Jim Ray
jimray.net
Jim Ray
@jimray.net
920 followers 880 following 1.3K posts
I used to be good at this.
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They’ll let em sit empty out of spite while they decamp to Sausalito or Palm Beach
This is it. The entire takeaway from the campaign, no matter who or where you’re running. This is the lesson.
The best media analysis of the most interesting political campaign of the year in the most media savvy city in the world comes from a worker owned news site. That rules.
watching the Mamdani campaign from afar during the primary, so many things were impressive, among them the incredible work his online video team was doing to spread the message in fun, creative, educational, invigorating ways that spoke to people

this is my story about how they did it
Selling Zohran | Defector
On a cool Sunday in November, a few days after Donald Trump’s re-election, Zohran Mamdani stood on a street corner in Jamaica, Queens, holding up a hastily drawn cardboard sign that read “DID YOU VOTE...
defector.com
Reposted by Jim Ray
We won a Cronkite award for our essays on @cbseveningnews Plus which went off the air last Friday. www.cronkiteawards.org/uploads/5/1/...
Blue background with *red* text, right?
I mean, I met my wife on Twitter so. Same.

There's also something about working out ideas. @davekarpf.bsky.social said something like this the other day, about dinking about on Bluesky and turning it into an article that I think also aligns with what you're getting at.

bsky.app/profile/dave...
My favorite thing as a writer is when I start ranting about something on Bluesky, get it all out of my system, and then turn it into a real piece of writing.

On that note: hey, it’s me, heckling centrist Dems in the New Republic!

newrepublic.com/article/2023...
It really resonated because so often social media gets lumped into more judgmental territory — snacks or junk food or whatever — or the nonsensical "global town square". It's a party and parties can but fun but you can't party all the time.
Smart thoughts from @aaronrosspowell.com about what makes decentralized social, including old-school blogging, exciting again
Social media is a party and we can't party all the time
pouredover.leaflet.pub
Every time I do like 4 hours of yard work on an even moderately hot day I’m like yeah I would not have survived to pass on my genes during literally any other period of human history
Reposted by Jim Ray
I subscribed and I think you should too.
GOOD MORNING EVERYONE!! Today is the last day of our Flytrap subscription drive. The goal for today is 159 subscriptions! THIS IS THE LAST CALL FOR THE 15% OFF DISCOUNT: the-flytrap.ghost.io/chomp
The Flytrap
Feminist cultural criticism against the algorithm
the-flytrap.ghost.io
Reposted by Jim Ray
for all the culture war/forum drama etc, it is just undeniable that this is basically the only social media platform where journalists can publicize their work online bsky.app/profile/sama...
if you think that’s what’s keeping left-leaning political takes from being seen on Twitter is that they aren’t being posted rather that they are being actively suppressed by the site’s white supremacist owner, you are either too dumb or too dishonest to listen to, even on Bluesky
Reposted by Jim Ray
if our brains weren’t always being cooked by the horrors of real life this place could be Actually Fun and it’s so nice to get a glimpse of what happens when it is

even if you don’t like baseball this shit was fun, right? everyone getting swept up in the same thing? I missed this
The wonderful old-Twitter experience of a global group chat during a live event or breaking news is a thing you can't do on Threads bc of its trash algorithms and you can't do on X bc it's a Nazi propaganda weapon, but it's really happening on Bsky now and I hope more holdouts start to discover that
Fwiw, it’s nice to have a place to chat during a live event. That was one of the things that Twitter was great for. Before the dark times. Before the empire.
I mean if we don’t convince enough people to eat em.
They’re gonna discontinue ‘em, Mike!
Adding this to my report that America has yet to recognize we have been living in a time of confectionary perfection for over two decades and are simply letting it slip away. I’m talking, of course, about the Take 5.
And we have now progressed from data analysis to policy recommendations.

I told her that we'd calculate the cash value of her candy haul, that I'd ask her to raid her piggy bank and donate 1/3 the candy cash value to a local food bank, and that I'd add on a 5X match.
I’d bet you a month’s salary it doesn’t include AOC, quite possibly the most prominent member of Congress with an actual working class background
Fans of the @play.date might be interested to know the codename was "Asheville" since Panic and Teenage Engineering first met at Moogfest.
Reposted by Jim Ray
The NYC lunchtime pecking order, late 1990s, sketched for The NY Times by a waiter at the Four Seasons. I sensed it would be of historic interest so I framed it and hung it on the wall at Slate.
Reposted by Jim Ray
Real talk? The Flytrap team were a big inspiration to me and others at @coyotemedia.org this year while we were getting off the ground. Please toss these amazing folks some coin, Bluesky. (And don’t forget to renew your membership if you backed them on Kickstarter!)
Didn't back us on Kickstarter? We have a 15% discount for new memberships, but our member drive is about to end so act fast. $55.25 for a year of @theflytrapmedia.com is a pretty good deal!!
The Flytrap
Feminist cultural criticism against the algorithm
the-flytrap.ghost.io
And here I thought we elected a president not a chief aesthetician. I wonder if anyone has written about the aestheticization of politics during, oh I don’t know, the 1930s?
I'm reminded of my key takeaway from reading Twitter and Tear Gas — power learns
Politically, the landscape is shifting too:

🔴 Nearly all platforms have become more Republican
🔵 But they remain Democratic-leaning overall
🏃‍♂️ Democrats are fleeing to smaller platforms (Bluesky, Threads, Mastodon)
Reposted by Jim Ray
Is social media dying? How much has Twitter changed as it became X? Which party now dominates the conversation?

Using nationally representative ANES data from 2020 & 2024, I map how the U.S. social media landscape has transformed.

Here are the key take-aways 🧵

arxiv.org/abs/2510.25417
On a day when we celebrate being all manner of fantastical creature, we should imagine a world full of Luddites. A better world.
We should all be Luddites
pouredover.leaflet.pub