Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth violated Sen. Mark Kelly’s First Amendment rights by moving to strip him of his retired military rank for reminding troops in a video last year that they are obligated to refuse illegal orders, a federal judge ruled Thursday. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

The whole racist backlash in "some quarters" against Bad Bunny and hispanic culture, in general, is not just bad, it's clueless and pathetic. Young people have largely embraced music from alternative cultures for a long time, starting with black music in the 50s up to K-Pop more recently.

Despite all the AI coding assistants, I'm still fastest going to Stack Overflow for answers...

Riffing off Brendan's method of juxtaposition in this awesome report, I'd like to offer another comparison: Food assistance cuts versus new funding for DHS in the "Big Beautiful Bill" Republicans cut food assistance by $187 billion while providing $191 billion in funding for DHS

A Minnesota woman observing ICE agents in her car was cornered on one-way streets. An agent approached, called her by name—citing facial recognition. Days later, her Global Entry and TSA privileges were revoked, with no explanation.

NANDA is an interesting MIT project working on distributed AI agent technologies. If you are in the Washington DC area, there is a hackathon on Saturday, Feb. 21 at George Mason U. luma.com/4pwuq0o4

Walz: "To Americans who are watching this, I've got a question for you: What side do you want to be on? The side of an all powerful federal govt that can kill, injury, menace, & kidnap its citizens off the streets? Or on the side of a nurse at the VA hospital who died bearing witness to such govt?"

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara: "People have had enough. This is the third shooting in less than 3 weeks. The MPD went the entire year last year recovering about 900 guns from the street, arresting hundreds of violent offenders, and we didn't shoot anyone ... this is not sustainable."

In a breathtaking reversal of reality, Trump uses a taxpayer funded website to whitewash the history of Jan. 6, blaming Capitol Police, Democrats and Pence -- everyone but himself and the mob that stormed the Capitol. @lukebroadwater.bsky.social @alanfeuer.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/01/06/u...

NPR built a visual archive of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, showing exactly what happened through the lenses of the people who were there. In Chapter 3, we lay out a timeline of key moments throughout the day as the assault on the Capitol unfolded.

Black swan moment for energy production and storage?

Five years ago today, Donald Trump urged his supporters to attack Congress and the Capitol over a proven lie. More than 140 police officers were injured. Trump then pardoned the attackers. He betrayed his oath and his country, and we won't ever forget it.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. He also decided to raid Venezuela because Maduro was dancing on TV. He doesn’t make decisions based on the reality on the ground - he makes decisions based on his ego. Always.

As senior dev too, I nearly do not write any lines of code anymore. I interact with models and as I'm able to judge/guide them, I have acquired super-powers. The main issue I see is for people learning now. They have to trust as they do not know. We'll see where it shifts the knowledge cursor

I'm old enough to have been a software engineer during the web/.com explosion in the 90s. I think about that time vs. this current AI era a lot. I had no doubts about the web being massively successful, despite missteps (pets.com...). I'm not at all convinced about AI yet. We'll see...

I see a lot of complaints about untested AI slop in pull requests. Submitting those is a dereliction of duty as a software engineer: Your job is to deliver code you have proven to work simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/18/...

And look, here's the thing, AI *can be* amazing. But the hype over generative large language models obscures the really profound, meaningful breakthroughs, as @mmitchell.bsky.social breaks down for us here: www.technologyreview.com/2025/12/15/1...

So many of us loved Rob Reiner's movies. He left such a profound impact on so many. What an absolutely black-hearted and despicable statement from the President of the United States about a man who was just murdered. Trump is deeply unwell and unfit to serve.

Last-minute gift ideas! Where to get your drunk Virginia raccoon merchandise dailyprogress.com/news/state-a...

So love wobbegongs. Everything is good about the wobbegong. Its name. Its flattened Oscar the Grouch face. Its frondy bits. Its lazy life as a hungry rug. And it’s a shark. Outstanding animal 10/10

Time to look into your settings, folks.

