This Bluesky Tool Makes It Easy to Find Accounts You'll Want to Follow

I may be more than mildly obsessed with Bluesky, the new-ish social media network that is taking the internet by storm, and serving as a safe haven for many former X users fleeing Elon Musk's increasingly unpleasant virtual cesspit (I may be editorializing a bit too much here).

It's just that I haven't had this much fun using social media since, well, I first got into Twitter circa 2010. As I've previously written, Bluesky recalls early Twitter, which means it feels vibrant and welcoming and peopled by tons of interesting folks (some 21 million of them, as of this writing).

As I've also previously noted, the value you'll get out of Bluesky is wholly based on who you follow there, since it isn't really powered by an algorithm trying desperately to keep you glued to your feed. No, you'll have to work a little harder if you want to tap into your latest font of dopamine, and that means populating your feed with posts you'll find interesting and provocative and hopefully not enraging (but that's what the "nuclear block" is for).

I've already written about Sky Follower Bridge, an extension that helps you track down people you once followed on X, and the Bluesky Directory, which offers a searchable index of more than 80,000 "starter packs" of people to follow based on your interests. Now I want to tell you about another tool that builds upon those: Bluesky Network Analyzer.

Easily find people to follow on Bluesky based on who's in your extended network

Bluesky Network Analyzer, from indie developer Theo Sanderson, is another third-party app that helps you find people to follow, but this one has a unique twist: Rather than finding potentially relevant accounts based on your former social media activity, or even your interests, it extrapolates them by considering who the people you already follow also follow.

If that's not clear, here's a simpler explanation: Once you grant the tool access to the list of people you follow, it runs a quick search and highlights accounts you don't follow that are very popular with the accounts you do follow.

Using it is as simple as entering your Bluesky username into the Bluesky Network Analyzer site. If you want to be able to follow people directly from the tool, you can also enter your Bluesky password, but you don't have to. (The fine print indicates your password is not sent to the site but only stored locally, but if you'd prefer not to risk it, you can also generate an app-specific password on Bluesky itself.)

The tool will import the list of accounts you already follow, then go to work analyzing them to see how many other follows they have in common. The search takes a little while to run—and will obviously take longer if you follow a ton of people—but once it's finished, you'll see a list of the results ranked by how many mutuals they share among the people you already follow. To give you some idea of who they are, you'll also see both the account's avatar and the bio, if they've entered one.

Credit: Screenshot by Joel Cunningham

Of course, it might not be that helpful to see that 202 people you follow also follow the Washington Post. If you'd rather find less basic results, click the toggle to select Sort by proportion (favors niche accounts), which will move accounts with fewer total followers to the top of the list.

Why this is a useful way to find followers

I like this tool because I feel like I've done a pretty good job curating the list of people I'm following, and so I can assume that if there are accounts a lot of them follow, they're probably worth considering.

My own results served up accounts of notable people I recognized (including some journalists and former Film Twitter folks) but had yet to located on Bluesky, so I was able to follow a bunch of them with a few clicks. More than that, I also located some people I used to follow on X who had yet to migrate to Bluesky before I last used Sky Follower Bridge.

If you wanted to, I suppose you could head over to Bluesky and search up the person's username (unfortunately they aren't hyperlinked), but I mostly found it to be a good way to jog my memory. Given how many of my former online friends have dropped off of social networks like Facebook and X in recent years, it was nice to be reminded that they exist.

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Add This Surprising ‘Palate Cleanser’ to Your Thanksgiving Spread

I host a full Friendsgiving meal in early November because it’s truly heartwarming to bring my chosen family all together for a home cooked meal—but low-key. I also need to test side dishes to share with you all. This year, the most surprising dish I made wasn’t squash, or another spin on sweet potatoes, but a resurrection of summer fruit. I made a warm roasted tomato salad, and I think it may have earned its spot at the table forever. 

I think we can all acknowledge that the Thanksgiving meal is primarily a parade of luscious fats, umami, salt, and carbs. I have no issues with this. However, repetition of the same flavors can cause something called palate fatigue (often a term used in wine tasting): Nuanced flavors become harder to detect because your taste buds are exhausted. Including an acidic dish, like tomatoes, creates opposition, gives you the feeling of a “palate cleanser,” essentially kicking your buds back into gear.  

