Jay Neely

YouTube video by Obscure Mics Half The Price Of The Maono PD200W...But Is The PD100W Half The Mic?

@thatbarkfella.bsky.social Hey Bark, do you have a go-to recc for a budget USB mic?

I'm looking for good production quality for an upcoming web event, but won't use it much otherwise. Your video below was helpful; is Maono PD100W my best bet or is there another at the same price that's better?

@mayorjakewilson.bsky.social Please follow up on this. A man who THREE WOMEN RESIGNED saying they suffered sexual harassment and verbal abuse from him, that the city's own HR investigation found "sufficient evidence of violation/s", should not continue to be employed by the city.

An ouroboros image of a snake eating its tail in an infinite loop, with the reddit Snoo mascot head in place of the reddit head.

I'm hoping something new in the social news space turns up.

I would love to pick up building the Business of Media community again, but Reddit is simply not trustable as a platform for community builders anymore, & is becoming an ouroboros of AI slop, worsening the bot manipulation issues.

Bluesky's great (my daily focus is on other accounts; will try to share more here), but it just doesn't scratch the news community itch.

@blueskyfeedcreator.com has helped create good custom topic feeds for some accounts I manage, but it still has very limited filters for engagement signals.

Screenshot from Discuit front page, January 23rd, 2026.

And that's pretty much it. Everything else I've seen looks like either a dev hobby project with no real hope of attracting a large userbase, an alt-right loser retreat, or a non-profit deluded about their ability to scale on donations (e.g. Discuit, as tiny & aimless as when I left 2 years ago). 🙁

Screenshot from the front page of PieFed, January 23rd, 2026.

I looked at PieFed since some Lemmy users were enthusiastic. Sounds like it's advancing faster in feature development, but it's still basically the same platform (& interoperable), and developed primarily by one guy. Maybe if the flagship instance diversifies more I'd switch from Lemmy.World.

…enthusiastic about AI, even when talking about its problems. I don't know if anyone at Digg is thinking about the needs & concerns of creators, and you're never going to build a top-tier platform for humans without support for humanities at the core of it.

Alexis Ohanian seems more grounded (relative to being in a bubble of wealth, sports, & tech), says he wants to Digg to be something his kids see he's helping to build and think highly of it. But he's still the guy that fired Victoria Taylor at Reddit, an active user on X, and creepily…

Screenshot from the front page of digg, January 23rd, 2026.

Digg is now open to the public, but honestly it looks uninspiring; basic, empty, and generic. Feels like they failed to build an active community in the closed alpha.

It's still very early. Saying the right things, but the founders concern me. Kevin Rose is *such* a tech bro, NFTs and all...

Screenshot from the front-page of lemmy.world, January 23rd, 2026.

I did a fresh look through social news alternatives.

Lemmy has been a good replacement for daily Reddit news checking + general discussion, but it hasn't grown more niche humanities communities. Probably the lack of UX & strong open source grognard vibes are off-putting to a lot of folks.

I think it's important for safety tools to avoid making you feel like you have to sacrifice your voice / ability to engage with legitimate discussion in order to have protection.

Good stuff. I would definitely encourage thinking about them as different tactics though. Playing dead / "make me as minimally accessible as possible" is a very different intent from wanting to throw up additional roadblocks to potential harassers at the expense of *some* reach but not all.

It would let you cut off a wave of harrassers and secondary-effects from getting on the radar of their dog-piling supporters, while still allowing engagement from a smaller, more trusted audience. Nice alternative to going private or blocking replies from everyone except your smallest network.

Thinking about pile-ons that can happen from just a screenshot or off-platform targeting of someone, what if you gave users the ability to pause being interacted w/ (replies, reposts, follows, lists) by anyone outside their 2nd-degree network (not followed by ppl they're following) for a few days?

Unfortunately I think you've fallen victim to some ragebait misinformation here.

The user who posted in the screenshot that's circulating is an impersonation channel: www.youtube.com/@beastlndust...

The official MrBeast channel posted here - x.com/mrbeast/stat... - stating that's not him.

