FeedCity

And btw to Mitch McConnell, fuck you. You had a chance, with one freaking vote, to avoid this. You are among a small number of people who could have stopped this. This should be the first line in your obituary. "He could have saved the United States, but chose not to do it."

Highly recommend this week's Ezra Klein podcast. It made me wonder if any of the readers of my blog voted for Trump. I can't imagine too many did, unless they've been willing to overlook my strenuous support for any option that opposes him. However if any of you are still he...

Today we’re rolling out two plug-in changes to Micro.blog. The first is that for new users, the Sumo theme by Matt Langford is now the default theme. This is a great theme that I think will serve new users better than our previous default theme Marfa. Sumo is better maintained and easier to customize.

Inspired by the good work that plug-in developers are doing, we’re also starting to sprinkle in donation buttons on your plug-ins list. The buttons can say either donate, tip, or buy me a coffee. Here’s an example:

I’ve been manually wiring these up, but later we’ll automate this so that Micro.blog can discover the donation link via a plug-in’s config or readme. If you’ve created a plug-in that accepts donations, let me know and I’ll update the listing.

Guillermo Rauch is one of the most prolific coders of this generation.  But he doesn’t think of himself as a coder anymore.  Coding, he says, is a specific skill that AI is becoming great at. Instead, he thinks the future of coding is more holistic, full-stack engin...

Guillermo Rauch is one of the most prolific coders of this generation.  But he doesn’t think of himself as a coder anymore.  Coding, he says, is a specific skill that AI is becoming great at. Instead, he thinks the future of coding is more holistic, full-stack engi...

On the podcast today we have Anthony Jackson, a technology enthusiast and entrepreneur. Anthony shares his journey from developing a passion for computers early on, to starting a computer repair business. He discusses his experiences with WordPress, including frustrations with customisation, and his transition to providing WordPress hosting through platforms like Linode and Docker. Anthony is now focused on creating Bash scripts to simplify the deployment of open-source applications. He emphasises embracing technology and the opportunities it provides, despite the challenges he has faced along the way. If you’re keen to hear some inspirational stories about overcoming tech challenges, resilience and learning, this episode is for you.

Federico Viticci blogging about timeline apps:

My problem with timeline apps is that I struggle to understand their pitch as alternatives to browsing Mastodon and Bluesky (supported by both Tapestry and Reeder) when they don’t support key functionalities of those services such as posting, replying, reposting, or marking items as favorites.

There’s no reason these apps can’t also support creating new posts. Sort of like how the Micro.blog iOS app can post to WordPress. I don’t think apps need to support all social features, though.

Join Guy Kawasaki for a fascinating conversation with Alison Wood Brooks, Harvard Business School professor and author of Talk. As the creator of the innovative "How to Talk Gooder" course, Brooks reveals the science behind great conversations, sharing insights on everything...

Elon Musk and his team have taken a hacksaw to the federal bureaucracy one agency at a time, and the question has become whether he’s on a crusade that will leave the government paralyzed or deliver a shake-up it has needed for years. Jonathan Swan, a White House reporter fo...

As Elon Musk’s government takeover continues, Representative Jamie Raskin has been sounding a particularly urgent alarm. And during a Twitter fight between the two, Raskin asked Musk a simple question: As someone who supposedly works for the government now, will he ...

I possibly was a bit hasty in declaring the coup over yesterday. I'm sure there will be new restraining orders from the courts telling Musk to stop, and so far Trump has been obeying those, so there's some hope when that happens he'll order Musk to stop, and then we'll find ...

I updated the Developers account on Bluesky to follow Tim Bray, Simon Willison, Techdirt, Manton Reece and Cory Doctorow. I took my feeds off the list, and added other developer accounts I regularly read. I'm trying to bootstrap something here, to see what can be done, and feel it's important to take myself out of the list for now.

Amazon’s Kindle Vella is shutting down with only a few weeks notice. I never read any stories but I thought it was an interesting idea — serialized novels delivered in short episodes like a chapter at a time, mostly fantasy and romance. Perhaps should’ve been more integrated with Kindle Unlimited.

The company’s promise to avoid building AI applications that cause harm has been deleted

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency – a team of 20 or so engineers – now has influence in a number of departments, working to deplete the civil service. But is this legal?

Read more:

Elon Musk and other unelected officials are working to remake the U.S. government. 

Faiz Siddiqui has been covering the world’s richest man for years, and he says Musk’s playbook at DOGE is similar to what he did at X, formerly known as Twitter: Cut first, ask questions later.

There are still questions about whether that worked for X and whether it’s legal for the U.S. government. 

Today’s show was produced by Rennie Svirnovskiy. It was edited by Maggie Penman and mixed by Sam Bair. 

Subscribe to The Washington Post here.

The coup is over. This time, unlike the last time it was tried, it worked. We're in the post-coup world now. He showed us exactly what he would do if he could and we somehow collectively acted as if he hadn't shown us. Sanewashing was just the tip of the iceberg, you can't blame it on the press, we didn't demand they get their shit together, we didn't try to change the subject so they'd have to tell the real story. We had a lot of tools available to us that we didn't use because we are lazy and selfish. BTW, if you want to follow the power, don't look at what governments do, look at what the other oligarchs do. Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, etc.

As our centennial series continues, Bernadette Atuahene, property rights scholar, professor at USC's Gould School of Law and leader of the grassroots Coalition for Property Tax Justice and Black Homes Matter campaigns, and the author of Plundered: How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America (Little, Brown, 2025), explains the long history of inequality in property tax burdens rooted in redlining.

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Freaky warning. As easily as Musk can turn off government websites, he can turn off our sites. He could turn off all .com or .org sites. He'll probably do it just that way. Only one domain will work in the future, x.com. Goodbye Google, Amazon, your drug store. Bubye. Not sure if moving your DNS to Europe or Asia will make a difference. He's taking advantage of centralization, and will try to make it more centralized. Totally centralized. A journalist couldn't report this, because what proof do I have? It's because there's a pattern here. And it's pretty obvious the tools he's using.

devs.feediverse.org on Bluesky. An interesting experiment.

I was just setting up an account for another Feed Reader experiment on Bluesky and found that they have a Suggested User List that recommended the usual people who get in the way of telling the story that's really happening. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach, really felt ...