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Reposted by Ashlyn B. Aske

Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · Sep 5

Couldn’t get a more clear example of Wilhoit’s theory of conservatism: “There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

Anthony L. Fisher @anthonylfisher.bsky.social · Sep 4

The "from my cold dead hands" crowd wants to ban people from owning guns

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Mike Masnick @mmasnick.bsky.social · Jul 17

I've had this headline rattling around in my brain since January and I finally wrote it. Been hearing too many people in the startup world buying into the neoractionary nonsense that maybe a little light fascism is good for silicon valley. It's not. It's very, very bad.

Techdirt @techdirt.com · Jul 17

Fascism For First Time Founders

Over the last year or so I've seen a disturbing tendency in tech/startup/VC worlds to buy into the neoreactionary view that for startups to be successful they need to get on board the Trump train. Yes, there are the big name folks who everyone knows about and who…

Fascism For First Time Founders

Over the last year or so I've seen a disturbing tendency in tech/startup/VC worlds to buy into the neoreactionary view that for startups to be successful they need to get on board the Trump train. Yes, there are the big name folks who everyone knows about and who didn't really surprise anyone—Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, David Sacks, Elon Musk (pre-fallout)—but the more troubling trend has been watching younger entrepreneurs and VCs listen to their podcasts, read their posts and books, and slowly nod along to the idea that democracy is holding back innovation.

www.techdirt.com

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Techdirt @techdirt.com · Jul 8

Who Goes MAGA?

With apologies to Dorothy Thompson, whose 1941 essay in Harper’s, “Who Goes Nazi?” remains a worthwhile read on the cultural archetypes of who is drawn to fascism, and who would never go down such a path. It felt like it could use a modern updating, however. Update: Just after I…

Who Goes MAGA?

With apologies to Dorothy Thompson, whose 1941 essay in Harper’s, “Who Goes Nazi?” remains a worthwhile read on the cultural archetypes of who is drawn to fascism, and who would never go down such a path. It felt like it could use a modern updating, however. Update: Just after I finished writing this, it occurred to me that there was no chance I was the first to think of doing this, so I did a search and sure enough, the writer Talia Lavin had the same idea months ago.

www.techdirt.com

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Ashlyn B. Aske @ashlynba.bsky.social · Jul 1

And while the election is over, we note that efforts to invoke and distort the law in service of conspiratorial narratives continue in 2025 with ongoing efforts to restrict voting rights (amongst the Trump administration’s other policymaking efforts).

Ashlyn B. Aske @ashlynba.bsky.social · Jul 1

We examine the role litigation plays in the right wing media ecosystem — MAGA uses the judicial process to frame fringe rumors about election fraud in legal language that gives them a persuasive air of legitimacy in the court of public opinion.

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Ashlyn B. Aske @ashlynba.bsky.social · Jul 1

Drawing on some of my work from the past year at the Center for an Informed Public, I published a piece in Lawfare with my colleague Stephen Prochaska.

Lawfare @lawfaremedia.org · Jun 27

@ashlynba.bsky.social and Stephen Prochaska explore the ways the MAGA movement uses courts and litigation to propel fringe rumors about election fraud into mainstream consciousness. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/how-...

How Strategic Litigation Feeds On and Fuels Political Narrative

Fringe election fraud rumors are becoming legal drama—weaponized lawsuits and policies that present fiction as fact on social media.

www.lawfaremedia.org

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Evan Greer @evangreer.bsky.social · Jun 16

The Minnesota shooter apparently used data broker websites to find the home addresses of the people he shot and murdered.

Congress has had years to do something about data brokers and they've sided with the tech lobby over and over again.

Their inaction is deadly.

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Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · May 13

This is an extraordinary and courageous piece of writing that wrestles with one of the great challenges of this moment: How do you decide whether to remain a part of broken institutions to try to fix them from within?

Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · May 13

"For me, the answer now lies in refusal, the withdrawal of participation from systems that require dishonesty as the price of belonging."

Today I am resigning from the National Science Board and the Library of Congress Scholars Council.

I wrote about my decision in TIME.

time.com/7285045/resi...

