Adam Greenfield

Endurance athlete, heavy-music appreciator, compulsive greeter of cats, host of Lifepod. My 2024 “Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in A World on Fire,” is available from Verso; new books forthcoming.

Public Key

npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78

NIP-05 Address

adamgreenfield@social-coop.mostr.pub

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nprofile1qqstezskypx70g6vdhryrjmqa659zk8suxftecks8wpj3mgn4afpsqspz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsxywscw

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relay.damus.io

nos.lol

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npub1hj9pvgzdu735cmwxg89kpm4g29v0pcvjhn3dqwur9rk38t6jrqpqkhpt78

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Last Notes

2026-08-11 12:39:03 UTC

As someone who regularly helps elderly, low-vision, low-English-literacy & other folks who are struggling to understand them manage their phones (I know @nprofile…zejv does this too), I cannot begin to explain to you the rage I feel at the designers & development organizations who foist these UI choices on a public not remotely equipped to navigate them.
The controls are overwhelming, still. They’re couched in jargon, still. They’re hidden somewhere non-obvious, down the end of a four-node decision tree. Fifteen years after I left the industry things have only gotten worse. And the worst bit of all – as I always insisted then, based on my own extended observation – is that *users internalize the blame for their inability to comprehend the UI*.
They wind up feeling stupid and incompetent. They wind up bewildered and scammed. They feel terrified to hit the wrong button, and then not be able to find it again. It’s so, so hard to watch. It breaks my heart, and it makes me furious.

2026-05-11 23:10:57 UTC

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@nprofile…vjcg Namechecked explicitly in the dedication!

2026-05-11 23:03:58 UTC

I came up out of the subway at Delancey Street straight into a massive crowd of nerds gathered to celebrate the dedication of Jack Kirby Way. The city councillor for the Lower East Side made a genuinely moving speech claiming Kirby as a son of Rivington Street and PS.20, “one of the most important artists of the 20th Century, born and raised right here.” Bless NYC forever.
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/116/558/430/670/332/485/original/84866057bd561a25.jpeg
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/116/558/430/797/222/896/original/a03cf755ef930910.jpeg

2026-05-10 18:09:00 UTC

Landed in my NYC. I’ve lived most of my adult life now outside of the United States, but there’s nothing in the world like the throb of home.

2026-05-07 20:06:49 UTC

I dunno, man. Those “smears” sound pretty good to me – better in most cases than the actual policy.
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/116/535/082/577/574/780/original/1d5b7dfa1a205e72.jpeg

2026-05-07 11:51:00 UTC

TIRED: Wittingly or otherwise, Trump is clearly a Russian asset.
WIRED: Wittingly or otherwise, Trump is clearly a *Chinese* asset.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/business/war-energy-china-iran.html

2026-05-05 12:37:10 UTC

Also, dudes: if you’re going to *write and publish a book* in which you describe yourself as “a good listener,” you best actually be one.

2026-05-04 21:23:55 UTC

RIP Ben Morea, founding member of the Motherfuckers, ad plures ire May 2nd, 2026.
This interview will give you a real taste of Ben’s Lower East Side, and all the dimensions of freedom one could explore there, now lost: https://illwill.com/the-ultimate-dilemma

2026-05-04 13:19:55 UTC

OK, I’ll bite. What does the “therefore” symbol in a profile connote?

2026-05-03 11:01:23 UTC

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@nprofile…0zcw Why such an unnecessarily abrasive comment?
@nprofile…dr25

2026-05-02 09:30:59 UTC

Whoever had this sticker made up, I love you.
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/116/504/276/770/353/106/original/a2b818d498bb4057.jpeg

2026-04-26 11:12:36 UTC

We bought tix for this next week & I am superstoked. I love the Prince Charles. https://princecharlescinema.com/film/1808/akira/

2026-04-22 14:47:20 UTC

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@nprofile…8atu If I say so myself, it was astonishingly prescient & still holds up. One scenario concerned AI agents engaged in looping, millisecond-scale edit-and-revert wars.

