It's not just that Orbán losing inspires hope in other competitive-autocratic countries ruled by right-wing nationalist authoritarians. It's that his loss materially changes things in those other countries, because he's been operating as a headquarters and funding source...

Reminding folks that one of the first signs of Orban’s authoritarianism was his attack on universities, including closing the highly-regarded gender studies MA program at the Central European University in Budapest. That program left Hungary & continues today in Vienna.

"Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei has said he is open to the idea that Claude may already have some form of consciousness, and company leaders frequently talk about the need to give it a moral character." This is a sales pitch, and journalism that doesn't highlight this has failed.

Luckily not everyone has to flee. Here's a story of someone who is currently at NASA and helped this mission: www.nasa.gov/image-articl...

congratulations to the astronauts who get credit for a moon mission using rocket development work by trans women who had to quit their job and flee the state of florida and can’t celebrate this win with their coworkers

I'm one of those trans women. I worked ground ops for Artemis I. I am torn between celebrating the success of my friends and peers and grieving how my dream of working for NASA was shattered by hateful assholes in Tallahassee

My favorite app on the Atmosphere is @semble.so but it doesn't work exactly like I want all the time so I made a client that does less on purpose. Check it out: sembleit.dev www.disnetdev.com/blog/2026-04...

there are no chatbots on a dead planet 🌍️ ☠️

I will never understand how anyone can look at a situation like this and think "man, data centres and AI are really going to help solve climate change and incentivse renewable energy" www.politico.com/newsletters/...

It is wild to me how hard it is to turn the news flood into a timeline—even though we only use existing reporting and lean on what human rights documenters call "emblematic incidents." Many of these entries represent tens of thousands of unreported experiences. But we think the list needs to exist.

the only safe data is the kind that is not collected. I love libraries and I want to expand access to them. But when I read that CPL is letting students use their CPS ids as library cards "through an agreement between CPS and public libraries to share student data" I hear alarm bells

The Venn diagram of someone who would do this and someone who would call ICE on their ex/neighbor/colleague is a circle.

very cool that Massachusetts lawmakers, who spend all day every day talking about how they're protecting us from Trump, just passed the "upload your ID to the Palantir database in order to access social media" law while saying they're "protecting the kids"

As the comments point out, the only thing off is "US soldiers refuse orders to kill ISIS families." Nope, the military complied with orders to blow up civilian boats and a girls' school, and stood ready to carry out orders of "a whole civilization will die tonight."

Our PhD student Kennedy Orwa, who studies applications of AI to health care, was hastily deported today to Kenya along with his 13-year-old son without opportunity to speak to legal counsel. King 5 reports that he held a valid visa that was rescinded without explanation.

I would like to talk more about how ICE shot someone else yesterday and he is in critical condition! The coverage is really horrifying because DHS is giving a similar story to the one they gave about Renee Good and so much news coverage is just buying it. Please talk about Carlos Mendoza Hernandez.

no please NYT, tell me more of this ancient discovery your digital archeologists have unearthed (source: www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/b...)

Anyway, come see me at Princeton next week if you're in NJ, to learn about what-all art history has to do with any of this (more than you would presume). cdh.princeton.edu/events/2026/...

We’re on strike today! Support our fight for a fair contract by NOT visiting the @propublica.org website or engaging with ProPublica stories today. Tell ProPublica’s management you won’t cross the picket line: actionnetwork.org/petitions/te...

A Super El Niño is coming. Here's some of the likely impacts it could bring, from drought in Australia to a new hottest year record. www.cnn.com/2026/04/07/w...

this wikipedia editor is orbiting the moon right now!

they zip tied children for landlords

Thys ys a respite. Thys ys a quiet shore. Thys ys a forest full of lost songs. Thys ys a hope machine. Thys ys a treasurye of languages. Thys ys a beacon for wanderers. Thys ys a workshop for the broken heart. Thys ys wher we meet across tyme and space. Thys ys wher dreames begin. Thys ys a library.

Amidst everything else, the Trump regime has quietly killed off the U.S. Forest Service 🌲 “One hundred and ninety-three million acres of your national forests… just handed, on a silver platter, to the people who’ve spent their entire careers trying to destroy it.” www.hatchmag.com/articles/tru...

ICYMI, I spelled out the geopolitical landscape of tech and content moderation and why its so bad for free expression (and democracy generally!) in @lawfaremedia.org this week.

