Miles Davis, upon being asked to tailor his own pants, “You want me to sew what?!”

Toxic fumes are leaking Into airplanes, sickening crews and passengers. The problem is getting worse and not much is being done about it. From Ben Katz, me, and @andrewtangel.bsky.social for @wsj.com. 🔓 www.wsj.com/business/air...

Kantians must be stopped.

Every year!

I really loved this new Elvia Wilk essay: clereviewofbooks.com/elvia-incorp... (If you haven't read her book, DEATH BY LANDSCAPE, you should.)

Over @wsj.com, my colleagues Sara Randazzo, @ceostroff.bsky.social, and Shane Shifflett have a deep, fascinating look at how researchers are amending grant language to keep federal funding and avoid getting flagged in the Trump administration’s push against "DEI." www.wsj.com/health/scien...

I studied Baroque music, and Beethoven is definitely *not* Baroque, but I did have some fun with this Sonatina of his. And, yes, I know my interpretation is pretty far off, but I was, as they say, ~vibing~.

I absolutely loved this essay by Patrick Nathan. patricknathan.substack.com/p/soul-searc...

New Sumerian myth just dropped. archaeology.org/news/2025/07... (How rad is it that we're still deciphering these things!)

no one asked for this, but

Turned away from the pearly gates, the hacker mutters, "Jesus' disciples get to be 'fishers of men,' but when I do it, it's a federal crime."

Brb just sending copies of Barthes “The Death of the Author” to Nintendo execs.

mike's hard problem of consciousness

Maybe the real Ship of Theseus was the Ship of Theseus we made along the way

I'm burning through an absolutely incredible podcast, Threshold. The most recent season, Hark, is all about the history of sound across human history. It's hands down some of the best science journalism I've even encountered. www.thresholdpodcast.org

@willoremus.com's piece and @jeffjarvis.bsky.social's response circle an important question: How capacious should fair use be? I sure don't know, but multi-billion dollar companies scraping millions of maybe-pirated books certainly *feels* a bit different than a reporter subscribing to the news.

A Borges story about a guy who gets AI to summarize all the world’s information for him, and then summarize the summary, until the AI has the whole world summarized into a single word. He sits alone at his desk, staring at the word, repeating it endlessly, certain he is experiencing everything

this is deeply aspirational for me.

does everybody know about my favorite website, the embroidery tips page that forgot to close its <h3> tags

My daughter is definitely *my* daughter. For my birthday cake, she suggested making a snowman out of frosting. "Frosting the Snowman," she wants to call it. Only five years old, but she's already a pun-master.

I talked a little bit about how the Journal used artificial intelligence in our look at Elon Musk's Twitter transformation. Shout out to my folks: "West says he finds it difficult to clarify the type of AI he uses in his work, even when explaining it to his own parents."

My colleagues @shaneshifflett.bsky.social, @ceostroff.bsky.social, and James Benedict have a deep look at Silicon Valley's new grip on Washington. www.wsj.com/politics/tec...

TIL my laptop(!) can quickly train a form of so-called "generative AI." These are taken over about 30 minutes as my model (for the nerds: a generative adversarial network) "learned" how to make landscape pictures. It's kinda pretty tho utterly useless—except maybe to demystify the AI craze a bit.

Come for the deep, magazine-y reporting; stay for the kicker ("Americano?"). From my colleagues Stacy Meichtry, Margherita Stancati, Ian Lovett, and @marcuswalker.bsky.social. www.wsj.com/world/europe...

I'm over the moon to be able to say that I was a part of the team—nineteen reporters strong!—that won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. Here's the announcement: www.pulitzer.org/winners/22641 And you can read the Journal's coverage here: www.wsj.com/articles/mus...

So proud of @wsj.com data team member @johnwest.bsky.social and formers @coulterjones.bsky.social @andreafuller.bsky.social for their work "chronicling political and personal shifts of the richest person in the world, Elon Musk, including his turn to conservative politics" pulitzer.org/winners/22641

Once again, @leonyin.org et al. are absolutely crushing it. This is a fascinating read.

Happy Easter! A couple of years ago, I wrote an essay, "Easter's Miraculous Bearability" for @commentmagazine.bsky.social about my raising my then-foster daughter during the early-pandemic lockdowns. comment.org/easters-mira...