2026-04-22 14:32:53 UTC

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@nprofile…8atu Weirdly, I did some, precisely as a visioning exercise for a large, multicolored client. It’s eight years old, and still under NDA.

2026-04-22 14:18:04 UTC

It’s difficult for me to say this, because I know it’s a practice that’s dear to a number of people who are dear to me, but in 2026 it is my *strong* sense that the discourse and practice of design fiction has failed to open up any particularly notable volume of social space in which to explore. I’m not even sure it’s proven its worth as corporate futuring. (I’d be delighted to hear of your counterexamples, but I really can’t think of any.)

2026-04-22 07:54:43 UTC

Here’s an irony: there is, within easy biking/public transit distance of me, a space that superficially seems to fulfill a lot of my criteria for an autonomous, convivial, noncommercial counterinstitution. This space fosters (a kind of) community. It supports the free exchange of knowledge (of a sort). It even hosts a weekly, no-cost dinner that, so far as I know, is open to all comers, and that has been running for years.
You think, well, we need spaces like this, right? Both strategically and simply socially? But every time I’ve been in there, there’s been such an overwhelming tang of boyzone that I’m immediately repulsed. This space is actively repulsive to me. It’s a vivid demonstration that you get that one thing wrong, and no good can come of the project, whatever else you get right. I may raise the topic on a forthcoming Lifepod episode.

2026-04-21 20:11:13 UTC

What am I doing wrong with my life that the algo just served me a Tony Robbins ad?

2026-04-14 09:32:56 UTC

Hey, I’ve got a small favor to ask: if you’ve really enjoyed one or another of the Lifepod episodes we’ve published so far, can I ask you to share it with one or two friends you think would also appreciate it? https://lifepod.transistor.fm/
What I’m trying to build with this project is a community, not merely a passive “audience.” Thanks so much for your support and encouragement, as always — it is a solid stoke, on a daily basis, to hear how much these stories are resonating with you.

2026-04-13 16:29:52 UTC

I want us to consider that it is, at least, possible that Hungary under Orbán was the high water mark of something that has now begun to recede.
That people have more or less sussed out “AI” all on their own, having seen what it does in their lives, and don’t particularly need to be convinced of its perniciousness.
That, similarly, people everywhere have had enough of screens, apps, algos, social media in general, and the cohort of people who enriched themselves on these things.
That more and more of the energy we use will *of necessity* not be generated in the burning of fossil fuels.
That the struggle is not over, by a very, *very* long way, but that most all the elements of a dispensation far more congenial to life-affirming projects are arrayed before us, and need only to be taken in hand and assembled.
Feels good.

2026-04-12 19:56:12 UTC

TANGO DOWN https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/12/world/europe/hungary-election-orban-magyar.html

2026-04-09 22:41:35 UTC

Dudes I’m really mad at myself for neglecting fun. Everything I do is so serious. I know the world is intolerably grim & cruel, etc., but I never let myself just have fun anymore.

2026-03-30 16:17:38 UTC

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@nprofile…vjcg Good shout Pete! I’ll have a watch.

2026-03-30 15:50:40 UTC

So far I’ve been joined by Valeria Graziano and Tom Medak from Pirate Care! Chris Smaje! Dianna Settles! Coming this week, Cassie Thornton, Susana Caló and Godofredo Pereira! Who do you want to hear from next on Lifepod?

2026-03-29 09:02:30 UTC

I’m not trying to tell anyone how to show up here, please believe me.
I *do* want to pass on that no fewer than three people whose presence On Here I really enjoy have recently told me they need to (at the very least) take an extended break from being here. And it’s all because of the same set of issues: what they consistently described, often in identical words, as the incessant, joyless judgment about choices of tool or platform or mobility mode, tone and language policing, hectoring about missing alt texts, humorlessness, etc.
I think a lot of this is due to context collapse, and probably also the desire to exert shape and control over *something* in a world that is otherwise terrifyingly unresponsive to our needs. But please do consider that others – including many who would otherwise number among your natural allies, comrades and friends – might arrive at different answers to complicated questions than you have, and that it doesn’t make them moral monsters. Thanks.

