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Blaine @blaine.bsky.social · 6d

A.I. at its peak

A screenshot of the titles scene from Serial Experiments: Lain of Lain, with eyes closed, wearing a hat with a cute bear face on it.

Blaine @blaine.bsky.social · 6d

The science appears to suggest that this is precisely what's happening. youtu.be/CYlon2tvywA?...

If only we had lightly connected small world networks instead of highly connected big world ones... 😅

Something Strange Happens When You Trace How Connected We Are

YouTube video by Veritasium

youtu.be

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Blaine @blaine.bsky.social · 7d

At that point of a project where I'm giving things clever names.

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Blaine @blaine.bsky.social · 7d

bsky.app/profile/blai...

Blaine @blaine.bsky.social · 8d

It was the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada earlier this week, and one of the narratives I heard was this one, struggling with the impossible choice of building new capacity in the shadow of cultural genocide (from www.cbc.ca/radio/thecur...)

A screenshot of the following text: JENNIFER GRENZ: How is it that simultaneously, I want your help and want you to leave me alone, that I recognize I cannot do all the work of healing the land with our communities by myself, but don't want you to do it either, that I can respect and praise your skills and knowledge, but do not seek them out of suspicion of your motivations and intentions. I find myself so often, in the same moment, happy to build bridges of understanding between our cultures, yet wanting to burn that same bridge, proudly taking up the space you helped make for me, but not wanting that space.

Reposted by Blaine

Dr. Johnathan Flowers, Blade Wielding Bisexual (Lordean arc) @shengokai.blacksky.app · 7d

Extant decentralized solutions (Mastodon, etc.) demonstrate that the kinds of social problems that decentralized networks are supposed to resolve simply emerge in different forms due to the properties of the networks in question.

Decentralization isn't a bad thing, it's just not the silver bullet.

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Blaine @blaine.bsky.social · 8d

😂 I was just really young and naive and a little stupid, because I should be outrageously wealthy, too. But, honestly, I think I'm happier without it.

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Blaine @blaine.bsky.social · 8d

They = We, and is this penance? 😅

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Blaine @blaine.bsky.social · 8d

Above all, we can't let the tech monopolists define the terms. Even if they set the current scene, it's not their play. Never was.

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Blaine @blaine.bsky.social · 8d

These are serious and solemn reflections, frankly incomparable to the question at hand, but I hope that we can learn from them a little bit about what it means to know that we can't let others control our narrative, but also how hard that is to do.

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Blaine @blaine.bsky.social · 8d

It was the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada earlier this week, and one of the narratives I heard was this one, struggling with the impossible choice of building new capacity in the shadow of cultural genocide (from www.cbc.ca/radio/thecur...)

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Blaine @blaine.bsky.social · 8d

My great lament is that these narratives are so often so simplistic, and even that explaining this stuff is necessary. Tech barons deigning to give power to "the rest of us" is an untrustworthy non-solution, but also it's necessary that we step up and build alternatives.

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Blaine @blaine.bsky.social · 8d

There's a tension – it's deeply unfortunate that power is and has been centered in this "tech-centric" discourse. e.g., Canada doesn't exist because we didn't like the US and decided to build our own political algorithm.

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Blaine @blaine.bsky.social · 8d

This is slander. (I think. Is it ... good? 🙈)

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Reposted by Blaine

New_ Public @newpublic.org · 10d

Introducing the New_ Public Canon: A non-exhaustive, in-no-particular-order selection of books about communities, technology, and civic life that our team loves and references (almost) every day.

What are we missing? Any recommendations?

Reading list titled 'The New_ Public Reading List Part 1: The Big Books' on purple background with coral section. Books listed: Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs, Governing the Commons by Elinor Ostrom, The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser (obviously), and The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters by Priya Parker. Decorative 3D geometric shapes in bottom right corner.

Reading list on coral background with purple footer. Title reads 'Let us know what we're missing!' Books listed: Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam, Governable Spaces by Nathan Schneider, Plurality: The Future of Collaborative Technology and Democracy by Audrey Tang & E. Glen Weyl, and Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Decorative 3D geometric shapes in bottom right corner.

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Blaine @blaine.bsky.social · 10d

does the chatbot go on to make 10s of millions of dollars, spent on <insane sf shit I can't even imagine, probably involving chartering large planes and yachts and expensive musicians>?

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Blaine @blaine.bsky.social · 10d

How is it possible that we've ended up in a weirder world than the wired?!

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Blaine @blaine.bsky.social · 11d

I'm glad I'm not the only one! 😅

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Blaine @blaine.bsky.social · 11d

I say "Twitter" because it's maybe the most "this", but it feels like this applies to most successful online spaces.

Another more boring way of putting this is that when we show up online, we're coming with the request: "tell us a story."

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Blaine @blaine.bsky.social · 11d

Is the thing that makes Twitter work similar to Kayfabe?

Like, when we have a critical mass of dril and Trump and a cast of characters way too long to list here, are we just putting up a fourth wall and inhabiting that space?

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Blaine @blaine.bsky.social · 11d

I'm not a wrestling fan, and I don't play DnD, and I've been to lots of theatre but I'm not a theatre kid nor do I have a grounding in theatre theory, so this is all probably painfully obvious to many, but I've never seen it said, so I'm just going to think out loud here for a second...

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Blaine @blaine.bsky.social · 11d

Yesterday I learned about this term "Kayfabe" (ikr, application for amnesty under xkcd 053) thanks to this playing on the radio: www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/...

And I'm going to admit, my brain broke a little.