US union membership soared to 16-year high in 2025 despite Trump assault www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

New — I spoke to eight trans people in Kansas about the new state law that invalidated their driver’s licenses overnight, what’s it’s like to live there right now, plus details of two DMV emails exclusively obtained by The Handbasket that shed light on the law’s chaotic and cruel rollout:

If this Anthropic order stands, it’s going to tear the tech industry apart.

Post old memes to confuse young people

Post old memes to confuse young people

one under-discussed crisis in Silicon Valley is that startups are having to dig ever deeper into the lore of Tolkien to find their names

This is probably happening in San Francisco, too, right?

Well this is fun

Wild that Whole Foods is now cheaper than Safeway in SF. www.sfchronicle.com/projects/202...

We are Great!

'Women aren't less than': Team USA women's hockey players respond to Trump www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news... by @dohamadani.bsky.social

ummmm ... Europe puts sprinkles on bread?

One of the craziest things about Musk-era twitter is that because linking to anything is penalized by the algo, no one uses links and you have NO IDEA where any of the info you see is coming from. It's madness!

Let's talk about the history of "the gay mafia" 🧵

Let’s all remember that X is a third-tier social media app at best, as measured by usage

This is a huge deal, and the number of people I see pooh-poohing this as just a loss to a supposedly elite group sucks. A) most of the jobs that disappeared were the working-class ones; B) bye bye not just to local coverage but to arts, sports, everything that’s not tech/biz/politics/opinion/advice

I can't get over this number: in 2007, there were 360,000 newspaper jobs. Now, there are 80,000. "My local paper sucked!" Sure. What sucks even more? The void. "I get all my news from the Guardian!" No, the Guardian doesn't report on your town council, your school board, local cops.

Marques Brownlee — with 20 million YouTube followers — says Tesla 'stopped talking to me' www.businessinsider.com/tesla-stoppe...

👀

"while I was unable to substantiate darker allegations, parts of the story still resonate" 🤨

New from me: House Democrats probe Musk and Grok over nonconsensual undressing on X www.nbcnews.com/tech/elon-mu...

New from me: House Democrats probe Musk and Grok over nonconsensual undressing on X www.nbcnews.com/tech/elon-mu...

Is the word "ballroom" accurate anymore? The White House isn't going to be hosting a party for Cinderella's prince, right? Or a debutante ball? I think we're mostly talking about a conference center that can also host large dinners.

Has conservative media stopped covering the president of the United States? Here's the FP's coverage of Donald Trump in the past week.... It's not really even about Trump! And the DOJ headline is in the passive voice.

this Mark Carney guy seems to be popular apnews.com/article/cons...

Tesla ‘Robotaxi’ status check: 8 months in, 19% availability, and all of Musk’s promises are missing electrek.co/2026/02/16/t...

In Munich, AOC warns that democracies must deliver for the working class to stave off 'authoritarianism' www.nbcnews.com/politics/con...

On Thanksgiving, the immigrant children held at the Dilley detention center gathered in the gym for what they thought was a holiday feast. The kids salivated over a spread of turkey, sandwiches, pastries and pies, a family told me. But the food wasn’t for detainees — it was for the staff.

This is wild www.nbcnews.com/world/israel...

Opus when he realizes that Anthropic is using his name for an AI product

For those of you keeping score at home, the actual cut to the Post newsroom was 45%, not the widely reported one third. Remaining journalists are a bit over 400, down from around 1100 four years ago and 580 when Bezos bought the place.

I wrote about Steve Bannon and his offer to "rebuild your image" for Jeffrey Epstein www.nbcnews.com/tech/interne...

New: Remember Miko, the Google-affiliated AI touchscreen toy robot for young children? Turns out that until yesterday, you could listen online to the audio files for its LLM-generated responses to kids, no password or anything necessary.

A remake of "Happy Days" set in the 90s — is this a thing?

interesting idea from @mattyglesias.bsky.social: "Congress ought to act to impose common-carrier regulatory requirements on SpaceX..." www.slowboring.com/p/dont-let-e...

👀

Also a principle source of molasses — without which New England would not have its precious “Boston brown bread”

NEW: A baby held in immigration detention became so sick, she had to be rushed to a hospital in severe respiratory distress. “She was at the brink of dying,” a lawyer told me. But the girl didn’t go home after her 10-day hospital stay; instead, ICE put her and her mother back in lock up at Dilley.

“Its”?

X awards $1 million to creator with a history of racist, Hitler-supporting posts www.nbcnews.com/tech/interne...

A key point about changes in the news media: "People don’t stop searching for information, they just find it elsewhere."

This week's Post layoffs hit a chord for me, so I wrote something personal, timed with the anniversary of my own layoff a year ago. "What is it that they say, again? Journalism is the thing you love that doesn’t love you back." mirandacgreen.substack.com/p/where-do-t...

Jury rejects idea that Uber is not responsible for drivers' actions: "A federal jury in Phoenix on Thursday ordered Uber to pay $8.5 million to a passenger who said one of its drivers had raped her, setting the stage for thousands of similar cases around the country." www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/b...

I wonder if they'll come up with a new ... strategy.

Therapy is good and people should go

My story on Elon Musk cutting safeguards at xAI is on the front page of today's @washingtonpost.com. I’m also among 100’s of reporters laid off. I absolutely loved my job my brilliant coworkers & the thrill of reporting @ the center of forces upending the world: AI & Silicon Valley’s political power

Most of the Washington Post’s tech reporters were laid off today, including me. I have loved my time at the paper, which is where I wanted to work from age 15. I take some consolation in not being among the survivors who will have to work harder with less for fewer readers. On to better things.

I expected the cuts would be bad but I'm honestly stunned and sickened seeing how many great journalists the Washington Post just lost. People who nailed huge investigations, documented war zones, exposed horrific crimes, dropped all at once for failures they did not cause.

Hearing really grim stuff about The Post being decimated tomorrow. Wishing the best to all my former colleagues.