MIT (endowment: $27B) shuttering three of its four main libraries is one of those news items that just knocks you off balance, auguring, as it does, profound and permanent changes to the entire institutional apparatus of higher education in this country.

just remembered the time, back when I was on twitter, that I said 'originalism is astrology for people who feel bullied by the Civil Rights Movement' and a bunch of people into astrology were like 'how dare you' 😭

Funny story: 13 is the same number of service members who died in the pullout from Afghanistan, for which Biden received brutal bipartisan media coverage for months

To people like Jeff Behar, actually treating the Sermon on the Mount like it means anything is worse than corrupt bigotry.

University administrators two years ago: we can’t allow social justice movements to change the university as we know it University administrators today: in order to accommodate the new probabilistic bullshit generator no one likes we must change everything about the university

Tennessee again looked a state of dunces after the Knox County Board of Education banned "Roots," by the late Alex Haley, who lived in Tennessee at several times in his life. "Roots" is also a state book.

This is the most incredible triumph of propaganda in my lifetime. The idea that Hitler was "left" and/or a "socialist" once was correctly seen as self-evidently insane. But here we have the richest & most powerful man on earth blithely repeating it.

Letting this man speak in any public, let alone official, role is a disservice to all people everywhere. He lies, with abandon, to anyone who will listen, to foment fear and anger, to advance his racist aims.

He’s been President for over 5 years and we’ve never received the details of even one real medical exam even as he deteriorates before our eyes and the media just allows it

Caught a few details on a YouTube explainer and it just seems extremely whacked out the way they are openly planning to loot public funds and people are salivating about the possibility

So, @edzitron.com ate his Wheatties this morning

I don't think this has any teeth and is obviously at odds with existing rules that have survived more competent challenges from smarter villains, but thanks Trump for letting voters know your solution for corruption is to make it illegal to expose corruption www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

Listen in on scientists finding (and falling for) a new species of octopus now called Microeledone galapagensis. Read more here www.scientificamerican.com/article/tiny...

If Florida and California were separate sovereign countries two thousand miles apart, and California decided to change its own internal motor vehicle laws, how could that possibly be a “casus belli”? Their brains are melted.

Another one — @acluindiana.bsky.social obtains a $225,000 settlement for a Ball State University employee fired over a Charlie Kirk post. www.aclu-in.org/press-releas... That’s at least $1,545,000 in settlements over Kirk-related censorship in the past week alone.

The Vatican went and made infographics for the encyclical 👍

If you wanted people to be less hostile to "AI" then you should have had a different group of liars trying to push it than the ones behind the metaverse, crypto, driverless cars, NFTs etc. "Sorry but we're only so gullible!"

they’re shooting crowd control munitions at crowds that include multiple members of congress, the governor, and a sitting united states senator. they fired pepper balls at the senator. they cannot and will not be reigned in by democracy, whatever’s left of it.

Can’t believe that Andy Kim is in two of the most haunting pictures of the last few years.

We're used to this idea that police can tear gas anything they don't like now. It should be a fireable offense.

Uber’s COO has said that it’s getting “harder to justify” its AI costs because there was no way to show a link between AI spend and any meaningful increase in useful features. This is the first time I’ve seen a company say this directly. www.businessinsider.com/uber-coo-and...

BREAKING: Adam Hoffman has been released from jail for "good behavior." Hoffman is the Waco, TX attorney who faced life without parole for repeatedly raping a young boy, until Texas AG Ken Paxton offered him 1 day in jail and no need to register as a sex offender.

A PhD student at Stanford noticed her classmates were asking Al to write their breakup texts. So she ran a study. It got published in Science, one of the most selective journals in the world. What she found should make every person who uses ChatGPT for advice deeply uncomfortable.

oh hey I did another one of these things www.dailykos.com/stories/2026...

"We must avoid the 'Babel syndrome,' the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language — even a digital one — can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance."

It’s honestly hilarious how many Serious Opinion Havers keep independently rediscovering the same discourse of “BlueSky sucks because I don’t know how to make friends”

something I don't see mentioned enough in discussions abt consumer sentiment is that people watched Elon Musk and the Hitler Youth completely dismantle several agencies and destroy thousands of livelihoods on a whim, and that is a terrifying concept even if you aren't a government worker

I am struck that the one time I wrote for The Atlantic, they had a fact-checker who demanded I include links for even quite minor claims in the piece or at least substantiate those claims to him, whereas when TCW writes for them, there isn't a single link or example to be found.

When you see someone complaining about “bubbles” etc, seeing some form of writing credit in their bio is as certain as seeing a guy with a a Greek statue avatar argue “it’s ephebophilia actually”.

That’s exactly right.

The US’ main aim now, according to Rubio’s speech, is keeping the Strait of Hormuz open, which wasn’t even an issue before blundering Trump launched his illegal war. And it’s the issue because for the first time there are consequences - vast economic harm and lost votes in America.

You may remember Republicans absolutely losing their mind when Obama released $1.7 billion in frozen Iranian assets.

The US DOJ does not consider solicitation of a minor to be a crime

BREAKING: Federal judge dismisses the case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia in Tennessee. Opinion: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us... Order: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Also just a crystalline example of how the AI industry completely normalizes execs telling outrageous lies and exaggerations to get what they want

"technology automates everything" is a story with two endings the utopian one where abundance allows everyone to live a life of leisure, and the dystopian one where all the benefits accrue to a small set of oligarchs and everyone else suffers the oligarchs are asking us to cheer for option B

He definitely watched it. Them hit dogs…yall know the rest

So if I’m understanding it the outlines of the prosecutorial misconduct in the Broadview Six case is this. They tried three times to get an indictment. After they failed the second time they simply booted the grand jurors who didn’t think the conduct was a crime. Then they told the remaining …

why are they so weird and defensive amanpour didn’t impugn the reporting she’s just reacting with the level of surprise that a reasonable person with knowledge of the parties would experience at reading such a story

HOLY FUCKING SHIT

NESTERAK: President Trump has granted clemency to numerous individuals who have stolen hundreds of millions in Medicaid funds. Can we expect any of these folks to be shown the same mercy? McDONALD: I'll take a different question

NEW: Five teen girls were targeted by AI-generated child sexual abuse material at a Pennsylvania high school. In the days and weeks after the school learned about the abuse, the administration failed students, according to parents who spoke to 404 Media. TW:

Among the Jan 6ers eager to get in line for $1.8 billion in government money: a sex offender who bear-sprayed cops www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202... @merylkornfield.bsky.social

Fox News doing a whole primetime segment about how Republicans aren't evil and why you should be friends with them even as a non conservative is super interesting to me because of the role Fox plays in its viewers lives.

The "Liberal Media" was always a myth but it's wild that we blew past its total and utter debunking without comment

The tell that some maga douchebag is spitting utter bullshit is the use of the nefarious “they”. The mighty antifa, leftist cabal, the deep state, some evil presence referred to as “they”. “They” didn’t leak trumps return to discredit him, a lone contractor released 400k returns, 1 was trumps.

"If Tennessee is already one of the best places in America to do business, why are taxpayers being asked to subsidize one of the largest corporations in the world, a corporation by the way that is cutting jobs and closing stores?" said Pamela Furr of Americans for Prosperity.

Nice way of saying we failed in saving money, but we did fuck up your government

This thread is an entire college course

Old Kingdom tombs with 160 pottery vessels discovered at Qubbet el Hawa, Egypt Archaeologists working at Qubbet el Hawa in Aswan have uncovered a new group of rock-cut tombs dating to the Old Kingdom, around 2686 to 2181 BCE... More information: archaeologymag.com/2026/02/old-... #archaeology