Brian Ng

Brian Ng

@aspiringboy.bsky.social

Semicolons are life. He/him. Paris-based Kiwi writer. brianng.xyz

188 Followers 843 Following 14 Posts Joined Nov 2023
1 year ago
Preview
Some DOGE Staffers Are Drawing Six-Figure Government Salaries Engineers and executives at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency are drawing healthy taxpayer-funded salaries—sometimes from the very agencies they are cutting.

SCOOP: Some of the DOGE staffers are drawing salaries from the agencies they are cutting. We got some new details: www.wired.com/story/doge-g...

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1 year ago
Preview
DOGE's savings page fixed old mistakes — and added new ones An NPR review of new data added to DOGE's "wall of receipts" finds the group quietly changed previous errors, added new ones and still has little verified savings to show for its work.

An NPR review of new data added to DOGE's "wall of receipts" finds the group quietly changed previous errors, added new ones and still has little verified savings to show for its work.

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1 year ago

Israel is starving Palestinians in Gaza because Israel has broken the Ceasefire treaty and refused to start withdrawing their troops from Gaza.

Blocking Humanitarian Aid and starving people is a War Crime, but you won't hear any of the Media reporting it.

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1 year ago
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For the millionth time, stop using this meme. The original context was Norm Macdonald joking about the brutal rape and murder of Brandon Teena, a trans man. It was depraved to say it at the time and it's worse that people continue to share this.

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1 year ago
musk on twitter:
Mars probably had liquid oceans a long time ago, before it cooled. Now, there are vast fields of ice covered by red dust. 

If we warm up the planet, the oceans will return and the atmosphere will densify, making it possible to extend life to Mars.

he's really so stupid and I can't stand it. if you warmed up mars and melted the water, the water would evaporate into space. Mars can't have a habitable atmosphere in its current state bc it has no magnetic field. solar winds strip away everything that isn't stuck to the surface.

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1 year ago

Meta could have solely funded the ENTIRE WORLD'S 2022 CLIMATE FINANCE GOAL instead of this

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1 year ago
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1. You don't pay inheritance tax you're dead, the people who inherit it do.

2. Never going to inherit £1m+ from anybody?

Then like 96% of people you won't pay any inheritance tax.

3. If you get rid of inheritance tax for millionaires and billionaires, your taxes will go up.

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1 year ago
What’s a technology that you think is overhyped?

I’m going to give a sideways answer to this, which is that the venture capital business model needs to be understood as requiring hype. You can go back to the Netscape IPO, and that was the proof point that made venture capital the financial lifeblood of the tech industry.

Venture capital looks at valuations and growth, not necessarily at profit or revenue. So you don’t actually have to invest in technology that works, or that even makes a profit, you simply have to have a narrative that is compelling enough to float those valuations. So you see this repetitive and exhausting hype cycle as a feature in this industry. A couple of years ago, you would have been asking me about the metaverse, then last year, you would have asked me about Web3 and crypto, and for each of these inflection points there’s an Andreessen Horowitz manifesto.

It’s not simply that one piece of technology is overhyped, it’s that hype is a necessary ingredient of the current business ecosystem of the tech industry. We should examine how often the financial incentive for hype is rewarded without any real social returns, without any meaningful progress in technology, without these tools and services and worlds ever actually manifesting. That’s key to understanding the growing chasm between the narrative of techno-optimists and the reality of our tech-encumbered world.

Stand by this: www.politico.com/newsletters/...

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1 year ago
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Is the news media going to address the facts that Sam Kerr & Kristie Mewis felt unsafe that night: first bc of the actions of the cab driver. Then bc a white policeman ignored the couple's complaint against the cab driver? Both #sexism & #racism here. Yet the whole focus is on Kerr's words. #justice

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1 year ago
screenshot of a NYT page that says: Sabrina Imbler was a reporting fellow for The New York Times, covering science. She left The Times in May 2022.


lmao sorry this is so fucked up??? I was using they/them pronouns when I started at the NYT in 2021 and when I left in 2022.