A new fellowship is all about putting the news in news creator The goal of the News Creator Corps is to "flood social platforms with accurate information."

The goal of the News Creator Corps is to "flood social platforms with accurate information." www.niemanlab.org/2025/10/a-ne...

Post from Threads user rodneyowl: "Ireland has declared the Basic Income for Artists scheme permanent. This will be officially announced in tomorrow’s budget. Details to follow. Congratulations to all who fought for it and the present and future artists of all sorts in Ireland. That includes me 👌We’re just comin to the end of a 3 year pilot scheme. It’s been a roaring success. For every €1 paid out to the 2000 participants, the government got €1.46 back. Can’t argue with that. Other countries are already taking note."

Damn. This is amazing. £325 per week, paid monthly, for 3 years - and the result was a profit for the Irish economy:
www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employmen...

Graph of spending in the 2024 election cycle by industry sector, via https://www.citationneeded.news/follow-the-crypto/

Great interview by @niemanlab.org with @molly.wiki, an independent journalist focusing on how cryptocurrency industry spending is influencing politics: www.niemanlab.org/2025/08/inde...

The crypto industry spent more on 2024 elections in the United States than the oil or pharmaceutical industries.

The playbook of demagogues like Trump is to protect the Oligarchs by dividing us up based on race, religion, place of birth or sexual orientation.

They want us to hate each other while they laugh all the way to the bank.

Don’t fall for it.

Screenshot of multiple spammers in Facebook comments.

I wonder if there's any good methodology for estimating what % of a social platform's "Monthly Active Users" # that they report to investors is just outright fraud from intentionally de-prioritizing spam account prevention.

Bookshop.org Ratchets Up Battle Against Amazon with Addition of E-book Sales - Retail TouchPoints Bookshop.org's latest salvo in its battle against Amazon is a new e-book platform for independent bookstores.

Huge deal for independent bookstores:

www.retailtouchpoints.com/topics/retai...

I see local shops like @portersqbooks.bsky.social & @lovestruckbooks.bsky.social doing a great job with curation and community-building; no longer missing out on ebook consumers' purchases could be a nice boost.

Google maps screenshot of Greater Boston with the City of Boston limits highlighted.

Boston's actual geographic bounds make the strict residency requirement for all city jobs absurd.

A Brighton (neighborhood) resident is eligible; a Brookline (town) resident—geographically BETWEEN Brighton and Boston—is not. 🤦‍♂️

Cambridge & Somerville right next door? Sorry, not allowed. #BostonMA

YouTube video by Reid Gower THE SAGAN SERIES - The Frontier Is Everywhere

Had a conversation that reminded me of The Sagan Series from ~14 years ago now.

If you haven't seen these, they're wonderful short videos that are an ode to exploration, space, and a cosmic perspective of our lives.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY59...

Any advice for someone catching up on 6 years of WordPress development? 😬

Trying to wrap my head around how Full Site Editing / Block themes work, what I should evaluate when choosing them, how to extend them with other block patterns, and how their template system works with custom post types.

Bluesky gives a lot of visibility to full reply chains. A real pain when weird obsessives try to hijack by replying to every. single. comment. @support.bsky.team please reduce the visibility of this kind of crap.

In the meantime, friendly reminder we can all block bad-faith spammers like this.

Back to the bundle "If media companies can’t figure out how to be the bundlers, other layers of the ecosystem — telecoms, devices, social platforms — will."

"The number of subscriptions you need to stay informed across entertainment and news is insane, unmanageable, and expensive. Consumers are overwhelmed by information and disoriented by complicated choices."

@semaforben.bsky.social on why publishers should consider bundling:

My limited edition puzzles are now available 🧩✨ These eight are on sale for two weeks during the holidays 🎁❤️

The collection will be updated with different artwork in the next edition.

Visit adamsdoyle.com/purchase 🌟

ALERT: The MBTA Red Line is now completely free of all slow zones for the first time in at least 20 years, joining both the Blue and Orange lines as speed restriction-free.

Five authors I've read five (or more) books by?

Anne McCaffrey
Neal Stephenson
Bernard Cornwell
Aaron Allston
This awesome guy 👇