Revive cold-weather tomatoes

Yes, you could serve a raw tomato salad to access the fruit's bright acidity, but fall and winter tomatoes have a diminished flavor compared to the peak season ones we saw a few months ago. My guess is that’s why we don’t see them a ton on Thanksgiving tables. Luckily, a quick trip to the oven can change all that. 

Roasting dull winter tomatoes evaporates some of their water, thus concentrating their flavors, and it browns the bottoms, exhibiting the maillard reaction and caramelization of the natural sugars. That’s my long way of saying: Roasted tomatoes will have much more flavor than raw tomatoes in fall. Plus, it couldn’t be easier.

How to make a warm roasted tomato salad

I like plum tomatoes for this, but Campari tomatoes work too. I prefer these varieties because of their medium size, and they happen to soften nicely. Using my air fryer secret for roasting, sprinkle some salt into a bowl with the tomatoes. Then drizzle a teaspoon of oil into one palm. Rub your palms together and then rub each tomato with your oily hands. The salt will naturally get picked up. Place the tomatoes, either whole or halved, on an unlined baking sheet. Unlined baking sheets will give your tomatoes more color. 

Roast the tomatoes at 375°F for about 30 minutes, or—if they're whole—until they’ve just burst slightly. If they’re halved, they're done when the bottoms have some browning. (You can place halved tomatoes either cut-side down or skin-side down, but I've found that cut-side down is more prone to sticking.) Plating this dish is flexible, and there’s almost no way to screw it up. Carefully scoop the tomatoes onto a serving dish, and place hunks of burrata or fresh mozzarella in between the burst tomatoes. If you don’t like soft cheese, you can shave large sheets of Pecorino Romano over the top instead. 

Drizzle it all with some finishing olive oil, and a sprinkle of (fill in the blank): This is really where you can make the dish your own. I used dry Calabrian chili flakes this year. Perhaps you’d scatter chopped fresh basil over the top. Maybe chopped salted pistachios and za'atar are more your vibe. If you have garlic confit, you know what to do. But even if you skip the final garnish, you must crush some flaky salt over the top. 

The dish will look simple but tantalizing nonetheless. I actually prefer making dishes that have easily identifiable ingredients so I don’t have to field as many questions. You don’t need a ton—maybe one or two tomatoes per guest—to supply an acidic intermission halfway through the first helping. 

Warm Roasted Tomato Salad

Ingredients:

• 8-14 Campari tomatoes

• Neutral cooking oil to coat

• ½ teaspoon salt

• 1 ball burrata cheese (or fresh mozzarella)

• A drizzle extra virgin olive oil

• A sprinkle flaky salt

• Chopped basil, pistachios, chili flakes, or other garnish (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F. 

2. Put the tomatoes in a bowl and sprinkle the ½ teaspoon of salt over top. Drizzle a small amount of oil into your palms; it should be enough to coat the tomatoes. Rub your palms together and then rub all of the tomatoes, rolling them around to pick up the salt. Place the tomatoes on an unlined baking sheet, drizzle with any excess oil, and roast them for about 30 minutes or until they just begin to crack and burst. Cool them for a few minutes.

3. Put the tomatoes on a serving platter. Rip the burrata into six or seven hunks and dot the dish with the cheese. Drizzle the dish with a bit of olive oil and a sprinkle of flaky salt and any additional garnish you like. Serve warm. 

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All the Different Bars at the Gym, Explained

The first step in lifting a barbell is loading weight plates onto the bar. At some gyms, there’s only one type of bar, and it weighs 45 pounds, and that’s all you need to know. But that’s not the only type out there, and if your gym has different bars of different shapes and weights, it’s possible to get confused.

Check end of the bar first

If you’re wondering about what kind of bar you're looking at or what it weighs, always check the end of it. Sometimes you’ll find a label with a brand name, a description of what the bar is, and its weight. For example, this one has a little endcap that says “The Rogue Ohio Deadlift Bar. 27mm. 20kg.” Now you know that it weighs 44 pounds (20kg) and that it’s got a 27mm wide handle, just over an inch, which is slightly thinner than a typical power bar. Great! Problem solved.

