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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Hank Kingsley said:

 

This sounds like something Schumer or Jeffries would believe.  It's copium from a bygone era. 

I agree that BlueSky is fairly worthless, but Twitter is cooked. The platform, algorithm, and "AI" is completely corrupted. There are plenty of leftist/dems that still engage, and nothing moves the needle. 

Compared to what? That’s like saying Pete B going on Fox or democrats running ads on Fox News doesn’t move the needle.
All algorithms of social media are inherently exploitable. Optimizing for the algorithm is the standard business of digital marketers every single day across all platforms. Withdrawing from Twitter, and every single argument I have ever heard for withdrawing from Twitter is just packaging up what leftists are really doing, which is taking their ball and their bat and going home because they don’t think it’s fair.  It’s essentially what the Clinton campaign did when they decided to only devote resources to areas where they already had good numbers and infrastructure in 2016 (and 2008)
So the real question is whether it’s worth it. I think the stakes are simply too high and the opportunity cost is too low to withdraw from the venue, but if you have the luxury to lose without consequences,  bully for you. 

 

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
Posted
15 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Or in Austin, it's a core function, called a "charrette."

It's just as delusional and fart-sniffing, but it's in french, so it's cool.  I bet they do charrettes in Portland, so there ya go, they're just good policy.

Never heard of a one until getting my master's in community and regional planning at UT in the late 1990s and have actually led a number of planning sessions involving "charrettes" (never in Austin), though I never use that word when interfacing with the public because it's dumb.

They can be helpful at the outset to generate ideas and engage the public, but then very quickly devolve into futile design-by-committee exercises that get bogged down and end in shitty results if you're not careful. A good facilitator with some experience learns fast how to plant ideas to shape the conversation and make the participants feel like they came up with them on their own, so that you get where you know the plan should go (because you've done this shit a thousand times in other places and you're a good planner). Everybody leaves happy, feels they were heard and made a contribution here or there, and knows the whole damn plan doesn't fall on their pointless efforts to reach consensus.

I'm likely not telling you anything you don't already know, so this is mainly for the benefit of the peanut gallery, or those who don't know what the hell we're talking about.

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Posted
22 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Never heard of a one until getting my master's in community and regional planning at UT in the late 1990s and have actually led a number of planning sessions involving "charrettes" (never in Austin), though I never use that word when interfacing with the public because it's dumb.

They can be helpful at the outset to generate ideas and engage the public, but then very quickly devolve into futile design-by-committee exercises that get bogged down and end in shitty results if you're not careful. A good facilitator with some experience learns fast how to plant ideas to shape the conversation and make the participants feel like they came up with them on their own, so that you get where you know the plan should go (because you've done this shit a thousand times in other places and you're a good planner). Everybody leaves happy, feels they were heard and made a contribution here or there, and knows the whole damn plan doesn't fall on their pointless efforts to reach consensus.

I'm likely not telling you anything you don't already know, so this is mainly for the benefit of the peanut gallery, or those who don't know what the hell we're talking about.

lol here it's sarcastically called the "Seattle Process" and we need more facilitators like you around. It's stopped many a good idea from becoming reality (and to be fair, also has stopped more than a few bad ones from being forced upon us). In a region founded in large part by people from consensus-based communities (Scandinavia, Japan, New England, layered over an existing tribal-based system also largely based on community decision-making) it makes some sense that it took root here. The major problem is that it takes forever to get anything done and issues are often just kicked down the road. 

"Charrette" is a common term in architecture, used from day one in school throughout your career to mean a short, intensive skull session/workshop with your design team or with other closely related peers/consultants to stimulate ideas and (hopefully) solve problems on a given project. As you are working from a fairly common shared knowledge base, it can be very effective and useful. While the idea sounds nice brought into the public realm, the mere fact that by definition you are involving laypeople that may have a stake and may be quite intelligent but that do not often have the specific knowledge required to solve problems in a short duration intensive workshop can be problematic (especially when the agency wants everyone to feel their opinions are weighted equally).

