Luis Villa

Programmer turned lawyer and community guy.

Current: Sonarsource, Creative Commons, OpenET, California HDF, 415/94110, dad.

Previously: Tidelift, Wikimedia, Mozilla, Open Source Initiative, GNOME, LegOS, Duke, 305/MIA, more.

Public Key

npub1szcpjn5y4mlh7vzeythwanuatypw60dzjky4jyulydnpz606ntpsy35ale

NIP-05 Address

luis_in_brief@social-coop.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsgpvqef6z2almlxpvj9mhwe7w4jqhd8k3ftz2ezw0jxes3d8af4scpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds9d7lwc

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1szcpjn5y4mlh7vzeythwanuatypw60dzjky4jyulydnpz606ntpsy35ale

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Last Notes

2026-08-20 19:57:31 UTC

me: oh, [thing] is a cool volunteer project that seems like it would be fun and not trigger any of my usual obsessions, I think I'll join their chatroom
<5 seconds later>
we regret to inform you that Luis has done a licensing discourse

2026-08-17 04:54:11 UTC

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@nprofile…d8tx @nprofile…469z you do realize how utterly arrogant it sounds for an organization that has existed for 25 years to tell the Met and the Rijksmuseum that we know more than they do about preservation, right?

2026-08-15 19:00:00 UTC

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Wikipedia should be spidering and caching open content automatically, and making it available in our articles, not asking them to further complicate their lives.

2026-08-14 20:07:34 UTC

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@nprofile…d8tx assume that, for purposes of a wiki-community-project (or even WMF), we can get it in writing that *our* API and content uses are fine - but that we have to pass on the -NC restrictions to downstreams.

2026-08-14 19:57:46 UTC

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@nprofile…d8tx curious what you think of non-profit sources with non-commercial restrictions as partners? No specific ask, just vibe check. Seems clear that there are quite a few potential partners with -NC or -NC-like restrictions.
(I have thoughts but want to hear your thoughts untainted first)

2026-08-14 15:04:57 UTC

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@nprofile…d8tx the wikidata diamond open access data is very sparse compared to what OpenAlex has, but I wasn't surfacing either of them so thanks for the suggestion. (Also a good example of how wikidata could/should layer over top, since I can already see places where the OpenAlex data is wrong.)
The DOIs are an interesting one - generally there isn't a shortage of outbound links, so just Add More DOIs isn't something I'm quite interested in yet. But it's in the backlog to poke at more.

2026-08-12 16:55:02 UTC

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@nprofile…d8tx yes, because the goal was to link to things outside the wiki movement. (Wikidata is in all the information icons, since it's the source of the linkages)

2026-08-10 21:39:15 UTC

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@nprofile…d8tx it looks like the caching was partially broken. Should be better now for the top six example articles (and recached on every deploy), though I suspect there are still plenty of edge cases here.
I added DigitalNZ but it creates as many questions as it answers: helps nicely for your example query from the weekend, but low quality on other pages. Probably a good early proof point that curation of this is hard.

2026-08-09 00:38:07 UTC

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@nprofile…d8tx there’s a list of precached examples right beneath it, but maybe that should be more obvious?

2026-08-07 21:20:14 UTC

New post: Wikipedia and friends: learning through code
https://lu.is/2026/08/wikipedia-and-friends/
#llm #wikipedia #wikidata #opensource #harness #openknowledge #commons #glam

2026-08-01 21:01:09 UTC

Have created a San Francisco Wikipedia edits Mastodon bot. Bluesky probably coming tomorrow. https://sfba.social/@wiki_changes_top_500

2026-07-25 14:29:52 UTC

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@nprofile…47td yeah compare like... any other media site. Or even just the front page of enwiki.

2026-07-24 07:05:30 UTC

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@nprofile…hvmm the overwhelming majority (I seem to recall something like 80-90%) of projects on sourceforge only had 1 contributor. And the number has only gotten worse since then!
I do think there’s some real challenges around LLMs and collaboration but a fake idealized past is not how to address it.

