Trump's mainstreaming of conspiracy theories has consequences.

"One study found that increasing the number of people who receive SNAP benefits by 5 percent could have prevented nearly 32,000 suicides over 15 years. And a $1 increase in minimum wage has been linked to roughly 8,000 fewer suicide deaths over a decade."

The Mississippi Legislature no longer has to redraw its state supreme court maps to create a majority Black district after a federal court vacated an order requiring the 38%-Black State to create a new map that complies with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. buff.ly/uPtqbCp

What's alt text? Why is it important on Bluesky? How do I write it? Where am I? What's going on?

This Supreme Court's majority doesn't care if they cause chaos, so long as it benefits their political party.

Israel’s efforts to influence the vote for the Eurovision Song Contest to improve its international reputation were far broader than previously known, a New York Times investigation found. Here is the inside story of the controversy that almost broke Eurovision. nyti.ms/3Rellcg

The war against Reconstruction never ended.

Northeast Lauderdale High School in Meridian, Mississippi, is investigating after a video appeared on social media showing a student using a rake to write the n-word in the dirt on a school baseball field. www.mississippifreepress.org/northeast-la...

Is The Daily Beast confused or is it just me???

What a freaking weirdo to stand up there and talk about teenage boys' sperm counts.

It was quite a week in Tennessee last week. Photojournalist John Partipilo captured the week in photos.

There were no fatalities after powerful storms brought tornadoes to at least five Mississippi counties, destroying 500 homes and injuring 17 people.

This is exactly it. There are beneficial AI tools that nobody is mad about (tools that help with accessibility, medical use, etc.) It's the generative AI slop we're being inundated with and the insistence on injecting it into every area of our lives with no real benefit that people rightly hate.

For the first time since news of Mississippi’s $77 million welfare scandal first broke in 2020, a judge has sentenced one of its conspirators, even as six others await sentencing.

Mississippi State Auditor Shad White says redistricting isn't just about partisan politics; it's about making sure "Bennie Thompson and Hakeem Jeffries are not in charge."

* SAUDI ARAMCO CEO NASSER: ENERGY SUPPLY SHOCK THAT BEGAN IN Q1 IS THE LARGEST THE WORLD HAS EVER EXPERIENCED * SAUDI ARAMCO CEO NASSER: IF HORMUZ DISRUPTION CONTINUES FOR A FEW MORE WEEKS, NORMALIZATION WON'T HAPPEN UNTIL INTO 2027 @reuters.com

“We Assume Flows Through the Strait of Hormuz Start to Recover in 5 Days and Fully Recover by Mid-April” - Goldman Sachs, just a few months ago

NEW: ChatGPT advised the FSU shooter that a mass shooting would get more attention from media if it involved several children, according to a new lawsuit against OpenAI www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

I used to be a WaPo Opinions video editor, and if a video didn't have 100 views within the first five minutes of publishing on Youtube, I would've considered it an embarrassing failure. Fortunately didn't happen much!

She didn't expect boos from her "AI is the next industrial revolution" any more than she expected wild applause for "Only a few years ago, AI wasn't a factor in our lives." People are sick of generative AI.

I wrote in March about the billionaire ownership class’ doomed strategy of trying to attract readers by pivoting right — and who it ends up hurting.

this graduation speech moment is notable, and her amazed shock at having failed to read the room feels instructive. when you're inside the bubble, you think everybody else is. but everybody isn't.

THREAD: A common claim I see is that the reason most of the photos we see from the 1960s are in black-and-white is because of some concerted effort to make events like the Civil Rights Movement seem more distant. While I understand the attraction to this idea, the reasons are simpler than that. 1/

Doctors say that fluoride helps build strong teeth. A guy who snorts cocaine off toilet seats and takes raccoon penises home for “further study” says it causes autism. For busy parents, it can be hard to know who to trust.

Alabama House speaker said he hopes SCOTUS “will overturn Amendment 14,” the one that made Black people citizens and guaranteed equal protection under law. It wasn’t just a slip. Today’s newsletter. 👉 link.al.com/public/45636...

It’s wild the context in which people were just openly declaring racial justice “went too far”

Marcomentum? Seriously? Media brainworms.

Thinking about this part... "Before the second recess, all four of Louisiana’s Black congressmen, past and present, since the Reconstruction era spoke to the committee..."

Imagine being proud of making children hungry.

In a state like Mississippi, which has no universal early-voting options and only limited absentee-voting options that most can’t take advantage of, knowing where to go on Election Day matters. Even small hurdles can add up and deter turnout. Mississippi’s 2024 turnout was just 57.5%.

We’ve spent years calling circuit clerks, tracking polling place changes and helping voters access accurate election information. Help us continue this work across Mississippi. Right now, the next $3,000 is matched. givebutter.com/mfpvip

President Trump wants the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool painted blue. He used an exemption to steer a $6.9 million contract to somebody he said had worked on his own pools, despite rules about how government money is spent, The New York Times found.

It truly amazes me how the NYT just does not think smaller publications are worthy of being cited in its pages.

Such an interesting article. Never thought about the artists who design postal stamps.

“If you’re passionate about something, stick to it, even if you’re bad at it,” retired MSU art professor Alex Bostic said. “You’re going to eventually get good, & that’s what I teach my students. … Success is when talent & opportunity meet, so work on your talent because opportunities will come.”

Babies who don’t get the vitamin K shot are 81 times more likely to develop severe bleeding. In many cases, oxygen can’t reach their brains and blood pools around their skulls. Yet driven by misinformation, more parents are refusing the injection.

You can stick a tape in your VCR and it just plays what you wanted it to play. It doesn't spy on you. A streaming service isn't editing it. Or removing it. You don't have to pay a subscription to keep using it. It's something tangible you own. Once you have, it's yours. Same with CDs, vinyl, etc.

My view is that the American South never fully took to liberal democracy. And I think we have to reckon with that to face the moment we’re now in. I wrote about it for @thebulwark.bsky.social www.thebulwark.com/p/liberal-de...

Here's an article about the NYTimes (very slow) transition to color photography. Beyond tech/ cost/ quality issues, the old guard associated grayscale imagery with seriousness and color imagery with tabloids or newfangled "McPapers" like USA Today. www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/i...

I hate that this needs to be explained to people but I do appreciate others are as annoyed by hearing that claim as I am.

The New York Times switched to color in *1997* Obviously the tech had been mature for a long time by then, but it was considered low class to print in color, like you’d blend in with USA Today and Weekly World News

THREAD: A common claim I see is that the reason most of the photos we see from the 1960s are in black-and-white is because of some concerted effort to make events like the Civil Rights Movement seem more distant. While I understand the attraction to this idea, the reasons are simpler than that. 1/

Folks are gonna make me have to explain the history of black and white and color film photography/photojournalism with all the misinformation that flies around this app 😩

The gold, 22-foot Donald Trump statue definitely isn’t a false idol. You can tell because Trump’s pastor friend said of the new statue at his Doral golf course, “Let me be clear: this is not a golden calf.”

This happened, even as white Republicans are now working to nullify Black-majority districts across the nation.

BREAKING: In a loss for Democrats, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled the congressional map voters approved last month to counter GOP gerrymanders cannot go into effect. The decision overturns the will of voters for technical reasons and gives Republicans a leg up for the 2026 midterms.

Bar for bar what they said about Eric Garner when he was murdered. Eugenics, ableism, and white supremacy go hand in hand.

Adam Serwer wrote this in 2018: