Interviewed Blake Ziegler, of @the-rac.bsky.social, about the recently approved use of "Bible stories" in the Texas public school English curriculum: "When we look at the way Judaism is represented...there is the implication that the Holocaust was a divine punishment."

Strike fund for Austin American Statesman's NewsGuild, which is picketing today. Union seeks cost of living adjustments & protections against the use of AI, freelancers, temporary workers, managers or non-Austin-based workers to do the work of local journalists.

As the tools evolve, so do the ethical concerns around them, according to a former chair of UT Austin's "Good Systems" team. https://www.kxan.com/news/texas/ut-austin-team-examining-ethics-of-ai-use-to-release-peoples-guide-to-ai/ 

witnessing the birth of a new all timer post is such a beautiful thing

I talked to Sharon Strover with Good Systems, a UT Austin team looking at the ethics of AI use: "A lot of using AI these days amounts to really understanding as best you can what it does, how it operates and indeed how it can behave in biased or sycophantic ways, and even in misleading ways."

In 2021, @jamestalarico.bsky.social said a state bill to ban trans athletes would "be a stain we can’t remove." I asked his campaign for his comments on today's ruling that upholds such laws. He hasn't given one yet; I don't expect it as the campaign is largely avoiding the transgender question.

Wilder's skeleton will also be dressed in his old costume for the show

In local news: 99.5% of CapMetro union members just announced they're willing to strike. It comes a week before July 4th, when the service provides free rides to the city's park for the fireworks show.

On the sports cases, and I'm sure this nuance will be lost, but the ruling doesn't apply to "male or co-ed sports teams." It is explicitly transmisogyny.

And Alito, who was NOT retiring...

SCOTUS strikes down Trump executive order on birthright citizenship

6-3 on campaign finance

3k+ people already in the SCOTUSblog live chat 💀

🚨 Another Texas poll showing James Talarico and Ken Paxton are in a dead heat Talarico 47% Paxton 47% Talarico leads with 61 percent of Latino voters in Texas Talarico leads with independents by 27 percentage points #TXSen www.nytimes.com/2026/06/30/u...

is anyone else excited for the last day of pride month (when they will ban trans athletes)

Gracie the Giraffe has been compromised to a permanent end

Prisoners at a jail in Eastern North Carolina overpowered staff and have seized control of the facility, authorities said www.wral.com/news/state/b...

As with some other things, i suspect if we have another dem president we will discover that the court did not so much transfer power to the executive as to themselves, ie they will find novel bullshit reasons to block a dem president the same way the find novel bullshit reasons to enable trump

Next SCOTUS opinions tomorrow morning

In good news, SCOTUS declined review of Carroll v. Trump

It also says that we have a "reasonable right to privacy" regarding our cell phone data. It doesn't say these warrants are outright unconst but this decision will increase magisterial scrutiny

Well, wasn't expecting this court to say "nothing in the federal election-day statutes requires ballots to be received by election day" or for it to be a 5-4 split

This narrative during Pride month was absolutely intentional. The corporate media is fully in for fascism and desperate for you to agree.

My story on the one-year anniversary of the 2025 Independence Day Floods in Central Texas:

Fixler said he is almost always troubled by invocations of “Judeo-Christian.”…”It feels like a fig leaf at inclusion,…They’re promoting a particular version of Protestant Christianity in our public schools and trying to use Jews as cover by using the term Judeo-Christian.”

The organization of society around the fiction of immutable and hierachal sex is a mistake, hope this helps

I'm also annoyed by this but I'm begging people to realize that headlines are now dictated by appealing to SEO and "Heated Rivalry" is going to generate traffic, allowing publications to actually justify covering a queer indie movie that won't perform as well as something mainstream.

It's a deregulatory movement

LIVE BY THE NECROPOLITICS DIE BY THE NECROPOLITICS

Lmao

more and more lately i'm hearing short form internet cooks saying that cheese on a burger is bad and i genuinely think you don't deserve to have opinions and should not be trusted about anything, even outside of the kitchen, if you actually believe that. you are just factually incorrect. and evil.

I feel that Cornyn and Crockett both thought they'd get to run against each other in a battle for the center. Neither wants to help their party's candidate get elected and instead just say that they're working "in other places" / "down ballot"

It's also 10 years since Brexit. A slim majority blew up the country's economy and that led to this

Imagining Rod moving through Budapest like he thinks he's being hunted for sport

Every other local news story all week is about "look at these lovely drunken Scottish fans" and after a Cape Verde win in Brockton (big CV population) it's look at all the trash on the ground.

Tbh I'm excited to read the filings about the alleged vandalism at the Reflecting Pool

when people say that there is an entire welfare network for far right cranks that are bankrolled by local car barons and billionaires, what that means is that every university is prone to opening a Center For Freedom Thoughts Studies that focuses on how to ban trans people and put migrants in camps.

Starmer saying the next PM will inherit a country that is 'fairer' than the one he inherited 2 years ago. In the one Starmer inherited, trans people could use public toilets.

Broke: midsommar is a movie about bad relationships Woke: midsommar is a movie about white supremacists Bespoke: midsommar is a movie about how grad students should be killed

The remake of just one of the movies she starred in made over a billion dollars last year alone, and she still died in poverty from an extremely preventable infection. We need universal healthcare or we don’t have basic human rights.

I got the series when I was in high school, for the safety of others (but tbh, for me, gender was probably also a relevant motivator)

Oh, you can just nationally ban an app that promises to help students cheat?

the business is called what a what now sorry

BREAKING: Iran Suspends Entire 60-Day Negotiation Process With the U.S.

I don't think white people should get Juneteenth off

I mean, it'll probably spawn a stab-in-the-back myth just like every war since Korea. Hawks will claim the U.S. could have won if only there was an invasion

See, it'll be blue when all the coating rises to the surface, as planned 🙄

It’s been five years since Alex Jones lost InfoWars to the Sandy Hook families. As the verdict came down, he asked: “Do these people actually believe they’re getting any money?” He hasn't paid them a penny. Well, The Onion is going pay them anyway. The new InfoWars begins July 2nd at 8 p.m. ET.

From Alito & Kagan's concurrence: "marijuana use today is like alcohol use at the founding. It is widespread and increasingly considered socially acceptable in many quarters. And from a practical standpoint, law enforcement widely tolerates the use of marijuana."

AP photo shows water pumped from the Lincoln Reflecting Pool, it's so clearly blue (photo credit Cliff Owen)