2026-07-24 06:59:44 UTC

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@nprofile…hvmm I found this really interesting; the idealization of coding as collaborative (always more of an aspiration than a reality) seems like another very problematic part of the announcement:
https://xn--gckvb8fzb.com/i-regret-migrating-to-codeberg/

2026-07-24 06:35:28 UTC

Mood: I have one precious life to live, why am I not living it in Paris
🥐 ☕️

2026-07-19 00:50:49 UTC

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@nprofile…xjjm oh, I'm looking exclusively at window managers so completely bonkers (by my old-man-shakes-hand-at-KDE standards) that everything is already customizable

2026-07-19 00:41:19 UTC

"stuck in an airport for a long delay" is the right time to, after years of mainstream desktop modernist minimalism, install a weird alternative WM, right?

2026-07-14 18:31:05 UTC

it is wild that “screenshot some text and drop it into a chat window” is often the lowest-friction way to share information between apps now.

2026-07-13 19:10:38 UTC

today in “traffic shit between my cafe and the local park”: a *city* truck run a stop sign, after honking repeatedly for the car in front of it to go. The car in front of it was not going, and getting honked at, *because it was waiting for 20 toddlers to cross in the crosswalk*.

2026-07-12 00:41:37 UTC

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@nprofile…g30v yeah, that’s definitely not the right conclusion to draw. If anything, it *should* be that the right-hand side of the graph could use a lot less energy and still maintain standards of living.
But: “the US uses a lot less energy” doesn’t magically create more energy in the left-hand side of the graph, which is the thing a lot of degrowthers get wrong.

2026-07-11 00:32:40 UTC

New: Energy Consumption & Human Development
https://lu.is/pages/energy-hdi/

2026-06-24 15:56:04 UTC

New: My teleconf setup
https://lu.is/wiki/teleconf-setup/

2026-06-23 00:39:26 UTC

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@nprofile…wgjt yeah, would love to talk to y'all about this problem in the open data space. I think there's a ton of opportunity there *if and only if* there's a lot of checking of data integrity.

2026-06-22 22:53:05 UTC

New post: What Is a Harness?
https://lu.is/2026/06/what-is-a-harness/
#llm #wikipedia #opensource #harness #openknowledge #commons

2026-06-16 14:29:16 UTC

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attn @nprofile…7t5c

2026-06-13 16:51:58 UTC

The best time for a European organization to start building an independent European mirror of Wikipedia, not reliant on the US or WMF, was in December 2016.
The second-best time is today.

2026-06-09 20:02:58 UTC

Hi, it’s me, I’m a winner of Cyberlaw Trivia Night

2026-06-09 17:59:57 UTC

Bookshop.org is amazing because they build software for public good without accepting compromise: it has to be every bit as good as the alternatives. So I regret to inform that if you excitedly pre-order a friend’s book, Bookshop will happily let you do that repeatedly without a warning 😂
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/116/721/449/891/655/826/original/0cec066ebd542da7.jpeg

2026-06-02 15:38:01 UTC

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To be clear, there's definitely a new and real trust problem, but there always were, we just did our best with what we had. And while our worst is now even worse, our best is also potentially even better.

2026-06-02 15:35:28 UTC

I guess this doesn't hit me as hard because, coming out of a background of acute pessimism (law and before that QA) I've always been in an acutely low-trust position wrt software, and if anything I'm very excited about the new ways to validate and verify; ie, to build trust.

2026-06-02 13:29:46 UTC

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@nprofile…ytv2 book release party?! (goes to bookshop.org)

2026-05-30 19:31:48 UTC

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@nprofile…n07e I feel like I’m missing something? This is all just an airbrush and templates?

2026-05-13 01:59:22 UTC

Reading @adapalmer on hopepunk and struck by the very uncomfortable feeling that libre software and open culture’s current struggles trace in part to a past luxury: we opted into purity culture and out of the messiness of compromise.
I finally need to read https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816698646/against-purity/

2026-05-09 02:28:07 UTC

Distinctly possible that the only thing that makes humans more accurate than Opus at Wikipedia citation checking is… being able to see and read web embeds.

