How Regimes Rely on ‘Loyal Losers’ New research sheds light on how low academic performers with poor career options tend to be assigned the most brutal tasks, including torture and murder. (Gift link) www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/w...

💥We’re less than four months from Election Day. This is a fun reminder that Democratic campaigns aren’t glamorous, they’re powered by us. Volunteer for a Dem candidate. Donate if you can. Block walk. Phone bank. Talk to neighbors. Find your precinct chair. We can create change! #texasdemocrats

Thread! I started my career as a market researcher. I have a certain bias towards quantitative research. But @sarahlongwell25.bsky.social has performed so damn many focus groups in the past ∼10 years that her insights amount to projectable, market-representative information

See, people always want to make this just about "sports," but the real upshot here is that, 6-3, trans women can't make a claim under the Equal Protection Clause. And if they can't do that, it's hard to see how they have constitutional rights.

Our fans finally caught up with us at the Red Carpet in Cannes

As we kick off the Round of 32, I give you what these matchups are really about: 1. Canada 🇨🇦 vs. South Africa 🇿🇦 - Battle of the Commonwealth nations 2. Brazil 🇧🇷 vs. Japan 🇯🇵 - Battle of the Portuguese Jesuit "colonies" 3. Germany 🇩🇪 vs. Paraguay 🇵🇾 - Battle of *chuckles nervously* (1/x)

LET THE FREE MARKET DECIDE Fuck AI NO, NOT LIKE THAT

This looks like the place at Christie and Grand my wife and I used to shop at in the early 2000s 😍

@daveweigel.bsky.social is right. The big pitch of the establishment, NYT, Yglesias, etc is that they need the keys to the car because they know how to win (and in the Trump era, winning is existential). But nobody really believes that anymore after 10 years of Trumpism

This really is a problem, period the end. N.B. She says “the Democratic _establishment_”—NOT “the Democrats.” Keep it straight

Haven’t read the article, but I will tell you right now that you should know what cargo culture was and how it is practiced today unconsciously by almost everyone you know. It’s especially relevant _right now._ Also Ed Zitron knows WTF so he’s worth keeping up with. Thank you @stephen.fosketts.net

I think Abughazaleh is being characteristically respectful here, but Harrison’s post is dishonest. The folks he’s talking to don’t hate the Democratic Party. They don’t say those words publicly and if they do privately, it’s rhetorical. Criticism, however sharp, is not hatred. It’s caring

I’m honestly fascinated by people who think New Yorkers electing leftist candidates is bad for Democrats elsewhere. That genuinely does not make sense. You’re fighting ghosts.

Everything that motherfucker touches dies. open.substack.com/pub/jojofrom...

💯% exactly right. Anti-DEI is a cover for the insecurity and greed of wanting to get shit by right without putting in the work

Calling this a war on diversity is right wing framing. Pete Hegseth is blocking the promotions of qualified Black people and women because he’s a bigot. These aren’t diversity hires who are being promoted to fit some quota. This is racism and sexism at the highest office in the U.S. military.

I have a USB stick from a box of a lady's possessions that were sold at auction. I guess none of her family wanted them, or she didn't have any. I shouldn't have plugged it in (security) but I did. This handwritten note made me cry. If you've lost anyone recently, maybe it will speak to you too.

The way that redemption arc/comeback profiles of “cancelled” men talk about rape allegations is like they’re a horrible trial for the alleged perpetrator—who essentially takes a hiatus for a few years before receiving this kind of press—while the impact on the victim’s life is never even considered

This is how it’s done. State the facts and refuse to entertain their bullshit.

It is a pity that such a well-written, -directed, and -performed work as The Green Knight should so utterly fuck up credibility elements like:  • period architecture  • aristocratic home furnishings  • the value of elite arms (the long sword) It costs literally nothing to get these right

Next up: stealing from orphans

I like big hydrogen atoms & I can’t lie. You other brothers can’t deny. When a water molecule walks in with oxygen on top & two hydrogens in your face you get sprung.

