I heard a NPR segment about Stephen Colbert, and it ended with the open-ended question of what he might be doing next. How about Stephen Colbert for president?

Patrick McGeehan | 'In the past year, consumer prices in the region rose 4.6%, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was significantly higher than the national inflation rate of 3.8%.' Will high inflation up labor unrest in the US? Yes, in NYC. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/n...

Lee Drutman | 'There is no secret lasting formula to being the dominant majority party for the 2030s or 2040s, because America is too big and diverse to have one dominant national party.' www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/o...

Sounds ominous. Would be a good place for aliens to hide.

Reagan paved the way with a dog whistle. Trump showed the racists really wanted the bullhorn.

The Economist | 'The tide of the [Russian war in Ukraine] looks to be turning. Russia’s death toll remains extraordinarily high, and its spring offensive has stalled.' Ukraine is winning. 3% of R's pre-war male population has been killed or wounded, 1.1-1.5M men. www.economist.com/graphic-deta...

Lydia Polgreen | Trump 'has shown nothing but contempt for the patient work of building durable power based on consensus, preferring the blitzkrieg of violence.' Learning the lesson of Athens, 416 BCE, 2500 years later. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/o...

Nate Cohn | 'In the polling era, there are no examples of the president’s party retaining the White House when the president’s approval rating is under 40%. More often, the election is a rout.' Good news for those who want the GOP out. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/u...

Want And Need Nick Bunker | Who To Believe About The (Coming?) Jobs Apocalypse? | Other Things Don’t count out the possibility that people want and need work. | Nick Bunker The labor market is not just a bunch of numbers. It’s made of people. www.workfutures.io/p/want-and-n...

Tressie McMillan Cottom | 'People can live in suspended terror for only so long.' The Nerd Reich wants us scared. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/o...

The first step is admitting you've conducted yourself in a way that deserves jail time - and that's what Trump is admitting here. #TrumpCrimeFamily

Tressie McMillan Cottom | 'The girl boss leadership strategy isn’t just outdated; the “how to get ahead” genre is the antithesis of today’s labor market. Getting ahead is for a time when companies are hiring.' Girl boss influencers are losing their draw. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/o...

Carlos Lozada | 'Trump promised no more forever wars; Iran could be his whatever war.' There is no offramp. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/o...

Short Takes #29: Smaller in Comparison We learn to think of history as something that has already happened, to other people. Our own moment, filled as it is with minutiae destined to be forgotten, always looks smaller in comparison. | M Gessen www.workfutures.io/p/short-take...

The Past Becomes A Refuge Yi-Ling Liu | Employer Concentration | Factoids When the future loses its promise, the past becomes a refuge. | Yi-Ling Liu www.workfutures.io/p/the-past-b...

Jamelle Bouie | 'Whatever Democrats do, they must do something.' Stuff the Supreme Court with leftists. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/o...

Palmer drought index. Worst ever. Worse than the dust bowl. Fire season is coming.

this is the closest I've ever come to actually suggesting a "one neat trick" suggestion for anything, but I'm so serious here. the Virginia Constitution gives the legislature the power to set retirement ages for judges "REGARDLESS OF THE TERM TO WHICH ELECTED OR APPOINTED." make it 54 right now.

Anton Troianovski | 'A Pew Research Center survey in March found that 57% of Republicans under 50 have an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 50% last year and 35% in 2022, and about the same share as Americans overall.' Young GOP is turning on Israel. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/06/u...

Word of the Day: Dry-Chatting I'll have my AI email your AI. Dry-Chatting is when people test out a difficult discussion in advance by chatting with an AI. www.stoweboyd.io/p/word-of-th...

Putin's war in Ukraine drags on longer than the Soviet battle against the Nazis in WWII. And copycat Trump is emulating that failure in Iran. www.wsj.com/world/russia...

I was/am one of the leading experts in social / collaborative tech - and its deployment and adoption. I’ve worked with some amazing orgs. No one seems to be interested in my expertise these days but admittedly, I am not trying too hard because all I see is over-hyped, breathless deployment of AI.

