Joe Germuska

related:

"When the attention economy transforms society into a massive thirst trap, what happens to politics?"

www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-attent...

The attention economy is devouring politics

Social scientists need to understand how. As do we all.

This could be super useful for journalists and local civics nerds — in one place, neighborhood-level shapefiles and 2020 demographic data for 206 US cities that have "city-defined neighborhoods"

paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
data: dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtm...

City-Defined Neighborhood Boundaries in the United States - Scientific Data

Scientific Data - City-Defined Neighborhood Boundaries in the United States

"According to the employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they fear losing their jobs or other forms of retaliation, the policy would be implemented quietly and would not be put in writing."

www.npr.org/sections/sho...

Louisiana forbids public health workers from promoting COVID, flu and mpox shots

An NPR investigation found Louisiana health officials told staff to stop promoting vaccines for COVID, flu and mpox, holding flu shot events or otherwise encouraging the public to get those vaccines.

"In any other administration, at any other time in American history, this level of corruption would be a political disaster — a scandal that could bring down the administration. For the Trump administration, it is a Tuesday."

jamelle @jamellebouie.net

wrote about the president’s flagrant and destructive corruption in a column that references street fighter, the simpsons, machiavelli, and a host of revolutionary-era americans (gift link)

Opinion | The White House Gold Rush Is On

@weareravenous.com 's @shokdiesel.bsky.social points out one of the few real downers about Chicago's food culture: the city's relentless antagonism to street food vendors

www.weareravenous.com/email/814924...

A World-Class Food Scene Requires Street Food Vendors

Chicago seems hellbent on sanitizing its downtown and making room for the underseasoned.

This New Yorker cartoon by Adam Douglas Thompson neatly combines two of my idiosyncratic enthusiasms

🤩
(Via this digital exhibit storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/b00f... )

as age verification laws spread, the general public needs to understand the risks as well as the benefits.

@noupside.bsky.social provides a (characteristically) clear and balanced guide here

Noema Magazine @noemamag.com

The growing number of AI agents roaming the internet will eventually force us to verify what the old web mostly presumed: that there is a morally & legally accountable person somewhere in the chain, @noupside.bsky.social writes. #aiagents #identitytheft

We Need A Way To Prove Personhood Online | NOEMA

The growing number of AI agents roaming the internet will eventually force us to verify what the old web mostly presumed: that there is a morally and legally accountable person somewhere in the chain.

Thanks to @archive.org for the pointer to this excavation of Psyche Pscene, a late 60's early 70's independent zine published here in Chicago

jessejarnow.com/2024/04/psyc...

I was reminded of the time in 1991 when ACT UP activists put a giant condom over Senator Jesse Helms's house.

I found this 2008 narrative from one of the provocateurs if you want the whole story

https://www.poz.com/blog/in-memory-of-je

In Memory of Jesse Helms, and The Condom On His House [VIDEOS] - POZ

On September 5th, 1991, I put a giant condom over Jesse Helms' house. Why? Because, as the condom

"A person who merely refuses to learn what can be known is not a skeptic, but rather an ignoramus; a person who raises questions but does not seek their answers is not a skeptic, but a bullshitter."

Albert Burneko @albertburneko.bsky.social

blogged it defector.com/what-the-fuc...

What The Fuck Is A "Vaccine Skeptic"? | Defector

At darker moments, contesting this kind of stuff in the wake of the 2024 election—and all the shameless, shameful, unforgivable work the American media did to produce that election’s outcome—feels as ...

another good nugget from #ATmosphere conf delivered by @eclecticcapital.bsky.social:

ATProtocol could offer "open enough to scale, closed enough to mean something"

‘the successful outcomes will look more like "guilds" and "collectives" than traditional startups’

ATmosphereConf 2026

ATmosphereConf is the global atproto community conference. Join us in Vancouver, Canada, March 26th - 29th, 2026.

Probably should have done this before the conference, but I made a BlueSky starter pack from all of the handles included in the #NICAR25 schedule data

go.bsky.app/JVQ7hXm

There are Friday news dumps and then there are 6:20 pm on Thanksgiving Friday news dumps

www.northwestern.edu/leadership-n...

Agreement to Restore Federal Funds: Leadership Notes - Northwestern University

Earlier today, the University reached an agreement with the federal government to restore hundreds of millions of dollars in critical research funding.

In this week’s @sayswhopodcast.com @dansinker.com truly nails the voice of that particular type of BlueSky scold who jumps on posters for suggesting that democrats should visibly act as an opposition party. (Slightly truncated because of Overcast’s clip limit)

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Oh wow, this is totally brilliant! @blaine.bsky.social as principal software engineer for local projects at @newpublic.org

newpublic.substack.com/p/he-coded-t...

🐦💙 He coded Twitter. Now he’s building tech for New_ Public

A Q&A with Blaine Cook, our new Principal Software Engineer for Local

come to nerd out about community technology; stay for the Parable of the Sower references

Blacksky Algorithms @blackskyweb.xyz

Blacksky is excited to announce Acorn, a platform for growing and managing communities on decentralized infrastructure. blackskyweb.xyz/introducing-...

Introducing Acorn: Community Infrastructure That Grows With You

Featured image: Emergence by Paul Lewin

“I often get the impression that mainstream media is more concerned with presenting itself as calm and evenhanded than accurately representing reality.”

https://meditations-in-an-emergency.ghost.io/maybe-you-should-shout-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-if-its-on-fire-the-coup-continues/

Maybe You Should Shout Fire in a Crowded Theater (If It's On Fire): The Coup Continues

Yesterday the Associated Press ran a story with this sentence in it: "Last week, regional managers for the General Services Administration, or GSA, received a message from the agency’s Washington headquarters to begin terminating leases on all of the roughly 7,500 federal offices nationwide, according to an email

I was bummed to not share the stage with @werd.io but I'm happy we worked his voice into the deck. Also really good questions from the audience.

The energy at #ATmosphereConf has been great and so cool to have a bunch of sessions on journalism and media.

Let's build things together!

This is really good

Melanie Mitchell @melaniemitchell.bsky.social

I enjoyed talking with @kensycoop.bsky.social on the Many Minds podcast about the metaphors we use to conceptualize AI. manyminds.libsyn.com/seven-metaph...

Many Minds: Seven metaphors for AI

If you wanted a petri dish for understanding metaphors—how they emerge and evolve and jostle with each other—it would be hard to do better than the world of AI. We talk about AI systems variously as c...

"I'd wanted to warn people that extremists are not monsters, they're regular people who think and do monstrous things. … And I had not understood initially how much the "leaders" didn't really understand or control their own movement…"
www.forever-wars.com/they-want-to...

'They Want To Be A Part of History': Elle Reeve on the Extremely-Online Fascist Resurgence

As we brace for the fallout of the attempted Trump assassination, the journalist and 'Black Pill' author talks to FOREVER WARS

Guardian: NSA detected phone call between foreign intelligence and a person close to Trump

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

NSA detected phone call between foreign intelligence and a person close to Trump

Whistleblower says that Tulsi Gabbard blocked agency from sharing report and delivered it to White House chief of staff

Reply to @joe.germuska.com

“Hemp is a dusky, dark fellow, a sort of Indian; but Manilla is as a golden-haired Circassian to behold.”

These MFers are even racist about rope!

🐋