2026-03-25 20:34:26 UTC

I’m back on Instagram (@hellolifepod) to spread word about the podcast.
It’s such amateur-hour, engagement-farming ass. Aside from barraging me with pestilential ads, its winning ways include prompting me to disable my privacy settings on a weekly basis, and continuously suggesting I follow the few people I specifically despise.

2026-03-01 09:44:22 UTC

You know I invariably hesitate to post anything that might smack of self-promotion, and never more than when the news is so unremittingly grim. But a friend reminded me it’s just when things are darkest that people need a Lifepod.
https://lifepod.transistor.fm/
Please do join me for this podcast aimed at helping us learn how to take care of ourselves in this world on fire. Our conversations are about mutual care, collective power and #autonomy — about how we develop our capacities as individuals and communities, outside the market and against the indifference, neglect or active hostility of the state. I think you’ll enjoy these conversations, if you believe as I do that we are the ones we’ve been waiting for, and I hope you’ll contribute to them.
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/116/153/264/567/110/518/original/c15c314171453b9c.jpg

2026-01-21 11:44:23 UTC

Something I’d ask people to consider, here and everywhere, is that if someone isn’t perceptibly responding to a situation with the grief or anger or rage you think is appropriate, it doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t care.

2026-01-15 20:17:35 UTC

I don’t think Stephen Miller has the reeeemotest idea what “an insurgency against the federal government” would actually look or feel like, but I tell you what: he keeps on doing the things he’s been doing, he’s gonna find out.

2026-01-14 13:04:38 UTC

I need your help, friends. I want to say that speaking thermodynamically, the history of computing history is a march toward *managed dissipation*. It seems to me that each successive epoch of calculational engines, from Hollerith’s whirring cabinets to liquid-cooled data centers stuffed full of Nvidias, externalizes a different cost, hides it behind a new abstraction, then runs into it as a wall. But computation has always been about where the heat goes and who pays for it. Does this track?

2026-01-13 18:01:33 UTC

I’ve said it before & I’m sure I’ll have occasion to say it again, but it *sucks* how much my friendship group has scattered among different platforms, such that being on none of them but this one means I never hear from any of them. I really, really miss some of those heads.

2026-01-12 22:21:25 UTC

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@nprofile…v6fw ?

2026-01-12 19:07:40 UTC

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@nprofile…rx20 And I used to wear Odeur 53, but it gave my partner headaches. : . )

2026-01-12 18:54:52 UTC

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@nprofile…rx20 Etat Libre D’Orange!

2026-01-12 10:35:35 UTC

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@nprofile…rx20 An underutilized expressive medium IMO. Scent for men, especially, is so strongly marked by notions of class, but I think that’s starting to break. You love to see it.

2025-12-05 03:13:08 UTC

I am genuinely distressed that so many of my tics and go-tos as a writer are now widely thought of as tells of LLM-generated prose.

2025-12-03 05:53:03 UTC

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@nprofile…hceu New Orleans?

2025-11-21 21:11:49 UTC

Pre-administrative realism. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/nov/21/donald-trump-democrats-republicans-zohran-mamdani-us-politics-latest-news-updates

2025-11-20 16:54:20 UTC

Somewhat against my better instincts, I’m about to start watching something called “Scavengers Reign.”

2025-11-18 14:06:05 UTC

I saw something on here the other day where someone was saying, basically, “No, I won’t do anything to promote my book. I’m sick of the sound of my own voice and the sight of my own name, and anyway I said what I had to say in the book itself,” and I have rarely identified with anything more.

