Thank you so much Avi!!

Thank you so much for reading! I definitely regretted not having my board on me last time I was in London -- next time for sure :)

PhD defense :) biggest of shout outs to the best committee I could wish for, @jatucker.bsky.social @cbarrie.bsky.social @gmcclendon.bsky.social @andyguess.com and Pat Egan -- feeling very lucky!

NEW: How To Train Your Chatbot

AI chatbots have become increasingly common. How much do you know about how they actually work?

Now in English, Arabic, French, and Italian. Live at: howtotrainyourchatbot.com

new new new!! proud of this one, please try it out and let me know what you think <3

howtotrainyourchatbot.com

How to Train Your Chatbot is built by @aliaelkattan.com, @lujain.bsky.social, Sarah Al Yahya, @raminrahni.bsky.social, Jonah Senzel.

Translations by Sarah Al Yahya (Arabic), Kiara Jouhanneau (French), and @tommi.space.

Funded by the Responsible Technology Youth Power Fund.

just saw a posting for a job at the NYPD on a Civic Tech newsletter lol u gotta be kidding me

this is the first anniversary of the revolution, and port said massacre, that I'm seeing tons of identical AI generated slop about it and it's starting to drive me crazy

I'm sorry. As a technology writer, I'm supposed to be telling you that this bet will some day pay off, because one day we will have shoveled so many words into the word-guessing program that it wakes up and learns how to actually do the jobs it is failing spectacularly at today. This is a proposition akin to the idea that if we keep breeding horses to run faster and faster, one of them will give birth to a locomotive. Humans possess intelligence, and machines do not. The difference between a human and a word-guessing program isn't how many words the human knows. I'm sorry. I know that when we talk about "digital sovereignty," we're obliged to talk about how we can build more data-centres that we can fill up with money-losing chips from American silicon monopolists in the hopes of destroying as many jobs as possible while blowing through our clean energy goals and enshittifying as much of our potable water as possible.

Córy Doctorow with another verbal bullseye: pluralistic.net/2026/01/13/n...

Native Americans protested in Minneapolis today after the ICE abducted four Oglala Sioux Tribal Members. Three of them are still missing. (1/17|26)

congrats Doctor Ingrid!

Champion Trees - Higher Taste Listen to Higher Taste on TIDAL

this track's been my lifeline lately

tidal.com/track/470617...

consistently

feels nice to be from the greatest city in the world

idek anymore!!!!

has NYU considered hiring someone who can fix elevators instead

Made a lil site today whydontyouaskchatgpt.com

snow in nyc is like the most beautiful sight you've ever witnessed for 24 hours, then you're on the brink of death every time you step on the sidewalk for the next week

can a benevolent nerd please make a streaming platform-agnostic jamming tool (you can jam to the same songs across diff platforms) and a playlist sharer (you can share a playlist of songs and it opens in any platform) thank you very much

alright funs over we need to get everyone to trash their ring doorbells

why the hell do doctors offices want me to scan my palm with amazon one palm scan reader or take a selfie to verify my identity to check into my appointments

my favorite completely placebo pseudoscience is that i somehow convinced myself that i can relieve physical pain by listening to the strokes. i can't explain it but it works

thanks so much for reading (and sharing) brendan, it means a lot!

Great piece!

> I argue that skateboarding, too, is a pedagogical instrument…

> The playfulness skating allows is not about turning cities into playgrounds but turning individuals into people who can find playgrounds in cities.

yes!! i had similar thoughts about walking with a camera after writing this piece :)

Aw thank you so much Sacha!!

THANK YOU FOR READING YUSUF means the world! also this is the only time I don't bail when it comes to skateboarding lolll

“In Seeing like a State, James C. Scott examines mapping as a way of making territories legible to state power – planning, surveillance, and control.15 By seeing like a skater, skaters can subvert the gaze of the state, imagining an alternate mapping of public space.”