2026-04-30 04:27:08 UTC

New post: Collaboration: a Confused Story in Five Graphs
https://lu.is/2026/04/web-collaboration-five-graphs/
#opensource #wikipedia #llm #collaboration

2026-04-29 15:18:07 UTC

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Anyway that guy is probably going to kill or maim someone one of these days, if he hasn’t already.
Hope the people well-actually-ing Waymos feel good about that.

2026-04-29 15:18:05 UTC

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The reckless dangerous pass was around a Waymo, stopped correctly at a stop sign that it had approached at a safe pace.
The next time a Waymo screams at me after driving recklessly right at me will be the first time.
They’ve been testing in my neighborhood for seven or eight years.

2026-04-29 15:18:04 UTC

Welp just got into a screaming match with a Tesla driver who was violating several traffic laws at once, including a high-speed blind pass around two cars and some mid-street curbs, directly at me in the crosswalk.
With a kid in his back seat.
In front of a playground.

2026-04-22 14:42:29 UTC

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@nprofile…nrwh I would imagine it would all have to be redone now, or was enough AI stuff in view that it is managing? Because the current status of all Wikipedia visioning has to start from a readership graph that looks like print newspapers, except happening faster.

2026-04-22 14:20:55 UTC

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@nprofile…nrwh hrm, that's interesting and timely - I'd really like to see some design fiction work around Wikipedia.

2026-04-19 05:45:03 UTC

New post: Career articles on Wikipedia: some scary numbers
https://lu.is/2026/04/wikipedia-career-cliff/
#wikipedia #wikimedia #llm

2026-04-19 04:40:23 UTC

Am looking at a lot of graphs of Wikipedia readership tonight and this is the only good one.
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/116/429/528/860/516/973/original/4c9c91cc5c09e8a7.jpeg

2026-04-16 17:33:39 UTC

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@nprofile…nvaq this originally started as “what would LLM-aided decision-making modeled after coop-y structures look like” and then spiraled very quickly and badly from there

2026-04-16 17:02:36 UTC

“Tyranny of Agent Structurelessness”
Is this a thing? I am afraid that by thinking it it will manifest somehow

2026-04-12 16:46:21 UTC

Wellll boy that escalated quickly.
Ironically, the subject of my lightning talk at this event was that long-time wikipedians feel intimidated to talk about how they think we can use LLMs to advance the values and goals of the movement, which is bad for the movement because we're fighting bad-faith AI with one hand tied behind our backs.
The in-person response was positive and constructive, including many new demos of useful LLM-based or LLM-built tools. It also included "literally devoted their entire adult lives to Wikipedia" folks saying "yup, I built useful LLM tool X at a hackathon but haven't talked about it online because I know I'll get attacked".
Thanks for proving my point, I guess. :thonking:

2026-04-06 17:36:28 UTC

Today in experiments in legal drafting with LLMs: I gave a policy draft to an LLM, and asked it to review for IETF RFC 2119 compliance. It identified several ambiguities and errors in “should/must” and similar usages. Excellent outcome; recommend as a safety check for policy drafters.

2026-03-27 18:21:42 UTC

“Women of Afrofuturism” exhibit at @nprofile…tjye is so, so good. What a delightful use of the flexibility and creativity SFO’s spaces can yield.

2026-03-26 03:37:58 UTC

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@nprofile…uxt4 (also to mock Sora for lasting only half a Wave… doesn’t really say much one way or the other about the future of AI-generated video.)

2026-03-26 03:31:27 UTC

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@nprofile…uxt4 I agree. And so to mock Wave for only lasting a year is funny, and also almost entirely misses the point of a really important advancement.

2026-03-25 16:49:22 UTC

I cackled loudly.
Also: Google Docs is both the technical and spiritual successor to Google Wave and is incredibly widely used. 🤷🏽

2026-03-22 20:36:54 UTC

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@nprofile…fz9l I knew he’d gotten the brain worms but I missed that one?

2026-03-22 20:36:41 UTC

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@nprofile…fz9l I uh what

2026-03-22 18:57:12 UTC

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@nprofile…6hfk I have bad news for you about what people are willing to tolerate for useful new technology

2026-03-21 20:41:07 UTC

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@nprofile…kwc9 “the tragedy of the commons is when Commons” would have been more efficient

2026-03-21 20:34:45 UTC

Unsubscribed from Stratechery after… probably since he initially started offering subscriptions? Learned a lot over the years, but like every pundit there is a shelf life and it is passed.

