jfairbairn.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

from “Parable of the Talents” by Octavia Butler

submitted 7 days ago • 386 comments

I found myself asking, “what is the objective of the tariffs on Canada?” And I realized that there doesn’t have to be an objective, at least not a strategic one. Spite and grievance are reason enough.

submitted 20 days ago • 1 comment

I think I see a “tell” for when Musk is behind something the government announces: wordplay. He loves his stupid, trollish wordplay. So when you see something like “external revenue service”, that’s a signal of his influence.

submitted 20 days ago • 1 comment

It would be nice to see mainstream media acknowledge that every alarmist in their ranks about Trump and his henchmen has been correct, and every single "Let's all calm down" guy--a posture of blasé detachment that is consistently over-rewarded in legacy media--has called it wrong from day one.

submitted 22 days ago • 107 comments

For me, "regenerative" means "living and thriving in a way that causes all the beings you depend on (even those whose individual lives you cause to end for your own thriving) to also live and thrive"

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

The problem with institutional knowledge is that it is self-perpetuating. A high-knowledge environment tends to reproduce itself by being weak on supporting process - if you know how to work the organization, you don’t have to have process.

submitted 22 days ago • 1 comment

The platform capitalism variant of Linus’ Law is, given enough $$$, all feature requests are shallow

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments

Observation. Barely anyone is talking about Russian influence this time. Given how flagrant it was last time, and how unpunished, and how the, um, strategic situation has only ratcheted up, it seems likely to me that there is more of it now, rather than none.

submitted 31 days ago • 0 comments

a key take away from reading a lot of history for me: the people who survive hard times and eventually brutally humiliate their seemingly invincible enemies are not the people whose first response to adversity is “oh well, guess I’ll die”

submitted 33 days ago • 60 comments

Wow. I know the Economist usually maintains a tone of amused detachment/worldly pragmatism, but this really feels like they have just decided to throw off any pretence of supporting an energy transition or even a liberal political order. econ.st/40JFaL2

submitted 31 days ago • 0 comments

I'm currently on day two of a workshop from the NIH. We're in the middle of a presentation and we're now being told that the remainder of the workshop is cancelled. 🙃

submitted 31 days ago • 54 comments

Let he who's dad didn't track their teenage erections and post it to the internet cast the first stone.

submitted 31 days ago • 7 comments

Not to blow my own trumpet but it does feel like maybe we were onto something here ..

submitted 31 days ago • 5 comments

Trump demands to be the center of attention. It's hard not to see Trump 2.0 as the biggest energy story in the world. But China begs to differ: China built 277 GW of solar (877 GW total now!) & 80 GW of wind (521 GW total) in 2024. That, as Trump would say, is 'uge! electrek.co/2025/01/21/c... 🔌💡

submitted 32 days ago • 4 comments

Imagining our world as a living being of which we are an essential part, is an act of imagination in the same way that it is for our gut bacteria to imagine a human being.

submitted 32 days ago • 1 comment

Thinking of all the times I’ve heard “climate can be an opportunity as well as a risk!” asserted by people in finance sector as if it’s a good thing.

submitted 38 days ago • 12 comments

People want clear and obvious solutions. And I get why. But hope and fear do not neatly map onto each other. The problem/solution frame bears much responsibility for how we got into our predicament in the first place.

submitted 39 days ago • 0 comments

"Enshittified tech platforms shouldn’t be able to command attention forever. Their own lust for growth should be the start of their downfall." h/t @jjn1.bsky.social roblog.co.uk/2025/01/the-...

submitted 39 days ago • 0 comments

If you can’t write from where you want to be, write from where you already are, no matter how shitty or unpublishable you think that is. I’m sure someone’s said this already, but: if you can’t be good, at least be honest. (This is a note to self on #writing)

submitted 39 days ago • 0 comments

I feel nervous about posting here. I’m encouraged by the somewhat old-Twitter vibes (the positive ones) I’m starting to see now that a bunch of you are here. But I’m also not keen on having the same patterns repeat, even if it takes a few years. I want to love fedi but it’s not where y’all are, so 🤷🏽

submitted 39 days ago • 0 comments

It’s not techno-optimism. It’s techno-capitalist optimism. It’s the kind of optimism that doesn’t see things like rhe mass extinction of species as within its scope of problems to solve, presumably because we could eventually build technology that would obviate any need (from a human […]

submitted 98 days ago • 1 comment

“Foreseeable but not specifically predictable” is a vibe we’re just starting to realize we’re going to have to get used to

submitted 55 days ago • 0 comments

At CES: AI baby monitor AI 5G litter box AI eye mask AI bike AI long distance group video game sex toys AI CGM that doesn’t work if you have melanin AI chessboard AI golf simulator AI pet door AI clothing AI skincare LIGHTING AI chatbot watch AI massage chair AI glasses AI piano

submitted 46 days ago • 5 comments

The “existential risk” (or more correctly, threat) is not from AGI per se, and certainly doesn’t come from the level of intelligence implied by AGI. The “AI threat” is one example of a broader category of threats you could characterize as “runaway automation”.

submitted 80 days ago • 1 comment

“No but hear me out, what if everyone is wrong in exactly the same way, and my pet alternative theory conveniently happens to be exactly correct?”

submitted 82 days ago • 1 comment

31 years between these two purchases. (Yay, got a piano recently and diving back in!)

submitted 82 days ago • 0 comments

Time to read A Time of Gifts again, I think.

submitted 96 days ago • 0 comments