Sen. BLUMENTHAL: You’re a prosecutor and said attacks on law enforcement are unacceptable. Do you support Donald Trump pardoning violent insurrectionists who assaulted law enforcement on January 6? Trump nominee: *dodges* Blumenthal: You won’t say? Trump nominee: *dodges, talks about Joe Biden*

Literally unable to click the checkout button on a website and actually buy something from it because the stupid AI chat assistant button hovers over the button I want to click; this feels like a metaphor for how AI 'benefits the economy'

NEW: Epstein survivors release the most powerful PSA I have ever seen. Make this go viral so every member of the House of Representatives sees it.

The aurora borealis last night, North of Ruckersville, Virginia

Two photos of the aurora tonight, between about 9-10 PM, taken about 15 miles N of Charlottesville, VA. The first one was shot with a 24mm lens (about twice the width of normal vision) and the second was shot with an 85mm lens (~2x normal...).

I highly recommend this thoughtful, practical essay.

Of course I'm worried about socialism. I mean, just imagine if Mamdani one day becomes President and nationalizes industry, imposes historic tax hikes, goes after the media, builds a secret national police force, militarizes the country, and sends people to camps.

Jared Isaacman, the billionaire Space X fanboy picked to take over NASA, plans to eviscerate the agency

🌟 This year's Utah AI Summit (hosted by @utahcommerce.bsky.social) features 2 @utah.edu speakers: Penny Atkins, our director of research & science, and Masood Parvania, director of the Utah Smart Energy Lab & professor of electrical & computer engineering. Learn more: aisummit.utah.gov

I hope someone is writing "12 Hangry Men" about the sandwich guy jury

Virginia lived up to its motto yesterday. It's not for the haters, like the people in Washington, D.C.

This seems huge, and deserves more attention. SCOTUS has gone out of its way to make it harder to sue Fed law enforcement for damages when they trample—sometimes literally—on your rights. Illinois just made it so their resident can sue the Feds in state court. Feds fail us, states step up.

Of course, this is precisely why we expect law enforcement to wear badges and uniforms and show identification. Anyone could have foreseen (and many of us did) that this would be a serious side-effect of ICE's insistence on behaving like unaccountable thugs.

An evil person has died www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/u...

NEWS: Federal agents crashed with woman’s car, pointed guns at her, dragged her out by legs, tossed her in a minivan, held her and (eventually) let her go without charges. This as Chicagoans say the immigration blitz is out of control. (DHS blames her.) www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/03/c...

Cost to fund SNAP and keep 42 million people from starving: $100 billion Cost of lost revenue due to tax cuts for the richest Americans in the top 1%: $100 billion One is decried as "welfare." One is not. Why?

A terrific AFP fact check uses reverse image searches to expose how a White House video took scenes from Florida, Texas, South Carolina and Nebraska and lied that they showed "Chicago is in chaos." factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com....

🚨 NEW: We tested 39 AI models for security vulnerabilities. Not a single one was as secure as it was "safe." Today, we're releasing the industry's first standardized jailbreak benchmark. Here's what we found 🧵1/6 mlcommons.org/2025/10/ailu...

In any other country, if federal agents fired upon journalists when unprovoked — what would we call it? If federal agents marched down streets demanding papers — what would we say? Authoritarianism — let’s not pretend it’s something else when it happens in our American cities.

Brett Kavanaugh assures me this is the sort of minor inconvenience that shouldn't disturb anyone.

Sometimes I ask myself why do I even bother working in conservation, no one cares. But then I think of the animals, the plants, and all living things, THEY care and they are worth fighting for.

This is why people do it: www.linkedin.com/pulse/linked...

I recommend this post from @simonwillison.net: simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/7/v... He lists the engineering skills required to use AI-generation most effectively to build quality software, based on his experience using AI on his projects. In short, we can't replace software engineers with vibe coding

Interesting thread on HRM...

Twice today people posted announcements on LinkedIn about interesting projects, including links to the LinkedIn pages for the projects, but didn't bother posting the actual links to the projects themselves. I had to hunt around to find. Don't do this.

How it's done...