“college readiness” is not really the reason to encourage high schoolers to read and write

Commentary: Because the assaults on academic freedom are well underway within state capitals and inside university administrations — in Ohio and across the nation — few institutions will be spared. But alumni have to speak up now ohiocapitaljournal.com/2025/12/09/i...

"The rapid, largely unregulated rise of datacenters to fuel the AI and crypto frenzy is disrupting communities across the country and threatening Americans’ economic, environmental, climate and water security." www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

the idea that a handful of conservative legal scholars have an understanding that should supersede a settlement affirmed my generations of american is astoundingly arrogant, and the idea that trump — or any president — can unilaterally overturn that settlement is just despotism

Presumably Alabama will be suspending fraternities and sororities too. U. of Alabama Suspends Black and Female Student Magazines, Citing D.E.I. Guidance www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/u...

“But if the Rabbit novels are obviously realist in most of their aspects, their representation of the social may be less apparent.” David Shumway @nearleft.bsky.social on the work of John Updike. pghrev.com/updikes-real...

The dripping contempt the right wing SCOTUS majority holds for district judges is truly a sight to behold every time. When they deign to give actual reasons for their shadow docket holdings, it’s “look at the absolute idiots who keep getting everything wrong!”

"AI has become the high-fructose corn syrup of the digital realm: It’s now in everything, even if you don’t want it there." www.sfgate.com/tech/article...

Good work, @pghreviewofbooks.bsky.social, now I gotta get @nearleft.bsky.social’s book.

Boycott complicit institutions.

How many Supreme Court justices have been redacted from the Epstein files, anyway?

How did the @nytimes.com editors let this sentence appear? "Critics have likened Mr. Trump’s approach to extortion, while others have chalked it up as a cost of doing business with this administration." www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/u...

AI generated content of any kind undermines the credibility of whatever is being communicated

one of the coolest things about ChatGPT is how you can actually just never use it. you can fill your whole entire life with simply not once using it. it's incredible.

Before the midterms of 1866, President Andrew Johnson called his congressional opponents traitors and said they should be hanged. Voters were so profoundly moved by his words... that they gave his opponents a supermajority in Congress, and the nation got the Fourteenth Amendment.

🥰♥️♥️♥️♥️

The Kremlin disguised a nearly $100 mn payment to Trump in the form of a brokered real estate deal... and both Jeffrey Epstein and William Pulte were involved in the deal. That's very interesting.

all six D's who voted for this god awful thing including the corrupt give away to senators need to be primaried

This isn't "internal recriminations." It's voters expressing overwhelming opposition to what the people they elected to represent them are doing, and anyone--either in journalism or politics--who characterizes it as infighting is either not seeing and hearing what's right in front of them or lying.

Time for change in some high places in the Democratic Party if we are to meet the greater challenges of the moment in this country. My latest. www.thedailybeast.com/why-these-vi...

Chuck Schumer Helps Pull Democrats Back From Brink Of Courage

American politics makes a lot more sense when you realize that the GOP is afraid of pissing off the GOP base, and the Dems are afraid of pissing off the GOP base, but neither party is afraid of pissing off the Dem base.

Democrats trounce GOP, but it’s Schumer who concedes.

I fully believe in the corporate death penalty and believe we would be a better world if OpenAI lost its corporate charter and was forcibly dissolved. www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/u...

I’m just a small-town political scientist, & it’s still relatively early, but it appears that The Actual Democrats did not Need To Do any of the Things or Learn any of the Obvious Lessons that Ezra Douthglesias said they Must Do & Learn.

Eagerly awaiting tomorrow's New York Times headlines explaining why this wave of victories is actually bad for the Democrats

Politicians should probably get on Bluesky to get better in touch with the American electorate.

Despite your best efforts.

Looks like the Dems will pick up 12 seats in the VA House of Delegates, which will go from 51-49 to 63-37 D-R. That's an honestly shocking result.

Kevin Roberts' defense of Nick Fuentes is a watershed moment: the right has officially declared open, unabashed Hitlerism to be an acceptable position in their coalition www.vox.com/politics/466...

"Developing our linguistic capacities — to master diverse concepts, to follow an intricate argument, to form judgments, to communicate those to others — is the development of our capacity to think. Cognitive degradation threatens democratic processes." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/o...

This was just posted by a CBS News producer on their Instagram stories.

Not a hard question, except for the culture that pretends it's not the answer 1) right-wing media lies incessantly, so anyone truth-based doesn't trust it, and anyone who trusts it doesn't trust anything else 2) other media treats those lies as legitimate, for "fairness," getting trust from no one

“Tackiness and tyranny go hand in hand.” Paul Krugman, today.

chop from the top www.chronicle.com/article/your...

Don’t. Print. Lies. In. The. Newspapers. bsky.app/profile/mcop...

I’m thinking of Marshall Berman’s brilliant work on urbicide—the purposeful destruction of the city’s built environment after WWII—and how Trump’s minions are trying to finish the job by disappearing Black and Brown people. That’s why Mamdani’s coalition is so frightful to them

I’ve been writing about politics in some capacity for over 25 years now and it’s still stunning how the mainstream media refuses to tell the public basic truth

Those with sharp eyes might detect a subtle difference in NYT play last month of an event in one city, w 100,000+ attendees, versus play this morning of some 2500+ events w many millions of attendees, in all 50 states. See if you can spot it! /s Then you can find today's story on p A23

The New York Trump Times lies about size of the No Kings protests.

"However, we may not interview any of these millions of people unless they meet us at a MAGA diner."

No Kings Huntington Station, NY

Swearing in isn’t some ceremony. You aren’t a member of Congress until it happens. He knows that. No phones, no staff, nothing. I had to escort her into the Capitol on Wed bc Capitol police must treat her as a public visitor until she’s sworn in. And solo visitors aren’t allowed during shutdown!

No one wants AI, no one asked for AI, it will burn the planet, destroy art & jobs, & produces nothing of value - except capital accumulation in the form of a commodities bubble. It is tech dystopia; regression thru technology; techno-anti-futurism; capital accumulation as de-development 2/2

UK residents: Pre-order your copy of The World of Leonard Cohen with 25% off, this week only, using the code OCTOBER25 at the checkout. Find out more here: www.waterstones.com/campaign/oct... #WPreorder #TheWorldofLeonardCohen

Should the New York Times be sold to Pennysaver and its editors sent to work in Amazon warehouses? It depends on who you ask.

🚨🚨 @utaustin.bsky.social is working to eliminate its Black studies, Latin studies, and gender studies depts -- utterly reneging on its mission and depriving students of the full educational opportunities they deserve. Please--scholars AND publishers--share & write to UT leaders. #SaveUT