But on many bars, all you’ll see at the end is a rusty bolt. If the bar is seven feet long, it probably weighs 44 or 45 pounds. If you’re suspicious, though, trust no one. I’ve heard bystanders say “oh yeah, that one’s 55 pounds” for both a standard 45-pound bar, and a monster of a 69-pound trap bar.

There’s a simple way to find out how much any bar weighs: weigh it. Almost every gym has a bathroom scale kicking around somewhere, so you can weigh yourself holding the barbell, and then weigh yourself without it and subtract your own weight. (Ask the front desk staff for help if carrying it around to weigh it would be awkward. They may either know the weight, or may be able to help you wrangle it onto a scale.

That said, these are the most common bars you’re likely to encounter:

Standard 44- and 45-pound bars

These are a family of slightly different things, but I’m lumping them together because they are about the same size and weight, and can be used interchangeably for many lifts. Some are 44 pounds (because that's 20 kilograms, and 20-kilogram bars are standard in international competition), and some are 45 pounds (which are basically the same thing, but more American). Honestly: don’t worry about the difference. A 20 kilo bar loaded with two 45-pound plates is technically 134 pounds, but everybody in the gym will say it's 135 and you might as well go along with it.

These 45(ish) pound bars are the most common ones you'll see in the gym. They are seven feet long, with the part you hold about an inch in diameter and the parts where the weight plates go about two inches in diameter. They are sometimes called an "Olympic" bar to distinguish them from the "standard" bars that used to be common, and which you can still buy as home gym equipment. (Ironically, "standard" bars with their one-inch sleeves are no longer standard. But the name has stuck.)

Within this category, there are a few different types of 44- and 45-pound bars:

• Men’s Olympic bars are 20kg (about 44 pounds) for the men’s bar, and 7.2 feet long. The collars (the wider parts on the ends) spin easily. If you load them up with plenty of weight, you will see that they are “whippy,” meaning the bar tends to flex or bounce easily. These are designed with the two Olympic lifts in mind, the snatch and the clean and jerk. But you can use them for any lift you like, so you’ll find them at gyms where nobody does any Olympic lifts.

Cap Barbell THE BEAST Olympic Bar | For Weightlifting and Power Lifting, THE BEAST - Black/Chrome, No Center Knurl, 7' Olympic, (OBIS-86B) New Version

$131.07 at Amazon

$149.99 Save $18.92

$131.07 at Amazon

$149.99 Save $18.92

• Power bars, used for squat, bench, deadlift, and the like, are the same size and shape as men’s Olympic bars. They tend to be stiffer (less whippy) and the collars will probably not spin as easily. If they’re not 44 pounds, they’ll be 45.

• Deadlift bars may be a bit longer than a typical power bar, and may be thinner and more whippy. They are usually still 45 pounds.

• Squat bars are a wild card here. Normally, the bar in a squat rack will be a regular power bar. But sometimes, it will be a specialized squat bar that is thicker and stiffer, and that may weigh 50 pounds, or sometimes 55 or more.

Women’s Olympic bars

Women’s bars are lighter and slightly thinner than men’s Olympic bars, but they are also noticeably shorter—about eight inches shorter. They weigh 15kg, or 33 pounds.

METIS Women’s 33LBS Olympic Barbell [6.6FT] - Complies with IWF Standards | Ideal for Beginners & Female Lifters

$159.99 at Amazon

$159.99 at Amazon

Women’s Olympic bars exist for women to use when competing in the snatch and clean and jerk. They have two main advantages over a men’s bar (if you are an average sized woman):

• They are thinner, making them easier to grip, especially with the hook grip that Oly lifters typically use.

• They are “whippier,” so that the bar doesn’t require quite as much weight on it for it to be able to flex and bounce. This matters in Olympic lifting (for example, when you use the bounce to help you as you’re standing up from a clean) and means basically nothing for other lifts.

Because they’re specialized for Olympic lifting, you’re only likely to see these bars in Olympic weightlifting gyms and in Crossfit gyms (and similar functional fitness spaces). You're not too likely to see these bars in your average commercial gym.