@amyaharder.bsky.social on one of the biggest stories in energy: fossil fuel companies working with tech to build massive gas power plants on the site of data center complexes. Rob Wingo of the pipeline company Williams says this "doesn't hit the retail customers," but I'm skeptical.

being able to sit patiently with other people's thoughts, sit patiently with your own, and make both of those processes legible to someone who is not you is very valuable. if you can find a new way to do this that is fantastic news but I suspect it will at least resemble the model we've inherited

Datacenter load growth has been top of mind, but the most rapid demand expansion over the last decade was in ERCOT's Far West Weather Zone This quadrupling of demand started before AI, and predates Texas' spurt of crypto growth. Instead, it's anchored in a traditional Texas industry: oil and gas 🔌💡

Save the Date! Who Owns Black Data III: The Fight for Black Futures open.substack.com/pub/lifexcod...

I obtained documents from Texas Parks & Wildlife that show how Border Patrol is seeking access to parcels in three state parks (Big Bend Ranch, Seminole Canyon and Bentsen-RGV) for border wall construction. @insideclimatenews.org insideclimatenews.org/news/0204202...

All right, live whatevering of Trump v. Barbara, the birthright citizenship case. Arguing for the bad guys is US Solitictor General John (voice is an immutable characteristic so let's show some respect) Sauer. For the plaintiffs it's ACLU legal director Cecillia Wang.

1/ TRUMP V BARBARA LIVE Sauer kicks off with a fairly straightforward summary of the stupidest argument ever brought before this court by any solicitor general. As usual, Clarence Thomas is up first: a two-parter about Dredd Scott & "state citizenship"

Watching the tech industry unleash unpredictable software into production in the name of AI adoption, then spend twice as much time and money trying to limit the blast radius, proves humans should be investing in our own intelligence before allowing the machines to mimic us.

I don't really believe in Trans Day of Visibility. Give me a Cis Day of Visibly Showing Up For Trans People and you'll have my attention.

Happy trans day of visibility, here is a wrasse design I made awhile ago because all wrasses change sexes as they age.

"The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate any thing. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It [cannot] anticipat[e] any analytical relations or truths. Its province is to assist us in making available what we are already acquainted with." — Ada Lovelace, 1843

i truly don’t think we reflect enough about how Meta, TikTok etc manipulating things in pursuit of never ending growth shapes our expectations about what it means to use social media period

Look I’m an old leftist punk that brawled with nazi skins and I have literally nothing in common with these people but when I see a soccer mom with a Trans Kids Belong sign screaming FUCK ICE at the top of her lungs I whole heartedly welcome my unlikely new comrade

That’s my town y’all 💘

anyway here’s @greatdismal.bsky.social in 2011 in Zero History describing the obsession with tactical clothing as a fetishized pursuit in a way that perfectly nails the combat cosplay of modern day ICE and BPD

it's happening with cars too, where the rising touchscreen tide is rolling back and physical controls are once again re-asserting their place in the cockpit it turns out that "everything's computer" is just pure ideology, rather than a way to actually improve peoples lives

13 As @victorerikray.bsky.social observes in The Overseer Class, the US has diversified the disciplinarian apparatus… and nothing else. As virtually all police chiefs became Black at all unis, unis are shutting Black studies… www.thegazette.com/news/educati...

Lawsuit update: @knightcolumbia.org & @protectdemocracy.org have filed a preliminary injunction motion on behalf of @thecoalition.bsky.social asking the court to block a U.S. immigration policy targeting noncitizen researchers who study online safety. 🧵 knightcolumbia.org/content/tech...

2021 Republicans: How dare tech companies talk to government about moderating speech!!! We’ll create a whole false narrative about it and take it all the way to the Supreme Court! 2025 Republicans: We run things now so

The Council of State Governments is perhaps best known (in my world) as the state-owned NGO that puts together interstate compacts, the constitutionally defined agreements that bind together the union. They're how states agree to do stuff together when congress can't, won't, or shouldn't step up.

“Rather than serving as safe confidants, the researchers said, chatbots can introduce serious risks that outweigh their benefits, potentially resulting in what Freed called ‘technology-facilitated harm…’”

admire the magnanimity of the sea which will permit no records

hands up if you're learning congressmen had a special checkin desk from this

*Good news for life-extenders. If "taxes" are no longer certain, then "death" may be in big trouble