"Way back in 2012, the internet wasn’t yet the angry, shrieking wasteland it has become. A simple story about a no-nonsense lady in North Dakota could break through the noise." www.wsj.com/us-news/mari...

The passing of Paul Newman (2008), Sean Connery (2020), Sidney Poitier (2022), and now Robert Redford (2025) signals the slow disappearance of a certain type of 20th century figure: men who embodied classic style in a way that reflected their taste, rather than a professional stylist.

PSA: If you do not wish to mistakenly see the graphic video of Charlie Kirk getting shot and have an iPhone best to turn off video autoplay. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Motion, and then disable "Auto-Play Video Previews." This is the default setting. A per-app setting is also on the menu.

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”, released as a single 34 yrs ago today “No one had any psychic foresight .. that the song would go on to do what it did,” said Grohl. “We just fuckin’ rocked it in a little rehearsal space that was like a barn. .. We just thought it was another cool song for the record.”

"Over the past quarter century, American tech companies to a large degree designed and built China’s surveillance state, playing a far greater role in enabling human rights abuses than previously known, an Associated Press investigation found."

I'm seeing a social media trend where people are sneaking pics of men reading books in public and making fun of them as "performative males" And while I love a good dunk, I don't think you guys want men to be reading even less than they are now. Just saying

I have honestly many times thought about purchasing one of those bulletproof backpacks or whatever, but then I think about the burden of carrying that to school every day, putting that burden on our children, that physical and mental burden of having to remember why you are carrying that backpack.

The trouble with age verification

“If a tool can give suicide instructions to a child, its safety system is simply useless."

Here's a recent story (and photos) by Mariam Dagga, about children in Gaza:

"At her funeral Monday, relatives and colleagues caressed her cheeks through tears. Her body lay shrouded in white, a single red flower placed gently beside her face."

This is Tuffy. He is the only example of taking up the whole sidewalk that is not only justifiable, but encouraged. 14/10 (IG: mypittuffy)

I am sorry I will never be able to read a story about Uranus and not laugh. It's just how it is.

“Small children from poor or middle-class families who watch ‘Sesame Street’ do better on cognitive tests and in first grade than children who do not watch it,” Renata Adler wrote, in 1972.

AOL’s dial-up internet is finally taking its last bow. Yes, while perhaps a dinosaur by today’s digital standards, dial-up is still around.

Big move from Reddit: it says that it has caught AI companies scraping its data from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, so it’s going to start blocking the Internet Archive from indexing the vast majority of Reddit. www.theverge.com/news/757538/...

this is wild www.404media.co/a-cbp-agent-...

“We wanted to test the guardrails,” said Imran Ahmed, the group’s CEO. “The visceral initial response is, ‘Oh my Lord, there are no guardrails.’ The rails are completely ineffective. They’re barely there — if anything, a fig leaf.”

U.S. kindergarten vaccination rates inched down again last year and the share of children with exemptions rose to an all-time high, according to federal data posted Thursday.

Escape to a weird blocky garden apnews.com/article/robl...

Silicon Valley is lighting hundreds of billions of dollars on fire to generate this slop.

Remember Cambridge Analytica?

And here I was thinking they couldn’t make Microsoft teams worse

Nursing homes around the U.S. say they're feeling the effects of President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.

other fun note i learned in reporting this out? the top two plush toys on amazon are these nuggets and a stuffed version of anxiety from inside out 2.......... we're not OK

'Vacations.' The word is 'vacations.'

Counterpoint: Foursquare was fun and amazing and I long for the olden days of our stupid little apps.

Amazing. Respect the lede.

I...

The Trump administration has announced that it is revoking guidance to the nation’s hospitals that directed them to provide emergency abortions to women when they are necessary to stabilize their medical condition.

Is this going to be too real to enjoy?

The photos in this @apnews.com article about the Digital Equity Act show a little of what it's about. People helping people to use computers. By @blanka.bsky.social and Claire Rush. These cautious, but willing, folks are in a Keyboard Basics class in Portland, Oregon.

“Because who doesn’t want grandma to be safe online? Who doesn’t want a veteran to be able to talk to their doctor rather than get in a car and drive two hours? Who doesn’t want students to be able to do their homework?”

Happy World Goth Day, the photos of me as a goth are, for better or for worse, printed on paper and tucked away in a box somewhere.

The ChatGPT summer book reads list in the Chicago Sun-Tribune fills me with dread about how much we’ve already lost and how much we will lose to AI slop. I think about all the little pieces of human writing I care about but maybe most people don’t—museum placards, book flaps, photo captions

If there's one thing modern kids are known for, it's obeying screen time rules www.wtvr.com/news/local-n...

"Across the Americas, organizations that guide women seeking abortions in various countries are raising alarm, decrying what they see as a new wave of censorship on platforms owned by tech giant Meta — even in countries where abortion is decriminalized." From my colleague Maria Verza in Mexico City.

Uhh no thanks

The Associated Press has moved hundreds of news alerts since President Donald Trump took office for a second time. We used them to tell the often-dizzying story of what Trump did, how some people and courts pushed back and the world's reaction.

BREAKING: The federal government is reversing the termination of legal status for international students after many filed court challenges, a government lawyer says.

BREAKING: Education Department says it will begin collection on student loans for over 5 million borrowers in default.

“I feel relaxed, but at the same time I’m like, ‘Oh, there’s a moose. Oh, what if there’s a moose? I can’t go to the toilet!’” said William Garp Liljefors, 20, who has collected more than 150 moose plush toys since 2020.

Meta, the FTC argues, has maintained a monopoly by pursuing Zuckerberg’s strategy, “expressed in 2008: ‘It is better to buy than compete.’ True to that maxim, Facebook has systematically tracked potential rivals and acquired companies that it viewed as serious competitive threats.”

BREAKING: Hungary has passed a constitutional amendment that allows the government to ban public events by LGBTQ+ communities.

The Associated Press wins reinstatement to White House events after judge rules government can’t bar its journalists, citing the 1st Amendment.

I have heard from several readers that they are having trouble deleting their data from 23andme. Are you having issues deleting your info? Let me know if you'd like to chat. I can be reached here or [email protected]

"White House officials informed the Navajo Nation that an artificial intelligence-powered automated review process looking for content with DEI initiatives led to the elimination of anything mentioning 'Navajo,' according to a statement from Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren."