"The message is chilling: in Trump’s America, even the most powerful media companies will silence their own talent if it keeps them in the administration’s good graces. It is a remarkable, and deeply alarming, moment for free speech." — @oliverdarcy.bsky.social

if anyone else was looking up aryna sabalenka's kit today, found it! It's also available in black www.nike.com/t/nikecourt-...

"The CDC, once our nation's most powerful bastion against disease, injury, and disability, appears to be burning to the ground. This will be a prolonged, excruciating immolation, and people will die as a result."

Love a Foucault reference

Just saw some clips of Summer I Turned Pretty and um, neither Conrad v Jeremiah come close to the hotness of Ben vs Noel back in my day

"Israel is murdering the messengers...Israel wiped out an entire news crew. It has made no claims that any of the other journalists were terrorists. That's murder. Plain and simple." --Committee to Protect Journalists regional director Sara Qudah

oh my, this Rick and Morty clip is like a documentary www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MU5...

"The Congressional Budget Office said Saturday that the Senate version would result in $930 billion in cuts to Medicaid, more than the roughly $800 billion that the House version proposes."

it would be really helpful for a journalist to be in the signal chat right now

budget question. If homeland security has used up its budget already (per that congressional hearing where Kristi Noem had to answer for running out of $), how does the agency afford more raids/higher quotas for raids?

do headlines the right way i.e. slate in 2020

A scene from the new UCLA Chancellor inauguration

worth jumping off a call so i could focus on this sinner djokovic match

LeBron just casually showed up at a girls club volleyball tournament ystd to watch his kid; he’s just a sweet volleyball dad www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8M2QmQc/

had no idea what i was getting into but HOLY CRAP lilo and stitch was so so thrilling and well done

im still ending my voice memos with "bye bye" and no one can stop me

From “tomato girl summer” to “looksmaxxing,” algorithms and AI filters are changing how we define beauty. How do we keep up? Thanks to @elisewho.bsky.social for joining Terms of Service this week to discuss! Watch here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jxn... Listen here: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/h...

A vital conversation rn, esp given what we know about the carelessness of our tech overlords

The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I reread it today; nothing in the law allows a president to defund PBS and NPR. In fact, Congress specifically sought to insulate public media from political pressure.

"To be a fascist, you have to think at some conceptual level, which Trump never does." —John Bolton, speaking with @vox.com

"Where did these numbers come from? Apparently, an oversimplified calculation that several major AI chatbots happen to recommend."

"You have given up..."

Apartheid Clyde a petty, dangerous, incompetent man but what always amuses me is how no one likes him and he can’t even buy his way into getting people to like him. He can’t buy a good sense of humor or good looks or good reputation.

One of the defining feelings in American life, for decades now, is elites doing plainly criminal shit and nothing at all happening as a result. It is deranging in a way that virtually nothing else is. Media fixates on perceived street lawlessness but shit like this matters much more in my opinion.

seems bad (also, good for them)

I think some in the Senate have convinced themselves that the backlash to folding will be limited to “the left” and therefore ignorable. Those people are deeply and profoundly misreading the moment and the stakes. Virtually every swing district House Dem walked the plank to vote NO for a reason.

Five years since these 🔥 answers from @jiatolentino.bsky.social in Interview Mag. Worth a reread. www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/ask-...

(1/3) It needs repeating: in 1994, Ukraine was persuaded to give up its nuclear weapons to Russia in return for the US, the UK, and Russia guaranteeing Ukraine’s sovereignty, security, and territorial integrity.

French Senator Claude Malhuret: "Washington has become Nero’s court, with an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers and a jester high on ketamine... We were at war with a dictator, we are now at war with a dictator backed by a traitor."

You guys. As a member of the Oregon Trail generation, I just.

“In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors.” —former SCOTUS Justice Hugo Black

Now that Trump has ousted Brown, and the heads of the Navy and Coast Guard, the remaining top military leaders are all white and male, particularly striking given that minorities make up nearly 40 percent of the military and women constitute fully a fifth. www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/king-donal...

THIS TRACKS

"In construing freedom as the multiplication and speedy satisfaction of needs, they distort their own nature, for they engender within themselves many senseless and stupid desires, habits and most absurd inventions." —a dying monk in The Brothers Karamazov, published in 1880, by Dostoevsky

can't wait!

Lord knows I’m not a constitutional scholar not even a lawyer (and I’ve yet to check in with @kateshaw.bsky.social) but a legal regime in which “you can do crimes if you’re buddies with the president or praise him publicly” is *on its face* a violation the equal protection of the laws.

The Elon-Sam Altman showdown is a lot less fun than the Kendrick-Drake rap beef, and we aren’t gonna get any great music out of it 😔

Incredible new ep this week! It's @elisewho.bsky.social, who takes us inside her TED Talk. We discuss: - What goes into crafting an exceptional talk, tightly told - Our shared love of Bourdain - The “peak/end rule” - Using callbacks And more! Find How Stories Happen in your podcast player

US farmers sold $2 billion of food to USAID. Not any more. - US farmers provided 41% of food delivered by USAID - $340M of purchases/shipments are now paused. Over 680,000 tonnes. - Food stranded in Houston - Aid stopped in transit. The world’s poor starving, food rotting & US farmers screwed.

From Oliver Darcy, @oliverdarcy.bsky.social February 05, 2025. www.status.news/p/trumpocaly...

"'Constitutional crisis' does not even begin to capture the radicalism of what is unfolding in the federal bureaucracy and of what Congress’s decision not to act may liquidate in terms of constitutional meaning." —@jamellebouie.net @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/o...

"OPM released a new memo and a contract providing more specificity about the terms of the deferred resignation agreement. It is even worse than it initially appeared." via @popular.info

Pretty clear that the operating principle here is that the law is whatever Elon Musk’s current whim dictates.

This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism vs. No It Won’t

It seems picayune, but policing body hair is one of the oldest forms of bodily control. Forced shaving of Guantanamo detainees, for example, were considered an element of abuse, like food deprivation

"I think when you revert to protectionism, you're on the way downhill. You have given up; you're not going to expand your markets. You're not going to be a world power. That's the beginning of the end. That's utter foolishness." —frmer US Treasury Sec & Sen Finance Chair Lloyd Bentsen, in 1992

The clearest-eyed look at what has happened in America over the past 48 hours is one written w/ the authority and remove we write about foreign nations. From @vermontgmg.bsky.social www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/musk-s-jun...

it's STILL JANUARY?!

happy year of the snake. *mumbles to self*: Of COURSE it's the year of the snake

My TED Talk is out today and it's about the way filters and feeds in digital culture are now reshaping our expectations of our appearance toward an internet-driven sameness. It's marginalizing for everyone who can't conform, and punishing for those who can. LMK what you think! go.ted.com/elisehu