Alan Henry

I've gotten some new art, including some stuff for spooky season! For starters, what do we think about this pfp/icon by the amazing @ceejinary.bsky.social? I kinda love it! (PS: More art to come, but it's all posted on Patreon first, for all tiers: www.patreon.com/c/halophoenix)

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While I was out of the office, my colleague Kim Key covered this week's infosec roundup, and she makes a great point here... (She is, to her immense credit, not on social media, and I think about joining her in that every day...)

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This is in your inbox if you're subscribed! If you're not, you can read it here: buttondown.com/alanhenry/ar... And subscribe for the next dispatch here: buttondown.com/alanhenry

I'm just saying, this is the way.

We spent two decades celebrating the birth of the pocket supercomputer. Now, Silicon Valley's obsession with cloud-reliant AI agents is aggressively sending us back 50 years.

Yes, we can have nice things. Thanks to gravitational lensing. nautil.us/nasa-shares-...

It's newsletter time! This time, I wonder how history will remember our times, and through whose eyes. I also suggest you write your own memoir. Up on Patreon RIGHT NOW for Terra and Sol subs: www.patreon.com/halophoenix/ Sub here to get it in your inbox on Friday: buttondown.com/alanhenry

It's newsletter time! This time, I wonder how history will remember our times, and through whose eyes. I also suggest you write your own memoir. Up on Patreon RIGHT NOW for Terra and Sol subs: www.patreon.com/halophoenix/ Sub here to get it in your inbox on Friday: buttondown.com/alanhenry

I think a lot about how when this is over - if we get there with a democracy capable of it - that a real truth and reconciliation process will be necessary. I just don't know if anyone currently in power (or worse, consulting for anyone in power) has the stomach for it. Excellent read.

jesus christ the games industry is a hellscape man

In my latest for Reactor, I explore the history of nonbinary pronouns in science fiction, and why all my books have nonbinary characters.

Elon absolutely sucks but this is just a preview of the kind of control AI companies are playing for with their push into government, education, and every other industry

It takes time and love to build a universe, but my next video game history book is finally here I’m so happy to announce that SUPER MARIO GALAXY: The Artistry and Impact of Nintendo’s One Giant Leap is available for pre-order RIGHT NOW from @bossfightbooks.com bossfightbooks.com/products/sup...

Older Americans lost over $7.7 billion to online scams last year. 📱🚨 For our October cover story, PCMag spoke with scam victims, consumer advocates, security experts, and financial fraud attorneys to unpack this crisis. Read the full story 👉 bit.ly/484EVgc #CyberSecurity #OnlineScams #TechNews

there is a piece to be written about this "no contact" as a very specific kind of moral panic about status, intergenerational mobility, and maybe dementia. because it is wild how much this no contact thing riles up older people.

Today's the day and nothing is going to stop me from eating entirely too many cupcakes and an obscene amount of sushi tonight. Somehow, some way, I persist.

This week's infosec roundup covers what AI is actually doing, including how Japan declared a security emergency, partially thanks to the threat it's posed in the sheer number of hacks on Japanese businesses lately:

"The proactive role that our government plays in determining winners & losers, especially by race in our economy, is undeniable" - Dr. Derrick Hamilton on the foreword to The Myth & Propaganda of Black Buying Power by Dr. Jared A. Ball

It's a day ending in Y, which means it's a good reminder that "your lack of urgency does not equal my emergency," like all productivity advice, only works when you're the type of worker whose time is respected in the first place. Sound familiar? I wrote a book about it. amzn.to/3Utcfug

Add "for Tax Purposes" to a movie: For Tax Purposes, Doctor Zhivago

Republicans, from John Roberts on down, who have enabled Trump/Miller/Vought/Musk to dismantle and discredit our institutions and rule of law should know no peace. Every leader of every stripe should be mad and appalled.

The OG post is gone (predictably) but this is another reminder that my liberation is your liberation. Genital checks were common EVEN AFTER slavery, as we were used as subjects for medical experiments and objectified. Sound familiar? Doesn't take much looking around to see how that persists.

In other news, my birthday is this weekend and if you want to confess your undying love for me or anything now is a great time ...by which I mean sign up for my newsletter or support my patreon, yeah, of course: buttondown.email/alanhenry www.patreon.com/c/halophoenix

I know that like, this stuff is supposed to be exciting and all, but I keep looking at these new product releases and wondering "who is this FOR? how does it actually improve our lives or fix a problem someone faces every day?" The joke's on us, I guess?

I wrote about the feeble attempt by prominent tech punditry mainstays like John Gruber and Casey Newton to rationalize their continued use of Elon Musk's propaganda website.

Media Effects theories; from Cultivation to Uses & Gratifications to Agenda Setting etc. It's all here. Ofc, those theories were developed because of the power of TV. In the digital age, understanding the impact the platforms have on _us_ is really important. 👇

I truly can't wait to see who's more charitable to the mar-a-lago looking illiterate woman than they were to Karine Jean-Pierre. Keep an eye out, these folks always tell on themselves.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) says Trump's raid of Rep. Ilhan Omar's home is a reminder that he's a "coward" who lashes out at Black women who challenge him www.huffpost.com/entry/live-u...

So this week's infosec roundup is here, complete with a massive breach at the Pentagon, thousands of active credentials sitting on GitHub, and a worrying trend of governments targeting VPNs: www.pcmag.com/news/a-16-ye...

the Zero System is just AI + the YouTube shorts algo, hence it producing immediate psychosis in all Gundam pilots

Please read this thread. Please.

They're going to keep pushing it until they fully revive lynching. That's the itch they're trying to activate.

The more depressing thought is that, if this actually goes through, millions of Americans would watch it.

This is tomorrow morning! If you're tuning into the conference, drop by and say hello!

*so important*: if you’re voting by mail, assume the USPS will delay because it’s its policy. You can: —put it in drop box —go to counter to watch them postmark in front of you —if you’re dropping it in a mailbox, do it VERY EARLY.

When I say that there's nowhere - NOWHERE - on this planet where Black people can exist, excel, and be respected for our efforts, stuff like this is what I mean. A lot of y'all love to be smug about racism in the US/the south/other places, but never interrogate antiblackness in your backyards.

"Mainstream newsrooms are often bastions of “well-meaning” white people who say they want diversity, but don’t want it at the expense of their friends being passed over in a zero-sum game."

The Mental Health in Journalism Summit, an online conference about...it's name, starts tomorrow and goes through the 9th! I'll be on a panel on Thursday at 8am ET discussing intersectionality and minority stress in journalism. Come join us: www.theselfinvestigation.com/summit/

Not to parrot the great @tomscocca.bsky.social but it's *always* interesting to see which/whose opinions are acceptable to include in news stories versus which ones are not.

I am not kidding when I tell people that much of quiet global politics in the US and elsewhere has been decades-long maneuvering, in the open and in secret, to ensure that only the poor and disenfranchised have to "suffer" things like legal or even social accountability.

24 years old

Starlink sponsoring MLB on Fox playoff segment “Team Leaders”. Apparently, Starlink has been spending more in ads this year, per PC Mag. www.pcmag.com/news/spacex-...

Again: for Black Women, in particular, the ability to chose, a time and place to reproduce is a function of liberty. The most fundamental fact of enslavement was the Black Women had no control over their reproduction; in fact, their ability to reproduce was a key source of other’s wealth.

Like I said in the lede, in a few years there's gonna be a killer docudrama about ShinyHunters. I'm also talking about a new study from Northeastern that revals how many connected cars and their apps track you (and sell your data), among other things.