Alistair Croll

I went to early voting and my name was not on the lists. Brought ID, completed the forms, voted. But it’s really weird that I was removed from lists (we live 5 minutes’ walk from the voting station, so it’s unlikely our zone would have changed.)

Not calling shenanigans yet, but: My partner and I have lived at the same Montreal address since 2018, and voted while living here. I got no voting card; she got a vote-by-mail card she didn’t request. The elections website couldn’t tell us where to vote based on our postal code.
Anyone else?

Shouldn’t Max Headroom be an actual show by now?

Were medieval swordsmen really so clumsy that they kept cutting themselves with their own swords? I mean, “double-edged sword” is a pretty common metaphor, but how bad do you need to be at swordplay for that to matter.

“Sharp pointy jewel-encrusted pommel” maybe.

That’s a nice book neighbor! Thanks for sharing a pic of it in the wild!

Yeah, they’re fools.

Yay! Can’t wait to hear what you think. And as they say, all good things…

This is science.

In Canada, apparently the salt box outside the door doubles as a package delivery area.

Lovely photo to receive from the shipper. As we know all too well from justevilenough.com, last-mile logistics are hard.

Books in hands!

Amazing! Thank you!

Some elevator rides just hit different.

Just Evil Enough with Alistair Croll and Emily Ross Podcast Episode · Cross Tabs · 2025-02-06 · 1h 25m

I can’t remember a podcast that has been as much fun—or as thought-provoking—as this wide-ranging chat about subversiveness, norms, behavior, and political influence with @farrahbostic.bsky.social and the excellent Emily Ross.
I suspect you’ll like it too.

podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/c...

Whoops 1000 people.

The Subversive Marketing Handbook - JUST EVIL ENOUGH JUST EVIL ENOUGH is the subversive marketing handbook from Alistair Croll, author of Lean Analytics, and Emily Ross of X.

Small brag: We just hit a thousand direct-from-author orders for Just Evil Enough.
That’s 100 people who get extra content, videos, worksheets, event invites, and a Signal channel.
In bookstores/Amazon as audio, hardcover, and audiobook March 7. But you should buy it from justevilenough.com instead.

Somebody Like I Used To Know is on the airport radio and I can’t not hear “now you’re just a smelly Peter Ustinov”.

This was a really fun, sprawling conversation about subversiveness, competition, and the norms that hold Canada back. Plus basketball, AI, Startupfest, and lots more.

Thanks, @trondizzle.bsky.social!

YouTube video by Benn Jordan The Really Dark Truth About Bots

Really feels like everyone who cares about democracy should watch this. Ostensibly about bots, it’s far more.

youtu.be/GZ5XN_mJE8Y

Many of the bots who’ve followed me don’t feel like the usual thirst traps and clickbait. They’re ideologically neutral, with generated avatars, bland bios, and arbitrary post shares.

Just what I’d want to embed now for later use in disinformation campaigns.

It would be easy for a competitor or even an ideologically opposed nation-state to point an automated, GenAI-based water cannon of crap at a platform to slow its growth and undermine its quality.

This feels more like an arms race than opportunistic scammers.

The torrent of bot accounts on the platform is huge. It’s a hard problem to fix. It also makes me think about online warfare.

If you didn’t like a competing/open platform, flooding it with fake accounts would be a logical attack that harms it without being easily traced.

And Meta, which is making its own.

I put “Rizzard of Oz” on my name tag at a game jam event solely to see the reaction on my daughter’s face.

Was not disappointed.

The thing I can’t shake after recording my voice reading my words* for 16 hours straight is that nobody can ever trust that it’s really me on the phone ever again.

Literally just made the data for a training set.

* and my co-author’s.

Wrapped day 5 of recording the audiobook for @evilenough.bsky.social. Just a few pages left. The best part is the studio tech telling me in between chapters how he’s going to apply all the ideas to his own business. Did not expect.

Around 30% of the folks following me here look like bots (generic posts, stuffed bio, photo straight out of central casting.) Started a week ago. Anyone else?

Can’t unsee spidonutsea.

I really feel like there is a holistic understanding of how social media is changing society finally coming together. 🤞 we have time to use it to speedrun the coming changes. Definitely a race against the incentive structures of social media.

FWD50 kickoff last year was about Luther, contrasting the printing press to the Internet.
Then your talk about Father Coughlin this year.
Then that post about Latin being the language of the elite this week.
Tonight, watched that @hankgreen.bsky.social episode with my 14 y.o.

Well this blew up a bit.

Astonishing that English contains two languages; tand that you probably judge someone’s politics based on which one they use.