Lane Becker
@lanebecker.bsky.social
Prestidigitation, double shuffling, honey-fugling, hornswaggling, & skullduggery. @ Wikimedia/Wikipedia. Previously @ IFTF, 18F, Code for America.
Need to follow-up the “No Kings” protest with one called “No Cowards.”
November 10, 2025 at 1:36 PM
Need to follow-up the “No Kings” protest with one called “No Cowards.”
Voted against most of them, knew this would happen, still completely sucks.
Every single constitutional amendment on the ballot in Texas passes, enshrining "parental rights" in the state constitution and making it easier for Greg Abbott to pack the state commission that disciplines judges, as well as tax breaks for "border security infrastructure."
November 5, 2025 at 3:28 AM
Voted against most of them, knew this would happen, still completely sucks.
This is, per usual, note-perfect.
November 5, 2025 at 2:49 AM
This is, per usual, note-perfect.
“One way of thinking about the past half-decade or so of life on the internet is that we’ve all become test subjects in a grand experiment to see just how bad ‘good enough’ can be.”
Platform Temperance
Notes on a new wave of the Techlash
maxread.substack.com
November 1, 2025 at 2:53 PM
“One way of thinking about the past half-decade or so of life on the internet is that we’ve all become test subjects in a grand experiment to see just how bad ‘good enough’ can be.”
"And through it all, my army of well-intentioned dorks keeps documenting every bit." www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/hi-...
Hi, It’s Me, Wikipedia, and I Am Ready for Your Apology
“Wikipedia, the constantly changing knowledge base created by a global free-for-all of anonymous users, now stands as the leading force for the dum...
www.mcsweeneys.net
October 27, 2025 at 11:28 PM
"And through it all, my army of well-intentioned dorks keeps documenting every bit." www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/hi-...
Reposted by Lane Becker
ordinary americans are filming ice agents and trying to save their neighbors. for all the hemming and hawing during 2024 about how democracy was an elite concern, the elites gave up far more quickly than average people.
October 24, 2025 at 1:51 PM
ordinary americans are filming ice agents and trying to save their neighbors. for all the hemming and hawing during 2024 about how democracy was an elite concern, the elites gave up far more quickly than average people.
Reposted by Lane Becker
thread, h/t @yvonnezlam.bsky.social (think about this in concert with how much we value "focus" these days)
And… I backed off this notion for a while because it seemed a bit secondary. But increasingly I think I was right the first time. Life works when people and systems accept their fuzzy unarticulated ancillary roles and know that they are part of something uncontracted but networked.
October 8, 2025 at 2:52 PM
thread, h/t @yvonnezlam.bsky.social (think about this in concert with how much we value "focus" these days)
“Use strong white flour for a superior product. Form the dough. Knead until it’s as elastic as the truth.” www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/how...
How to Make Strudel Like Magda Goebbels
“My grandfather used to say ‘and Magda Goebbels made a great strudel’ and I never knew what it meant until after he died my grandmother explained s...
www.mcsweeneys.net
September 23, 2025 at 1:26 AM
“Use strong white flour for a superior product. Form the dough. Knead until it’s as elastic as the truth.” www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/how...
“Fascism is a temper tantrum disguised as an ideology.” www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8SHcorw/
there’s no such thing as hypocrisy when you’re worldview is that you can just do whatever you want. * * * enjoy my rant. views are my own
TikTok video by Abbie Richards
www.tiktok.com
September 19, 2025 at 2:24 PM
“Fascism is a temper tantrum disguised as an ideology.” www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8SHcorw/
“You can tell the country is free because everywhere you look, there is less and less evidence that slavery ever happened.” www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...
A Beautiful Day for Saying Nothing
That chill in the air isn’t Jimmy Kimmel’s show being suspended. It’s just autumn!
www.theatlantic.com
September 18, 2025 at 10:08 PM
“You can tell the country is free because everywhere you look, there is less and less evidence that slavery ever happened.” www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...
”Wikipedia is one of the few platforms online where tremendous computing power isn’t being deployed in the service of telling you exactly what you want to hear.” www.theverge.com/cs/features/...
Wikipedia is under attack — and how it can survive
The site’s volunteers face threats from Trump, billionaires, and AI.
www.theverge.com
September 5, 2025 at 2:06 AM
”Wikipedia is one of the few platforms online where tremendous computing power isn’t being deployed in the service of telling you exactly what you want to hear.” www.theverge.com/cs/features/...
Holy hell. There’s bad, incredibly bad, unbelievably bad, and then, much, much worse than all of those, is this.
The entire Social Security database, dumped on a random cloud server: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/u...
DOGE Put Critical Social Security Data at Risk, Whistle-Blower Says
www.nytimes.com
August 26, 2025 at 3:03 PM
Holy hell. There’s bad, incredibly bad, unbelievably bad, and then, much, much worse than all of those, is this.
Reposted by Lane Becker
Holy shit, they did it. They wrote the headline.
July 30, 2025 at 1:10 AM
Holy shit, they did it. They wrote the headline.
