Yeah but lots of bsky users are on here for art and such and have feeds with minimal news

I also suspect bsky users on average have a significantly healthier and more diverse news diet so even if they see news on bsky might not consider it to be a news source

and our government works hand in hand with them to consolidate power and get more authoritarian.

Like people thought Smartphones and Twitter and 3D printers and cheap Linux SBCs and MCU development boards would help us build a real democratic techno utopia, all with support from Intel and Google

But the way that personal dignity and liberty was at least in the abstract valued, and the way we hoped the democratization of technology would help us reach a more global, more equitable, and more free society just feels so incredibly dated and naive as our tech billionaires get richer...

But I also wasn't really politically aware until 2014/2015, my family was not particularly political, nor were we effected by 2008, so it's easy for me to look back it through overly rose tinted glasses.

It's easy (for me especially) to look back at the late 2000s and early 2010s as a really amazing time, both in terms technology and politics. We had smartphones maturing but not yet stagnated and evil, Obama was president, the Maker movement was in full swing, gay rights had major wins.

OP, using Shapeshifters' tumblr account, reflected back on this.
shapeshiftersvt.tumblr.com/post/7514895...

Yeah, here. Two ministers arrested, one Unitarian, one Methodist. Not sure if it was in the exact location in the photo, but it was in Florida.

www.tampabay.com/news/st-pete...

I have a rule that I really try to hold myself too, even when traveling. Which is no big chain food. If I'm going to eat out I am going to support a local place, the food is almost always better, the prices are almost always lower.