Training bars and curl bars

These bars are lighter and may be smaller than the ones discussed above. In Olympic weightlifting, there are training bars (often 5kg or 10kg, so 11 or 22 pounds) that exist to give you something lighter to work with if you’re not ready for a full size bar. They may be the same dimensions as a women's Olympic bar, and are used by kids learning the lifts. Again, you're not likely to see these outside of an Olympic weightlifting gym, but you never know. They'll be clearly marked on the endcap, and usually shouldn't be loaded past about 50 pounds total.

Curl bars are much more common in general-purpose gyms, and are just what they sound like: shorter, smaller bars meant for doing bicep curls and other moves that don’t require a full size bar. At my gym, they’re not kept with the regular bars, but instead stored near the dumbbell racks. Curl bars are often, but not always, 25 pounds. Check for a label or weigh them to be sure.

EZ-curl bars

These are the wiggly ones. They’re used like curl bars, for exercises that use smallish amounts of weight. Their handles are designed so that you can choose the position that’s most comfortable for your wrists. They may be 25 pounds or less; this one is 15 pounds.

Elevens EZ Bar Curl Barbell 4ft-22LB 330LBS Capacity Olympic Bearing Barbell (330LB-Sliver), 47 inches (A-YD04001)

$42.99 at Amazon

$59.99 Save $17.00

$42.99 at Amazon

$59.99 Save $17.00

Trap bars and other oddly shaped things

There are a variety of other bars out there, in odd shapes and varying weights. One is the trap bar or hex bar, a hexagon big enough that you stand inside of it. (It’s mainly used for trap bar deadlifts, where your hands are at your sides and you don’t have to worry about whether you’re going to smack the bar into your shins.) Some trap bars are 45 pounds, but some are more and some are less.

CAP Barbell Olympic Trap Bar, Hex Bar, Shrug Bar, Deadlift Bar, Black

$58.00 at Amazon

$89.99 Save $31.99

$58.00 at Amazon

$89.99 Save $31.99

There are also football bars, also called Swiss bars or multi-grip bars, that allow you to use a neutral grip for bench press or other pressing movements. Sometimes they’re 45 pounds, but again, sometimes they aren’t. You may also find safety squat bars, cambered bars, and other specialty items depending on your gym. Unusual bars aren’t standardized, so the weight is just whatever it ended up being when the bar’s maker welded all the parts together. And when in doubt, weigh it yourself.

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You Can Finally Reset Your Instagram Algorithm

The modern internet is ruled by algorithms. When you boot up Instagram, for example, what you see in your feed is strategically sorted by the app's AI based on your past activity to keep you engaged as long as possible. If Instagram showed you a bunch of random posts you had no interest in, you'd likely leave immediately. But when each photo or video is something that piques your curiosity, well, that's how a social media addiction is born.

That said, sometimes, our algorithm goes a little haywire. Perhaps you had a passing interest in a creator or subject, but now it's all over your feed. Maybe an accidental "like" or share mistakenly taught the algorithm you're a fan of something you really are not, and now you're subjected to the topic with every other post (and advertisement, for that matter).

In the past, you really had two options: tell Instagram you didn't want to see these types of posts and actively seek out other types of content, or start fresh with a new account, and take care not to anger the algorithmic gods. Now, however, things are about to change: Instagram is going to let you reset your algorithm.

Meta announced the changes in a blog post on Tuesday: The company is currently testing the ability for users to reset their "recommendations" (essentially a PR-friendly word for algorithm). Once cleared, you will find posts on your Explore page, Reels tab, and your main feed that you likely wouldn't have encountered before, and you'll probably miss out on posts you would have seen under your previous algorithm.

That said, the algorithm is still active, which means it'll learn your habits over time and begin showing you personalized content based on your activity and pages you follow. If you're careful about the posts you like and share, and the pages you follow, this algorithm might turn out better than the old one.

How to reset your Instagram algorithm

Once the option rolls out on your end, you'll find it in your Instagram settings. Open the app, tap your profile, then tap the hamburger menu in the top right. Scroll down and tap Content preferences under "What you see," then tap the new Reset suggested content option.