Happy Easter! A couple of years ago, I wrote an essay, "Easter's Miraculous Bearability" for @commentmagazine.bsky.social about my raising my then-foster daughter during the early-pandemic lockdowns. comment.org/easters-mira...

I see a lot of you are worried about your stocks so I’m glad I invested all my money in the one asset that will NEVER decline in value: tulips

I’m in not-so-sunny Los Angeles (for the first time!) at AWP! Say hi if you’re around!

What does a sneakerhead say when the bill arrives? “Other shoe just dropped.”

I'm working on a little play: VLADIMIR: Do you think it will come today? ESTRAGON: Today? VLADIMIR: You said it would come today. ESTRAGON I don't remember that. (Pause.) Should we take the Ferris wheel? VLADIMIR: We can't. ESTRAGON: Why not? VLADIMIR: We're waiting for fried dough.

I'm working on a little play: VLADIMIR: Do you think it will come today? ESTRAGON: Today? VLADIMIR: You said it would come today. ESTRAGON I don't remember that. (Pause.) Should we take the Ferris wheel? VLADIMIR: We can't. ESTRAGON: Why not? VLADIMIR: We're waiting for fried dough.

1. I've been listening to Doug Metzger's amazing podcast, "Literature and History" for several years now. Each multi-hour episode digs into a text, bringing us from literal clay tablets to, Metzger hopes, contemporary Anglophone literature. We're at episode 109, and we've made it to the Middle Ages.

At #NICAR25? Interested in embeddings? Come to my hands-on class about embeddings at 3:30, “SELECT * FROM interesting”! (Also, come say hi!) Can’t make it? Here’s the repo: github.com/jswest/nicar...

Are you at #NICAR25 here in sunny Minneapolis? I’m on a panel about visual investigations tomorrow afternoon! Come! Or don’t! Either way, message me and say hi!

My colleagues, @ceostroff.bsky.social, Shane Shifflett, and James Benedict have a fantastic look at DOGE's savings claims: "A WSJ analysis of government data found that many claims of savings were overstated and ‘woke’ cuts were only a tiny fraction of the total." www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

I love that these three subsequent headlines on the New York Times's homepage tell a story. A story of a man I want to be.

From my inimitable colleagues, the story of how the Trumps translated their electoral success into cash. This lede! www.wsj.com/politics/ele...

(I promise to stop spamming LEAVES OF GRASSTOK soon...) A TikTok-like way to experience Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," my app runs on an engagement algorithm, taking you through the poem in an order determined by what you dwell on. App: leaves-of-grasstok.vercel.app Code: github.com/jswest/leave...

Can't enough of algorithmic feeds? How about one for... poetry! I TikTokified Walt Whitman's _Leaves of Grass_ with "Leaves of Grasstok." It learns your preferences and drops you deep down a rabbit hole of poetic wonder! app: leaves-of-grasstok.vercel.app code: github.com/jswest/leave...

I made it: leaves-of-grasstok.vercel.app An app that learns your preferences about Walt Whitman's LEAVES OF GRASS. It guides you through his poems, illustrating each with a photo from the Depression-era FSA photographs from the Library of Congress. For more: github.com/jswest/leave...

After Wikitok—a genius swipe-able way to navigate Wikipedia that learns your interests (github.com/IsaacGemal/w...), I'm working on "Leaves of Grasstok," which lets you navigate Walt Whitman's stanzas, learning your interests as it goes, illustrating each with a image from the Depression-era FSA.

From my new colleague at the Journal, @klong.bsky.social, who is starting with a bang. www.wsj.com/tech/doge-st...

I'm enjoying Anne Carson's kinda bananas book, WRONG NORMA. My favorite is the lecture about the sky written from the perspective of the sky, including a long, untranslated passage in Arabic and a conversation with Godot of WAITING FOR GODOT fame, whose first name is, Carson tells us, Rusty.

1. I wrote a song (so sound on, please) for every one of Shakespeare's sonnets—sort of. Here's Sonnet 116. (In the spirit of @renamosteirin.bsky.social's excellent book, EXPERIMENT 116, I used Sonnet 116 as my test case.)

The Central Intelligence Agency has now concluded that the deadly Covid pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak, shifting its view to support a thesis also held by the FBI and Energy Department. www.wsj.com/politics/nat...

Over at the @theverge.com, @sesmith.bsky.social has an absolutely jealousy-inducing piece (and I'm not just saying that since I'm on the hook for a book about link rot). www.theverge.com/24321569/int...