NEWS: Virginia's governor vetoed a bill late last night that'd have banned prosecutors from pressuring Virginians into waiving their constitutional rights. That's right, local prosecutors often get defendants to sign away Fourth Amendment protections to get a plea — for years.

With Virginia on board, the National Popular Vote Compact is now enacted in states worth 222 electoral votes. Here's what that means. n.pr/41xl7iy

journalists staying on twitter because news happens there cover the news that happens there challenge

For those hereabouts scrambling to remediate course materials in order to meet the end of the month deadline for compliance with new federal ADA Title II standards, here is the endgame as I see it: 🧵

New: Texas Tech University System’s chancellor on Friday ordered campuses to phase out academic programs “centered on” sexual orientation and gender identity, escalating a course content review that has already upended classes across the system.

It also follows from the idea that "the" future is inevitable that the PRESENT is/was inevitable, a position that almost none of these jokers would accept

NYTimes has spent years breathlessly repeating claims that objecting to the treatment of Palestinians is antisemitic, but when right-wingers say they're “J-pilled,” NYTimes calls this "slang for skepticism of Israeli influence." Where's the "J" in "Israel"? Might that "J" mean something else?

Imagine breaking into a building with this in it and heisting a Renoir instead, smdh

“Guilty pleasure“ is actually a good concept because it marks the way our enjoyment inevitably comes into conflict with other values. We can’t get rid of guilty pleasures—hardly anyone believes that pleasure is the ONLY value—we can only negotiate them.

feels like i send my reading group email and then @jasonkoebler.bsky.social publishes a piece that makes me wish i waited so i could've linked it this piece for @404media.co illustrates how Anthropic's labor market junk ignores how a lot of work depends on the internet not being awash w/AI garbage

This is one way to differentiate "genre" from "literary" writing; genre writing is calling in a pre-existing audience rather than constructing a new one.

The world you are living in has a history; the way things are now is not the way things have always been.

North Tehran’s Aqdasiyeh oil depot is ablaze tonight after it was targeted by multiple US-Israeli airstrikes. Apocalyptic scenes filmed by Iranians driving on the nearby highway. Local reporters saying firefighters can’t put it out. This depot is critical energy infrastructure for Iran.

1. Its been a week since NYU Langone ended its trans youth care program. Then Sinai followed a few days ago. There are immediate steps Mamdani can take, and he refuses to do so. When asked about those steps, his office has chosen not to comment repeatedly. Subscribe to support our journalism.

Isaiah Zagar used tiny and broken bits to make Philly more beautiful, and there's nothing more beautiful than that. Zagar's Magic Gardens is one of the places I take folks who are visiting Philly for the first time because it's so damn incredible. 1/3

The wonderful thing about Tyggers Is Tyggers are burning bright Their tops are made out of rubber In the forest of the night What bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy, Immortal hand or eye Did frame the most wonderful thing about Tyggers, Their fearful symmetry!

This NYT column by @polgreen.bsky.social is the truest thing I've ever seen about the REAL reason public trust in the media collapsed

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey has supported immigration enforcement against people with criminal records and defended an agreement her state has with ICE. “I’m all for getting the bad guys,” she told Boston’s CBS affiliate.

The synthesis of this contradiction is IMO that a lot of the rhetoric of chatbot personhood is produced through and for sadistic fantasy. The *reason* a lot of people want to convince themselves that chatbots are people so badly is SO they can get off on "abusing" them

Fuentes then fantasizes about “breeding gulags”: “So just like Hitler imprisoned Gypsies, Jews, communists, you know, all of his political rivals, we have to do the same thing with women… They go to the breeding gulags. The good ones will be liberated. The bad ones will toil in the mines forever.”

