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James Ball

@jamesrball.com

48K followers 1.1K following 6.1K posts

Tech, policy, politics. Political editor @ The New World, Fellow @ Demos, newsletter @ techtris, PhD researcher @ UCL Laws. Latest book: The Other Pandemic – How QAnon Contaminated The World. 🏳️‍🌈 https://www.jamesrball.com/

www.jamesrball.com

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · Aug 11

Enjoying my posts? (If not: sorry..?)

I have a newsletter here, plz do subscribe: www.jamesrball.com

Details of books I’ve written here: www.jamesrball.com/p/books

And all my writing for @thenewworldmag.bsky.social is here: www.thenewworld.co.uk/contributor/...

I often pop up elsewhere, too.

Techtris | James Ball | Substack

A weekly(ish) newsletter on technology, policy and society, from James Ball. Click to read Techtris, by James Ball, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.

www.jamesrball.com

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 1h

“Across social media, images of dancing frogs, unicorns and T-Rexes are being shared, all in stark contrast to the masked and belligerent law enforcement officers on the other side.”

inews.co.uk/opinion/trum...

Trump’s movement was fuelled by Pepe the Frog — now another amphibian is pushing back

A new figure has emerged at anti-ICE protests in Portland - a man wearing an inflatable frog costume

inews.co.uk

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 1h

“A viral and ridiculous image, such as a cute cartoonish frog standing off against a row of heavily-equipped militarised police, or even national reserve members, tells the story far more quickly than official statements ever could. It also spreads further and faster.” inews.co.uk/opinion/trum...

Trump’s movement was fuelled by Pepe the Frog — now another amphibian is pushing back

A new figure has emerged at anti-ICE protests in Portland - a man wearing an inflatable frog costume

inews.co.uk

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Reposted by James Ball

James Plunkett @jamestplunkett.bsky.social · 1d

Are there any live proposals to get DSIT (and/or CLG?) to create a Civic Tech Fund? An initiative to support the UK’s civic tech movement (pro-social platforms like Library of Things, Olio, Park Run, etc) and shared infrastructure for community organising. 1/n

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 5h

andrej

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 5h

You had to click back to it about once or twice a week! That’s all!

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 5h

I just absolutely do not get his grift it’s not even monetised here, at least not directly. Is he just addicted to the #numbers?

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Reposted by James Ball

Clay Jackson @clayjak.substack.com · 16h

that lawyer was me.

open.substack.com/pub/radleyba...

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 6h

Smh, can’t believe we’re still having to have this argument when we’ve all got a better social network now, one where people bother to click articles and read through to the second tweet in threads.

Jonn Elledge @jonnelledge.bsky.social · 1d

The platform formerly known as Twitter may be horrible, but it is still shaping policy. So were we all wrong to leave?

Was the left wrong to leave X for BlueSky?

The platform formerly known as Twitter may be horrible, but it's still shaping policy

www.newstatesman.com

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 6h

I still have my account on X and I still RT a minimal amount of work stuff there. I still spend time there for work. But I never post there for fun and I never spend time there for fun. Maybe the reason should have been because it’s hateful there, but it’s actually mostly because it just sucks now?

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 6h

The kind of stuff I’d always posted stopped doing numbers. The kind of stuff I liked seeing stopped getting posted. The site stopped sending people to stuff I write. I stopped getting commissions from it. The fun stopped ages ago. And crucially, it got *boring* to spend time there.

Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com · 8h

This is an exact encapsulation of why I moved to Bluesky.

No amount of handwringing in the Atlantic about how I owe some eternal Promethean suffering to the discourse is going to make me stay on a site I hate, that stopped doing anything for me professionally years ago.

Well – no. Bluesky may or may not be, as one centre-right friend who felt unwelcome put it, “self-righteous island”. But the idea that’s why we went is nonsense. That I’ve largely stopped posting on a site that’s done more to shape my career and social circle than the rest of the internet combined is less about avoiding rival opinions (I love arguing with people who are wrong!) than with the fact the site simply became unusable. It stopped generating the things (good jokes, interesting debate, clicks) I wanted; it became extremely good at generating the things (racists, pornbots, racist pornbots) I did not.

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 6h

“Try a log scale?”

Marjorie James Keenan @unenthusiast.com · 11h

In honour of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand.

rm -rf ~/

hammancheez @hammancheez.bsky.social · 11h

"The chancellor approved it"

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Reposted by James Ball

Marjorie James Keenan @unenthusiast.com · 11h

In honour of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand.

rm -rf ~/

hammancheez @hammancheez.bsky.social · 11h

"The chancellor approved it"

🫧 Spark Elation 🫧 @tyranny.sparklenoise.com · 11h

In honour of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand.

“a supply chain attack”

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 7h

Good *grief*

James Ball @jamesrball.com · 7h

It’s contactless only so it doesn’t have a way to accept payments above that limit

James Ball @jamesrball.com · 10h

morning!

Reposted by James Ball

Jay Kuo @nycjayjay.bsky.social · 1d

What Trump and his ilk claim versus what they can support with actual evidence are always leagues apart.

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 10h

Oh great Donald Trump is running the self-checkout at this shop in Europe now, too?

A sign below a card machine says “kindly split bills for amounts exceeding 50 euros. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 21h

It’s happened again! But this time they’re both claiming “world exclusives” on the same emails between Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein.

What’s going on here? Does one have a mole on the other’s newsdesk? That’s *very* 1990s if so.

James Ball @jamesrball.com · 7d

Looks like someone gave the Sun on Sunday and the Mail on Sunday the same story about Angela Rayner and told them both it was an exclusive…

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 1d

Washington DC is, by several measures, America’s most liberal city. It no longer has a newspaper that’s even trying to represent that in its op-ed pages.

Philip Bump @pbump.com · 2d

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Reposted by James Ball

John Sipher @johnsipher.bsky.social · 1d

Shocking. Hard to imagine this Administration making shit up 😏

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/u...

Report on Soros Cited by Justice Dept. Does Not Show Funding for Terrorism

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by James Ball

ceej @ceej.online · 2d

hardly any floppy disks remain from shakespeare times

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 1d

What’s the word “vegan” doing in that sentence???

Twlldun @twlldun.bsky.social · 1d

I mean, this is really desperate shit, isn’t it? I am a great deal more woke-sceptic than pretty much all of Bluesky but I honestly can’t be bothered to care about the National Trust putting vegan tampons in the men’s toilets and neither should you

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 1d

Task based. Writing left handed, phone use right handed. There’s a long list with not much logic to it either.

Reposted by James Ball

Django Wexler @djangowexler.bsky.social · 1d

My boss: so how's our fourth quarter looking?

Me, the sales manager at the company that makes inflatable frog suits: well, you're never going to believe this, but

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 1d

Can’t believe we’re only like 20% into this season of the presidency and we’re already reusing plot lines.

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 1d

oh no

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