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Posted
53 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Compared to what? That’s like saying Pete B going on Fox or democrats running ads on Fox News doesn’t move the needle.
All algorithms of social media are inherently exploitable. Optimizing for the algorithm is the standard business of digital marketers every single day across all platforms. Withdrawing from Twitter, and every single argument I have ever heard for withdrawing from Twitter is just packaging up what leftists are really doing, which is taking their ball and their bat and going home because they don’t think it’s fair.  It’s essentially what the Clinton campaign did when they decided to only devote resources to areas where they already had good numbers and infrastructure in 2016 (and 2008)
So the real question is whether it’s worth it. I think the stakes are simply too high and the opportunity cost is too low to withdraw from the venue, but if you have the luxury to lose without consequences,  bully for you. 

TV is a whole other world from social media. Dems going on Fox "forces" the viewer to watch them (unless they change the channel), that's now how it works on Twitter.

Musk controls the Twitter algorithm.  Also, he manipulates his AI Grok (which many users rely on for "facts") anytime it feeds answers that he feels are too "woke" or whatever. 

No one on the right is seeing AOC or Pete or Bernie tweets, unless they are being retweeted with criticism from the right. No one on the left is seeing right winger tweets unless they are retweeted by the left with criticism. The algorithm isn't interested in expanding viewpoints, it's wants to do the exact opposite. The misinformation/disinformation is staggering, to the point that even Dem accounts fall into that trap. 

And again, most of the large left-leaning accounts are still on Twitter. And it is still accomplishing nothing. 

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Posted (edited)
46 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

TV is a whole other world from social media. Dems going on Fox "forces" the viewer to watch them (unless they change the channel), that's now how it works on Twitter.

Musk controls the Twitter algorithm.  Also, he manipulates his AI Grok (which many users rely on for "facts") anytime it feeds answers that he feels are too "woke" or whatever. 

My guy, I used to own/run a digital marketing agency. Let me repeat this sentence again, except in all caps so you can understand it:

ALL ALGORITHMS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ARE INHERENTLY EXPLOITABLE. 
 

46 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

No one on the right is seeing AOC or Pete or Bernie tweets, unless they are being retweeted with criticism from the right. No one on the left is seeing right winger tweets unless they are retweeted by the left with criticism.

Oh no! They aren’t seen unless validated by engagement? Lol ok

this is AOC, responding to Florida congressman Randy Fine (R). It has 12M views, 313K likes and 6.3K comments, mostly morons
And according to you this is … either bad for Democrats or somehow not actually being seen, it’s not clear.

46 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

And again, most of the large left-leaning accounts are still on Twitter. And it is still accomplishing nothing. 

The first sentence here is true, because they know the second sentence is false, even if you don’t.

AOC gets it. Newsom’s Zoomers get it.  

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
Posted
6 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

ALL ALGORITHMS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ARE INHERENTLY EXPLOITABLE. 

I don't believe in algorithms.

I choose to believe that he universe knows that I like fishing, cooking, and buxom women, and somehow my social media feed manages to match with those likes.  You just have to trust in the universe, man.  And chicks with bigguns.  Gotta trust them too.

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, flatdawgs said:

lol here it's sarcastically called the "Seattle Process" and we need more facilitators like you around. It's stopped many a good idea from becoming reality (and to be fair, also has stopped more than a few bad ones from being forced upon us). In a region founded in large part by people from consensus-based communities (Scandinavia, Japan, New England, layered over an existing tribal-based system also largely based on community decision-making) it makes some sense that it took root here. The major problem is that it takes forever to get anything done and issues are often just kicked down the road. 

"Charrette" is a common term in architecture, used from day one in school throughout your career to mean a short, intensive skull session/workshop with your design team or with other closely related peers/consultants to stimulate ideas and (hopefully) solve problems on a given project. As you are working from a fairly common shared knowledge base, it can be very effective and useful. While the idea sounds nice brought into the public realm, the mere fact that by definition you are involving laypeople that may have a stake and may be quite intelligent but that do not often have the specific knowledge required to solve problems in a short duration intensive workshop can be problematic (especially when the agency wants everyone to feel their opinions are weighted equally).