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1 year ago

Folks are mostly missing the forest for the trees re: the recent Meta announcement. Specifically, the focus on the move from fact checking to community notes. There two different changes that are a much bigger deal that have received less focus. 🧵 1/11

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1 year ago

Another obvious tell is the awkward inclusion of the specific term "transgenderism" (a rightwing shibboleth) into the policy language itself.

TL;DR - the fact checking drama is mostly a distraction from a much more grim set of changes. 🧵 11/11

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1 year ago

During the Holocaust, the Nazis and their collaborators paid bounties for every Jew they turned in.

academic.oup.com/ehr/article-...

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1 year ago

All these goobers posting airplanes and stars thinking they’re drones made me realize that if there was social media 500 years ago, a bunch of people would have been sharing pictures labeled “omg a mermaid” with community notes like “that’s a rock” and “manatee.”

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1 year ago

winter night walks are great for freaks like me who enjoy a desolate wasteland with no one around and nothing but howling frost wind belting your face freezing you half to death. it’s refreshing

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1 year ago
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Elmo hates this photo. Share it far and wide around social media.

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1 year ago

yeremi colino, a teenager stabbed to death in NYC last night by a group of men after he told them he didn’t speak english, deserves as much attention as the healthcare CEO, if not more. let’s give it to him. www.amny.com/new-york/man...

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1 year ago

AOTEAROAAAAAA

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1 year ago
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1 year ago

I keep getting media requests but tbqh I don't think I'm the right person to have on shows. If you're a lawyer, academic, journalist, closely following SK politics, present in Seoul, and fluent in English, please reply to this post with your creds so I can forward them to people who keep asking me.

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1 year ago

🫡 heading out to see what I can clumsily report on the declaration of martial law in south korea

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1 year ago

I'm fucking blasted and hanging out in the weirdest scene because history happened at a deeply inconvenient hour. so it goes.

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1 year ago

Sitting on my hand until it goes numb so it feels like someone else is doing the dishes.

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1 year ago

it’s interesting that they’re trying to ban trans people from the military. from what i’ve heard they’re super soldiers who are too good at sports and athleticism

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1 year ago

We want Bluesky to be a great home for journalists, publishers, and creators. Unlike other platforms, we don't de-promote your links. Post all the links you want — Bluesky is a lobby to the open web.

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1 year ago
Preview
‘Deaths of needless poverty and despair’: homelessness report reveals surge in fatalities in Australia ‘Staggering’ annual death toll of 1,500 revealed in 10-year analysis ‘a shocking indictment on our society’, expert says

“Almost 1,500 people are dying in homelessness every year, with new research from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare showing a 63% surge in preventable deaths.”

www.theguardian.com/society/2024...

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1 year ago
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The network technology giant Cisco offers to turn Wi-Fi access points installed in offices and other buildings into a system that tracks the location of employees, customers, smartphones, laptops and other devices for a wide range of purposes #workersurveillance

I took a deep dive ⬇️ [thread]

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1 year ago

legacy media upset about the bluesky migration, calling it an “echo chamber,” while elon has rigged X to oversaturate his tweets demeaning those exact same mainstream media sources. and to be clear, X has never been a strong driver of page views—just a bunch of bots and trolls yelling off a tweet

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1 year ago
Preview
Transgender lawyer makes history, takes case on puberty blockers and hormone therapy to Supreme Court The Supreme Court will weigh whether Tennessee's ban on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors is a form of sex discrimination.

In 9 days my colleague @chasestrangio.bsky.social will become the first transgender litigator to argue before the Supreme Court. He'll be representing three trans teenagers and their families in a challenge to TN's ban on hormone therapies for trans people under 18 www.usatoday.com/story/news/p...

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1 year ago
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Or… join Bluesky, where links to articles are not deprioritized, journalism soars, and people actually engage thoughtfully instead of hurl slurs.

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