kate conger
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kateconger.com
kate conger
@kateconger.com
110K followers 630 following 1.9K posts
tech reporter for the NYT!
co-author of CHARACTER LIMIT!
signal: kateconger.11

buy our book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/737290/character-limit-by-kate-conger-and-ryan-mac/

tour dates & translations: https://linktr.ee/kateconger
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kateconger.com
this is one of my favorite videos of Penny, just really sums up her entire chaotic but sweet vibe
November 25, 2025 at 9:59 PM
kateconger.com
After losing Penny, I think it’ll be a long while before I have another dog. But I did sign up to take shelter dogs out for field trips and did my first one today. Meet Parker, who is up for adoption with no fees at East Bay SPCA!
November 23, 2025 at 8:22 PM
kateconger.com
men are so emotional www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/p...
Baszucki: Yeah, I would actually lean in harder. The shift would be constantly moving to higher quality, more accurate and more diligent systems. Can we review more? Can we do more better? And say you and I, we’re a system, what is the best way to review every single image going into Roblox at higher and higher quality? And say we figured out the best way to do that is to do it with better and better A.I. models. Would you pick that? Roose: Yeah. Baszucki: Good, so you’re aligning with what we did. High-five. Roose: But I’ve also been covering social networks —— Baszucki: Thank you for supporting our Roblox decision matrix. Roose: But I also remember 15 years ago when —— Baszucki: I’m so glad you guys are aligned with the way we run Roblox. High-five. Roose: Right, I also remember 15 years ago when Mark Zuckerberg was saying —— Baszucki: Is this a stealth interview where actually you love everything we’re doing and you’re here to stealthily support it?
November 21, 2025 at 6:40 PM
kateconger.com
Penny died on November 9. She was 16 years old. How lucky I feel to have shared a life with her. She was a comedian and a hellraiser. She’d do something silly and then give you a look to make sure you were in on the joke. She tore through old dirt bike tires and horse balls. When we moved into our house in 2019, she ran across the bridge over the creek a few times and then realized she could just jump straight over the creek, so she’d go tearing after her ball and just blast herself into the air. She could jump high enough to see over the 6 foot fence and she’d scare the shit out of people when her head popped up. She loved getting comfy. She’d sleep on as many pillows as possible, her whole body curled up next to my head. She had a special spot on the east side of the house where she’d lay in the morning sun and bake her belly until she was practically overheating. When we went camping, she’d slowly shove me off my sleeping pad and take over. She was too independent to cuddle for long, but after breakfast in the mornings, she would get back in bed with me and let me hold her for a while. She loved ear rubs and forehead kisses. She ran miles and miles. She loved to sprint up and down the beach, racing past the waves. You could see her eyes go peaceful as her body picked up speed. She eagerly chased Nate on his mountain bike and challenged me to keep up. She ran through the woods alongside us when we snowshoed the PCT, crashing through the crusted snow and paddling in the powder underneath. She hated rain and would lay her ears out sideways to try to keep water from dripping in. Afterward, she would scrub her whole body up and down the couch, grunting and wiggling to get her ears dry. She begrudgingly learned to swim after anxiously watching me jump in an alpine lake, and learned to love it when she realized she could fetch sticks out of the water. She ruined every fishing trip she went on after that, thinking the lures cast into the water were for her to chas… She obsessed over seeing unusual animals. Her favorite were deer, and she had a special sort of yodeling cry I only ever heard her make for them. When one of our neighbors got a goat, she’d eagerly go up to the fence and marvel at him. On one of our last walks around Lake Merritt, she met a horse and just stared and stared. Penny was my best friend. We resembled each other in so many ways — both fiery, stubborn, fiercely loving and loyal but quick to lash out. I trusted her taste in people, and she trusted me. We could be gentle with each other, even when we struggled to be soft with others. Loving her — and I think loving any being deeply — held up a mirror to all my flaws. I had to look at my laziness on the days I didn’t feel like walking her, at my impatience when we wanted conflicting things, at my inattentiveness when I took my eye off her and she escaped down the storm drain, and I had to go crawling through the drains of Oakland with a flashlight to fish her out. She forced me to grow, but I also ache at all the big and small ways I let her down. She was by my side for the very best and worst moments of my life. When I met her, I felt this little wisp of flame inside me that was the start of a family, and I kept it so secret for fear of extinguishing it. She was Nate’s little girl before she was mine, and when I came along, she begrudgingly gave up her seat in the truck and then sat on the floor glowering at me. Together, we set off on the adventure of being a family and it felt so fragile I could barely breathe — the terror of the hope to be loved. When we split up, Nate gave Penny and I the kindness of allowing us to stay together, a huge self-sacrifice. I will always be grateful for that. In her later years, Penny kept learning. She picked up new commands without me even knowing it. She learned what free boxes were and how to dig in them to find a new stuffy to carry home with her. She made a fast friend in Luna, whose easy, gentle presence comple…
November 12, 2025 at 12:50 AM
kateconger.com
I said goodbye to my little girl Penny on Sunday. I shared a lot of her online over the years and so I’d like to share a few thoughts about her now that she is gone.
November 12, 2025 at 12:48 AM
kateconger.com
"sandwich hurler" is up there for me with "aloof wife"
NYT headline: Jurors Find Sandwich Hurler Not Guilty of Assault The verdict on a misdemeanor charge came after seven hours of deliberation, and after prosecutors had previously failed to secure a felony indictment.
November 6, 2025 at 8:41 PM
kateconger.com
@theferocity.bsky.social have you been made aware you’re in the Sunday crossword!?
screenshot of a crossword puzzle with the clue “____ Jones, author of “How We Fight For Our Lives”
November 3, 2025 at 5:35 PM
kateconger.com
tfw new stuffy acquired
November 3, 2025 at 12:40 AM
kateconger.com
She’s so sassy??
Giant skeleton statue popping out the top of a garage with its hand on one hip
October 28, 2025 at 6:40 PM
kateconger.com
Another big Musk gripe: His relationship with former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, who recently settled his severance lawsuit against Musk. Agrawal's wiki is a basic overview. His Grokipedia is a play-by-play of Musk's fights with him.
Screenshot of Agrawal's wiki page, which is a basic summary of his early life and career highlights. Disputes over bot accounts and platform transparency During Elon Musk's attempted acquisition of Twitter in 2022, Parag Agrawal faced significant scrutiny over the platform's estimates of fake and spam accounts, which Twitter reported as comprising less than 5% of its monetizable daily active users (mDAU).[50] In a detailed Twitter thread on May 16, 2022, Agrawal defended the methodology, explaining that Twitter employed a multi-step process including human reviews, machine learning models, and behavioral analysis to identify spam, while suspending over 500,000 such accounts daily before they became visible to users.[51] He emphasized that the <5% figure represented a conservative upper bound for undetected spam within mDAU, excluding accounts already proactively removed, and noted quarterly refinements to the estimation model based on internal data.[52] Musk publicly contested these claims, estimating that fake and spam accounts could exceed 20% of users—potentially far higher—and argued that Twitter's SEC filings, which relied on the <5% assertion, undermined the $44 billion deal's valuation.[53] He dismissed Agrawal's explanation with a poop emoji in response, demanding independent verification and later seeking access to Twitter's full "firehose" of raw user data to audit bots personally, a request Twitter partially denied citing privacy risks and tool limitations.[54] [55] In August 2022, Musk escalated by challenging Agrawal to a public debate on the bot percentage, asserting that proving the <5% claim would resolve the issue.[56] Agrawal maintained that Twitter's anti-spam efforts were robust, reporting in July 2022 that the platform suspended approximately 1 million spam accounts daily amid ongoing enforcement.[57] However, external analyses cast doubt on the figures; a June 2022 GlobalData study concluded that about 10% of Twitter's active accounts engaged in spamming behavior, exceeding the company's estimate.[58] Further complicating transparency, Twitter…
October 28, 2025 at 12:11 AM
kateconger.com
One of Elon Musk's big gripes with Wikipedia is that his entry there has a whole section on his salute during his inauguration speech earlier this year. His Grokipedia entry doesn't mention it at all, but the "Nazi salute" Grokipedia entry says this:
On January 20, 2025, during a rally celebrating Donald Trump's second inauguration, Elon Musk extended his right arm twice in a straight-armed gesture while speaking, which multiple observers and media outlets likened to the Nazi salute, igniting debates over intent, free speech limits, and historical symbolism.[78] Musk responded by posting jokes referencing Nazi figures like Rudolf Hess and Joseph Goebbels, dismissing critics and framing accusations as overreactions, while some supporters claimed it evoked a Roman salute adopted by fascists rather than a direct Nazi reference; neo-Nazi accounts online praised the gesture as validation.[79] German officials and historians, citing the gesture's post-1919 fascist codification, condemned it unequivocally, underscoring transatlantic divides in interpreting such acts amid 2024-2025 discussions of ironic or revivalist uses.