But when I read about *how* its being used, it's mostly stories like OP--people using it for convenience, and only later some developing serious confusion and mystification that god is speaking to them or they are dating a computer. The mystification emerges more from habit than epistemology

Gorey

The International Olympic Committee ruled that an image of Toussaint Louverture, born into slavery and and leader of the Haitian Revolution, on Haiti’s uniforms violated Olympic rules barring political symbolism

Thank you and farewell to this maestro of effervescence and sting

‘In major assessments for maths, science and reading from 2011 to 2019, greater in-school computer use for learning correlates with lower scores. In contrast, students in classes with rare or no computer use at all typically score highest’

Blistering piece on ed tech in @economist.com. ‘Although ed-tech companies tout huge learning gains, independent research has made clear that technology rarely boosts learning in schools—and often impairs it.’ economist.com/united-state...

Legendary reggae drummer Sly Dunbar, one half of Sly & Robbie, has died at 73 stereogum.com/2486631/sly-...

1. ICE has STOPPED PAYING for medical treatment for its 73,000 detainees ICE has not paid its bills to 3rd party providers since OCTOBER and the situation will likely persist for MONTHS, a Popular Information investigation reveals Meanwhile, critically ill ICE detainees are not receiving care 🧵

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has upheld a decision by city parks and arts officials to allow the controversial Vaillancourt Fountain to be removed from Embarcadero Plaza.

These 75 Democrats joined Republicans to "express gratitude" to ICE agents and call for greater local and state collaboration with ICE. jonathancohn.medium.com/a-tale-of-tw...

In the new VLC, @bassidiki.bsky.social deftly reveals the shared imperial logic bridging the juridical + medical senses of "immunity," showing why The Sign of Four is an island novel—and, by bringing in Ross, a less exceptional one than people pretend. Read it while it's hot! tinyurl.com/ywv45d3z

Gwendolyn Brooks (at 16)

Osita Nwanevu with the perfect rejoinder to that nonsense Compact piece (which way too many self-professed "liberals" took at face value), fleshed out with the types of actually diligent statistics and contextual analyses sorely absent from the conversation: www.ositanwanevu.com/on-race-gend...

*whispers* this would also be right about fan culture sorry 👀

Dallas City Council members approved exploratory measures for privatizing City Hall as they seek to sell the community site, demolishing its I.M. Pei-designed Brutalist building and a public plaza with sculptures to make way for a new casino funded by Trump donor Miriam Adelson.

I got kicked off a committee for repeatedly asking "why would we want that?"

Texas A&M University will not reinstate a lecturer who was fired after a video of her teaching about gender identity in a children’s literature class went viral, despite a faculty appeals panel unanimously concluding that her dismissal was not justified.

Like the suburban developments named after whatever natural feature was destroyed to build them

A better framework is to address the broader project of AI to displace interpersonal contact, thought, negotiation; and to normalize this project. This aspect of AI is essential to the economic agenda that it underpins. 2/n

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, and she'd say "Nice catch!" when I pointed to a potential problem, or "Great observation" in response to my comments.

Steve isn’t here anymore, but he always posted this picture on Hanukkah so I thought we could carry on his tradition and remember him.

it’s St Lucy’s day, so you know what that means — time for the best John Donne poem

i really want to push back more forcefully on this dishonest portrayal of the self as a "neutral" party. like setting aside that it's categorically not true, it's specifically being weaponized by people who perhaps don't have expertise, but certainly have prior interests in these subjects.

To the New York Times, a constitutional provision is just something that's "traditional."

In addition to all of the other benefits already reported about NYC congestion pricing, "In the first six months of the program, air pollution – in the form of particulate matter 2.5 micrometers and smaller – dropped by 22% in the Congestion Relief Zone (CRZ)" news.cornell.edu/stories/2025...

Wait did everyone else already just know that What I Got is Lady Madonna 🤯

A giant

Nonsense from Castro. Clearly having well-funded candidates across statewide races is a good idea, but JC could obviously run for AG in any case! The idea that having a high-profile Lieutenant Governor candidate is make-or-break for an AG race is bizarre and self-serving.

🚨🚨 Texas A&M Board of Regents is meeting next week and set to approve a new policy requiring pre-approval of courses on race and gender. This is a blatant violation of academic freedom.