💯 first thing I thought, (well the second, after ‘this is an act of political obeisance dressed up as a ‘business’ decision’) . That vaporizing your sports department on the eve of the Super Bowl, the Winter Olympics, and the US hosted World Cup, is insanity

Lol since I wrote this the amount shipped today jumped another 6,000.

Mayor Mamdani has endorsed Gov. Hochul for reelection via an essay in The Nation that lauds her for fighting back against ICE and committing to funding a childcare expansion in NYC. www.thenation.com/article/poli... The essay also includes this section:

American journalism is being put in peril, not principally by the failure of its business model, but by the political destruction of anti-democratic billionaires….

What does Moltbook have to say about the Epstein Files?

With the awful WaPo layoffs and the state of journalism more broadly, if it's useful for any writers and reporters considering going indy, @molly.wiki, @xoxogossipgita.bsky.social of Aftermath, @jasonkoebler.bsky.social of 404 Media, @edzitron.com and me will do a little workshop next week.

"Rhe only reason we know any of this [about Mandelson] is because Epstein became entangled in the MAGA movement’s narrative. "What we still aren’t asking is how similar networks of influence are operating elsewhere today." New on D4S: democracyforsale.substack.com/p/release-th...

It is still hard to understand how the Epstein Files’ first significant political casualty might be …Keir Starmer

If Jeff Bezos could afford to spend $75 million on the Melania movie & $500 million for a yacht to sail off to his $55 million wedding to give his wife a $5 million ring, please don't tell me he needed to fire one-third of the Washington Post staff. Democracy dies in oligarchy.

ICE at the polls! Bannon is basically yelling “fire” in a crowded theater here. His objective is to cause chaos (and suppress votes on the left). And it’s already working. This threat works on multiple levels and doesn’t have to be “real” to serve its purpose. Let me explain & offer some advice.

Media coverage of Gaza has plummeted. So today on @thenation.com, we're doing something pretty special: we're only running pieces by people in and from Gaza. We're calling it "A Day for Gaza." You can find links to all of the incredible pieces here. Please read! www.thenation.com/article/worl...

There are few things about the world of large scale technology platforms I enjoy …but the fact this is a calendar reminder is one

Catherine O'Hara is taken, while Donald J. Trump still wheezes amongst us. The Lord's aim is notoriously sloppy. www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVoj...

💔 RIP Catherine O’Hara , one of the greatest youtu.be/IR4jV8cSOO4?...

A list, in no particular order, of just some of the moves that the Trump administration has made in its ongoing campaign to suppress and deter journalism essential to democracy: Arrest Don Lemon and Georgia Fort for covering an anti-ICE protest. Raid the home of a Washington Post reporter, ...

Wearing an Arsenal scarf around campus today (it’s cold) - provoked excellent interactions with students, staff and faculty 🔴⚪️

There is no reason any of these men need any of this gear. This entire situation is not only dangerous and illegal. It is absurd and stupid. www.nytimes.com/video/us/100...

Very interesting new work from my @towcenter.bsky.social colleagues - building on excellent @wired.com article on LLMs and breaking news. Who is making decisions on when to ‘turn on’ web search for chatbots and when not to? www.cjr.org/tow_center/a...

I am moving ‘fur and feathers Friday’ up a day because of the extreme conditions in the United States of America (both psychological distress and unreasonably low temperatures)

Gary Larson *did* tell people this, yet when it's some "scientists" www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

US Director of National Intelligence furtively lurking round Fulton County Election Hub whilst the FBI take away 2020 ballots…. the zone is now officially flooded to the brim

Of the biggest scandals in US history just this week, I think I’d rank them: 1) Federal paramilitaries invade US city based on racist lies, murder US citizens 2) Slush fund for the president from stolen foreign resources held in Qatar 3) Whatever FBI and DNI are doing re: 2020 election in Georgia

No notes - as someone else said

We unpack the roots of the current US approach to media policy via the gateway of the Gawker trial

Never ending scoops at CBS

If AI is so great, why do the people running the key companies insist on expressing themselves in tediously long personal essays

And *crucially* scoops of ideas….. 🤔

Are the infrastructure and tools we use in journalism still safe? @marinedoux.bsky.social joins @emilybell.bsky.social on Journalism 2050. Watch or listen wherever you get your podcasts youtu.be/spMlrKJ1OzY?...

‘Working in the deepfake factory of a fascist foreman’

Amen

The shocking testimony of a children’s entertainer who filmed the assault and murder of Alex Pretti, and a pediatrician who administered emergency medical aid whilst ICE agents ‘counted bullet holes’

Important …

Matt Reuter, The New Yorker

Apart from anything else there are no penguins in Greenland. Unless he’s invading the South Pole too….

The distance between an “actual and true headline” vs it “performs well for user satisfaction” is a measure of moral rot at the heart of Big Tech. www.theverge.com/tech/865168/...

Newly unsealed evidence makes it even clearer that Rubio and Noem knew they were targeting students based solely on their political speech and that they knew this policy was unconstitutional. They just didn’t care. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/u...

Loved doing this - a stroll down memory lane …(if memory lane was a dark alley with lurking billionaires). Also - what have we learned about sustaining independence of media in times of pressure?

Rip-roaring talk if you're interested in the history of Gawker and independent media, I had a blast thank you @columjournreview.bsky.social @emilybell.bsky.social @marinedoux.bsky.social @swajcmanearle.bsky.social and Amanda Darrach

People talk about Mark Carney speaking truth to power but this by @marcelias.bsky.social of the indispensable @democracydocket.com is incredibly brave - and true. Legal professionals, more of the press, are needed to document abuses, and corporations - shamefully silent - should speak out

Also remember when newsrooms all started ‘democracy desks’? How about staffing up corruption desks?

The editorial board of the NYT counts up the personal corruption of Donald Trump - at least $1.4bn so far: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

"The 2024 federal election cycle was the most secretive since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010." Dark money groups, nonprofits and shell companies ...plowed more than $1.9 billion into the election... www.brennancenter.org/our-work/res...

So ICE and the White House have been scrambling to pump out meme videos of clashes with protesters and "epic takedowns" and then an ICE agent recording video with his phone shoots a woman dead www.washingtonpost.com/technology/i...

Monkeys on the loose news:

In case you've seen the story about “grok now only generates images for paid users”, it's untrue. Apparently everyone just reported it because… it was what grok told them 🤦🏼 www.theverge.com/news/859309/...

"The media has largely let [tech companies] set the terms of the debate, right down to the terminology used in any discussion of these systems." From @nannainie.bsky.social & me in @techpolicypress.bsky.social on how to spot and resist anthropomorphizing language about so-called "AI".

This is an absolute banger of a story from @petergeoghegan.bsky.social about former UK PM Tony Blair’s think tank trying to become an AI infrastructure company - Palantblair anyone? Reminder too of Larry Ellison’s role in this effort democracyforsale.substack.com/p/blair-bids...

She smiles at the man who shoots her and says she isn't mad at him. Clearly initiates the effort to leave when the aggressive agents arrive. The question now (not that this was in question) isn't who's telling the truth. It's when DHS had this video and knew that what they were saying was a lie.