New — I spoke to parents whose kids are former patients of NYU Langone's trans youth health care program about the Texas criminal subpoena for their private health records. "I was furious. I was in disbelief. I was scared for my child's well-being." Read my full report:

The reason they had to threaten people's jobs over posting Charlie Kirk quotes verbatim is because most Americans, including many Trump voters, would recoil in horror if they ever got an uncensored view of what TPUSA is promoting.

We’re here because criminals overran our government. We got here because 1/3 of the voting public couldn’t be bothered to vote. We got here because another 1/3 are mentally indigent. Sarcasm is more than called for.

Yes, I have wondered how the WaPo's ed page, during the Bezos Reich, could have become so incredibly and un-self-aware-ly terrible. Seeing that the guy in this clip is in charge removes the mystery. (Obviously talking about O'Neal, not the stalwart @froomkin.bsky.social )

Parallel counterfactual: Of 100+ democracies that have been set up since US Constitution in 1787, virtually none have copied US model. (Exceptions I'm aware of: Liberia, Philippines. Could be more.) It's an antiquated, flawed system. US has thrived in spite of it, not because of it.

“The investments in Jared’s firm were meant to anchor ties with the Trump family,” said [a director at Chatham House, the British think tank ...] “The Gulf states likely felt very angered, if not let down, that the US didn’t fully consider their security needs.” archive.is/2026.05.14-1...

I’ve attached an addendum to this article responding to the piece DHS GC James Percival pubished in The Federalist 12 hrs after my piece ran. (DHS sent me a link to the Percival piece, so it may have been meant as a reply to mine, but I'm not sure.)

"The oligarchs want a permanent ruling class. The extremists want a permanent underclass to grind a boot into. The deal between them is straightforward enough: the oligarchs get captured courts and permanent tax cuts, the extremists get their hierarchy of human worth written back into the law"

With data from the @nytimes.com API, I analyzed all national+local coverage since 2000—224,000 articles— to see which topics in each state get covered out of proportion to the rest of the country. A portrait of how the paper of record sees America, one state per tweet, alphabetical. 👇

Or, less genteelly:

Aaron Bushnell was raised in this close-knit Cape Cod christian community, and he strongly rejected it. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communi...

Must be the Latin education, but absolutely no one, literally, no one, does political assassinations like the British do

“This year they’re expecting between 250 to 300,000 salmon returning, which would be the highest I can remember in a long time,” said Michael Rasmussen. Kind of astounding, particularly since Shasta Dam is still blocking so much of the historical migration. fox40.com/news/local-n...

"The Gila River Indian Community holds the biggest volume of CAP water that may be subject to cutbacks" Indian tribes tend to have the highest priority water rights on the Colo R, and Phoenix, Tucson, Vegas, & LA/SD will probably pay dearly for that water. www.kjzz.org/politics/202...

Kids are such hard work...

"Williamson also questioned the ... publication just two and a half years after OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022. “It is not feasible that dozens of high-quality studies about ChatGPT and learning performance could have been conducted, reviewed, and published in that time,” Williamson said.

I just can’t get over how willing the populace is to cede its fundamental right and ability _to_think_. Since when did that become so onerous and burdensome? Why do such large numbers of people find the idea of giving up analytical thinking a plus? Astounding and horrifying.

@dunsworth.bsky.social is reading Sapiens one page at a time and blogging about it. ecodevoevo.blogspot.com/2026/03/sapi...

keep on thinking i should probably read harari for general research purposes but then i open it at random to pages like this

Since the modern university trumpets the values of innovation, “thinking outside the box”, and entrepreneurialism, it is hard to see what anyone has to complain about here

A wonderful fact is that if you are holding an 100g apple in our 9.8 m/s^2 gravitational field, that apple is applying almost exactly 1 Newton of force against your hand. Isaac Newton certainly seemed to notice :-) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_...

