I will write more later but I wanted people who had known him to know that Jon Mott, one of the nicest and most thoughtful guys in edtech died unexpectedly last night.
Mike Caulfield
@mikecaulfield.bsky.social
Author: Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online (University of Chicago Press). Researcher, infolit/misinfo/rhetoric/civic reasoning. Currently researching AI as tool for critical thinking.
Health care, food, video games, tvs, computers, sneakers, insulation, rain jackets, toilet paper, stoves (induction), central HVAC (heat pumps), mattresses, car safety (just literally saved life of acquaintance last week), power drills, solar power, amusement parks, farmers markets, gyms
Fancy restaurant food used to be mozzarella sticks and marinara sauce everywhere but the largest cities
Constantine@ajaxsinger.bsky.social · 16h agoFood, man. Food is so much better than it was in 1986. All of it. Poor-people food, restaurant food, fresh food, frozen food. Food is just a hell of a lot better.
A short note on why I'm boring you all with film stuff. hapgood.us/2026/08/04/i...
I’m a film podcaster now
For a while when I worked in the misinformation studies field I had a saying that was only half-joking about the instant internet experts on vaccines, water policy, and 5g towers: “These peop…
hapgood.us
I think one of the sad things about the current data center story cycle is the electric companies have effectively used "data center demand" to obscure that our main grid/supply/safety problems come from them letting the grid decay over the last two decades in unconscionable ways.
Mike Rothschild@rothschildmd.bsky.social · 23h agoLA County confirmed that SoCal Edison's unused transmission tower started the Eaton Fire, which destroyed much of Altadena. The tower had been dormant since the 70's, but was left up anyway. It energized in the high wind and sent molten metal into dry brush underneath. www.cnn.com/2026/08/04/u...
Almost *everything* you see in this format, whether infinite power cubes or solar powered houses for the homeless that fold out of suitcases or French "bread libraries" for the poor is liberal catnip bullshit by content farms. Stop being idiots. Thank you.
I talk a lot about tropes and to me it's always exciting to trace the development of a trope from something like gaslight to diabolique to housemaid, I'll never get the people who treat the spotting of tropes as a way to discount stories, it's like "debunking" a meal bc you know the ingredients.
David Sims@davidlsims.bsky.social · 4d agoif I ever taught film criticism lesson one would be “you being smarter than the movie is not interesting to anyone”
if I ever taught film criticism lesson one would be “you being smarter than the movie is not interesting to anyone”
If you can read this and not feel white hot rage at both the SPD for not pursuing this and the left for spreading comforting lies about this you're better than me www.npr.org/transcripts/...
We Keep Us Safe: Inside the White Jeep : Embedded
EPISODE 6: An interview with a protester who witnessed the aftermath of the shooting leads to a tip that changes the entire investigation.Support journalism like this by signing up for NPR+ at plus.np...
npr.org
whet moser@whetmoser.com · 3d agorelieved this is getting thorough reporting again www.npr.org/2026/07/31/g...
I worry that most cynical among us, hopped up on 30 years of law and order rhetoric, will say "this is the system working: he didn't do anything wrong and now he's free." As if the terror and wide-scale publicity of an arrest and federal prosecution is not a horrible punishment in and of itself.
CNN@cnn.com · 5d agoThe Justice Department is admitting that a $14 million renovation on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, DC, was flawed, and is dropping the criminal case against a former Olympian that accused him of damaging the pool, according to a new court filing. https://cnn.it/3RJJnwj
Rural voters have an immense amount of power and use it to shape their communities into places that reflect their priorities more directly than anyone in the US. I think there's a tendency of the left to look at the result and imagine that can't possibly be what they want, but consider it might be.
Sarah Taber@sarahtaber.bsky.social · 6d agoA very serious Rural Politico once told me "Dems have to go to farmer meetings! We gotta be where the people are!" I was in fact in a farmer meeting at that very moment! So I live-texted him the meeting. They were complaining that they want indentured workers that they don't have to pay or feed.
When he released Psycho, Hitchcock tried an unusual marketing campaign, insisting that die to the shocking plot that must be seen as a whole no one would be let in late. A mini boom of admittance rule marketing followed.
people just absolutely making up fantasy nonsense to justify being mad about absolutely nothing. this is ridiculous.
someone just told me with deep certainty that McConnell's staff can vote for him. this is a nonsense lie! Senators need to be on the floor themselves to vote! as long as Mitch is in the hospital they're down a seat!