2025-11-03 18:03:19 UTC

Hello cats.

2025-11-03 12:12:56 UTC

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@nprofile…lx0q I’m not going to pull a “don’t you know who I am??”, but no, having published extensively on the topic, I don’t think I have. But thanks for reminding me why I so often regret saying anything at all here.

2025-10-31 16:20:17 UTC

Some people should be ashamed to call what they sell “bagels” or “croissants.” That shit’s just *round bread*.

2025-07-27 22:08:16 UTC

A friend swears up and down she was at an event *in Berlin* that began with a land acknowledgement. Like, “We acknowledge that we are speaking on the unceded territory of the Lusatians, the Semnones and the Sprewanen.” If she’s not just having me on – and I fell for it, which is extremely in character for me – then someone somewhere really has lost the plot.

2025-06-29 10:07:57 UTC

The most interesting thing I took home with me from Glastonbury was the testimony of some folks who were involved in the 1985 Battle of the Beanfield, which I’d previously only had the vaguest understanding of. I don’t think it’s too great a stretch to locate it alongside the Sanrizuka and Larzac struggles of the decade previous. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Beanfield

2024-08-06 16:53:35 UTC

#Bloomington & surrounding environs! This is happening! We’ll be getting into “Lifehouse,” #mutualaid, autonomous & self-organized community resilience efforts, and whatever else comes up, next Saturday at Redbud Books. Won’t you join us?
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/112/916/112/505/101/593/original/5078ed1039e960ab.png

2024-03-15 21:04:56 UTC

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@npub1m4u…7sa6 @npub13vv…0sze I got that, thanks! But why would I do that on a Friday more than any other day of the week?

2024-03-15 20:55:04 UTC

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@npub13vv…0sze Can I confess, here and now, that I’ve never understood quite what you mean by your Friday inbox counsel? [hangs head in shame]

2024-03-12 15:46:46 UTC

Having seen some comments I posted here not merely boosted past my comfort zone locally, but taken off Mastodon entirely and posted on the Web, without my permission, I’m afraid I’m going to have to batten down the hatches again. I’m truly sorry.

2024-03-03 18:19:46 UTC

It can never be said often enough: Garrett Hardin was an unregenerate, overt white supremacist, and you should *never* allow your interlocutors to refer to a or the “tragedy of the commons,” even in casual speech, without making this explicit.

2024-01-29 20:06:55 UTC

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@npub135d…tg9k @npub13vy…lczv Well, I left the States precisely so I wouldn’t have to see this sort of thing unfold. A copout? Maybe.

2024-01-29 19:18:59 UTC

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@npub13vy…lczv @npub135d…tg9k In US states: Loss of livelihood for those with “subversive” opinions, or who have had same in the past, throughout state employment (including state universities). Closer, and eventually explicit, coordination between police and paramilitaries/militia. Weaponization of the regulatory state. Enlistment of private citizens in “borderwork”/harassment of refugees and undocumented newcomers, eventually extending to the documented but visibly other.

2023-11-28 21:43:01 UTC

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@npub198f…n2cq Well, I’m glad you found some value in it. But boy *howdy* did I find it abrasive. (I’d concede there are some generally accurate observations about the dynamics of subcultures in there, but they’re all but lost in a chaff cloud of smug, dismissive, defensive posturing, of the type that goes all the way back to “fans are slans.” Some of us are just here to Enjoy the Thing, y’know?)

2023-11-28 16:37:01 UTC

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@npub198f…n2cq “muggles”?

2023-08-17 18:46:03 UTC

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@npub1e0a…eww0 It has been 26 minutes since you’ve posted this, which is really too early for a fair final determination to be made. But somehow I’m willing to bet that the answer is “No, it won’t.”

