Douthat moderated a panel I was on w/Walter Kirn and sat there like a log while Kirn literally pulled out his phone on stage & read Taibbi Twitter Files tweets accusing me of censoring *22M tweets*. He lost control of the panel in the first 5min and apparently is still not interested in the facts.😂

The extent to which this history has been rewritten by right wing propagandists while MSM slept for 2 yrs—so much so that the NYT doesn’t even catch it now. When the “Censorship Industrial Complex” supposedly formed, silenced conservatives, & stole elections, THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION was in power.

I had my first baby in 2013 and several Tylenol studies were already out. RFK Jr has been flogging this for a long time. This isn’t new science, it’s that he has a bigger mouthpiece as HHS secretary. Unless this is presented alongside studies on other factors -incl parental age- seems pretty bad.

The best thing I've read on the new information ecosystem. (And a great gateway for people whose influence is based on traditional expertise/credentials. It's by the Carnegie Endowment! There are footnotes!)

I know everyone is focusing on the legality of this and the substance of this particular message; but that is the spammiest, scammiest, trashiest platform with vast networks of fake accounts and its had security issues in the past. It’s wild to think he’s just DMing cabinet secretaries etc on it.

🌱 9 more little honeynut squash on the vine, hoping it doesn’t completely die before the green ones turn at least a bit orange. We lost 6 to rabbits early on and then started using Repels-All and coyote pellet things. It’ll be 2 dozen from 2 plants across the season.

Last week @rachelkleinfeld.bsky.social and I put out a provocation & set of suggestions on how influence has changed and why institutions (& funders) need to change their thinking on shaping public opinion and connecting w/audiences. The old way no longer works. carnegieendowment.org/research/202...

When your anti-vax Health Secretary stacks the vaccine committee: "Some members seemed confused about the data they were being presented. After their vote on the program that provides free vaccines for children, some members asked what they just voted on." wapo.st/3K9OBNV

During the decades that the House UnAmerican Activities Committee ran its witch hunts, the blacklists were self-imposed. Eventually, the Committee’s targets realized that they had to respond differently… www.lawfaremedia.org/article/proc...

Arsonist raises doubts about harmful chemicals in fire extinguishers

At 2:30ET today there will be a hearing on “the harms of AI chatbots.”Testimonies are now up. None of these are good for the companies. Big focus on kids. (I wouldn’t let my kids use Character.ai; my experience was ‘creepy product w/nasty dark patterns’) www.judiciary.senate.gov/committee-ac...

I feel sorry for the cdc staff who did such a careful job on these presentations and are now attacked by Dr. Malone, who has shown clearly he doesn’t understand this area (and is an extreme conspiracy theorist). www.importantcontext.news/p/kennedy-ap...

The fact that left-of-center folks see it as hypocrisy is itself a sign that they do not understand the contemporary right. From the basic Wilhoit-ian perspective of conservatism, there's no contradiction, no hypocrisy. Power *is* the principle.

Great story by my colleagues on the constant political realignment of Grok, the generative AI chatbot over on the other site. This change to Grok’s answer about the greatest threat to Western civilization is particularly ironic/meta. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/t...

Noted lib Amy Coney Barrett wrote the fking majority opinion. People don't understand what happened in Murthy bc the right treated it like a civil rights case while MSM barely paid attention. It was dismissed b/c *the plaintiffs hadn't even mentioned most of the defendants* ergo no standing.

Matt Taibbi is incoherently bitching ab work SIO did exposing an astroturf operation that a TPUSA affiliate ran. There was nothing ambiguous ab it & Twitter actioned the org that ran it. The end. But not for Matt, who makes it a conspiracy bc some ppl who worked at Twitter once worked for the CIA 🙄

Sinclair saying they will not agree to carry Jimmy Kimmel again unless he makes a donation to Turning Point USA is wild even by Sinclair standards

This is jawboning. This is what the Freedom Caucus fascists of the Weaponization Committee and their Substack lackeys pretended was happening under some “Biden regime,” but it wasn’t. It was always projection.

Comedy is legal again

Read the second half of your first sentence. They’re literally anti-vaxxers.

Robert Malone has a book where he and his wife claim he’s being gang-stalked by deep state agents so yeah this checks. Just asking questions!

COVID killed 1.2 million Americans while a vaccine saved millions. Yet today, antivaxxers & disinformation doctors are in charge. How did this happen? COVID propaganda that started in 2020 led directly to this moment. Get comfortable. I lay it all out here. rumble.com/v6z2zva-ever...

Rep Comer hauling in tech CEOs to talk about content moderation and radicalization 💀 Welcome to the “moderation isn’t censorship” club, nuance is good actually. oversight.house.gov/release/chai...

That website is free.

Susan Monarez, the former head of the CDC who was ousted by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. amid a dispute over vaccine policy, will tell her story during a Senate hearing on Wednesday.

My hot take that got me yelled at by ppl here was "doesn't seem 'leftist', extremely online but not getting NVE, not much evidence for groyper, doesn't read as cohesively strongly ideological in any direction, there's just not enough info, wait 48 hrs": www.kenklippenstein.com/p/exclusive-...

