Notices by Kate Bowles (kate@aus.social)

This is an unmistakeable call for ethnic cleansing.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/feb/04/benjamin-netanyahu-donald-trump-israel-gaza-middle-east-ceasefire-latest-live-news

There’s the state of the world, and there’s also #asstodon which is comforting if you need a consolation break.

Re that last boost from @Furthering, it’s a bead on a rich thread with replies that’s just wonderful on curation and recommendation as moral acts that rewild the algorithmic landscape. The detail about dancing bees connected to something equally wonderful I learned about from @futurebird yesterday: trophallaxis.

The point here is that even though the means of tying these two threads together isn’t easy or convenient, the work of searching for them and figuring out how to connect them and recommend that connection to others is the whole point that attention farming misses. We aren’t just content consumers, we are moving together across a terrain of risk, threat and joy. For our survival we listen to those we trust and try to be trustable in return, because we all depend on each other’s knowledge.

https://sauropods.win/@futurebird/113775521493349188

In 2025 I’m reclaiming my attention from the hamster wheel world of work multitasking, and off work tiredscrolling, and AI of any stripe. I’m re-learning how to read #WordsWorthWriting.

Starting the year with this short piece from the always excellent @kin.

“I predict that in the 2100s we’ll be working hard to extract AI from our daily lives in similar ways to how we are working to extract automobiles from our daily lives today.”

https://kinlane.com/2024/12/31/artificial-intelligence-is-to-the-mind-what-the-automobile-was-to-the-body/

Stop everything, this review of 2024 is the one you need. Thanks for everything @firstdogonthemoon.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2024/dec/20/seriously-did-one-single-good-thing-happen-in-2024-yes

I keep coming back to this beautiful new short piece from @jalcine about the social internet as immersive theatre, public art, shared listening.

This means the labour of putting things out there is the labour of intentional creativity, not just the effort it takes to throw trash out of the car window.

It’s craft and the intention of what you put out there will be read by others in the way that they read it.

What an amazing prospect this is.

https://www.jacky.wtf/essays/2024/create-with-intention/

@clayrivers @StillIRise1963

I hope you both don’t mind if I pop a note of thanks into this exchange for the specific thing you said here: “responsibility for maintaining a system”. This is so clear.

I pay attention to the ways in which my smaller actions actively maintain polluting systems, whether by not noticing or going along or settling for or other ways of doing it. Responsibility for maintaining racist systems is also something white people do with our smaller acts all the time. Keeping this front of mind today.

It’s an aggressive and smothering weed, but in that moment when it opens up to the sun you forget everything.

What’s the story, morning glory?

#bloomscrolling

Ok, this from @kissane is genuinely extraordinary. It’s extraordinary. It gets more extraordinary as it goes on.

Read this. It is not a quick read. It’s a read and come back to and read again.

Read this. Don’t think of it as a post or a hot take, you’ll give up. Hold it in your hands like a slim book. Take it to a park. Read it with a whole pot of tea. Invite friends over to mull it with you. Follow every link. Write notes in the margin. See where you disagree. Talk about it.

Read this.

https://www.wrecka.ge/against-the-dark-forest/

Thinking about the UI problems @mekkaokereke is raising, the behaviours @KarenWyld and others have consistently pointed out, the labour of everyone working on shared blocklisting, and the accountability for what happens here that can never be set and forget — how does this erratic network of self-managed communities best manage its own future?

Bear with me, but what if BlueSky really is the best and most seamless experience for Twitter communities looking to rebuild quickly? What if it’s always going to be fine for some people and completely meet their needs? Is that a threat to this? Maybe.

Unless this is quietly becoming something else altogether, something for a different purpose that’s still being spec’d. What could that turn out to be?

Here’s @ben on being open-minded about platform co-existence, instead of the very tedious smackdown triumphalism that’s a tech product norm.

“This dynamic offers a promising future for users, with both worlds learning from one another in a productive tension that has the potential to strengthen the open social web.”

https://werd.io/2024/bluesky-the-fediverse-and-the-future-of-social-media

Among the terrible things in my workplace is a proposal to disestablish languages and linguistics. We’re a regional university serving a regional community—this risks language study at university level for students over a really wide area.

If you work in languages or linguistics, especially in Australia, please consider supporting my hardworking colleagues who are fighting back with a petition. Time is pressing, and boosts are welcome.

https://www.change.org/p/fight-the-closure-of-languages-at-the-university-of-wollongong/c

Very demoralised by everything but especially the behaviour of my employer. That line got crossed. If you work in a uni you won’t have to guess.

#silentsunday astonishment

Absolutely never expected to find myself engaging with the Telegraph for any reason, but Ukraine: The Latest is a whole other thing. So much grief for such a loved person.

Just so sad at the news David Knowles has died, far too young. I’ve been listening to his voice every night since the invasion of Ukraine. Here’s the report from the team at the Kyiv Independent.

https://kyivindependent.com/founder-and-co-host-of-telegraphs-ukraine-podcast-dies-aged-32/

@Alon @AstroKatie @Mabande But just quietly, if people do CW eye contact they’re only doing something to try to take care of strangers for whom that might be a thing. That “culture of CWs” — like encouraging alt text which BS used to not do, and now does — is just a way of saying “hey, keep in mind others aren’t living with the same needs or lived experiences as you”. In the end, erring on the side of caution isn’t the worst thing we could do for each other.

Of course there are better and worse ways to point things out. All we can do is try not to be assholes for any reason anywhere even with good intentions.

Moving on from thinking about replying, I’m noticing the techniques we all have for being each other’s strangers in crowded places, so we don’t do each other harm. Road rules are an obvious example. We take turns in doorways.

We’ve had a few big surf days recently and our community has been out watching the point break. Surf culture is a whole thing to watch in action, notorious for being hostile to outsiders and resistant to change.

But also amazing in achieving safety in pretty hectic situations.

@tty @natureworks Oh I love this. It happens on informal bush paths around where I walk — people clear overhanging branches and put stepping stones across muddy patches. These small anonymous fixes on a path where you never meet anyone are all time gifts.

@natureworks @tty I shared this one recently. It’s a creek outlet that constantly shifts position on a busy dog beach. Every day someone takes a moment to make a new little creek crossing for other dog walkers. So in this case there’s also a sense of working with impermanence. I love this aspect.