Thread

The Pope understands AI better than Silicon Valley

This 🧵 makes a lot of sense to me. Provenance is good (repost by @nathankalmoe.bsky.social and Nair has many thoughtful, probing followers)

"Technology has the power to heal, connect, educate and protect our common home; but it can also divide, exclude and generate new forms of injustice. ... (It) is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it" www.vatican.va/content/leo-xi..

guys we don’t have to have discourse about this app every single day, we don’t have to do this

Four years ago today, 19 children and 2 teachers were murdered in Uvalde. The heartbreak that swept across Texas has never left, and the pain those families carry every single day is unimaginable.

Frontier model use seems to have replaced boat size comparisons for how groups of Western men figure out who’s alpha

Dude gets insulted to his face and is like nah, he must have been talking about Joe Biden.

Feeling overwhelmed with all of this. LISTEN. Another Louisiana resident (Marshawn is the only name we have) testifies against the state’s racial gerrymander, speaking truth to power up and down the hearing room and predicts how this story will end. Speak your truth, fight and believe.

I have observed this seeming contradiction too. But I don’t think it’s a contradiction to be using it and also hating it. Individual utility isn’t the same as being comfortable with its impact on society in general. And a huge amount of AI discourse isn’t about the tech so much as the …

AI simulates (imitates), that’s how it works. Am starting to regret the “generative” label. Simulating responses to questions by imitating past responses (THIS IS HOW AI IS TRAINED PEOPLE) guarantees false trend analysis

I interact with chatbots as if they were humans I’m interacting with face to face. But. BUT. I keep constantly in mind that this a human-simulating, truth-SIMULATING model. My biggest worry about AI is that users don’t get its core simulative nature. Treating it humanely amplifies this problem

It’s depressing how things that were seen as KKK-level racism when I was in college are mundane government policies and Supreme Court decisions today.

Good, short read on the two main threats democratic rule

Being a good writer is a different skill set from being a good editor even though they’re related. I believe we’re seeing the same patterns in tech. Being a good coder/designer/PM is not the same as getting good code/design/strategy out of an LLM. We’ll see failures as companies figure this out.

The Open Compute Project is growing fast: it’s now 623 (corporate) members ranging from startups to neoclouds to hyperscalers to classic IT vendors. 125—20% of all members—were added in just that last 6 months! 24 of them from EMEA. Are standards now foundational to tech? #OCPBarcelona26

I’m at the Open Compute Project EMEA conference in Barcelona. Astonishing how much industry discussion, on display on stage at this show, is about achieving more and power in the data center … but almost none is about how to create and send it TO the data center equitably and sustainably

2½ hours of keynote seems long? Granted, this one has 13 parts #OCPBarcelona26

The Open Compute Project was founded 15 years ago. It was founded by Facebook but has steadily become a coalition of a host of vendors up and down the stack—and remains a forum for inquiry, free information exchange, and cross-platform standards development. #OCPBarcelona26

“Today’s Apple … failures aren’t dramatic ones. They’re the small, persistent, daily-friction kind that the founder used to personally drive teams to fix.” Yup!

We’ve got to stop this criminal syndicate and charge its lawless members and leaders, root to branch. A country that allows some to be above its laws is not a country

If you’re against DEI, you’re a segregationist and I’m tired of folks, for the sake of politeness and naïveté, pretending the discussion is anything but that.

Some companies are replacing SWE/PM/etc titles with Builder. Not my team but AI is blurring roles. 1. PMs build prototypes via Claude Code; SWEs review and own the code. 2. SWEs write strategy docs with Claude; I act as final reviewer. Both now handle tasks that were someone else’s job a year ago

Even AI won’t escape the discouragement and aversion phase thenewstack.io/claude-opus-... by @adrianbridgwater.bsky.social @thenewstack.io

Sure, but counterpoint: domain expertise and experience are not reflected in “builder”

Seems like just in the past year or two people are shuttering their windows in flight _and then not raising the shutter until AFTER landing._ They just wait in ignorance for the big bump of landing…. This is weird. OTOH, I’m the guy who likes to look when they insert the needle into my skin

Sana is the sleeper story in @workday.com’s #agenticAI strategy, extending their HR/Finance contexts into the whole estate. Agents will operate all over where work happens—a governance problem as much as a tech one www.linkedin.com/pulse/workda...