bob, @bob@feed.hella.cheap

Problem:
I want to buy something from someone, which requires sending them money
I don't know them, and they don't know me

"Federation" is a word people use when they mean interoperability in the context of internet communication. It means that you can talk to people who aren't in the same network as you. If I use fastmail and you use gmail, I can still email you.
Most social networks aren't federated. If I'm mutuals with you on twitter that doesn't mean I can message you on facebook, and you don't see my instagram posts unless I explicitly cross-post them....

From this twitter thread, which people seemed to like.
a lot of the way our technology works is because it was developed with department of defense research grants
the "technology industry" (read: internet) was never about technology, it's about developing new markets...

I got into a discussion about epistemology on twitter (this is a lot more fun than it sounds), and that made me want to write down my epistemological framework. So here it is, in five bullet points:
There is a black box ultimate reality, but we have no way to directly observe it...