Why I’m Resigning from the NSF and Library of Congress

I cannot participate in systems that require dishonesty as the price of belonging.

time.com

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Paris Marx @parismarx.com · May 8

whenever i hear mark zuckerberg says the research meta is funding says social media isn’t bad for people, i think of tobacco execs saying smoking isn’t bad for your health

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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · Apr 23

let’s be clear that personalisation amounts to determining a person’s future based on recurring patterns of the past. if you belong to a groups that society has not been kind to in the past (black & brown, LGBTQI, poor, disabled, etc), AI personalisation ensures your future encodes past injustice

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Lee West @whodat35.bsky.social · Apr 3

WA Sen. Maria Cantwell is leading a #bipartisan push to give Congress more authority in setting #tariffs. www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

Cantwell leads bipartisan push to give Congress control over tariffs

Under the new legislation, all new tariffs would expire in 60 days unless they are approved by Congress. Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley is a co-sponsor.

www.seattletimes.com

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Algorithmic Justice League @ajlunited.bsky.social · Mar 31

1/ 🏳️‍⚧️ Today is #TransDayOfVisibility so let’s talk about the disparate impact of AI on this community. From security checkpoint systems that use a binary definition of gender to biased facial recognition technologies, AI is failing transgender and nonbinary people in critical ways.

Black background with white and red text reading "When we are thinking about how A.I. discriminates, we have to think about how machine learning systems are built. The mathematical patterns in the data are the same mathematical patterns in the world. So any kind of discrimination that exists in the world or has existed historically is likely going to be reflected in the data that’s used to train the system up." White text under this reads "Meredith Broussard, Author of 'More Than a Glitch' & 'Artificial Unintelligence'"

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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · Mar 18

Just so we’re all clear, the Supreme Court *expressly ruled* that the president cannot fire FTC commissioners without cause in 1935’s Humphrey’s Executor. Trump’s action here is brazenly illegal under any interpretation of the law as it stands. www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

Exclusive: Trump fires both Democratic commissioners at FTC, sources say

President Donald Trump fired the two Democratic commissioners at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday, two sources familiar with the situation said, in another major test of the independence of regulatory agencies.

www.reuters.com

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sarah jeong @sarahjeong.bsky.social · Mar 18

I can't believe we're gonna relitigate humphrey's executor. what's next. marbury v. madison? www.theverge.com/news/632267/...

Democratic FTC commissioners say they were just ‘illegally fired’ by President Trump

It’s the latest power grab over the independent agency.

www.theverge.com

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Ida Bae Wells @nhannahjones.bsky.social · Jan 24

Trump's freezing of all civil rights cases at the DOJ is not part of an anti-DEI agenda, but an anti-civil rights agenda. DOJ was *founded* to protect Black rights during Reconstruction. That this difference is unclear speaks to the success of conservative propagandists and the failures of liberals.

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Joey Schafer @schafer.bsky.social · Jan 21

A really powerful thread 🧵

🦇Miss Hell Batkeeper🦇 @mishellbaker.bsky.social · Jan 21

Being a person with deadly, incurable cancer who is nonetheless still alive for an indefinite timeframe gives me an interesting metaphor that helps me deal with things like large-scale corruption in government or commerce.

Bear with me for a second while I try to explain.

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Mert Can Bayar @mertcanbayar.bsky.social · Oct 14

BREAKING NEWS 🚨: Who supplied information to X users during the Trump assassination attempts?

Our latest report dives deep into this and discovers that the news supply on X is becoming oligarchical, where few prominent accounts dominate the news supply and shape the discourse in key events.

Breaking News in the Hands of a Few: Newsbrokering on X During the Trump Assassination Attempts

Research Report

uwcip.substack.com

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Mert Can Bayar @mertcanbayar.bsky.social · Sep 14

A quick read from @mikecaulfield.bsky.social on the pet eating rumors in Springfield. Do rumors cause violence? The answer Knopf provides and Mike summarizes here makes perfect sense to me ad a political scientist where rumors have potential but not sufficient to cause violence on their own.

The book that explains how the Springfield cat rumors put people at risk

Knopf's Rumors, Race, and Riots (1975) remains one of the best works on how misinformation fuels and sustains hate.

open.substack.com

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Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · Sep 9

The false narrative of "non-citizen voters" is a major theme of election rumors (and outright misinformation) in 2024. There's a whole cottage industry of creators generating "non citizen voters" content and the Heritage Foundation is getting in on the action: www.nytimes.com/2024/09/07/u...

Heritage Foundation Spreads Deceptive Videos About Noncitizen Voters

The right-wing think tank has been pushing misinformation about voting into social media feeds. The Georgia secretary of state’s office called one video “a stunt.”

www.nytimes.com

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Ashlyn B. Aske @ashlynba.bsky.social · May 16

Also, thanks to @mertcanbayar.bsky.social for editing support & promoting the post! :)

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Ashlyn B. Aske @ashlynba.bsky.social · May 16

Claims that "strange" anomalies and/or patterns in voter registration data indicate fraud are often unfounded, and reflect misconceptions about data or election law.

Read my recent piece w/ @katestarbird.bsky.social here! ⤵️
www.cip.uw.edu/2024/05/14/w...

Examining mischaracterizations of voter registration data in Washington state

There are often many explanations for why patterns and outliers occur in a dataset.

www.cip.uw.edu

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