"Mohammadi has been arrested 14 times for her activism on advancing women’s rights in Iran, improving the conditions of prisoners and ending the regime’s use of the death penalty." Exists a more misogynistic set of religious fanatics than the ayatollahs of Iran? www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

This piece rings true to me. The Morris worm, Canter & Siegel, and the Netscape IPO also prefigured our current dystopia. Even Barlow and the Wired bunch were mostly blowing smoke.

Criming season is open.

This is a very good website. I research privacy and surveillance for a living. I already know quite a bit about what our tools reveal about us and think about privacy and technology for most of my waking hours. And yet I still found myself gobsmacked when it all was put right in front of my face.

It's Infinite Jest made infinitely more Jeff.

"Prosecuting a group that the far right opposes by accusing the group of supporting the far right makes this one of the most cynical criminal cases ever brought by the Department of Justice."

In the aftermath of 2020 election we saw a slow-motion coup attempt. Now we’re watching a white supremacist slow-motion coup. Not an “attempt”; it’s happening.

"RECOGNIZING THE HEALING POWER OF FAITH: The United States is, and will always be, one nation under God. Over two-thirds Americans affiliate with a religion, and for the first time, the Strategy is grounded in the healing power of faith for those suffering from drug addiction." Turning existential.

For further context, and in contrast to what the IHE article from yesterday stated, the hack is very much still ongoing (it appears that Instructure tried to fix the Canvas breach, but the hackers got around the patches again today). www.thedp.com/article/2026...

I have been making fun of the Odyssey since I was a teenager and I’m not going to stop just because a director with a very parasocial fanbase has made it his mission to turn the Ancient Greek version of “Dude Where’s My Car” into a Very Serious Movie.

A reminder that this is why we make fun of The Odyssey. The book would not exist if Odysseus was not such a complete chaos goblin who was busy causing problems for himself by arguing with Gods and being a shit navigator. There is no way to make an extremely serious movie out of this material.

Would that Islamic feminists in Iran were trained and well armed, and could initiate a guerrilla insurgency to destroy their misogynistic (and positively medieval) ayatollahs.

I've been scooped (in a good way). I was working on a piece along these lines. This is better. substack.com/home/post/p-...

Ben Tarnoff (@bentarnoff.com)on Bill Gates’s long shadow https://go.nybooks.com/4nj5R2L

At some point Crown Prince Bonesaw is going to get really tired of all this.

Jesus Circles Earth Few Times So He Not First To Arrive To Judgment Day https://theonion.com/jesus-circles-earth-few-times-so-he-not-first-to-arrive-to-judgment-day/

Good to see: Senator Adam Schiff tells me that if Dems win Congress, wholesale fumigation and reform of DOJ will be essential due to Trump's world-historical corruption. "DOJ is in shambles," Schiff says. He and others lay out ideas on preventing future travesties: newrepublic.com/article/2099...

Comments in current DOJ are brutal.

"Political scientists describe the likely rout of Labour as heralding the definitive demise of the long-shaky duopoly dominated by Labour and the Conservatives. Instead, a landscape more akin to European politics, in which coalition-building becomes central, is in prospect."

"A third of children have bypassed online age checks in the past two months ... one mother caught her son using an eyebrow pencil to draw a moustache on his face to pass a platform's facial age estimation check." (He was successful.)

City Renames Street To Honor Charlie Kirk https://theonion.com/city-renames-street-to-honor-charlie-kirk/

Abortion Pill Thrown Into Air And Caught In Mouth

A survivor of the Kent State Massacre rings the bell on campus today, May 4, at exactly 12:20, the moment his classmates fell, 56 years ago.

Visiting Ireland for the first time this summer, so I've been following their journalists and commentators more closely these days.

My favorite virologists talk science and dish vitriol at current hype about AI and bioweapons. Grad school adventures with chemical burns make an appearance.

Covid broke a lot of brains. "Then-Governor Gary Herbert issued numerous emergency health orders which angered some in the legislature. So they passed a law that limited emergency declarations to only 30 days (and in retaliation, Gov. Herbert issued new ones every 30 days)"