It's not even the ethics of it. My career, my hobbies, my free time, hell, my whole life took off once I fully left Twitter. It is a place to go if you want to be stuck in a neverending race war feedback loop. Like not using ChatGPT, not using Twitter is a superpower. Remain employable; stay off it.

"I want to go back to the network run for the benefit of the man directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, because that's where the good AI posts are," say nation's oblivious bloggers

"I want to go back to the network owned for the benefit of the man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, minimum, due to his USAID cuts, because that's where the good AI posts are," say nation's oblivious bloggers

"I don't want to hear about politics," say American opinion writers several weeks before the most consequential midterm election of their lives.

“It can’t be a Nazi bar. When I go there, all my fellow straight, white men are super nice to me.”

And *this* is what ICE said: "Parra-Hernandez ran in front of an ICE vehicle and was struck." Do *you* see him running in front of the SUV?

This is exactly what ICE said: "Parra-Hernandez ran in front of an ICE vehicle and was struck." Now watch the video. They're no other word for it: They're lying.

Not yet this time round but I hope to. Simon’s obviously amazing but also a JSK alum so has very much been here.

Worth also saying: I don’t think the status quo is worth protecting. Existing institutions that have not served their communities well don’t need to stick around. If they are, or if they can evolve to, great. Otherwise we need new tech and journalistic institutions. The important thing is to serve.

Let’s please talk!!

I’ve been given the gift of a year, with one of the most prestigious universities in the world as my platform, and I want to help. It’s going to take a lot more reflection, healing, learning, and experimenting before I really find what I’m here for. But I’m impatient to work on it.

Tired: Move fast and break things. Wired: Build relationships and heal things.

One thing I definitely think is that code alone cannot change the status quo. Software is cheap to produce but making real impact means working with communities like news, understanding them holistically, and ideally co-designing with them.

I care about journalism because I care about democracy, and I think it’s the most important way we can learn about the world in a way that allows us to make stronger democratic decisions. How can we best bring about those effects? How might the world change and how can we meet that change?

So I’m wondering what my place in all this is. I’ve built open platforms for specific domains before (Elgg, the open source social platform I co-founded, was originally built for higher ed). But how can I be most impactful for journalism? I don’t think I know yet.

Meanwhile, tech folks I know are thinking about identity layers for agentic workflows and all kinds of smart protocol tooling. In tech, that could lead to wholly new kinds of products. News folks can’t connect it to their direct user needs (yet).

One of the things I’m thinking about producing is a set of Creative Commons licensed sample tech and security policies for newsrooms. Impactful for tech companies? Not at all. But for some newsrooms it could be really meaningful.

I’m a bridge between these two worlds - tech and journalism - and there’s a lot of translation to do. (I’m not the only bridge of this kind, to be clear! But I am one.) News is not an engineering-centric space; often there are zero engineers. That’s a real culture shock to tech companies.

I’ve realized I’m putting some pressure on myself: I have the time and space to reflect and build .. but that means I need to reflect and build. What can *I* create that would be useful for others to build on? It’s not my first time in this mode, but it’s been a while.