mccA thing that never stops being funny to me is that electoral reform is stymied by the fact there are separate camps who want instant-runoff voting, Condorcet ranked voting, and proportional representation, and they don't cooperate. Seriously one of the funniest things to happen in human history. First Past the Post has a plurality of support so it wins every engagement. First Past the Post wins by First Past the Post rules.
Nick Austin
- 3 Followers
- 25 Following
- 123 Posts
𝔰𝔥𝔦𝔟𝔠𝔬One day you wake up and missiles are falling on Tehran. A girl's school is obliterated and explained away as an 'AI hallucination'. The men who ordered it read GPT-tinged speeches, and none of it feels real because the last time you saw these people, they were podcasters and cable news hosts. Another strongman wins an election – the headlines call it a shock win. All you feel is deja vu. Your body knows better.
You reach for your allies and find dust. You were so sure we were stronger, together. But the organisations that promised they would prevent this either no longer exist, or are unrecognisable. And you may ask yourself, "how did I get here?"
You are not alone. Today, we publish 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓖𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓽 𝓒𝓸𝓷𝓿𝓮𝓻𝓰𝓮𝓷𝓬𝓮 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓘𝓽𝓼 𝓓𝓲𝓼𝓬𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓷𝓽𝓼, a culmination of half a decade of work that helps to understand why this happened, why the people who seized power are who they are, and why their grip on power is far more brittle than it looks.
It might seem tempting to look for answers that neatly explain everything. There are many reasons why, but here we propose two. This is angry and ambitious, but I'm optimistic, and you should be too. Moments like these come once in a lifetime.
https://newdesigncongress.org/en/pub/the-great-convergence-and-its-discontents/
WeltzeitgeistUS military raises the entry age for future soldiers from 34 to 42. I only have one answer why they're doing this now and I don't like it.
Mike Fraser1/ Announcement: So today being a news day I might as well announce that the team at TheCanadian.Social has officially taken ownership of https://journa.host and https://newsie.social. We have also moved these instances to our facilities in Canada. These are two important instances hosting a large portion of the fediverse's journalism accounts. We felt it important to keep them going as the previous stewards were considering shutting them down. #fediverse #fediadmin #journalists
Christine Lemmer-WebberI am thinking out loud in prep for my talk. And I should unpack this in a blogpost because the following observation is a DENSE one.
One thing that really became clear to me is that the topology of power of Bluesky vs the Fediverse does really matter, and id checks makes this *really* clear.
You can put a graph of
Discord -- Bluesky -- The greater ATmosphere -- the Fediverse -- Spritely's tech (esp Brassica Chat)
The power distribution of this stuff is going to matter a lot for regulatory moats
Preston von GabbleduckIncreasingly seeing politicians citing the wank-term "social cohesion" as justification for banning things.
Honey, if your way of achieving "social cohesion" is to make public discussion and protest about something uncomfortable illegal, you're not fucking creating cohesion, you're creating fascism.
Something being uncomfortable to talk about isn't solved by ordering everyone to bury their heads in the sand.
3 Muskrats in a trenchcoatHow does Time Warner not make alarm clocks?
Natasha 
🇪🇺The fact that some people can't distinguish between etymology and entomology bugs me in ways I can't put into words
dalloEuropean Parliament Votes Overwhelmingly For "The Full Recognition Of Trans Women As Women"
Analysis over at : https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/european-parliament-votes-overwhelmingly
REPORT on a European Parliament recommendation to the Council concerning the EU priorities for the 70th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women | A10-0010/2026 | European Parliament
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-10-2026-0010_EN.html
Star Trek Minus Context