How the Iron Curtain collapsed
Berlin techno clubs are closing in large numbers
The rise of Bluesky, and the splintering of social
MIT Technology Review: “..Last year, we put “Twitter killers” on our list of 10 breakthrough technologies. But the breakthrough technology wasn’t the rise of one service or the decline of another.
It was decentralization. At the time, I wrote: “Decentralized, or federated, social media allows for communication across independently hosted servers or platforms, using networking protocols such as ActivityPub, AT Protocol, or Nostr. It offers more granular moderation, more security against the whims of a corporate master or government censor, and the opportunity to control your social graph. It’s even possible to move from one server to another and follow the same people.” In the long run, massive, centralized social networks will prove to be an aberration.
We are going to use different networks for different things. For example, Bluesky is great for breaking news because it does not deprioritize links and defaults to a social graph that shows updates from the people you follow in chronological order. (It also has a Discover feed and you can set up others for algorithmic discovery—more on that in a moment—but the default is the classic Twitter-esque timeline.)..”
- See also FastCompany – The website tracks how fast Bluesky is growing in near real time. Bluesky has added millions of new users since the election—and this site lets you watch each one as they sign up.
- See also Lifehacker – This Is the Best Way to Find People to Follow on Bluesky. Bluesky Directory is a repository of knowledge about the booming new social media service.
- See also A Second Academic Exodus From X? Numerous high-profile academics have announced they are leaving X, citing concerns about disinformation and how owner Elon Musk used the platform to support Trump.
Richard Whatmore, The End of Enlightenment: Empire, Commerce, Crisis.
Anthony Kaldellis, The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium.
Philip Ball, How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology.
David van Reybrouck, Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World.
Annie Jacobsen, Nuclear War: A Scenario.
Michael Cook, A History of the Muslim World: From its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity.
Kathleen Duval, Native Nation: A Millennium in North America.
Blake Butler, Molly. Or is that one fiction?
Olivier Roy, The Crisis of Culture: Identity Politics and the Empire of Norms.
Nick Lloyd, The Eastern Front: A History of the First World War.
Carlos Scarpa, The Complete Buildings.
Bryan Caplan, Self-Help is Like a Vaccine.
Harriet Baker, Rural Hours: The Country Lives of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Rosamond Lehmann. What is it like to be an unusual woman writer, with unusual proclivities, and have to build up or rebuild your work life in the countryside? There is now a whole book on this topic. Does it really mean you have to write down a complete inventory of all household possessions? (apparently) Beautifully written, very British, will frustrate those who seek generalization but recommended nonetheless.
Cormac Ó Gráda, Hidden Victims: Civilian Casualties of the Two World Wars.
Anil Ananthaswamy, Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI.
Luke Stegemann, Madrid: A New Biography.
Alisa Lozhkina, The Art of Ukraine.
Padraig O’Malley, Perils and Prospects of a United Ireland.
Craig Brown, A Voyage Around the Queen.
Patchen Barss, The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius.
Truly an outstanding list for this year. Although reading and “the book” are in decline, books are not. If I had to pick out two to top the list, perhaps they would be:
Annie Jacobsen, Nuclear War: A Scenario, and
Michael Cook, A History of the Muslim World: From its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity.
Also having a claim is Anil Ananthaswamy, Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI, though for many readers the math will be too much