Nic Babarskis

J.P. Hill reflecting on the murder of Brian Thompson and everything thats come after

As the search for the killer unfolds, what will continue simultaneously is the debate, the discourse, the conversation around Thompson’s killing. The single most helpful concept informing my thought process might be a little unexpected, it’s the Ruth Wilson Gilmore line: “Where life is precious, life is precious.” And where it’s not, it’s not. I’m writing to you today less about the murder of Brian Thompson and more about the response. Because this seeming assassination, cold and calculated though it was, reveals far less than the millions of responses it elicited. Regardless of whether or not the killer is found, and his full motive revealed, what we can grapple with right here and now are the shrugs, the celebrations, the remonstrances, and more. And they happen to reveal the deep and widening schism fracturing the structure of society.

Today, the U.S. supreme court is hearing oral arguments on a case involving Tennessee law with implications on whether states can ban gender affirming care for minors. I’m neither a constitutional lawyer, nor a medical expert - but I do hang out in conservative online forums, and when this topic comes up I inevitably see vitriol and violent rhetoric directed at the families and medical teams involved in gender affirming care circumstances. I see accusations of being butchers, mutilators, perverts and quacks. I once read a pamphlet published by an accredited Christian college that argued trans and queer social activists were a greater threat to the continuation of the U.S. than ISIS. It’s just gross. These families and medical professionals are often times facing difficult decisions about how best to support minors in acute embodied distress. For many of these kids this stuff has life or death implications.

This is why I personally despise framing culture-warring as some sort of civic or religious virtue. For a community that frequently asserts their fidelity to “judeo-christian” values, when it comes to discussing this particular cultural flashpoint I rarely see a single fruit of the spirit show up in the discussion. Let’s not dehumanize trans kids, their families, or their doctors.

This is a fun and thought provoking profile of a small college. How are these institutions going to survive? Uncommon College has some thoughts.

Is there something uncommon happening at Unity Environmental University?

Colleges that fail often fail because they attempt to appeal to everyone. In so doing, they appeal to no one because they cannot sell themselves as having any distinction. They will continue to spend themselves into infamy by trying to satisfy every possible interest. Eventually, adding programming and offering discounts on tuition catches up to you. In the past decade, Unity took a hard look at itself and decided it was good at two things: environmental programs and online education. They decided that those were the only two things they were going to do.

A copy of Abraham Lincoln’s original Thanksgiving declaration:

An excerpt:

And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans. mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.

X’s Objection to the Onion Buying InfoWars Is a Reminder You Do Not Own Your Social Media Accounts

The legal basis that X asserts in the filing is not terribly interesting. But what is interesting is that X has decided to involve itself at all, and it highlights that you do not own your followers or your account or anything at all on corporate social media, and it also highlights the fact that Elon Musk’s X is primarily a political project he is using to boost, or stifle, specific viewpoints and help his friends. In the filing, X’s lawyers essentially say—like many other software companies, and, increasingly, device manufacturers as well—that the company’s terms of service grant X’s users a “license” to use the platform but that, ultimately, X owns all accounts on the social network and can do anything that it wants with them.

What’s the play here? I mean, why is it in X’s interest to not see InfoWars sold to The Onion?

I’ve been POSSE-pilled. POSSE stands for Post on Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. Here’s a link to an image of what POSSE looks like.

Let me explain:

Existing in a digital space between July 2024 - November 2024 radicalized my views on what individual engagement with social platforms and publishing should look like. I happen to live in a political “battleground” state in the U.S. so pretty much any time I engaged ANY sort of digital media (social, streaming, news/information) I found myself deluged with targeted advertising, and if it wasn’t some super PAC screaming at me, it was the newsletters or newspapers I follow, or it was the general vibe of lament/panic in most of my social media silos.

So I reached a personal breaking point where I’m weighing that I would like to maintain some sort of digital presence (for professional, communal, and utilitarian reasons), but my direct engagement with all the specific platforms I use is absolutely toxic. Additionally, so many of the major social media sites are designed for surfing more than creation (the photography sites are not as bad, but even the video-centric sites want you cruising the algorithm more than posting your own stuff). Doing or creating something just feels better than sinking a chunk of time into doom scrolling an algorithmic feed, and I need hardwired systems to get me to create instead of consume.

So, I decided a hard reboot was necessary. For a conceptual/theoretical framework I’ve adopted Alan Jacob’s sharing and reflecting engagement model. I needed a dedicated blog/site for publishing longform/reflective thoughts, and a space for posts like you’d find on Bluesky, Mastadon, Threads, etc. While I have my own Squarespace site that I’ve maintained since my graduate school days back in 2012-2014, I’ve decided the platform doesn’t quite give me the oomph I needed when considering the subscription cost. Therefore, I set up a Ghost site for my primary reflective writing/blogging project and a micro.blog site to serve as my POSSE hub for social media style sharing. I also signed up for a dedicated reading app that I can funnel newsletters and important RSS feeds too, or save articles to read later - this is particularly important for news websites where I don’t need (and probably can’t emotionally handle right now) a constant deluge of front-page news designed by editors to try and keep me hooked on the website.

A quick note about POSSE privilege - I have the disposable income that allows me too absorb the subscriptions necessary to set up these sites, and I have enough technical know-how and social capital with IT folks to create my own domains and customize these spaces the way I want. I think it’s worth the investment, for my mental health, and my creative and intellectual life. I’d be happy to help get you started if you are in a similar (exasperated) place like me.

We’ll see how this goes…

Links for where to find or follow me

A couple newsletter/RSS subscription opportunities if you want to spend less time on social media, but still are interested in engaging with my stuff:

You can see everywhere I have a presence on the web here. You can use this link to get a weekly email newsletter of all the things I post on my micro.blog site - this will include links to my Ghost blog posts, which I intend to announce each week on the micro.blog. If you want just an email newsletter of my longform blog posts you can sign up for that here, or sign up for the RSS feed with your RSS reader - just copy this link.

Manton Reece - Bluesky relays, Mastodon discovery providers

For years Micro.blog customers have also asked for a firehouse view of blog posts. I’ve avoided it, and I’ll continue to avoid it, because it creates new problems for spam and moderation. It’s great that Bluesky and Mastodon offer their own forms of this. Not all platforms need it, though, and as Bluesky and Mastodon become busier, Micro.blog will continue to carve out a quieter, slower niche on the social web.

So far I’m liking the slower pace and POSSE functionality. We’ll see how it goes as the honeymoon wears off.