Gulp. Guys, AMERICAN SCARE was named one of Kirkus Review’s Best Books of 2025!

This is *very* cool

Jaw dropped. Trump Administration Removes Report on Missing and Murdered Native Americans, Calling It DEI Content

Kind of losing it over the idea of the "Betrayal index" in football

There’s never been a better time to buy Lab Dog and some other delights

1/ I’d like to share what’s happened since Sept. 30, the night of the most dramatic raid of the Trump administration’s Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago. Under the cover of darkness, 37 immigrants were taken from an apartment complex …🧵

“The only durable response to Sudan’s famine lies with its own civilians, who must be empowered to resist the militarization of hunger,” Shahad Elfaki argues in a new Dispatch from Issue Sixteen. www.thedriftmag.com/a-grotesque-...

The Epstein story gets a something that is tearing at the heart of the electorate: elite impunity. The idea that wealthy and powerful people can do terrible things *at scale* and face no consequences for them. Whatever political party actually stops it could rule the country for a generation.

I'm starting to worry Larry Summers isn't the greatest guy...

Finally driving my first EV and can’t be the only middle aged dad now *obsessed* with regenerative braking and getting as many miles as humanly possible.

“This was a very very bad vote”

One analytical model shows that, as of November 5th, the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. has already caused the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of them children. https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/jUzNSc

This really hasn’t gotten enough attention this week. @wired.com #ICE www.wired.com/story/fbi-wa...

Defense begins, “This case, ladies and gentlemen, is about a sandwich. A sandwich that according to Agent Lairmore somehow both exploded on his chest in a spray of mustard and onions but also landed intact on the ground still in its Subway wrapper.”

The beautiful cover for my new book: "The Broken Machine: Histories of Technology, Social Order, and the Self." Coming June 2026. (mitpress.mit.edu/978026255334...). @mitpress.bsky.social

This was a remarkably good speech

The Biden administration worked hard to accomplish this new free IRS filing system. It’s astounding that one should have to pay fees in order to pay their taxes. But this rent seeking is entirely consistent with the economic policies of the current administration that benefit the most wealthy.

anyone who boosts AI has to explain to me why this is worth it

For one of my final stories with @wired.com, I teamed up with @peggylowe.bsky.social at KCUR to dig through a Kansas City, KS police hack Inside were some of the most disturbing misconduct files I’ve ever read—and a secret list of cops the department said couldnt be trusted Here are a few of them:

We've got you 👍

Had a great time talking about dogs and all the other animals we forget on university campuses with @llassabe.bsky.social for @americancampus.bsky.social @uchicagopress.bsky.social americancampuspodcast.buzzsprout.com/2396665/epis...

This is quite a story: the US employed every strongarm tactic available, including personal threats against delegates and their families, to derail an agreement on reducing shipping emissions that was almost finalized. on.ft.com/47lq3dZ

“Individuals on the ground sent a message that reached us Monday morning that 1,200 were dead,” Nathaniel Raymond, the lab’s executive director, said. “By that evening, they said 10,000. By Tuesday, we couldn’t reach them anymore. We assume our ground contacts are dead.”

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans was a documentary www.fox8live.com/2025/10/30/v...

I was both a student and a teacher during this exact period on the same campus and find this description… unrecognizable

“To imagine yourself as a modern-day Seneca, a sage liberated from the cares afflicting more ordinary souls, is its own form of self-indulgence,” @erikmbaker.bsky.social argues in his Issue Sixteen essay on self-help philosophy. www.thedriftmag.com/how-i-learne...

NEWS: CBS News gutted its climate team as part of the big Paramount layoffs this week. These journalists had been doing incredible reporting on extreme heat, flooding, clean energy investments and more. I've got details for Climate-Colored Goggles: www.climatecoloredgoggles.com/p/cbs-news-g...

Terrific new short story by Nick Foretek out today. If you share it enough I'm confident we can get this to be the top result when someone searches "porn" on the internet www.thedriftmag.com/porn/

Very cool opportunity!

In short, the ANES data shows: 📉 Social media use is shrinking 💥 Twitter/X posting has moved ~50 points to the right 🧩 Platforms are splintering 🔊 Fewer people are talking — but those still talking are more politically extreme

Top academic researchers leaving US amid funding cuts www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLvO...

Just watched a fascinating panel of high school teachers talking about current gen. students, and I was struck by a note that students struggle more than ever to distinguish "claim" and "evidence": they're great at asserting opinions, but can't identify quotes & evidence in readings to support them

A warning about trying to "solve" the electric affordability crisis with new gas plants. It won't work (never mind the poor planet!): www.utilitydive.com/news/natural...

"Madden’s note positioned the existence of the curve as a metaphor for the susceptibility of modern mass society to fascist delusion." @bolman.bsky.social for @pioneerwork.bsky.social: pioneerworksbroadcast.substack.com/p/when-baseb...

These numbers are shocking. It’s also worth remembering that OpenAI is largely marking its own work here “The company designed its own benchmarks, and it's unclear how these metrics translate into real-world outcomes”

"Lab Dog is a landmark study. Brad Bolman’s history of what might seem a niche subject is, in fact, an original and illuminating exploration of key aspects of the biological and biomedical sciences in the twentieth century." Read Michael Worboys' review here: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

As the single most important news story this year, I can't wait to see the detailed and central coverage this will get in every media outlet we have

"But solar panels have an underside, and that underside is, by definition, shady. If, say, you built solar panels over California’s irrigation canals, they would cut evaporation in those crucial arteries by 63 billion gallons of water a year." pioneerworks.org/broadcast/pr...

Very nice for someone to say 𝘓𝘢𝘣 𝘋𝘰𝘨 is "a brilliant book" and even "a landmark study" and for them not to be my mom link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Do I like baseball? No. Do I remotely understand it? Absolutely not. Do I know what direction the ball's going in when I "throw" it for my dog? It's always a surprise. But I read whatever @bolman.bsky.social writes, so here we are! pioneerworks.org/broadcast/br...

I made my students a little “book” (just using Google slides) to show them how you all answered my question about how you take notes for research. Just to show the variety.

Is Gen-Z killing the curveball, as it has Southern accents and the alcohol industry? For PW Broadcast, Brad Bolman (@bolman.bsky.social) writes about what baseball reveals about science, shared reality, and American values. pioneerworks.org/broadcast/br...

After a searing ocean heat wave in 2023, two of the most historically important coral species in Florida are functionally extinct from the state’s reef, scientists have found.

For as long as baseball has been a professional sport, fans and scientists have debated whether curveballs were real. To some, they were a mass delusion, symbolic of everything wrong with America. Read more from @bolman.bsky.social on PW Broadcast. pioneerworks.org/broadcast/br...

The World Series is almost here, so something a little different from my usual: I wrote about the surprisingly long debates about whether it's actually possible to "curve" a pitch. Candy Cummings, mass delusion, aerospace engineering, fascism. This one has it all pioneerworks.org/broadcast/br...

The World Series is almost here, so something a little different from my usual: I wrote about the surprisingly long debates about whether it's actually possible to "curve" a pitch. Candy Cummings, mass delusion, aerospace engineering, fascism. This one has it all pioneerworks.org/broadcast/br...

The Trump admin greenlit a 211-mile road that will cut through arctic wilderness in Alaska. A federal review of the road found that it would impact the hunting and fishing rights of Alaska Native tribes.

this is very good, this point is especially maddening. even if i spot you no camera or actors, you still need visual skill! we know this from photography! this is why i am not william eggleston!

Genuinely (earnestly) think there’s little more important for the US