The heroes of the day are Richard Knipel, chair of @wikimedianyc.bsky.social, and @fuzheado.bsky.social, who stepped up and saved lives at Civic Hall. They were already anchors in the community, now their work in trust and safety extends to the physical realm. They deserve all our care and support.

Now Trump is hoping to at least get a Daytime Nobel Peace Prize.

Before Sen. Ted Cruz accused Wikipedia of bias for labeling Fox News unreliable about politics and science, I wrote @wired.com about how Fox News earned that designation. The process was guided by an apolitical British editor is mainly interested in snooker arstechnica.com/tech-policy/... 1/2

In 1996, Brewster Kahle wrote "Preserving the Internet" for Scientific American. Nearly 30 years later, it’s striking how many of his predictions about digital preservation came true—and how many challenges remain. Let’s compare 1996 vs 2025 🧵

As Peter Thiel turns loopier and loopier — meditating on the anti-Christ — Marc Andreessen has emerged to reveal Silicon Valley’s dark heart, as per this BI article: * only engineers matter * use lawsuits to intimidate critics * build cults of personality www.businessinsider.com/marc-andrees...

Elon Musk’s rage toward Wikipedia — and dreams of replacing it with an encyclopedia of his own — is in line with autocrats around the world, in China, Russia, Turkey and lately India. As I argued in this piece for The Globe and Mail a little while back. archive.ph/yoByG

Much unintentional humor in the Guardian piece on performers' explanations for taking the money to perform at the Riyadh Comedy Festival. www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

Charlie Kirk article's single-day traffic was highest in Wikipedia history - 15 mil views the day he died. It pulls no punches. Kirk was “a right-wing political activist" advocating Christian nationalism and Great Replacement conspiracy theory. New discussion topic: Was Kirk becoming Catholic? 1/2

My “America at 250” class—taught with David Blight and Beverly Gage — can be found here. New lectures and podcasts put up every week. m.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

The tech journalist stevenlevy.bsky.social wrote an apologia @wired.com after decades of largely flattering coverage of Silicon Valley. This feels like a vital moment -- a case for dismantling tech giants from an unlikely voice -- even if the essay pulls punches. 🧵 1/7 www.wired.com/story/silico...

I don't want to speculate, but you have to think that the hours that Peter Thiel and Jeffrey Epstein spent over lunch in 2017 almost certainly featured one of the most normal conversations of all time.

The Mark Zuckerberg image makeover continues … Zuck’s Wikipedia article now features a fresh, Meta-produced photo (left), replacing a 2020 shot (right).

It's helpful information how much the support of Kimmel is a sign of moral revulsion and how much it is a pure political calculation that Trumpism is weakening & a bluff. So it'd be good to have an instrument that has no capacity for morality and only detects political interest. Thank you, Ted Cruz!

This is airing on 60 Minutes this Sunday. The operation to fluff Bari Weiss is underway.

My latest for @nytopinion.nytimes.com "Is it possible that these purveyors of popular culture will ignore the 50 percent or more of this country that want television, film and music that doesn’t feel like it was extruded directly from the president’s brain? " www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/o...

"...every ounce of my energy has been devoted to an active opposition to cruel bigotry, convulsive violence, and the sadistic persecution which has characterised the philosophy and practice of fascism...nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us."

Trees are not a stated part of the Dept. of Transportation's plan to widen sidewalks and add bike connections to the Canal Street area next year. nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/09/15/p...

He never was that guy. He was always this guy. He was just outnumbered and didn't show you he was this guy. All along, they've been these guys.

one way you can tell he’s lying is that the story was sold with a hard news headline as opposed to the poncy “From Kampala to Queens, Mamdani navigates a complex identity” feature hed it would have gotten if it was actually about the decisions “people with overlapping identities wrestle with”

@hntdove.bsky.social I made this independent cartoon. If you like it would you share it? If we find an audience we can keep making them, and don't need to bend our creative vision to the studio system. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLvq...

I am skeptical about the likelihood that some of Mamdani's topline proposals get implemented, but this AMA answer points to the sheer quantity of low-hanging fruit out there in terms of simple straightforward quality of life improvements available in our city.