This is what I mean when I say conspiracy theory is not a way of thinking but a form of discourse; its core is Wilhoit's Law but for evidence: There must be in-groups whom norms of argument protect but do not bind, alongside out-groups whom the norms bind but do not protect.
Philip Bump@pbump.com · 2w agoThe core of the right-wing information universe is that one correction from a mainstream outlet proves it can’t be trusted and that one accurate claim in a flurry of false ones proves that they must be.
Lindsay is correct here and on a related point it's been sad to see this site swarm around whatever the latest conspiracy theory is. I'm increasingly convinced that any organizing upsides of social media for the left are cancelled out by fact it makes the left fracture over phantom issues.
Lindsay Beyerstein@beyerstein.bsky.social · 2w agoThe longer this goes on the more I suspect that Mitch McConnell is worth more to the Dems alive and hidden. They have no incentive to confirm the likely truth: He's too sick to vote, but he won't retire.
People still talk about false stuff online like it's only information. But information is experience. People believe they saw something or that something is happening and to them it's no less real than watching the twin towers collapse or the Iran hostage crisis. Of *course* that changes people.
There's an inside baseball misinformation studies point I want to make here about enduring five years of the political science and sociology folks saying: "people online don't really believe this stuff, this is all just downstream expression" and what an obvious crock that was.
Jonathan V. Last@jvl.bsky.social · 2w agoWorst part of the new @status.news report is that the Bari Weiss team appears to get its view of what is actually happening in the world from Twitter. They were asking Vega to include things that *weren't real* b/c they didn't know any better. www.status.news/p/cecilia-ve...
Apropos of the daily discourse, I think yeah, the idea that every difference of opinion is best explained (as a first move!) by a deficiency of character or experience of the poster is a) toxic and b) makes interesting spaces dull and I am opposed to it on both grounds
You look at this and see the man using a hammer on the portable generator. But have you also considered the man chopping at *nothing* and the guy diligently building emergency shelter with a cabin behind him
Lyse@lyse.myatproto.social · 2w agoMen? You guys okay?
This is a good thread. If you actually meet people who are "the party" they are mostly people doing somewhat thankless unpaid labor at the local level, and anybody willing to do thankless unpaid labor gets to influence things.
Dana Houle@danahoule.bsky.social · 2w agoPeople complaining that “the Democratic Party” doesn’t do anything? Then take it over! That’s what the Dean people did in a lot of places. And a lot of what party orgs do is vet/endorse/support people for municipal & county govt, school boards, local judges, etc. Stuff that may not sound…/1
As the owner of several AMC theater franchises, you can imagine I'm extremely left wing. But I bet you didn't realize I'm so left wing that I'm willing to bleed thousands of dollars every time I show the Odyssey to an empty IMAX theater to create the impression that a black actress is pretty.
Can we stop "teaching" people to use outdated techniques to "spot" AI video. It does an immense amount of harm to teach people methods that produce false negatives!
NJ.com@nj.com · 2w agoAI-generated tornado images circulated on social media during New Jersey storms, prompting experts to share tips for spotting fakes.
I share the concerns in that Atlantic article on reading but think, like this author, its view of the past is so cherry picked I'm not sure why smart people are sharing it open.substack.com/pub/millersb...
Before You Panic About That Atlantic Reading Piece
It’s Easy to Fear the Future When We Romanticize the Past
open.substack.com
Claude created a mess with a dumb way it tends to write prompts. I wrote a blog post about this failure mode, but that still left me with a massive mess to tidy up. Then I came up with an idea: have Fable read my post & fix the issue. It fucking worked. mikecaulfield.substack.com/p/blog-posts...
Blog Posts as LLM Repair Code
To Fix the Crappy Prompts Claude Wrote for You, Have Claude Read My Blog Post
mikecaulfield.substack.com
Pretty happy with these stalker matches plot.fyi/s/Q200437?v=...
Stalker (1979) — plot.fyi
162 min · RT 100% · 📺 Streaming options available. — Stalker is a 1979 Soviet science fantasy film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky with a screenplay written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, loosely based ...
plot.fyi
If you're my age you may find it very surprising tha Zamfir of the UHF Pan Flute commericals provides the soundtrack to a movie much cooler than you'll ever be plot.fyi/s/Q1421747?v...
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) — plot.fyi
115 min · RT 93% · 📺 Streaming options available. — Picnic at Hanging Rock is a 1975 Australian mystery film directed by Peter Weir from a screenplay by Cliff Green, based on the 1967 novel by Joan Li...
plot.fyi