El cognito
banner
elcognito.bsky.social
El cognito
@elcognito.bsky.social
Searching for the sublime
This was a surprise. Apparently access to fb and insta had no statistically meaningful effect on political attitudes. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
The effects of Facebook and Instagram on the 2020 election: A deactivation experiment | PNAS
We study the effect of Facebook and Instagram access on political beliefs, attitudes, and behavior by randomizing a subset of 19,857 Facebook users...
www.pnas.org
July 8, 2025 at 1:37 AM
Reposted by El cognito
Since Trump took office, his family has made $2.9 billion in crypto.

Again, this is a level of corruption so cartoonish, so obvious & on the surface, that it seems to have stunned everyone to silence.
Trump family's net worth has increased by $2.9 billion thanks to crypto investments, new report says
As the Trump family's crypto ventures increase their wealth, the president's administration pauses a dozen federal crypto probes.
www.cbsnews.com
May 6, 2025 at 8:58 PM
Reposted by El cognito
April 10, 2025 at 7:58 AM
Reposted by El cognito
3) The U.S. been more of an obstacle to international cooperation on GHGs than anything. Will it be any MORE so if it’s absent? Possibly the opposite will be true. The International Maritime Organization today agreed to a $100/ton carbon tax w/o US for example www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solu...
Countries agree to global carbon tax on shipping after decade of talks
The agreement, which goes into effect in 2028, makes the shipping industry the first to face international binding emissions targets.
www.washingtonpost.com
April 11, 2025 at 4:31 PM
Reposted by El cognito
Exclusive: Green-steel startup Boston Metal just showed that it has all the ingredients needed to make steel without emitting gobs of greenhouse gases. The company successfully ran its largest reactor yet to make steel, producing over a ton of metal.
This startup just hit a big milestone for green steel production
Boston Metal completed its first run of an industrial reactor that uses electricity to make steel.
www.technologyreview.com
March 12, 2025 at 1:51 PM
An insightful critique of utilitarian and longtermist ideology
thepointmag.com/politics/hom...
Homo Algorithmicus | The Point Magazine
Longtermism explains one of the most striking commonalities between progressive and reactionary techno-optimists: their shared set of enemies.
thepointmag.com
February 5, 2025 at 1:33 PM
Reposted by El cognito
A UK trial of a 4-day workweek with 61 companies was so successful that 54 kept it, and most made it permanent, per NPR.

Employees worked less but stayed just as productive, with some companies seeing revenue grow by 35%. Workers also reported better health, less burnout, and even losing weight.
January 22, 2025 at 10:42 PM
Reposted by El cognito
Making steel produces a lot of greenhouse-gas emissions. Now, construction is underway in Sweden on an industrial-scale plant that will emit almost zero carbon dioxide.

Our reporters and editors named green steel as one of the 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2025.
Green steel: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2025
Making steel produces a lot of greenhouse-gas emissions. Now, construction is underway in Sweden on an industrial-scale plant that will emit almost zero carbon dioxide.
www.technologyreview.com
January 9, 2025 at 3:23 PM
Reposted by El cognito
News is scrambling to find a narrative which is anything other than “he was radicalised by the normalised evil of profit driven health insurance ”
December 10, 2024 at 8:25 PM
Reposted by El cognito
The real manifesto, short and to the point: www.kenklippenstein.com/p/luigis-man...
Luigi's Manifesto
Exclusive: read Luigi Mangione's 262-word manifesto on the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO
www.kenklippenstein.com
December 10, 2024 at 9:14 PM
Reposted by El cognito
Jimmy Kimmel just DESTROYED Donald Trump’s entire administration. 🤣
November 25, 2024 at 2:44 AM
Interesting read for those interested in community organizing
www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyran...
The Tyranny of Stuctureless
The Tyranny of Stuctureless by Jo Freeman
www.jofreeman.com
November 30, 2024 at 3:28 PM
A haunting image of us tax dollars at work. #thiscantbehappenning
November 24, 2024 at 4:57 PM
Reposted by El cognito
Amazon and Elon Musk's SpaceX challenge labor agency's constitutionality in federal court
Amazon and Elon Musk's SpaceX challenge labor agency's constitutionality in federal court
Attorneys for Amazon and Elon Musk’s SpaceX have argued in a federal appeals court that the National Labor Relations Board’s structure is unconstitutional.
apnews.com
November 19, 2024 at 9:32 AM
Reposted by El cognito
Follower counts can be deceiving. Engagement is higher on Bluesky — we’ve seen this trend consistently, not just for the past few weeks.
as an experiment, I posted the same post to twitter and bluesky.

here is the time series of engagements (sum of comments, reposts, likes) from the two platforms.

Note that I have 39K followers on twitter and 7K here, so engagement per follower here is more than 10 times higher here on bluesky.
November 12, 2024 at 7:33 AM
Reposted by El cognito
New from 404 Media: someone put facial recognition on Meta's smart glasses to instantly dox strangers. You look at them, sends face to a facial recognition tool. LLM infers name, sends to people site. Gets phone number, address. I've seen it in action www.404media.co/someone-put-...
Someone Put Facial Recognition Tech onto Meta's Smart Glasses to Instantly Dox Strangers
The technology, which marries Meta’s smart Ray Ban glasses with the facial recognition service Pimeyes and some other tools, lets someone automatically go from face, to name, to phone number, and home...
www.404media.co
October 2, 2024 at 1:34 PM
"Our public discourse is successful when it produces a healthy public opinion capable of making state power answerable to politics. Our public discourse is not successful merely because every speaker expresses his thoughts in an uninhibited way. "
"One of the very great dangers hanging over the future of free speech in the United States is the present tendency of the Supreme Court to extend to all speech the protections properly due only to public discourse."
thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-unfortun...
The Unfortunate Consequences of a Misguided Free Speech Principle
We need to repair our politics, not our speech.
thereader.mitpress.mit.edu
October 12, 2024 at 2:53 PM
Should it be in proportion to how democratic we consider their government to be?
in general we have a really hard time figuring out to what extent civilian populations are accountable for the actions of their elected government
October 9, 2024 at 4:03 PM
Reposted by El cognito
Lawyers who once represented Kremlin's late foe Navalny go on trial in Russia
Lawyers who once represented Kremlin's late foe Navalny go on trial in Russia
Three lawyers who once represented the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny have gone on trial. The trial began on Thursday.
apnews.com
September 12, 2024 at 12:03 PM
Best feeling: when trying something new, it's so difficult that you barely manage. Then go to bed and the next morning it feels so easy and natural you wonder why it was ever difficult to begin with. Nothing feels more like magic. Thanks brain!
September 11, 2024 at 12:51 PM