Jay Owens
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jayowens.bsky.social
Jay Owens
@jayowens.bsky.social
I’m Head of Audience at @lrb.co.uk and I wrote a book, ‘Dust: The Modern World in a Trillion Particles’ (2023). I post about media strategy and environmental politics.

🔗 https://JayOwens.me
‘There were more than 45,000 forcibly disappeared people in Andalucía alone – and yet, as far as the state is concerned, no one forced them to disappear.’

@danhancox.bsky.social on Spain’s deep failures of memory and accountability re. the Franco regime.

observer.co.uk/style/featur...
The families of Franco’s victims still seeking justice 50 years after his death | The Observer
observer.co.uk
November 17, 2025 at 9:22 PM
‘It seems like half the startups coming out of Silicon Valley these days are just “We found a way to monetize undermining the social contract!”’

By @jeremiahdjohns.bsky.social

www.infinitescroll.us/p/does-the-s...
Does the social contract even exist any more?
The Weekly Scroll: Bad Apps, online drama, and the lack of social consequences.
www.infinitescroll.us
November 16, 2025 at 10:55 AM
“We don’t feel safe,” an elderly man named Ghassan, who lost his brother in the massacres, told me. “I can walk down the street here and shake someone’s hand, and that same person might be the one who killed my brother.”

Melvyn Ingleby on Syria after Assad.

www.theguardian.com/news/2025/no...
‘We were forced to burn bodies’: will survivors of the Tadamon massacres see justice?
The long read: During the conflict, the Damascus suburb became a killing field. But some of Assad’s henchmen are still around – and even working with the new government
www.theguardian.com
November 14, 2025 at 12:44 AM
‘The BBC exhibits symptoms of the West’s wider moral breakdown over Gaza – the failure even to name genocide, let alone stop it, when a Western ally is the perpetrator.’

@trillingual.bsky.social investigates how the broadcaster got Gaza wrong.

www.equator.org/articles/ins...
Inside the BBC’s Gaza Fiasco • EQUATOR
How the world’s most trusted media organisation fell apart
www.equator.org
November 13, 2025 at 8:47 PM
Reposted by Jay Owens
New: for @equatormag.bsky.social I spent months talking to BBC journalists, from front-line reporters to the former head of the World Service, about how the corporation came unstuck over Gaza. But as I was working on the story, it collided with something... bigger... www.equator.org/articles/ins...
Inside the BBC’s Gaza Fiasco • Articles • EQUATOR
How the world’s most trusted media organisation fell apart
www.equator.org
November 13, 2025 at 2:50 PM
‘Modernity itself—the entire project of human development, technological progress, and social organization that has defined the last several centuries—is no longer the exclusive property of the West.’

Kaiser Kuo on China’s challenge to American perception

www.theideasletter.org/essay/the-gr...
The Great Reckoning - The Ideas Letter
The world feels unsettled, as if history itself were changing tempo. The familiar landmarks of the modern age are blurring, slipping away, and the stories we once told ourselves about…
www.theideasletter.org
November 12, 2025 at 11:22 PM
As Covid arrived in 2020, a string of suicides ripped through the Blackfeet Nation, claiming kids as young as 11.

Charlie Speicher called up a fourth grade teacher named Steve Von Till, the former Neurosis guitarist.

@btoastie.bsky.social on heavy metal and healing.

www.hcn.org/issues/57-11...
Heavy metal is healing teens on the Blackfeet Nation - High Country News
In response to youth suicides, teachers show students the power of headbanging at Fire in the Mountains festival.
www.hcn.org
November 12, 2025 at 10:27 PM
Ministers are calling the Starmer leadership challenge story “one of the weirdest briefing decisions I have ever seen” or simply “mad” — and yet political journalists won’t name the “senior Labour source” wot briefed it.

When who would do this stupid thing & why is the only part of it that’s news.
November 12, 2025 at 8:09 PM
Textile designer ‘drew inspiration from the concept of “a piece of cloth”’, more news at 11.

www.apple.com/newsroom/202...
Introducing iPhone Pocket: a beautiful way to wear and carry iPhone
ISSEY MIYAKE and Apple today unveiled iPhone Pocket, designed to fit any iPhone as well as all pocketable items.
www.apple.com
November 12, 2025 at 12:16 AM
‘I was doing design research in Afghanistan and South East Asia and then I started looking at agencies that were hiring for innovation consulting or strategic consulting.’

Eva Oh on what prompted her to become a dominatrix.

pulpzine.substack.com/p/an-audienc...
An audience with legendary dominatrix Eva Oh
The dominatrix, mentor, advocate and podcast host discusses her career journey, maintaining personal boundaries, and advocating for the sex worker community.
pulpzine.substack.com
November 11, 2025 at 11:10 PM
“If you feel like not just your ego but your livelihood depends on these platforms, then you might project an enviable financial stability, along with an enviable emotional stability, onto someone who doesn’t use them at all.”

Jonah Weiner to Kyle Chayka

www.newyorker.com/culture/infi...
It’s Cool to Have No Followers Now
As social media has become older, more manipulable, and more automated by artificial intelligence, flouting online popularity has gained a new cachet.
www.newyorker.com
November 11, 2025 at 6:57 PM
‘Is this how rave dies? Not with a bang, but with a coffee-table book?’

@tomfaber91.bsky.social on the ‘ephemeral’, ‘ineffable’ thing called rave and cultural institutions’ increasing attempts ‘to fix this protean phenomenon in words or on a gallery wall.’

on.ft.com/3LnQkjp (unlocked)
How rave culture went from the dance floor to the museum gallery
Is this how the party ends?
on.ft.com
November 9, 2025 at 6:12 PM
‘“In Nevada, it’s very hard to piss everyone off, and this has been about the closest example,” Kuhlman said.’

