Notices by Erin Kissane (kissane@mas.to)

I don't think it's possible to be where we are in #uspol (and in the global authoritarian slide) without our information ecosystems being such a mess.

There's a ton of work to do on the distribution side of the problem, but also on the info-making side: Even great newsrooms aren't built to make the kind of knowledge we need in this moment, bc what they make are endless streams of atomized stories.

And we ordinary people are all out here in the feeds trying to piece it together in our heads.

Anyone reading this yet? https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2025/05/29/one-brief-shining-moment-rise-and-fall-of-the-second-american-republic/

@kims @jaz Thank you! I am so excited to find more direct ways to help.

I sure have a lot of thoughts on a lot of things, none of which belong on a microblogging network.

I am very anti getting covid *and also* this Lancet paper actually does a nice job of noting that the small cognitive deficits that persisted after clinically mild pre-vax-world covid may be too subtle to be noticed by the subjects, but there are other confounding factors & mysteries.

IRL many folks are *very* aware of cognitive problems after infection, so this isn't necessarily a case of special sneaky damage that's always subjectively invisible at high severity.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(24)00421-8/fulltext

Mostly I want to say: There's a ton of evidence that covid damages cognition to some degree, even in clinically mild cases. But the specific relationship between subjective experience and objective measures is genuinely complex, so it's good not to over-reduce it.

(Metacognition is wickedly tricky, as anyone with a history of "brain fog" and/or loved ones with cognitive decline can attest. Some conditions are subjectively detectable and some not and severity CAN play a role but doesn't always.)

Lastly! (Sorry.) The portents of doom clearly aren't the only reason for Moz going so hard on AI—there's a long history of classic techno-libertarian philosophy within the org that makes a lot of it make sense—and Moz has been looking for ways to diversify for a loooong time, but I do think the intensity of focus has been bumped up by the sense that things could hit a very heavy wall quite soon.

In lieu of an extremely specific reply card: I will not myself be engaging in arguments about whether or not Mozilla's initiatives are "good AI" or whatever.

Also I promise that you do not have to explain to me how Moz is funded or how browser development and/or open source works. ✌️

I haven't said this bc it seemed obvious but since I was snarky yesterday: My assumption is that Mozilla is real into AI (and not into most other things) right now is bc the potential remedies in the Google monopoly suit are an extremely serious existential risk and they're trying to operate where the money is (AI, for now) and maybe do some good—by someone's lights—to prep for that potential doom.

Remedies coming in about a year: https://archive.ph/j13bw

On Moz risk: https://news.itsfoss.com/google-mozilla-firefox-threat/

Venn diagram of what indie tech people think Mozilla wants to be/should be and what Moz actually wants to be: OO

yes

https://modem.io/blog/blog-monetization/

@berniethewordsmith We mention it, but this is sort of a level down, about structures and processes of governance. I wrote about the culture problem last year, though: https://erinkissane.com/the-affordance-loop

Unfortunately the site’s getting slashdotted rn but it will come back up

I think one of the hard things about fedi, culturally, is that a whole lot (most??) of us are here because we are refusers of norms. And which norms and which levels of refusal differ.

So even if you’re at the 80th to 99th percentile of resistance to corporate social media OR mainstream party politics OR mainstream journalism OR cars OR the normalization of repeat covid infections, there will always be people popping up to tell you that by not being completely pure, you’re killing everyone.

@clarity Thank you so much for the great talk threads! (You were so nice about mine but I am thanking you for the whole deal!)

As people come out of #xoxofest with, inevitably, some positive tests, I would like to reiterate as one of your Original Pandemic Aunties that *this is not your fault*.

Individuals in busted systems can only do so much for so long. Trying matters and/but so does giving yourself grace.

(Also there is a thread in the Slack for noting positive tests so folks can do light contact tracing, just fyi.)

https://erinkissane.com/fediverse-governance-drop

So relieved and delighted to have this stuff out into the world where it can help new (and maybe also some experienced) fedi admins and mods think through their work. And maybe help convey to others at least some of what makes the fediverse such a structurally interesting place.

I'm even more optimistic about the fediverse than I was when we jumped into this—and sobered, too, by how much work there is to be done. But I think it's doable.

Longer post(s) to come after the morning school rush, but!

The Fediverse governance research @darius and I have been working on this year—with the absolutely central participation of so many wonderful Mastodon and Hometown server teams—is out:

https://write.as/fediversalist-papers/releasing-our-findings

A lot of people tried to warn that if we didn’t comprehensively reform the CDC and hold them accountable for covid failures (testing, data, guidance), the next pandemic was going to be a clusterfuck.

Instead of doing any of that, they moved the deck chairs into slightly different configurations and here we are, blindfolding ourselves and hoping it all works out great.

(This is held over from last week bc I was too angry then to post about it.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/07/opinion/bird-flu-covid.html

@dangillmor It's such a terrible situation.

At the at risk of offering internet advice, you might consider doing a saccharin fit test on your masks before heading in
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.06.20055368v1.full.pdf

@alter_kaker @inthehands C-SPAN has the unedited video with (uncorrected) automated transcript here: https://www.c-span.org/video/?537366-101/vice-president-harris-speaks-reporters-meeting-pm-netanyahu