This is fun and fascinating, and has a beautiful illustration of the fact that coordination is not the same as actual governance. medium.com/@pportela/th...
The Polite Commons —
Notes from an artificial society of LLM agents
medium.com
I'm increasingly convinced that people who say "numbers never lie" have never worked with real data. Numbers absolutely lie, and they lie in multiple insidious ways that can only be predicted by people with actual expertise in the subject matter the data is attempting to measure.
Good news, the answer is(was?) no. Every few years similar charts make the rounds. Usually to blame smartphones for declines, but more recently LLMs. What really happened is this: High school completion rates in OECD countries are going up. This pulls PISA scores down. It's a one-time shift.
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · last mo.one for the "cognitive deskilling" files (from The Economist's FB account). surprised both by the pace of the decline and that math and reading scores seem to move more closely together than math and science scores, though I'm not at all familiar with this test and what it asks students to do
What horseshit. She embraced gay people at the height of the AIDS crisis, embraced trans people at the height of the war against them, supported Black communities and artists, and wrote the most pro-worker's rights feminist pop song of all time. Neutral my ass
CNN@cnn.com · 2mo ago"At a time when no American celebrity seems immune from the country’s many divisions, Dolly Parton was a crossover icon who stayed neutral in the culture wars while still speaking her mind," writes Zachary B. Wolf. | Analysis
I found this really thought-provoking for my own work helping facilitate conversations in my different roles, even though in none of them am I primarily a facilitator. Dear Dave: A letter on hosting, complexity and practice www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot/d...
Dear Dave: A letter on hosting, complexity and practice
A humpback whale called “Nova” that we saw the other day. She is about to dive deep. Over the past year I have been corralling my thinking on the Art of Hosting, complexity, dialogic co…
chriscorrigan.com
In my latest article I step again into the debate over whether people are capable of governing themselves. I look at ways the question sometimes says more about the questioner than “the people” & land on a principle for discovering grounds for working together. deepweave.substack.com/p/user-error
Wikimedia, the nonprofit behind Wikipedia, is refusing to voluntarily recognize the union a supermajority of its employees voted for and has retained a well-known union-busting legal firm to represent it before the NLRB. I emailed them today letting them know I will no longer be donating.
Finally back writing after more the 3 months unable to find my way forward. Thinking about how we build new foundations for our democracy. deepweave.substack.com/p/foundations
Foundations
Embarking on Absurd Adventures
deepweave.substack.com
Children drive all sorts of things, including me, to distraction; but they also shape culture. Important theory piece.
Sheina Lew-Levy@sheinalew.bsky.social · 3mo ago
New w @pamherd.bsky.social: Mamdani just announced PIT Crew — an NYC tech unit that will build digital public products. Takeaway: Mamdani is reclaiming a vision of tech in govt for progressives, one not driven by consultants and which solves real problems. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/mamdani-in...
Mamdani invests in tech capacity to “solve real problems”
What PIT Crew says about how he is governing, and tech in government
donmoynihan.substack.com
Don’t know who to credit for this. But it is how I feel.
Can I just brag for a sec? My clay work is featured and I’m quoted in this article. Also, I miss my mom, maybe most of all, when I need to brag. 💔 She was proud of every good thing I ever did. thelaurelofasheville.com/arts/wnc-cra...
WNC Crafts 2026: Odyssey Gallery of Ceramic Arts Boasts a Long, Fruitful History in the River Arts District - The Laurel of Asheville
The Odyssey Gallery of Ceramic Arts has undergone evolutionary changes through the years since Brian and Gail McCarthy began the organization under the name Odyssey Center for Ceramic Arts in 1993.
thelaurelofasheville.com
Extremely interesting paper by @zephoria.bsky.social & collaborators: Reckoning with the Political Economy of AI: Avoiding Decoys in Pursuit of Accountability (arxiv.org/abs/2604.16106).
It is endlessly astonishing to me that anyone is ever surprised by Donald Trump. There has never been a more transparent human being in all of history. Everything you need to know about him is right on the surface. You can understand him entirely, without remainder, with five minutes of exposure.
The Israeli Ultra-Hawks Who Feel Betrayed by Trump’s Iran Deal
Isaac Chotiner interviews Shimon Riklin, an anchor on Israel’s right-leaning Channel 14, and a Benjamin Netanyahu ally, who feels stabbed in the back by Trump’s Iran deal.
newyorker.com
Nice articulation of Constitution's *thick* accountability vs the narrow/thin one of unitary executive theory. Impt for nat'l governance, but interesting too for local: how to design a system able to wrestle productively w interests varying across dimensions: space, time, level of abstraction.
Josh Chafetz@joshchafetz.bsky.social · 4mo agoI've just posted a new (fairly short!) paper on unitary executive theory's impoverished theory of democratic accountability. Give it a read -- I'd love to hear any thoughts! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
There is a problem with the stories we tell & the way we perceive how change happens. The Union of Pinnacle Tenants, the largest tenant-led union in NYC—are the reason Mamdani took action. Organized people power is pivotal. Top down stories of elected heroes (even ones we like) are not sufficient.
Robert Reich@rbreich.bsky.social · 4mo agoIn January, Zohran Mamdani took action against bankrupt landlord Pinnacle, which was responsible for over 5,000 housing violations. Thanks to his intervention, Pinnacle's new owners have forgiven millions in tenants' back rent. This is what governing for the people looks like.
I've just posted a new (fairly short!) paper on unitary executive theory's impoverished theory of democratic accountability. Give it a read -- I'd love to hear any thoughts! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Of Multiplicity and Accountability
<div> Unitary executive theory has, since <i>Myers v. United States</i>, been premised on a conception of democratic accountability. On this view, the presiden
papers.ssrn.com
One of the more misogynistic takes currently trending in the AI policy space is "women use less AI than men because they have less tech literacy" Ok but have you considered that women use less AI than men because we have more tech literacy?
My latest newsletter article explores the "field theory" of social change and the need to rebuild civic competency: deepweave.substack.com/p/a-romp-thr...
A Romp Through the Fields
From Despair to Prayer to Project Management
deepweave.substack.com
This is the fundamentally false premise that people believe, despite all evidence to the contrary.🤷🏿♂️ The truth is: 1) Negative, divisive content, is not the most engaging content. It's not close. 2) Algorithms reward negative, divisive content, because billionaires buy platforms and make it so.
Stephan Lewandowsky@lewan.uk · 6mo agoThe core problem: the attention economy. Platforms maximise engagement, not truth. Algorithms reward negative, emotional & divisive content — not because of malice, but because that's what keeps eyes on screen. Democracy pays the price. 2/10
My latest article explores how action in smaller systems can impact larger ones. deepweave.substack.com/p/upside-out...
Upside-Out and Inside-Down
Thinking About Impacting the Large From the Small
deepweave.substack.com
"When in doubt, draw a distinction." Not sure where he got it, but in grad school one of my teachers taught me that. This (long) thread is about the key distinctions I rely on as a critic. There's a Twitter version from 2021. This one builds on that one. I will post them one at a time. Ready?
Nice thread. "Bottom line: System planning extends beyond minimizing costs. If we want models to inform planning and policy, non-economic deployment limits need to be explicit, transparent, and stress-tested."
John Bistline@bistline.bsky.social · 10mo ago#ModelingMonday: A key modeling assumption with big consequences is non-economic deployment constraints. Permitting, land access, local ordinances, supply chains, social acceptance. These shape what can get built but are tricky to model.
it’s been a consistent strategic disadvantage and evidence of a longstanding center-liberal naïveté to believe that institutions of the law will solve antagonisms that are fundamentally political