Having a small child has only further entrenched my anti-smacking position. What kind of person hits a three year old? It’s child abuse. The idea of it absolutely breaks my heart. If someone did that to my kid I’d call the police. And yet it still happens, and people still try to justify it.

The introduction of mu.social today is a big deal, imo:

You can now create an account on the Bluesky / ATproto network and interact with anyone on it entirely without entering US jurisdiction.

That's important for two reasons:

1. It proves the decentralization of that network
2. It provides a clean, viable alternative for people who want to interact with profiles there

I care less about European sovereignty, tbh, but it's clear that people want to escape US reach. This is a step forward.

If we’re building pro-social, democracy-supporting technology, how can we combine our ideals with being able to earn a living? Should we? https://werd.io/its-not-enough-to-have-better-ideals/

"Driven by political shifts and wellness trends, unpasteurized milk has moved from a fringe obsession to a widespread movement rooted in institutional distrust." Just an absolute microcosm of our times. https://www.propublica.org/article/mark-mcafee-raw-milk-recalls-maha

Help me settle a debate. Is Paw Patrol publicly funded or are they a private vigilante force? Are they a symbol of Canadian public services or corporate overreach?

It’s very useful that people are complaining about Pride month and trans visibility. It makes it so much easier to know who to avoid forever.

"The story of one couple’s long battle with their health insurer — and the little-known tool buried deep in their insurance coverage booklet that helped them finally win." This should not be a thing, but I'm glad my colleagues at @nprofile1q... were able to tell this story. https://www.propublica.org/podcast/health-insurance-industry-secret-external-review

If projects are going to convince people to try alternatives to Big Tech, they need to do a much better job of explaining why they're better for people who don't care about technical details like protocols and decentralization. #Technology https://werd.io/the-fediverse-is-not-a-product-its-time-to-get-real-about-marketing/

"When such power is concentrated in the hands of a few, it tends to become opaque and evade public oversight, [giving] rise to new dependencies, exclusions, manipulations and inequalities." #AI https://werd.io/the-pope-used-his-first-encyclical-to-warn-about-tech-centralization/

Still on that "finding a 3-bedroom house to rent in Palo Alto or Menlo Park near Caltrain" train. If you see something, say something.

I don't know who needs to hear this, but being prosecuted for staging an insurrection in the Capitol building that included militia leaders from the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers is not "persecution for political purposes".