If Trump has, in fact, backed down on sending a massive ICE deployment to the SF Bay Area, it would be yet more confirmation that he nearly always backs down in the face of (a) organized resistance and (b) personal contact from the rich and powerful. www.sfchronicle.com/us-world/art...

What is Sora's deepfake slop for, exactly? A little bit from me in the NYT on this awful, ghoulish invention which ultimately seems to have one purpose: to demolish the wall between the real and the unreal. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/o...

📣 Our book of the month for August is... STRATA: STORIES FROM DEEP TIME by @laurapoppick.bsky.social We loved this detailed, deliberate overview of geoscience—and its mixture of lyrical prose and detailed profiles of researchers and the things they study. newsletter.readcurious.xyz/p/announcing...

📢 Our pick of the month for July is "The Salmon Cannon and the Levitating Frog": @biologycarly.bsky.social's fun new book showing how silly science can lead to serious discoveries. Publishers Weekly called it "pop science at its finest" and they're right! newsletter.readcurious.xyz/p/cur015-sal...

Had a great conversation with @karenhao.bsky.social about her book EMPIRE OF AI, OpenAI, its true costs, and end-of-the-world thinking for this month's @readcurious.xyz live Q&A. I'll be sharing our chat soon in our free email newsletter. Sign up if you're interested! newsletter.readcurious.xyz

Sen. Alex Padilla, who was just forcibly removed from a DHS press conference, is the ranking member of Judiciary’s subcommittee on immigration, citizenship, and border safety, which has “oversight of federal agencies with citizenship, asylum, refugee, and immigration enforcement responsibilities.”

📣ATTENTION YOUNG WRITERS!📣 Henry Lien will be holding a free youth writing workshop hosted at @Chapter510 in partnership with the Locus Awards and @sistahscifi on Sunday, June 22nd in Oakland. RSVP now here or through the link in our bio! tinyurl.com/3fcz9yt7 See you there! #kidlit

Four things we loved about @karenhao.bsky.social's EMPIRE OF AI, our book of the month for June. newsletter.readcurious.xyz/p/close-read...

Mainstream media keeps laundering these “philosophers of the alt right” or “big thinkers of Silicon Valley”… And then you watch them on video and immediately see they are total chuds you wouldn’t want to spend 2 minutes alone with. Why can’t people see how utterly weird these dudes are?

Request for advice: a family member of mine in the UK, a lefty in his younger days, has been Farage-pilled. Constant stream of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant posts and right wing talking points, angry responses to my comments and questions. Any tips, suggestions or guides to constructively engage?

Our book of the month for June is @karenhao.bsky.social's astonishing look at the hottest company in tech: "Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI" It's a detailed, critical dive into what AI is, where it comes from, and what it costs. newsletter.readcurious.xyz/p/cur014-kar...

THE COUNTDOWN HAS BEGUN! We have 9 days to reach our fundraising goal & we have a LONG way to go!! Be the reason that the Locus lights stay on! Help us out at igg.me/at/locusmag2025. We are so grateful for your support! Fundraiser link in bio #sff #scifi #fantasy #booksky

Thanks to Vox for having me on Today, Explained to talk about fake North Korean workers. I'm told this goes out on many public radio stations, so hello to you all out there! (I cannot bring myself to listen to my own voice today, so please tell me if I goofed) megaphone.link/VMP4489740505

It should not be controversial or complicated to say that what is happening in Gaza is wrong. But here we are. We are bearing witness to thousands of people, many of them children, being trapped and bombed and starved to death. Doctors have been killed. Aid workers. Journalists. This is wrong.

The same reporters who won’t call the plane a bribe because it did not come with a note that says “now you will do what we want” somehow also often think that trans people are too biased to report on trans issues.

Lovely recommendation from @longreads.com today for my recent @wired.com story on why your weird remote work buddy may actually be a North Korean IT worker. "puts you on the edge of your seat for the audacity of the cybercrime alone" longreads.com/2025/05/09/t...