2023-08-16 18:18:37 UTC

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@npub17qm…uz8c @npub1d7j…u8xc @npub1ezx…74mr @npub1hpc…hjn3 …and then slaughtered everyone the KMT hadn’t gotten to. [ducks]

2023-08-13 20:42:42 UTC

This whole thing really upsets me quite profoundly. As a writer, I’m not going to turn down a paycheck, but it’s more important to me that people read my books than that I get paid for them. The publishers suing Internet Archive may be acting in someone’s name, but it sure as hell isn’t mine. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/business/media/internet-archive-emergency-lending-library.html?unlocked_article_code=SHhC1zCbybhNFFee1y2yE7uXqng9k_IfnWuZkvknItNyMGa8BjDb1bXtRT0vokzjJaZZ4n4b5tyDwKHX_OKblh5-fgx1H7U_y940V0RgncogyolvY7rx8-IY95ySMtAVyUXnSCINtoXVM-oHLsNncfS2VAmgWe5FGNQlJzFNLs7K-66gISBTvh364RoH3jmjvdf704Eoq-qNuSQEBshAMCUANLHBkCI9sJKVgDaiOsJwhoCfC2QXb5Kj7uwSQN78xBz6_V4R-HISPaCICnwsD-nwEhWDA0cxHLsC6PWPeRa_hhNetXGpM0wml5p0AqvzzAZ8idCCbUc-qcV9IuZ04aw92MN5ogprGrzF4bSZcBdsGFka7hzM13MxzQ&smid=url-share

2023-07-31 21:59:41 UTC

I know we all like to clown on techbros, and they certainly do make it easy. But I have to remind myself that as recently as 12 years ago, I *genuinely, sincerely* believed that IPv6 and universal open APIs and so on were an important step toward species-wide liberation. Should I have known better, even then? Yeah, probably. But the point is, I eventually grew out of it. Maybe they will too. Be their offramp, if you can?

2023-07-31 10:29:34 UTC

Aberdeenshire, by my count, has two seats at Westminster. Rishi Sunak just fucked the future for the sake of two votes in Parliament, in an election he’s almost certain to lose anyway. I don’t want to ride my hobbyhorse, but if this is how mitigation’s going, we *really* need to think harder about what happens in its failure. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/31/rishi-sunak-approval-100-new-north-sea-oil-and-gas-licences-fossil-fuel-climate-crisis

2023-07-21 15:55:45 UTC

Ayo, anybody want to work on researching physical/digital “hybrid cities” with my friends at #LSECities here in London? It’s a good opportunity to inject some sense, and decent politics, into what might very well otherwise be just another outcropping of blandly technocratic top-down liberalism. Tell ‘em I sent you! (Share as widey as you please.) https://www.lse.ac.uk/cities/join-us/vacancies

2023-07-19 11:41:30 UTC

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@npub1hpc…hjn3 It’s a trifle rich, but at such moments I’m always reminded of what one of my drill sergeants used to bark at me when my arms began to fail in the middle of my last pushup: “PAIN IS JUST WEAKNESS LEAVING THE BODY.”

2023-07-19 11:18:01 UTC

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@npub1hpc…hjn3 good man 👊

2023-07-18 21:21:37 UTC

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@npub189n…satx No, some people *really do* this sort of stuff because it’ll help them get ahead at work. That’s the Eichmann lesson.

2023-05-18 18:05:07 UTC

Beloved, I am proud to have played a very small part in helping Forensic Architecture and David Wengrow bring their Nebelivka Hypothesis to the Venice Biennale. This material challenges everything we (think we) know about the origin of the first cities and the formation of the state, and stands to upend the way we tell these stories to begin with. If you should happen to be in Venice for the Biennale, please do visit the Arsenale and spend some time with this extraordinary work.
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/110/391/004/068/766/447/original/febc4db635927d2b.jpeg

2023-05-13 13:27:17 UTC

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@npub1cvv…mv8d The “local specialists” aspect is key, and it’s why, for all my strongly-held anticapitalist sentiments, I retain some feeling for mom-and-pop-style small traders.