Yep to all that. At the University of Texas, the planning program is part of the School of Architecture; hence, its popularity in non-architecture contexts in Austin, and city planning obviously involves urban design stuff. Man, I got really sick of hearing about Andres Duany and what we derisively called his new sub-urbanism because of its inauthenticity back then and we were punk planning students. Anyway, I kinda wanna say that I vaguely recall someone mentioning that the term was imported from Portland, so the general PNW region makes sense. 

For my part, I've mostly worked in the economic development field, but that obviously involves a lot of land use issues and revitalization projects (rehab, adaptive reuse, etc.) and often involves folks from your realm. A name you probably know is Peter Calthorpe. I'm not at my old firm anymore, but one of the two principals at the time came to Austin from your neck of the woods and was good friends with him, so we partnered a few times and have done some work up there in Redmond, Puyallup, and Longview (he wasn't involved in any of those particular projects). Generally speaking, revitalization shit is my game, but you only eat what you kill.

Edited by bolverk
Longview not Longmont
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Posted
20 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

My guy, I used to own/run a digital marketing agency. Let me repeat this sentence again, except in all caps so you can understand it:

ALL ALGORITHMS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ARE INHERENTLY EXPLOITABLE. 
 

Well, the Democratic Party could use your help.  I'm assuming they've put some of their best and brightest on the case, but they have gotten their ass kicked on social media and YouTube for the last decade. 

 

 

Posted
3 hours ago, wildcat09 said:

FYI, Mina Kimes pretty much single-handedly led an exodus of all the best nfl writers to Blue Sky. A lot of them still post links to their stuff on Twitter (which is probably contractually required) but do most of their actual posting on Blue Sky. It’s not all sports, but it’s a start.

 

Blue sky sucks for sports. Yeah it has some national people but when it comes to the regional and local it is lacking severely. 

Posted
29 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

 

this is AOC, responding to Florida congressman Randy Fine (R). It has 12M views, 313K likes and 6.3K comments, mostly morons
And according to you this is … either bad for Democrats or somehow not actually being seen, it’s not clear.

AOC gets it. Newsom’s Zoomers get it.  

I would say it's rather meaningless. Plenty of stuff on the right gets that type of engagement. Elon in particular. There are also reports that say 60%+ of Twitter users are bots. 

In regards to AOC and Newsome, I'm glad they are fighting. Whether it's works remains to be seen.  We all thought there was Kamala momentum a year ago, and here we are. 

Posted
25 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

So Bozo's a twitter stan.

Who knew?

Politicians and those fighting for the left who refuse to post on Twitter and fight the fight there are basically giving up. It’s the same types that automatically resign at the slightest controversy and allows republicans to creep in. 

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Posted
6 minutes ago, BurntOrange&White said:

Politicians and those fighting for the left who refuse to post on Twitter and fight the fight there are basically giving up. It’s the same types that automatically resign at the slightest controversy and allows republicans to creep in. 

I don't begrudge those who use it as a megaphone to fight the good fight. But I didn't post on Twitter before I nuked my old account, and I don't post on Blue Sky with this one. It's simply the desire not to give any traffic to a site that actively promotes reich-wing neo-Nazis.

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Posted
26 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Yep to all that. At the University of Texas, the planning program is part of the School of Architecture; hence, its popularity in non-architecture contexts in Austin, and city planning obviously involves urban design stuff. Man, I got really sick of hearing about Andres Duany and what we derisively called his new sub-urbanism because of its inauthenticity back then and we were punk planning students. Anyway, I kinda wanna say that I vaguely recall someone mentioning that the term was imported from Portland, so the general PNW region makes sense. 

For my part, I've mostly worked in the economic development field, but that obviously involves a lot of land use issues and revitalization projects (rehab, adaptive reuse, etc.) and often involves folks from your realm. A name you probably know is Peter Calthorpe. I'm not at my old firm anymore, but one of the two principals at the time came to Austin from your neck of the woods and was good friends with him, so we partnered a few times and have done some work up there in Redmond, Puyallup, and Longview (he wasn't involved in any of those particular projects). Generally speaking, revitalization shit is my game, but you only eat what you kill.