From “taking Kyiv in 3 days” to warning people to watch out for Ukrainian drones over Moscow. Quite the collapse of the narrative.

Paul Krugman | 'Deep red states like Alabama and West Virginia have life expectancy comparable to, say, Kazakhstan.' paulkrugman.substack.com/p/maga-will-...

NACHO = Not A Chance Hormuz Opens

Clive Thompson turned me onto this hilarious tool: 'a little Kagi translator that takes a normal English sentence and translates it into the clotted weaselspeak one finds in the average LinkedIn post'. www.workfutures.io/i/196460310/...

Trump has hit a new low.

59% of U.S. respondents said that Trump does not have the mental sharpness it takes to lead the country.

Short Takes #28: The Older You Are Walter Mosley | It's Going To Get Worse | Weaselspeak | Factoids One of the truisms of human life is that the older you are, the more you live in the past. | Walter Mosley www.workfutures.io/p/short-take...

Teachers: "Please help us get AI out of schools, it's ruining education!" Students: "Please don't make us use AI, it's ruining our lives!" Politicians: "We hear you and we want to help you harness the power of AI." #NihilismAndTechnology

Zack Cooper | 'We are directing our anger at the part of [Health Care] that is most visible and frustrating (insurers’ restrictions on care) while ignoring the part of the health system that is most responsible for high costs and economic pain: hospital prices.' www.nytimes.com/2026/05/04/o...

Short Takes #27: The Full Consequences So Much Money Building AI Infrastructure | Ticketing Driverless Cars | AI Layoffs In India, Too www.workfutures.io/p/short-take...

Starting to think that you can reliably tell that a technology is a dead end when Meta bets big on it

55% of Americans say their financial situation is getting worse—a higher share than at any point in the past 25 years. (Gallup: news.gallup.com/poll/708905/...)

Michelle Goldberg | 'A Democratic version of the Tea Party is emerging as voters seek to upend a system that they believe has failed them.' Feckless Dem leadership in DC. Yes, feckless. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/30/o...

Neither Fated Nor Guaranteed Thomas Zimmer | The Wheels Are Coming Off | First, The Bankers? There is nothing inevitable about either doom or progress. We are neither fated nor guaranteed to experience the status quo for all eternity. | Thomas Zimmer www.workfutures.io/p/neither-fa...

Lynsey Chutel | 'At least 95 percent of Europe had above-average annual temperatures in 2025.' In May, more than half of Europe was in drought. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/29/w...

Trump is afraid of the world. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/29/o...

*Every* Republican is responsible for Trump's failures - the enabling Republicans sitting in Congress and the SCOTUS of course, but also their staff, their advisors, their BIG$ donors, their media shills, and the *voters* who put unfit Republicans into these positions of power.

Paul Krugman | 'The longer [Trump's] fugue state lasts, the worse the damage will get.' He's talking 'ballroom' while the world is short 11M barrels of oil a day. paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-oil-sq...

We dom't nee a Jeffries.

How much taxpayer money is being wasted on this shit? How much of YOUR money is DoJ spending to placate the world's most childish petty man instead of pursuing justice for ACTUAL victims?

Not a good look for the GOP, heading to the elections.

Aparna Kumar writes the obit for Third Voice, in 2001, after a 1999 launch. margin.at has features that remind me of Third Voice.... margin.at/stoweboyd.bs...

Annie Karni | 'All four Black Republicans in the House are leaving Congress next year: Three are seeking statewide office, and one is retiring because redistricting in his state effectively boxed him out of his seat.' It's the White People's Party. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/25/u...

Bluesky should copy the margin.at feature of annotating web pages, not just cutting-and-pasting into bsky skeets. Like Third Voice.

Shane Goldmacher | 'It takes 218 seats to win a majority, meaning Republicans would need to sweep every single race rated a tossup or better to hold the House majority.' GOP headed for extinction? www.nytimes.com/2026/04/28/u...

If the election was held next week, the GOP would lose.... margin.at/stoweboyd.bs...

Trump will try, though.... margin.at/stoweboyd.bs...

No matter where I go- work, the grocery store, even just on the street- I hear one thing from people: we need a ballroom