Reposted by Lane Becker
Counterfactual pseudo-history is the default mode of AI slop. The latent spaces of #genAI are free of chronology, causality, or historical time. All visual patterns exist here simultaneously as equally accessible & exploitable resources, organized by similarity & ready to be endlessly recombined
4/
4/
July 26, 2025 at 12:40 PM
Counterfactual pseudo-history is the default mode of AI slop. The latent spaces of #genAI are free of chronology, causality, or historical time. All visual patterns exist here simultaneously as equally accessible & exploitable resources, organized by similarity & ready to be endlessly recombined
4/
4/
Reposted by Lane Becker
and I think it symbolizes a lot about why tech progress right now feels so strange and perverse, you have people promising that things like this will lead to a new gold rush while much of the actual foundations of American scientific and technological superiority are being burned to the ground
July 12, 2025 at 2:26 PM
and I think it symbolizes a lot about why tech progress right now feels so strange and perverse, you have people promising that things like this will lead to a new gold rush while much of the actual foundations of American scientific and technological superiority are being burned to the ground
Reposted by Lane Becker
Palate cleansing Friday nonsense
Every guy with a tragic backstory (in a movie):
June 20, 2025 at 10:06 AM
Palate cleansing Friday nonsense
Reposted by Lane Becker
I will repeat myself: there is a persistent belief that popular government should be based on convincing people by argumentative debate, when its true basis is the negotiation of rational compromises between people of different beliefs.
100% this: "'debating' people — particularly in live or quasi-live forms — is a bad epistemic practice. It essentially rewards people for being dogmatic, incurious, and willfully slippery with rhetoric." www.slowboring.com/p/a-rawlsian...
June 15, 2025 at 3:41 PM
I will repeat myself: there is a persistent belief that popular government should be based on convincing people by argumentative debate, when its true basis is the negotiation of rational compromises between people of different beliefs.
“You can learn a lot about a state's freedom of expression by how it treats Wikipedia. Censoring the site indicates that a significant erosion of rights has already taken place. Tracking how states treat Wikipedia provides a useful signal for those trying to counter rising authoritarianism.”
What Attacks on Wikipedia Reveal about Free Expression | TechPolicy.Press
Ryan McGrady writes that you can learn a lot about a state's view on free expression by how it treats Wikipedia.
techpolicy.press
May 15, 2025 at 2:05 PM
“You can learn a lot about a state's freedom of expression by how it treats Wikipedia. Censoring the site indicates that a significant erosion of rights has already taken place. Tracking how states treat Wikipedia provides a useful signal for those trying to counter rising authoritarianism.”
Reposted by Lane Becker
Not to be too pro technocrat, but it is astounding how much this country depended on the selflessness of like a few hundred thousand highly educated public servants who, for peanuts, made sure our food and medicine and environment etc were safe. And in return these servants were demonized.
“When it comes to .. raw milk, I want to be free to form a relationship with a local farmer, look him in the eyes, pet his cow, and then decide if I feel safe to drink the milk from his farm.”
— Casey Means, Trump’s latest surgeon-general nominee.
www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
— Casey Means, Trump’s latest surgeon-general nominee.
www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
Trump Picks a ‘MAHA’ Movement Leader for Surgeon General
The president said he would nominate Dr. Casey Means, a California doctor and wellness influencer, to be the next surgeon general.
www.wsj.com
May 8, 2025 at 1:42 AM
Not to be too pro technocrat, but it is astounding how much this country depended on the selflessness of like a few hundred thousand highly educated public servants who, for peanuts, made sure our food and medicine and environment etc were safe. And in return these servants were demonized.
Reposted by Lane Becker
An excellent review of Sinners. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, I would HIGHLY recommend it. And all the commentary and ink spilled about Ryan Coogler’s deal underlines one of the central points of the story.
The Jim Crow Economy Is the True Horror in 'Sinners'
The film illustrates the near-impossibility of upward mobility during the segregation era.
www.theatlantic.com
May 3, 2025 at 12:17 PM
An excellent review of Sinners. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, I would HIGHLY recommend it. And all the commentary and ink spilled about Ryan Coogler’s deal underlines one of the central points of the story.
Anybody out there who can connect me to someone at Cloudflare working on AI Labyrinth? We're intrigued over in Wikimedia-land and want to learn more. blog.cloudflare.com/ai-labyrinth/
Trapping misbehaving bots in an AI Labyrinth
How Cloudflare uses generative AI to slow down, confuse, and waste the resources of AI Crawlers and other bots that don’t respect “no crawl” directives.
blog.cloudflare.com
April 15, 2025 at 1:12 AM
Anybody out there who can connect me to someone at Cloudflare working on AI Labyrinth? We're intrigued over in Wikimedia-land and want to learn more. blog.cloudflare.com/ai-labyrinth/
Manischewitz Jell-O shots replaced the third cup of wine this fine Passover night. We saved the last one for Elijah.
April 13, 2025 at 2:34 AM
Manischewitz Jell-O shots replaced the third cup of wine this fine Passover night. We saved the last one for Elijah.
Reposted by Lane Becker
One of the sources of rot running through our political, intellectual, and media institutions is the total triumph of the idea that democracy means outsourcing your morality and point of view to a fuzzily incoherent view of what's popular. Total rejection of the idea of morality as personal virtue.
How is this different than what Republican senators say about Trump
April 10, 2025 at 10:26 PM
One of the sources of rot running through our political, intellectual, and media institutions is the total triumph of the idea that democracy means outsourcing your morality and point of view to a fuzzily incoherent view of what's popular. Total rejection of the idea of morality as personal virtue.
Reposted by Lane Becker
Spotted eagle ray has all the chill #spottedeagleray #eagleray #stingraysofcoralcity #stingray #chill #takeiteasy #flow #venomousfish #barb #elasmobranch #coral #coralcitycamera #miami #portmiami #biscaynebay #coralcity #civicpridethroughbiodiversity #glennnevis #coralcityfoundation #ccf #kbcf
April 9, 2025 at 1:51 PM
Reposted by Lane Becker
like every simplistic theory of capital's coercive behavior and protection of its own interests is just looking unbelievably delusional
April 7, 2025 at 4:06 AM
like every simplistic theory of capital's coercive behavior and protection of its own interests is just looking unbelievably delusional