Very good description (and yes re Duany and Calthorpe). UW was set up the same way - in fact when I was there it was called the College of Architecture and Urban Planning, and we had required coursework in Planning, which I always enjoyed. The "charrette" term as a public meeting thing isn't really used here; interesting that it seems to have started in Portland, but Portland is weird and Oregon is politically the oddest state around.

In politics, I think the entire concept is best avoided especially in today's world, where we've been focus grouped to death. It works better where there is a common understanding of rules and social mores, which at the moment no longer seems to be the case.

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Posted
1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

I don't believe in algorithms.

I choose to believe that he universe knows that I like fishing, cooking, and buxom women, and somehow my social media feed manages to match with those likes.  You just have to trust in the universe, man.  And chicks with bigguns.  Gotta trust them too.

💯 

Posted (edited)
On 9/20/2025 at 6:36 PM, Captainant said:

You're ignoring her other major point of it being actual people and not just socks and bots, but go off king

...The paradox of Bluesky.The platform’s explosive growth after last year’s election has dwindled to marginal pre-election numbers, but everyone from pundit Nate Silver to Vice President JD Vance seems to find it important enough that they’ve been talking about that stalled growth for months and months.

Worryingly, that same paradox is supporting the entire creator economy right now. There is clearly a disconnect between the engagement figures that keep the money flowing and the wheels turning, and the reality of whether those numbers reflect anyone (viewers or creators) actually giving a shit.

That’s why I thought it was important to mention on Monday that consistently, around 5-10% of all the most popular posts on Bluesky are sexy cartoons. That matters because they exist completely outside of this paradigm — advertiser-unfriendly, completely free of AI, with all its engagement reflecting people who asked for it and enjoy it. A recent survey from Meltwater bears this out, finding that online conversation about Bluesky has almost 10-times the volume of conversation that Meta’s Threads generates, which consistently puts up much bigger engagement numbers than Bluesky does. 

And even though I doubt much of that conversation about Bluesky concerns hentai, its consistency shows the priorities of the platform and its users. Though, I do think it’s worth talking about how hard Bluesky’s most visionary perverts are working to hornify the bugs from Hollow Knight: Silksong. At time of writing, more than 80% of the top results for “Hornet,” the game’s main character, is art that renders her much sexier than she is in the game. Is this the kind of growth we should be tracking?

https://www.meltwater.com/en/blog/top-niche-social-networks-2025

Edited by Vegas64
Posted
26 minutes ago, Vegas64 said:

And even though I doubt much of that conversation about Bluesky concerns hentai, its consistency shows the priorities of the platform and its users. Though, I do think it’s worth talking about how hard Bluesky’s most visionary perverts are working to hornify the bugs from Hollow Knight: Silksong. At time of writing, more than 80% of the top results for “Hornet,” the game’s main character, is art that renders her much sexier than she is in the game. Is this the kind of growth we should be tracking?\

You are aware of Twitter being basically just porn and bots at this point right? Create a fresh account and scroll for a bit - it's every inch of what you're describing on BlueSky. This isn't a #bothsides, but rather making sure that you're actually calibrated to reality

29 minutes ago, Vegas64 said:

Worryingly, that same paradox is supporting the entire creator economy right now. There is clearly a disconnect between the engagement figures that keep the money flowing and the wheels turning, and the reality of whether those numbers reflect anyone (viewers or creators) actually giving a shit.

You're describing the grift of FB "engagement" numbers. Facebook and Threads and Insta and Twitter all juice their "engagement" numbers by counting anyone who even scrolled past an ad or post for a split second. Autoplaying video? Blammo - more viewcounts! It's all been bullshit for years, and it's not been a secret. 

