Odysseus Wasn’t Real. But He Had Real Worshipers in Ancient Ithaca. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/15/s...

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked President Donald Trump's administration from enforcing a ‌policy that targets foreign nationals who study disinformation and hate speech on social media for visa denials and deportation. www.reuters.com/world/us-jud...

Here is Oliphant's obituary: www.nytimes.com/2026/07/13/a...

I came perilously close to accidentally printing that Pat Oliphant had already passed away in my review of this documentary last fall. (Thankfully we caught the error in time.) But now he has, a giant in political cartooning. I recommend the doc: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/m...

Happy Manhattanhenge

MS NOW: Two Atlanta-based FBI intelligence analysts were fired last week after refusing to participate in the Trump admin's investigation of Georgia's 2020 election. The analysts told colleagues they did not believe the investigation was justified under FBI and DOJ policies.

Let's be clear: Trump's attacks on "antifa" are an attack on America. www.theverge.com/policy/79051...

‘Who is the most overrated person in history? #HenryVIII. Nasty piece of work and not as clever as he thought he was.’ 🎯 #Historian Alec Ryrie answers our quickfire questions www.historytoday.com/archive/inte...

poof goes the talking point www.cnbc.com/2026/07/03/m...

Trump Administration Rolls Back Part of Anthropic Model Ban Gift WSJ link: www.wsj.com/tech/ai/trum...

www.bloomberg.com/features/202... Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/features/202...

As we approach America250, I wish to point out that if not for woke George Washington mandating that his troops be inoculated against smallpox, we probably wouldn’t have made it to America001.

Who gets to assess frontier AI, on what terms, and who finds out the results? Merve Hickok, president of the Center for AI and Digital Policy (CAIDP), warns that Trump’s new executive order on AI buries those answers inside the NSA.

“In a union built to make war unthinkable, the first supranational weapon was issued not for defence against armies, but for keeping unarmed people out.” 🎁🔗

A state party severed from the fundamentals of being American. I could hardly believe what I was reading.

This essay by @joelsimonsays.bsky.social about interviewing authoritarians is a good read and helps put that Welker/Trump interview in broader context. via @columjournreview.bsky.social www.cjr.org/feature/shou...

Armenia’s Prime Minister Declares Victory in Race Shadowed by Russia www.nytimes.com/2026/06/08/w...

Between July 1942 and June 1945, the U.S. fast-tracked citizenship for 109,382 foreign-born service members under the Second War Powers Act. 400,000 to 500,000 Hispanic Americans served. Thousands of Japanese Americans served etc, etc

Xavier Becerra Advances in California Governor Race www.nytimes.com/2026/06/05/u...

The Pope’s Encyclical on A.I. Is Disappointingly Mild www.nytimes.com/2026/05/26/o...

The margin between Hilton (currently 2nd place in vote count) and Steyer (3rd) keeps narrowing It dropped from 6 pts to 5 pts today, and will probably tighten more That said, Steyer hasn't been hitting the numbers he needs in these late batches to catch up with top two candidates Stay tuned! 2/2

As part of the Data, Power and the Ethics of Knowledge series by the UC Berkeley Digital Humanities Summer Program, Prof. @roopikarisam.bsky.social examines how information became a technology of governance, classification, & control across different periods. 📅 June 12, 6 - 7 PM Reg. required.

DATA EMPIRE is on NPR's list! "A book that promises not to just show how empires have collected and weaponized data over the ages, but also how we can resist, is an easy must-read for me." wnyc.org/npr/nx-s1-58... Pre-order: N. America: tinyurl.com/DataEmpireUS Elsewhere: tinyurl.com/DataEmpireUK

Deb Haaland Wins Nomination in New Mexico Governor’s Race www.nytimes.com/2026/06/02/u...

Deb Haaland Wins Nomination in New Mexico Governor’s Race www.nytimes.com/2026/06/02/u...

‘A rude awakening’: more doctors running for office in rebuke to Trump’s health policies

New piece! Giovanni Orsina investigates the nature of Giorgia Meloni's political project and evaluates her time in power.

Last week, Marco Rubio acknowledged that Washington has backed away from mediating negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv. As WPR columnist @profpaulpoast.bsky.social writes, there is a lesson to be drawn from failure: the danger of working with amateurs.

The Commodores, Martina McBride and Bret Michaels are the latest performers to flee Trump's sinking "Great American State Fair" ship. At this rate, they'll be lucky if Vanilla Ice doesn't cancel last-minute for a better gig at a county fair in Ohio. Maybe Kash Patel's girlfriend can perform! 🤣

"The pitchforks are here": Billionaires work to contain AI's populist revolt www.axios.com/2026/05/29/a...

Support for dismantling DEI didn’t happen overnight. It’s the outcome of narratives recoding CRT as a threat to white Americans. My article (w/ @meredithdclark.bsky.social) in @pgi-wpsa.bsky.social examines how this strategy became sentiment. 🔗 doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2025.2556104

NYT gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/05/24/u...

Gift: The MAGA tax, “a toxic mix of high tariffs, zero net migration and all-encompassing policy uncertainty—shaved around three-quarters of a percentage point off the rise in American GDP in 2025…In other words, the president’s folly has slowed down a historic boom.” economist.com/leaders/2026...

Pope Leo XIV took direct aim at the power of Big Tech in his first encyclical on Monday (May 25), warning that artificial intelligence risks widening inequality, weakening democracy and undermining what it means to be human. religionnews.com/2026/05/25/i...

Gift article www.nytimes.com/2026/05/16/m...

The machinery of bullshit has indeed become part of the political infrastructure of this country. Great article explaining how this works and what this means for the Department of "Justice" in the second Trump administration: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

As Silicon Valley becomes increasingly entwined with a Trump administration hostile to NATO and other allies, EU countries are looking for a way off their services. At the head of the pack is France. From me and @mattburgess1.bsky.social for @wired.com www.wired.com/story/the-eu...

Tomorrow, May 16, is the 60th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution. I've written about how it shaped elite politics after Mao's death and the entire Xi family. Today I'm re-upping my recent piece on new findings about the origins of the Cultural Revolution. chinabooksreview.com/2026/02/19/p...

NEW: Meta and Google turned to some of the most trusted names in children's education — Girl Scouts, Highlights Magazine and Sesame Street — to deflect scrutiny over their impact on kids' mental health. www.reuters.com/legal/litiga...

AI not exactly beating the rap for being incapable of handling things outside its training data

Say a prayer for the women married to the men who can’t stop talking about AI. (This story is spectacular and, speaking from personal experience with all due respect to my spouse, spot-on.)

The TACO trade ("Trump Always Chickens Out") has been replaced by NACHO -- Not a Chance Hormuz Opens It's a bet that high inflation is here to stay. www.marketwatch.com/story/introd...

Ireland’s regulator has opened a new Digital Services Act investigation into Meta over dark patterns, writes Tech Policy Press fellow Liz Carolan. The probe comes amid rising scrutiny of Ireland’s role as the EU’s de facto tech watchdog and growing public demand for tougher platform regulation.

"Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, said on Wednesday that his artificial intelligence company had planned for growing about 10 times as big this year, only to reach a growth rate that could make it 80 times as big this year instead."