I am very much looking forward to talking to Bonnie about this wonderful book!

My new story at @wired.com on North Korea's extensive effort to secretly placing young IT workers inside Western companies. They use AI, deepfakes and boots on the ground to steal identities, get remote jobs, and funnel money and data back to fund the Kim regime. www.wired.com/story/north-...

You know that co-worker who always joins meetings with their camera off? The engineer who quietly gets his work done and never says much in the team chat? What if you discovered they were in fact a North Korean agent, working to send money back to Kim Jong Un's regime? www.wired.com/story/north-...

So we have: —masked vigilantes grabbing folks off the street —for free speech, for tattoos, or just because they’re brown (including Native Americans) —moving them to rocket docket jurisdictions —then deporting them to utterly random countries —this includes US citizen children WITH CANCER

Easy to be flippant, but Trump going on the record to tell the media he is not in control of his govt and is being misinformed by advisors. Someone else is running the country.

A question: the Supreme Court may have ruled that whatever the president does basically isn’t a crime, but does that mean anyone committing criminal acts on behalf of the president is immune? Because we got a lot of people out there just following orders.

100% Mia is gonna be one of the best ever to do it (if not already)

Good day to remember that a US President has no inherent power over tariffs whatsoever. It’s not like war powers or pardons. It’s entirely delegated by Congress to deal with emergencies. GOP Congress cld modify that law tonight and bring this to a screeching halt.

"high-profile ​“free speech” advocates such as Bari Weiss, Jonathan Haidt, David Brooks, David Frum, John McWhorter, and Malcolm Gladwell have either remained silent or championed the arrests."

Here we are

This week's newsletter is out, featuring highlights from our live conversation with @ayanaeliza.bsky.social. It was a fun chat: she talks about how her book What If We Get It Right? came together, what surprised her about it and what it doesn't cover. newsletter.readcurious.xyz/p/trying-not...

Video of the international student at Tufts being arrested by "federal authorities" in Massachusetts has been released and it's terrifying. They're not even uniformed officers. Just secret police thugs in hoodies and masks. From WCVB: youtu.be/PuFIs7OkzYY

The Signal story is really the perfect example of how Trump's litany of abuses have completely warped media coverage and the standard he is held to. It's being covered, but on the Trump curve, it's just another scandal, as opposed to a major national security threat that should lead to resignations.

Let me get this right. The administration is: - Arresting + deporting ppl without charge - Secretly moving ppl into new jurisdictions - Ignoring due process - Refusing to comply with judicial orders - Making sadistic promos for all the above This is what it looks like when people are disappeared.

Some people have an exceedingly different understanding of the word “ceasefire” than I do

Chuck Schumer is going out to meet swing voters where they live: in the upscale book stores of America's wealthy suburbs.

This week's newsletter is out, featuring a decades-old beef between Ansel Adams and Henri Cartier-Bresson that should give you some perspective. newsletter.readcurious.xyz/p/ansel-adam...

I’ve been doing a bit of feature reporting these last few months after mainly working behind the scenes on publications and projects, and damn. I missed writing a lot… and it makes me want to punch myself in the face at the same time.

Buttondown makes it super-easy to migrate your newsletter from Substack. Plus: “Need help migrating to Buttondown? Just contact our support team and we’ll take care of it for you!” No more excuses. (via @monteiro.bsky.social) [docs.buttondown.com]

Honestly I was surprised by how much I liked this book

People who read @adamhigginbotham.bsky.social’s “Challenger” were so immersed that they hoped the disaster would somehow be averted. newsletter.readcurious.xyz/p/adam-higgi... 2nd part of our interview with Adam is out now!

1 page of “hey, America, it’s me, Ken”, a couple of pages of limp diagnosis and… absolutely no plan. Which I suppose means it is actually a very realistic framework detailing how the Democrats will fight Trump. More confirmation that we gotta ignore these losers if we’re gonna save the republic.