Here, Instagram will warn you that your reset cannot be undone, and you'll see posts you wouldn't normally see. As an added deterrent, Instagram will suggest that you unfollow certain accounts instead of reseting your recommendations altogether.

However, if you're set on resetting, choose Reset suggested content, then hit the option again on the pop-up. Instagram will return you to your main feed, with a subtle alert confirming your suggested content was reset.

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The Best and Worst Times to Drive for Thanksgiving, According to AAA

Traffic increases are expected over holiday weekends as travelers hit the road to visit family or go on vacation—depending on where you live and where you're headed, there are some times you may want to avoid driving to miss the worst congestion.

The American Automobile Association (AAA) just published its annual Thanksgiving forecast, which predicts that a record 71.7 million people will travel by car over the holiday. That's 1.3 million more than last year and higher than pre-pandemic records, possibly boosted by the lowest national average gas price since 2021.

Air travel is also expected to be busy this Thanksgiving, with a 2% increase in travelers over last year and an 11% bump over 2019.

The best and worst times to drive over Thanksgiving 2024

For 2024, AAA has expanded its traffic forecast to include the Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving Day and the Monday after. Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons are predicted to be the worst times to travel by car—but unlike in previous years, drivers can expect minimal impact on Thursday, making the holiday itself the best time to be on the road.

Monday, November 25

• Best time: before 11 a.m.

• Worst time: 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Tuesday, November 26

• Best time: before 10 a.m.

• Worst time: 1 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Wednesday, November 27

• Best time: before 10 a.m.

• Worst time: 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Thursday, November 28

AAA predicts minimal traffic impact on Thanksgiving Day.

Friday, November 29

• Best time: after 1 p.m.

• Worst time: 7 a.m. to 10 a.m.

Saturday, November 30

• Best time: before 1 p.m.

• Worst time: 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Sunday, December 1

• Best time: before 1 p.m.

• Worst time: 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Monday, December 2

• Best time: before 8 a.m./after 7 p.m.

• Worst time: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Peak congestion in specific metro areas is expected to vary widely. For example, those traveling on the Long Island Expressway E from New York to the Hamptons on Tuesday afternoon could experience a 133% increase compared to typical traffic, while the worst traffic in the San Diego area—a 38% bump—is predicted to occur on I-15 S from Palm Springs on Saturday afternoon. Drivers in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. could see traffic more than double during peak times.

Finally, if you're renting a car, be prepared for long check-in lines on Wednesday and busy return desks on Monday and Tuesday after the holiday.

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How to Stick to a Cleaning Schedule When You Don’t Have Time to Clean

When you're done with work, have your kids' business all handled, dinner is over, and you've finished up any of the other seemingly endless daily tasks, what's the last thing you probably want to do? For me—and likely you—it's cleaning. When all you want to do is sit down and mentally prepare to do all that work again tomorrow, finding the motivation to clean and sticking with a routine are hard, which is why there are so many books and techniques out there, claiming to be the perfect way to do it. You can read all the best-sellers on the subject you want, but none of it matters unless you have a schedule and find a way to stick to it. That's really the key to keeping your small messes from turning into big ones—and you definitely don't have time to deal with the big ones.

Whole-house cleaning vs. micro-cleaning

Your first step is to pick a cleaning approach. After all the techniques, schedules, and hacks I've tried, I think micro-cleaning—or cleaning a little bit at a time, every single day—is the best bet if you're trying to create a schedule you'll stick to, but we can go over some different ideas to get you thinking of what will work for you.

That said, you have options when it comes to how you want to approach your cleaning. To start, select any pre-defined cleaning and/or decluttering method and commit to sticking to it. To get in the swing of scheduling daily cleaning time, I recommend micro-decluttering or the calendar method, as these already rely on a bit-by-bit methodology that lends itself perfectly to pre-planned cleaning sprees. With micro-decluttering, you select a small space, like a single drawer or nightstand, then spruce it up. That's really it. Instead of trying to tackle a whole room, you focus on something small, reap the motivational reward of getting something done even when you're tuckered out, and slowly work toward an overall cleaner space. The calendar method is similar, but you take a look at the date, then throw or put away the corresponding number of items. Since today is the 26th, I'd toss or put away 26 things. Toward the end of the month, it gets overwhelming, but those early-month days are a welcome respite before the number picks back up again.