I’m so excited to announce that my book was published today! The book retells the life of Charles Sumner, an abolitionist senator who co-framed the Reconstruction Amendments. I wrote this book with my blood, sweat & tears as a student at Yale Law School. (1/x)

Bruce Springsteen just opened his European tour in Manchester with a powerful message about how things are going back home 🔥

Spotted on 4th Ave. in Brooklyn

Dance with Death, by Hieronymus Hess, 1841, 📸 via Vatican Media Pool

NEW: There have been very interesting efforts in North Carolina to give people who were sentenced to life without parole as children a shot at release. Bolts worked with Phillip Smith, who is a writer himself incarcerated in North Carolina, who tells this important story beautifully:

“the heiress of a Wisconsin cheese fortune” lithub.com/thomas-pynch...

Had a chance to push back on the claim that Democrats “drove” Silicon Valley into the arms of MAGA. Pure gaslighting. Destroying institutions; imposing change from above; ending regulation, taxes. What Know-It-All tech billionaire would object? For @news.rte.ie www.rte.ie/radio/radio1...

Had a chance to push back on the claim that Democrats “drove” Silicon Valley into the arms of MAGA. Pure gaslighting. Destroying institutions; imposing change from above; ending regulation, taxes. What Know-It-All tech billionaire would object? For @news.rte.ie www.rte.ie/radio/radio1...

If you don't want to see this horrible garbage happen in every future high-stakes election, make sure it demonstrably fails in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race by helping elect Susan Crawford

Tonight, the West Side Story Cup.

Leader of Indian state of Maharashtra threatens Wikipedia over inclusion of scholars’ accounts of misbehavior by a revered 17th-century king. Latest example of Wikipedia under attack for recording what is known about the world. timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/theres...

The SpaceX news as artificially intelligently summarized on X/Twitter.

My attempt to explain the descent of X and Meta into "a free speech free-for-all" with an essay for Irish radio broadcaster @rte.ie. Yay! Lord of the Flies for everyone! www.rte.ie/radio/radio1...

My attempt to explain the descent of X and Meta into "a free speech free-for-all" with an essay for Irish radio broadcaster @rte.ie. Yay! Lord of the Flies for everyone! www.rte.ie/radio/radio1...

How did the tech bro crowd, growing up on stories of sci-fi, transhumanism, virtual reality and limitless ability to modify one's body, "biohacking," etc. end up becoming so viscerally anti-transgender? Truly boggles my mind.

I don't often explicitly recommend my own pieces. But I think this core dynamic of social media economics isn't as widely understood as it should be. And it's essential for understanding the entire "content moderation"/"free speech" convo talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-e...

Wikipedia is the last major, visible platform for facts that they can’t buy. The attacks are going to be merciless.

"Has not a drunken man also the spirit of a tyrant?"

I do actually think evil people can persuade others to work for them, and can be intelligent. I think it's pretty odd that anyone thinks otherwise. Paul Graham often says things I find puzzling.

I still find it very curious that Musk's biographer who spent years with him for a book has said little to nothing publicly about Musk's embrace of Trump or his full political shift to MAGA. It almost seems like that's something worth grappling with if you supposedly wrote *the* book on the guy...

Musk was asked what it was like to be world's richest person and he quickly corrected: Richest person who is not a sovereign. "It’s fair to say that if somebody is the king or de facto king of a country, they’re wealthier than I am.” Interview w Chris Anderson (2022) www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRvf...

Musk was asked what it was like to be world's richest person and he quickly corrected: Richest person who is not a sovereign. "It’s fair to say that if somebody is the king or de facto king of a country, they’re wealthier than I am.” Interview w Chris Anderson (2022) www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRvf...

Ronnie Spector has what is easily the funniest quote in that new Beatles '64 documentary.

Reading Maureen Dowd's 2017 interview w Peter Thiel as Trump was taking office, including this gem: “I don’t think these things will particularly change. It’s like, even if you appointed a whole series of conservative Supreme Court justices, I’m not sure that Roe v. Wade would get overturned, ever.”

Just browsing the very normal US National Map apps.nationalmap.gov/viewer/

Recommend Phillip Vance Smith II in Film Comment about barriers to watching movies and TV in prison. Smith, incarcerated in NC, reported this story out … they’re voices from NY, NC and Calif. Tablets hold promise, but greed and censorship stand in the way. www.filmcomment.com/blog/streami...

The Musk Foundation is one of the US's largest charities and Elon Musk has received huge tax benefits. But the foundation isn't doling out as much $ as is legally required. When it does give, that $ often goes to causes benefitting his own interests. We investigated: www.nytimes.com/2024/03/10/u...

My look at Abdul Hassan, the other Queens politician told by Colorado that he was not fit to run for President of the United States. When he complained, a panel of judges — including future Justice Neil Gorsuch —told him tough luck. For @theatlantic.bsky.social. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...