But you know, line MUST go up. So everyone happily ignores that inconvenient reality

Posted
1 hour ago, Captainant said:

You are aware of Twitter being basically just porn and bots at this point right? Create a fresh account and scroll for a bit - it's every inch of what you're describing on BlueSky. This isn't a #bothsides, but rather making sure that you're actually calibrated to reality

You're describing the grift of FB "engagement" numbers. Facebook and Threads and Insta and Twitter all juice their "engagement" numbers by counting anyone who even scrolled past an ad or post for a split second. Autoplaying video? Blammo - more viewcounts! It's all been bullshit for years, and it's not been a secret. 

But you know, line MUST go up. So everyone happily ignores that inconvenient reality

Makes sense, I just read that and I'm actually not on twitter (or bluesky or threads or facebook or tiktok or or or or or....) so I'll take your word for it.

Posted
2 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

Even with losing bigly, the Democratic Party did a great job of hiding this version of Kamala on the campaign trail. 

 

Democrats can't speak their own feelings or they will get shit on by their own party.

Posted
8 minutes ago, BurntOrange&White said:

Democrats can't speak their own feelings or they will get shit on by their own party.

Maybe those Democrats that feel like they can't speak their own feelings should suck less and have less shitty feelings.

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Posted
Just now, Brian Fantana said:

Maybe those Democrats that feel like they can't speak their own feelings should suck less and have less shitty feelings.

Agreed, definitely should continue with decorum and doing politics the right way!

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Posted

It might not even be by conscious decision, but it's pretty clear that the leadership of the Democratic party, and their connected web of consultants, pundits, donors, etc., selects for the most risk-averse people on the fucking planet. 

If even the idea of telling a donor no crosses your mind, you're not going to be a favored candidate to them.  

Posted
7 minutes ago, BurntOrange&White said:

Agreed, definitely should continue with decorum and doing politics the right way!

They should be relentlessly attacking the GOP and they should let the government shutdown happen, damn the consequences. They should be gassing up the base by telling them what they're going to offer that their constituents actually care about instead of conceding to idiotic GOP framing over and over again. Tar and feather Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer and tell those useless, feckless morons to pound sand.

Posted

2024 was going to be a long shot due to Biden’s insistence on seeking a second term no matter how it went.  However, I’ll always believe that once Biden withdrew, the spectacle, narrative drama and attention of a contested convention (even kayfabe!) would have presented whoever secured the nomination with the best opportunity to win the general election. 

Posted

Im reminded of the lead up to 2024 and the way Dean Phillips was villainized by his party for stating the plain truth that Biden was past his prime and a primary needed to happen. If memory serves he was basically begging for someone, anyone, before he went it alone. Turns out he was right and you know the rest of the story. This is not to say I am/was a Dean Phillips fanboy, just that the establishment/status quo, for some mysterious reason, is not in it to win. Burn it down

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Posted (edited)
4 minutes ago, Texaus said:

Im reminded of the lead up to 2024 and the way Dean Phillips was villainized by his party for stating the plain truth that Biden was past his prime and a primary needed to happen. If memory serves he was basically begging for someone, anyone, before he went it alone. Turns out he was right and you know the rest of the story. This is not to say I am/was a Dean Phillips fanboy, just that the establishment/status quo, for some mysterious reason, is not in it to win. Burn it down

It's not even mysterious. The Democratic Party is a controlled opposition entity that is pretty much entirely captured by moneyed interest and other interests I won't mention because it will break some posters' brains and derail the thread. It's all they know how to be. It does need to be burned down.

Edited by Brian Fantana
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Posted
8 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

It's not even mysterious. The Democratic Party is a controlled opposition entity that is pretty much entirely captured by moneyed interest and other interests I won't mention because it will break some posters' brains and derail the thread. It's all they know how to be. It does need to be burned down.

I wonder how many Democratic voters absolutely hate voting for Democrats.

 

Posted
11 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

I wonder how many Democratic voters absolutely hate voting for Democrats.

 

Excuse Me Reaction GIF by Laff

I fucking hated having to vote for Kamala Harris, not because I dislike her so much but because I was pissed off she wasn't offering anything substantive to the voter base, that she mishandled her campaign so egregiously when you consider the initial momentum she had, and that she refused to even try and separate herself from an absolute anchor of an unpopular administration that she was a part of.

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