Generally, sketch out a timeline for this—and this is how I recommend introducing that "whole-house" approach, though we'll get to another whole-house option in a moment. The first week of the month can be for your kitchen, the second week for the bathroom, the third week for the bedroom, and so on. Even just a very general guideline for what room you should be focusing on will help you out when cleaning time rolls around each day, so you're not overwhelmed trying to decide what to take on. Then, pick a time—and stick to it, to the best of your ability. If you get home from work every day at 5 p.m., make 5:45 p.m. your designated cleaning time. You won't always make it, but try to commit to cleaning a little every day. Even on days when I'm booked solid, I try to clean something small before I go to bed. Sometimes, all I can do is scrub out a sink or organize my kitchen table. Still, that's enough. I go to bed feeling like I did something, at least, and the feeling of accomplishment helps motivate me to do it again the next day, ideally a little more intensely.

For a more structured approach to this day-by-day/week-by-week technique, try the FlyLady method. Organizational guru Martha Cilley devised the method, which is very popular on social media, and outlines precisely which parts of your home should be dealt with each week of a given month.

Still, what works for others (like me) might not work for you. If you find that cleaning a small space every day is getting the results you want, you can try a whole-house approach every day. At your designated cleaning time, move around the house, looking for the room that is the worst offender. Clean it using an approach like this viral one from TikTok or designate a specific task for the whole home on that day. One day might be decluttering, so at your scheduled cleaning time, you go around and straighten up the visible spaces in every room. Another day might be dusting, so at your time, you go around and dust everything in each room. Vacuuming, sanitizing, organizing—all of these lend themselves to a whole-house approach and can be conducted on a certain day each week in every room.

Try a planner or an app to stay on top of your cleaning schedule

There are quite a few apps out there that can help you clean up and stay on schedule. Most of them send push notifications and tell you exactly what to focus on for the day, although it can take you some time to set the app to know your personal preferences and you may find some apps don't suggest tasks in the order or way you want to do them. If you need that kind of direction, try them out, but give yourself time to tinker with them and test different ones. Personally, I like to choose what I clean and when I clean it after a long day. That's why I like to use a planner or just keep a note in my phone.

Use a simple, inexpensive planner to mark out which rooms you'll take on in a given week and block out the time you set to do the cleaning. Set an alarm on your phone if you have to so you remember to clean every day at the same time. Eventually, it will become a habit, but reminders early on in the process won't hurt.

Keep detailed notes, especially early on. If you designate your cleaning time as every afternoon at 4 p.m., but notice that your kid arriving home from school disrupts you most days, you might need to find a new time. If you find that you're too tired at a certain time or that you don't have enough time to get everything done within the parameters you set, again, you should mess with the schedule until it works just right for you. Having actual data to refer to, like notes in your planner, will help you craft the right schedule and system over time.

Consider using a reward system for cleaning motivation

I am extremely motivated by rewards, which is why I am constantly downloading and recommending apps that give me something in exchange for using them. This is true in all aspects of my life, even my cleaning schedule. To me, there is no intrinsic reward for tidying up; some people feel good during or after cleaning, but I'm simply not one of them. If I'm toiling for the sake of toiling, I hate it. If I'm toiling in an effort to earn something, however, I'm the hardest worker you'll ever meet. The reward I give myself for staying on top of my cleaning schedule is hiring a professional cleaner to come in once a month. I work on my cleaning so the place is livable and nice, then allow myself the privilege of letting a true master put the deeper, finishing touches on my apartment. Plus, knowing a real neat freak is coming soon motivates me to clean more, so the pro won't be over-burdened or, frankly, judge me.

A professional cleaner might be a little spendy, depending where you live, or you might not need it if you clean hard enough on your own during your scheduled spruce-up time. If that's the case, think of a different reward that works for you. If you clean your whole bedroom over the course of a week, for instance, maybe you earn a new throw pillow for the bed or a special dessert. You can even use days off as a reward. Clean at the same time from Monday to Friday and take Saturday and Sunday off—but only if you stick to your schedule and make progress. This is where the planner comes in extra handy: Keep notes of what you do, when you do it, and how much progress you made every day, so you can look back at the end of the week and determine if you can get the throw pillow, the days off, or whatever floats your boat.

