I got all this pedigree and spent decades doing research and building things to then spend the rest of my life attempting to come up with good arguments as to why the Cookie Monster isn't real.
In case you need a trinket to get you through. Happy little friends for your lapel or tote. www.mulebooks.com/store/gilly-...
Gilly & Billy Enamel Pin — MULE BOOKS
2″ of mighty soft enamel for your jacket, backpack, whatevs. Show your support for wealth distribution with this delightful pin designed by Adam Koford. Less talkin’, more loppin’! GILLY & BILL...
mulebooks.com
To emphasize how silly this whole article is, let me show you the Apple News alert I got about it. How did we become the “face of hormone therapy?” Well, you see, many of us are now in our 40s
pebbles@pebbles.gay · 3d agobabe wake up they're doing "social contagion theory" for cis women now
Some cis people will literally leave their jobs over Joanne's bigotry, and others are mad they're being told not to watch a TV show. Who our allies are is very obvious to us, and we remember who they are.
hoots@hoots.bsky.social · 2d agoSpeaking of Harry Potter, I resigned from my position at Universal Studios a month ago over all of the Wizarding World/JKR shit. I am now paying my bills and paying for a wedding purely thru YouTube and Patreon. I loved working at USH. I was very conflicted leaving. Fuck Joanne.
All of this. It's a great time to look at what happened when the Soviet Union collapsed. We aren't that totally because we do have some relatively powerful/somewhat functional cities and states. But oof we have to get stoked for pushing consequences and rebuilding institutions over a generation.
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)@doctorow.pluralistic.net · 2d agoWhat if post-Trump America is even *worse*? 1/
As a new Harry Potter trailer makes the rounds, it bears repeating that there’s no way to watch this show without supporting J.K. Rowling’s bigotry and the structural violence she’s inflicting on the trans community.
There is no ethical consumption of HBO’s Harry Potter series
You can’t without supporting Rowling’s transphobic bigotry.
theverge.com
i somehow missed that this comes out on Christmas Day and, I'm very sorry, but that means that if you care about trans people at all, you have a moral obligation to ruin Christmas by shutting this shit off of you have to
Defector@defector.com · 3d agoIt's time to grow up: defector.com/its-time-to-...
I do think “every rich person went insane during covid because it was the first time they’ve been inconvenienced in decades” felt a little reductive at first but damn if isn’t more and more compelling as the years drag on
Francis Fukuyama keeps the winning streak alive.
ah yes once again the racists are the real victims
The Verge@theverge.com · 2d ago1Password faced immediate backlash from customers this week over a $300,000 pledge in support of a Linux distro created by David Heinemeier Hansson, who has regularly published overtly racist blog posts that include comments calling for deportation of ethnic minorities in Europe.
“If ICE is instituting this program to shield officers and the agency itself from public accountability, especially when information is already publicly available, then that’s a serious concern and flies in the face of our democratic values,” EFF’s Sophia Cope told @theintercept.com.
ICE Is Paying a Controversial AI Firm to Hide the Identities of Agents
In a leaked memo, an ICE official tells employees the new AI tech will protect them. Some worry it could be used to root out whistleblowers.
theintercept.com
Okay, class counsel in Anthropic JUST filed a status report--it hasn't shown up on CourtListener yet, and PACER is being rude to me right now, but @deannachase.com sent it to me because she is absolutely lovely. I'm reading it now.
@blackskyweb.xyz is building an interconnected suite of products reshaping how people connect, participate, organize, and transact online. We’re looking for a Head of Design to lead and shape how our products and brands look, feel, and work. please circulate widely. blackskyweb.xyz/about/jobs/h...
Head of Design
Product, brand, and visual identity About Blacksky Algorithms Blacksky Algorithms is building an interconnected suite of products reshaping how people connect, participate, organize, and transact onli...
blackskyweb.xyz
Who told you you can’t write a book? Who told you you can’t build a rollercoaster in your backyard? Who told you you can’t paint your living room hot pink? Who told you you can’t have cereal for dinner? Who told you you can’t wear that? Not us. Come hang with us. We’ll talk you into things.
How to Just Do Things!
Who's stopping you? Is it you?
eventbrite.com
It's not the case for everyone, but there's absolutely a crossover between car brain and simply hating kids and teenagers, and being mad that you have to share space with them. So much of the e-bike panic stems from this.
Mike (beep boop era)@latimeriidae.bsky.social · 3d agoEvery other month or so someone posts something relatively normal like “please take extra care going down our side street because soccer season/ school starts/ summertime etc and about half of the comments start at “you should keep your kids inside” and get worse from there.
Discovering once again that if you trace back citations sometimes discoveries attributed to solely to men were actually published in collaboration with a woman who happened to have the same last name.
There are endless studies showing this and also the financial and societal benefits of universal basic income and or housing-first policies but the U.S. never goes for any of it because it would require allowing the poor to receive benefits that the rich consider “undeserved”
Jen Taub@jentaub.bsky.social · 3w ago“A single-payer universal health care system could cover every American, save more than 100,000 lives a year, and still cost $1 trillion less than the system it would replace, according to a new preprint study led by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health.” ysph.yale.edu/news-article...
We have a decade of research that says this is a bad idea. Beyond that, we have a decade of research that says this will absolutely fuck over marginalized folks.
Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 3d ago“OpenAI said today that it is integrating ChatGPT Health with Epic’s electronic health record (EHR) system, which holds data for over 325 million patients, to let clinicians import patient data and use AI to ask questions.”