2026-03-20 15:22:59 UTC

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SF history nerds will enjoy this piece from local gem LisaRuth of FoundSF.org:
https://www.foundsf.org/SOMA_Side_Streets_Named_After_Ladies

2026-03-20 15:12:28 UTC

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(Maybe women get a 25-50 year grace period. Or even 175, just to be fair about it.)
But do as much as possible all at once, to help take the sting (and the controversy) out of Milk and MLK and Ferlinghetti.
Maaaaybe Castro and Haight-Ashbury get exceptions because nobody knows who any of those three dudes were and they’re international brands (and neighborhoods, so again maaaybe Fillmore also gets a pass though Fillmore was a much, much worse dude than Chavez!)

2026-03-20 15:11:58 UTC

Hot San Francisco take: rename every single street named after a person. Every single one.
Chavez? Pueblo Unido. JFK? Hope. MLK? Dream. All the various FiDi gold rush dudes? Ramaytush Ohlone words. Lincoln? Emancipation.

2026-03-19 18:09:29 UTC

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@nprofile…d4hg so cool.

2026-03-08 13:03:55 UTC

If all wedding DJ playlists now have a mandatory Bad Bunny segment, God Bless America.

2026-03-05 18:04:11 UTC

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@nprofile…px9a I am so on vacation that I forgot I hot-taked this while packing last night

2026-03-05 18:02:57 UTC

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@nprofile…px9a IANYL AIAOV
(Also I Am On Vacation)

2026-03-05 06:47:59 UTC

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@nprofile…r6lk I finally moved to a static site generator a couple weeks ago. I will see the block editor in my nightmares.

2026-03-05 06:46:55 UTC

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@nprofile…px9a hot take: the value of the copyright in code is near-zero post-SaaS anyway, and going quickly to even more near zero post-LLM. So doesn’t really matter much if it is copyrightable.

2026-03-05 04:21:48 UTC

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@nprofile…7t5c https://crookedtimber.org/2023/05/22/ban-llms-using-first-person-pronouns/

2026-03-05 04:21:11 UTC

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@nprofile…7t5c it’s originally from CT!

2026-03-04 16:11:16 UTC

New post: Lawyers, Humility, and LLMs
https://lu.is/2026/03/lawyers-humility-llms/
#law #llm #books

2026-03-03 05:16:31 UTC

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@nprofile…4krt https://astro.build/ plus some Claude-crafted bits.

2026-03-02 19:40:57 UTC

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@nprofile…4krt static site generator simply calls posting APIs for bluesky + mastodon. Also trying to publish to https://standard.site/ but not clear that's actually working yet.

2026-03-02 18:13:42 UTC

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@nprofile…fl4q new blog setup :/

2026-03-02 18:09:40 UTC

Apologies for the spam - linking my blog to fedi + atproto and went slightly awry.

2026-03-02 18:04:54 UTC

New: Science fiction and fantasy recommendations
https://lu.is/wiki/scifi-recs/

2026-03-02 18:04:54 UTC

New post: Setting new expectations for open source maintainers
https://lu.is/2021/08/setting-new-expectations-for-open-source-maintainers/
#community management

2026-03-02 18:04:54 UTC

New post: 7 questions for the OSI board candidates
https://lu.is/2023/03/7-questions-for-the-osi-board-candidates/
#licensing

2026-03-02 18:04:54 UTC

New post: 4 questions for the OSI board of directors candidates
https://lu.is/2021/03/4-questions-for-the-osi-board-of-directors-candidates/

2026-03-02 18:04:54 UTC

New post: Of Monsters, Men, and Lawyers
https://lu.is/2026/03/on-monsters-and-men/
#law #llms #ai

2026-03-02 18:04:54 UTC

New: Elsewhere
https://lu.is/wiki/elsewhere/

2026-03-02 18:04:53 UTC

New post: MPL 2.0, copyleft, and license compatibility
https://lu.is/2011/09/mpl-20-copyleft-and-license-compatibility/
#law #licensing