October 28, 2025 at 12:01 AM
kateconger.com
Today marks 3 years since the Twitter acquisition! Still so honored and proud to have told this story with @rmac.bsky.social
The book “Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter” is displayed on a mirrored pedestal along with a bouquet of orange flowers.
October 27, 2025 at 6:18 PM
kateconger.com
"where you don't even live or vote" lmaooo
Mr. Conway told Mr. Benioff that San Francisco — “where you don’t even live or vote” — was trying hard to reduce crime and boost its police ranks. Since the pandemic began, Mr. Benioff has lived on the Big Island of Hawaii, where he has bought several parcels of land. He is registered to vote there, not in San Francisco.
October 16, 2025 at 6:09 PM
kateconger.com
Kindle is running a one-day deal for our book in the U.K., if you've been waiting to snap it up! www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CW1MKNV...
October 8, 2025 at 7:32 PM
kateconger.com
Jonathan Rinderknecht, a white man, was charged with starting the Palisades Fire. But on X, the company's news summary tab shows a photo of a black man.
Screenshot depicting posts on X, one showing the suspect accused of starting the Palisades Fire, a white man. The X news tab reports on the suspect's arrest, but shows a photo of a black man instead.
October 8, 2025 at 5:10 PM
kateconger.com
Elon Musk once said he would pursue former Twitter execs to the ends of the earth. Instead, he just settled their $128 million lawsuit. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
October 7, 2025 at 9:22 PM
kateconger.com
Macrohard trademark application filed by xAI on Aug. 1
Macrohard trademark application filed by xAI Macrohard logo, filed by xAI
September 19, 2025 at 5:31 PM
kateconger.com
Our small rectangular son, Character Limit, is one year old today! Thank you for making @rmac.bsky.social & my first year as authors so incredible! We are continually grateful to share this story with readers. 💙
A hand holds up a copy of “Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter” by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac in front of the New York Stock Exchange trading floor
September 17, 2025 at 10:40 PM
kateconger.com
Tyler Robinson indictment has now been filed, including texts in which he confirms the bullet etchings were all just a "big meme": www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...
only thing I left was the rifle wrapped in a towel. …remember how I was engraving bullets? The fuckin messages are mostly abig meme, if I see “notices bulge uwu” on fox new I might have a strokealright im gonna have to leave it, that really fucking sucks.
September 16, 2025 at 6:27 PM
kateconger.com
This week, X let users post videos of Charlie Kirk’s death without content warnings, in violation of their stated policy on gore. And then the app received record downloads.
X’s head of product posts that X had more first time downloads in the US than ever before. New York Times article headline: Videos of Charlie Kirk’s Shooting Spread Rapidly on Social Media
September 13, 2025 at 3:11 AM
kateconger.com
For Mr. Musk to collect shares that would ultimately equal 12 percent of the company, Tesla would have to deploy one million autonomous taxis and one million robots and increase profit more than 24-fold from last year. It would also have to increase its stock market value to $8.5 trillion from about $1 trillion. But the car sales milestones in what Ms. Denholm prefers to call a performance plan do not seem that difficult to achieve. Tesla would need to sell an average of 1.2 million vehicles a year through 2035 for Mr. Musk to meet his goals, far fewer than the 1.8 million sold last year.
September 12, 2025 at 10:37 PM
kateconger.com
Grok says that videos of Charlie Kirk being shot are memes and that he's actually fine
September 10, 2025 at 10:27 PM
kateconger.com
we don’t know her precise birthdate, but sweet peach Penny girl is turning 16 this month!! can you even believe her wisdom and grace
orange and white dog sits with ears pricked forward in rainbow light
September 3, 2025 at 5:20 PM
kateconger.com
on dog day, behold dog
a orange dog with white markings next to a rainbow
August 26, 2025 at 10:36 PM
kateconger.com
I'll say it: this is the modern day version of Meryl Streep's cerulean monologue
i think they're a marriage of y2k resurgence and the paris hilton trend of having a chihuahua in your purse, plus threads of loneliness and seeking companionship through collectable characters (think like, hello kitty, jellycat mania, etc). it's sort of democratizing the status symbol of having a pet with you everywhere you go, plus a constant companion whose battery won't die (making it a good neopet replacement).
August 20, 2025 at 6:35 PM