My hot take that got me yelled at by ppl here was "doesn't seem 'leftist', extremely online but not getting NVE, not much evidence for groyper, doesn't read as cohesively strongly ideological in any direction, there's just not enough info, wait 48 hrs": www.kenklippenstein.com/p/exclusive-...

New OpenAI policy announcement related to teen mental health: “If an under-18 user is having suicidal ideation, we will attempt to contact the users’ parents and if unable, will contact the authorities in case of imminent harm.” More details: openai.com/index/teen-s...

RFK Jr.'s hand-picked panel of vaccine advisors is expected to vote to delay the hepatitis B shot for newborns. Doctors warn that could fuel a return of a disease virtually eradicated in U.S. kids.

The "free speech" ppl getting it wrong again. AG Bondi: "There's free speech and then there's hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie...We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone w/hate speech." via @thebulwark.com

at the center of the efforts to destroy civil society in russia, hungary, georgia and elsewhere is the stigmatization, harassment, & criminalization of NGOs. that's what this is about, a full-on assault on democratic debate & freedoms. this is not hyperbole. it's right here.

Ukraine’s drone units “have pioneered one of the most consequential innovations in modern warfare,” @Team_Harbaugh writes. In June, he joined operators in Ukraine’s 34th Coastal Defense Brigade to see firsthand how they are remaking drone warfare.

Who’s gonna tell him 💀

I joined @oliverdarcy.bsky.social’s Status for a conversation about content and mobilization. We discussed how real-world events become online spectacle, why influencers rush to set the narrative, who benefits (in some cases, profits), and what would change things. www.status.news/p/charlie-ki...

I joined @oliverdarcy.bsky.social’s Status for a conversation about content and mobilization. We discussed how real-world events become online spectacle, why influencers rush to set the narrative, who benefits (in some cases, profits), and what would change things. www.status.news/p/charlie-ki...

This is not the first time that supposed “massive uk protest image” with the Arc de Triomphe has gone viral! Right wing influencers shared it earlier in September — Grok misidentified the photo as real in that case IIRC. A factcheck from last time around: leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2...

Let's say it again: 1) Harvard said "No," and Trump has backed off. 2) Chicago (and Illinois) said "No," and Trump has backed off. It's day by day. But those who said "OK, sure," have gained nothing at all. Except shame.

IIRC all that labeling stuff was “censorship” & ‘Russian bots’ were a hoax perpetuated by Obama and the Stanford Internet Observatory. The US senators & representatives calling for people to be fired for their political speech now —that is NOT censorship. The Freedom Caucus decides what words mean.

Michael Shellenberger, the “CBR Chair of Politics, Censorship, and Free Speech” at the University of Austin, has spent several years now trying to get academics whose speech he doesn’t like fired by lying about them… These are lying hypocrites pursuing political power — not 1A champions.

The Utah shooter joked on Discord with his friends that his doppelganger killed Charlie Kirk when they asked him about it From Nick Bogel-Burroughs, and contribution from me. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/13/u...

If you're looking for resources on how your org can handle influxes of allegations based on someone's social media posts, here are two guides to learn from: - PEN America: onlineharassmentfieldmanual.pen.org/best-practic... - Researcher Support Consortium: researchersupport.org/institutions/

I mentioned that exact same retweet in my post about Clay Higgins. Shellenberger spent years claiming that literally the most benign attempt by a gov't official to merely *talk* to a platform about content moderation was the world's worst attack on the 1st Amendment www.techdirt.com/2025/09/12/f...

Michael Shellenberger, the “CBR Chair of Politics, Censorship, and Free Speech” at the University of Austin, has spent several years now trying to get academics whose speech he doesn’t like fired by lying about them… These are lying hypocrites pursuing political power — not 1A champions.

IMO this is still the correct take.

going to hold off until things are likely to be less annoying and more info is available but the “irony poisoned” meme shit is a rhetorical style and should not be viewed as ideological in and of itself

I know it's not exactly breaking news that some "free speech" warriors are total hypocrites, but I still feel it's important to call it out when it happens.

Ppl could just wait 48 hours for his friends and family to say what “he got more political” means Other profiles and discord chats and whatever will prob drop. Instead ppl pick 2 bits of evidence - a t-shirt, a Halloween costume, a meme on a bullet - and decide THEY KNOW. They don’t, yet.

Maybe if you’re 40 lol. Ask a middle school boy in your life what his favorite brainrot is. Things ppl in their 40s think of as “00s chan culture” are integrated in youth gaming culture at this point. The kids don’t know the etymology, which can be jarring. But memes for 🎃 are not weird to them.

Things are pretty early but — Tyler Robinson, the guy arrested for the Charlie Kirk murder, doesn’t scream “extremely online nihilist” either. Going as a meme for Halloween is not weird. Irony culture isn’t always nihilistic. The need to have an immediate answer is a side effect of social media.

the suspected Charlie Kirk shooter has been identified as 22 year old Tyler Robinson from Utah very little in his family socials other than that Tyler was very online and dressed up on Halloween specifically to emulate this meme knowyourmeme.com/memes/cultur...