A high-voltage transmission line is planned to cut through Nevada’s emptiest valleys for 235 miles, making a kilometre-wide utility corridor to feed Reno’s data centres.

on.ft.com/3LRXlZJ
The AI boom comes to America’s loneliest place
Plans for a 230-mile transmission line threaten Nevada’s wilderness and have united hunters and wildlife groups
on.ft.com
November 9, 2025 at 12:04 PM
“I was laid off from Teen Vogue today along with multiple other staffers on other sections,” said politics editor Lex McMenamin.

“After today, there will be no politics staffers at Teen Vogue.”

Why is Condé cutting what worked best at Teen Vogue?

www.commondreams.org/news/teen-vo...
Journalists' Unions Condemn Condé Nast's Gutting of Teen Vogue | Common Dreams
Condé Nast's decision to gut Teen Vogue's award-winning journalism and lay off key staffers is a devastating blow to insightful political coverage. Will the magazine's mission and identity survive the...
www.commondreams.org
November 6, 2025 at 9:50 AM
Sheffield Hallam University complied with a demand from Beijing to order a professor to stop researching supply chains and forced labour in China.

They’ve now been referred to counter-terrorism police for th ‘assisting a foreign intelligence service’.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
China academic intimidation claim referred to counter-terrorism police - BBC News
Sensitive research into alleged human rights abuses is alleged to have been shut down by Chinese agents.
www.bbc.co.uk
November 6, 2025 at 9:19 AM
‘If he could reach the woodlot by dawn, he might be pulled to safety and surgical care. If not, he’d almost certainly end up like countless other soldiers in this war: his last wretched seconds recorded for social media’s 24-7 snuff-film deathstream.’

By CJ Chivers

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/05/m...
A Harrowing Escape From the Drone-Infested Hellscape of Ukraine’s Front Lines
www.nytimes.com
November 5, 2025 at 11:44 PM
An interview with his video team:

‘I come from film. Anthony comes from film. Deb comes from marketing. Donald comes from outer space.

None of us even know the rules of traditional DC political communication, so I don't even think it occurred to us to do it that way.’

defector.com/selling-zohran
November 5, 2025 at 11:01 PM
‘Mamdani and his team — and the burgeoning DSA political machine — arrived at the exact moment Americans were ready to talk about class and found the best way to hijack our new world of short-form (and long-form) video to make sure you actually heard them.’

www.garbageday.email/p/we-did-it-zo
We did it, Zo
Read to the end for a good post
www.garbageday.email
November 5, 2025 at 9:35 PM
In better news: new shape just dropped that can’t pass through itself without touching the sides.

It’s called a Noperthedron.

Is it useful for anything? Well, Sergey Yurkevich who co-discovered it has a 3D printed one holding pens on his desk?

www.quantamagazine.org/first-shape-...
October 30, 2025 at 2:09 AM
The headlines on this story are so infuriating: maximum clickbait.

So many ppl I follow have been blithely tweeting ‘Bill Gates doesn’t care about climate change’, which isn’t remotely the case.

Instead, Bill Gates is saying his priority is reducing human suffering.

Oooh how wicked. Condemn him!
October 30, 2025 at 12:51 AM
‘Most scammers have themselves been scammed. The tens of thousands of Chinese, Ethiopians, Ugandans, Filipinos, Pakistanis and others who carry out the grunt work have been tricked, kidnapped and enslaved.’

@alexclapp.bsky.social on the vast cybercrime economy.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Alexander Clapp · Pig Butchering: Scam Gangs
If it were a national economy, cybercrime would be the third largest in the world, behind only the United States and...
www.lrb.co.uk
October 29, 2025 at 10:24 PM
A strong first issue for the new @equatormag.bsky.social.

Soyonbo Borjgin on a journalist’s life at 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘐𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘳 𝘔𝘰𝘯𝘨𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘢 𝘓𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘞𝘦𝘦𝘬𝘭𝘺

Here’s the opening paragraph and it just pretty much keeps going like this

www.equator.org/articles/the...
October 29, 2025 at 9:43 PM
‘There is indeed some elemental substance that enters human history from the non-human realm, bringing with it cycles of infernal violence.’

James Lasdun reviews 𝘔𝘶𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥 by Caroline Fraser, on the late 20th century epidemic of serial killers in the Pacific NW.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
James Lasdun · American Berserk: Serial Killers in Seattle
For a period beginning in the 1960s and ending around the turn of this century, the preferred form of the homicidally...
www.lrb.co.uk
October 28, 2025 at 12:02 AM
Interesting thread on the way even 'alternative' technologies such as Signal necessarily work these days - and why they can't route round dependency on Amazon.
📣THREAD: It’s surprising to me that so many people were surprised to learn that Signal runs partly on AWS (something we can do because we use encryption to make sure no one but you–not AWS, not Signal, not anyone–can access your comms).

It’s also concerning. 1/
PSA: we're aware that Signal is down for some people. This appears to be related to a major AWS outage. Stand by.
October 27, 2025 at 11:45 PM
‘We met like that year after year. In Berlin, always in summer, sometimes in London. And I always I felt the same, that I’d hit the jackpot, my best friend was Phoebus Apollo.’

Lauren J. Joseph in the @grantamag.bsky.social series ‘Dead to Me’, on social separations.

granta.com/cmon-billy/
C’mon Billy
‘When Billy wrote about me he called me Sprinkles. I can’t think of a single bad thing to say about him.’
granta.com
October 27, 2025 at 6:08 PM