2026-03-02 18:04:53 UTC

New post: Younger developers reject licensing, risk chance for reform
https://lu.is/2013/02/younger-developers-reject-licensing/
#law #licensing

2026-03-02 18:04:53 UTC

New post: Why make a new open source software license? MPL 2.0 (part 3)
https://lu.is/2011/09/why-make-a-new-open-source-software-license-mpl-20-part-3/
#law #licensing

2026-03-02 18:04:53 UTC

New post: 6 questions for the OSI board of directors candidates
https://lu.is/2020/03/6-questions-for-the-osi-board-of-directors-candidates/

2026-03-02 18:04:53 UTC

New post: What to know before jumping into a career as an open source lawyer
https://lu.is/2017/02/what-to-know-before-jumping-into-a-career-as-an-open-source-lawyer/
#careers

2026-03-02 18:04:53 UTC

New post: Exploring the legal issues around open data and open hardware
https://lu.is/2014/05/exploring-the-legal-issues-around-open-data-and-open-hardware/
#3d printing #open hardware #law #open data #hardware #licensing

2026-03-02 18:04:52 UTC

New post: The Mozilla Public License - almost 2.0 (part 1)
https://lu.is/2011/08/the-mozilla-public-license-almost-20-part-1/
#licensing

2026-03-01 21:47:53 UTC

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@nprofile…5raw if we talk enough about paperclip maximizers, we can ignore the profit maximizers behind the curtain

2026-03-01 02:46:27 UTC

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@nprofile…asy0 @nprofile…hjuj I had meant the corporate “you” but uh I suppose the singular Dolan-you also applies 😂

2026-02-28 21:03:46 UTC

Good: I get to wear shorts for my birthday party because the weather is glorious. 🎂
Bad: the weather should not be glorious in February in SF. 🥵
If you want to celebrate(?) for me, make a donation of any size to https://welldonefoundation.org who close old wells to stop methane leaks.

2026-02-26 21:35:27 UTC

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@nprofile…x9w4 that whole exchange is some yikes

2026-02-26 21:25:28 UTC

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@nprofile…nhan Oh, that’s an interesting point.

2026-02-26 19:47:08 UTC

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@nprofile…hjuj ugh. Figured it would be painful in general but something you had worked through regularly enough to make it tolerable. Not good if it counts as painful even for you.
@nprofile…w9sg @nprofile…xtch @nprofile…asy0

2026-02-26 01:08:52 UTC

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@nprofile…w9sg I’m not aware of any offhand. But some LF orgs must have jumped through the hoops at some point? @nprofile…hjuj @nprofile…xtch @nprofile…asy0 ?

2026-02-26 01:07:35 UTC

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@nprofile…8ca9 but yeah, that’s the pretty plain reading of that statute. I’m sure SFPD traffic enforcement will be on this any moment, as soon as they come back from their decade-long blue flu.

2026-02-26 01:06:44 UTC

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@nprofile…8ca9 huh, they’re very widespread around the big tech conferences. Not that the industry is particularly law-abiding, but surprised the owners of the trucks would bring them in en masse if they’re illegal.

2026-02-26 01:00:53 UTC

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@nprofile…cx89 yupppppp

2026-02-25 22:35:13 UTC

I can’t believe it’s been a decade. Anyway here’s a post that’s not about this but it’s not not about this: https://lu.is/2021/04/values-centered-npos-with-kmaher/

2026-02-25 22:31:41 UTC

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@nprofile…lpcm CW: too-accurate LinkedIn parody

2026-02-25 16:02:51 UTC

And weirdly when someone turns gigantic and blue Wonka shoves them in your face repeatedly

2026-02-25 05:18:38 UTC

attn @nprofile…089a

2026-02-25 05:09:32 UTC

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@nprofile…a6hr “neuroscientist” guy says his grade at Harvard was “A+++” on his LinkedIn and this research was first published by noted journal (right wing rag)… The Free Press.
There’s reasons for concerns here but don’t launder Free Press bullshit.

2026-02-24 06:08:35 UTC

It’s a small detail in this thread, but it’s utterly bonkers that we’ve elevated cars over *freedom of assembly*, a right literally in the Constitution. One of the ultimate symbols of car-brained America.