Overall, the goal here is to do this in manageable chunks. It really only takes 15 to 20 minutes per day to clean up one spot around the house, and if you stick with that schedule, you won't feel overwhelmed the way you might if you were staring down a tremendous mess. Even if you are staring down a tremendous mess, rely on the schedule to tackle it bit by bit so you don't burn out. Over time, it will get done and you will stay more motivated to do it.

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This Is the Best Way to Find People to Follow on Bluesky

If you're tuned in to digital culture news at all, it's been impossible to miss the chatter about Bluesky over the past month. The fledgling social media site—which looks and acts a lot like Twitter did a decade ago, long before Elon Musk bought it and renamed it X—is exploding in popularity, doubling in size over the past two months to around 20 million users.

Suddenly a site you'd probably only heard of if you spend a lot of time thinking about your social media diet is topping the App Store charts and attracting a flood of folks looking to exit X as it has drifted toward promoting toxicity and even disinformation in the lead up to, and aftermath, of the U.S. presidential election.

All of the reasons for the site's recent boom aside, if you're a new user, the most important thing to you is probably figuring out how to best use it, from making the migration from X, to learning Bluesky's quirks, to finding the people you used to follow elsewhere.

But as much as it can feel like Old Twitter, Bluesky has some unique things to offer—chiefly among them a lack of an algorithm that "learns" (or decides) what you're interested in. That's where a tool in the independently created Bluesky Directory comes in handy.

Search more than 47,000 Bluesky "starter packs"

Assembled by Mubashar “Mubs” Iqbal, Bluesky Directory is essentially a collection of links to Bluesky tools and utilities from across the internet, from a Chrome extension that helps you find all of your old X followers to links to third-party clients that are more customizable than the official Bluesky app and website.

The most useful part of the directory, for Bluesky newbies at least, will be the searchable index of more than 47,000 "starter packs." If you haven't encountered one yet, a starter pack is essentially a list of Bluesky accounts sorted by what unifies the folks behind them. When you open a starter pack—either within the Bluesky app or on the website—you can choose to follow everyone in it with a single tap or click, or scroll down and choose who you want to appear in your feed one by one.

So, for example, if you're a big movie geek, you might enjoy a starter pack like Filmmakers, which features 20-odd directors (Rian Johnson, Kevin Smith, and Lily Wachowski among them). If you love podcasts, you could check out Women in Podcasting. If you want to keep tabs on everyone who writes for Lifehacker, I've created a starter pack for that too.

You can search for starter packs on Bluesky itself, but the experience isn't great. Bluesky Directory's searchable index is a lot more user-friendly. You just type a few relevant terms into the search bar, and you'll be served up any starter packs that match (the site is slightly sluggish—which is to be expected with a million new users coming online every day—but not unusably so).

You'll be able to see a description, the number of accounts on the list, and even a preview of a few of them, right from the results page.

There's a starter pack for (almost) everything

You can browse a list of the most popular starter packs, but if you want a truly bespoke social media experience, it pays to do a granular search. As of this writing, the index includes 47,450 different options, with more being added every minute. (If you've created a starter pack you'd like added to the database, there's a link to submit one right there on the search page). And chances are good if you're interested in a topic, there's a starter pack for it.

Perhaps you want to follow authors who like to post about their cats? Or maybe academics with learned opinions about pizza? COVID-conscious porn performers? I was disappointed there were no results for a search for "Ninja Turtles," but it's early days yet; on the other hand, I found lists of journalists who write for some of my favorite publications, as well as people who've guested on my favorite movie podcast.

Once you find a feed you like, click on the name and you'll be taken to Bluesky, where you can choose who on the list you want to follow (or follow everyone). You can also toggle over to the "Posts" tab to see recent posts from everyone in the starter pack.

Before you know it, you'll have a hyper-specific list of Bluesky follows attuned to your particular interests—which seems, to me, a lot better than having an algorithm throwing rage-bait at your face every time you open the app.

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