Highly recommended! In addition to the usual topics, this edition also recommended a really great article: lithub.com/maybe-dont-t... It was maddening, entertaining, and crystallized my issues with the NYT.

We need libraries for so many reasons. www.11alive.com/article/news...

🇨🇦Signaling a new chapter in her career, pop star Katy Perry released a new single Monday about the superiority of Canadian manufacturing. “When I learned about the strength of Canadian automotive and aerospace manufacturing, I knew I had to put it in a song,” 😉 theonion.com/katy-perry-r...

EXCLUSIVE: One Saturday afternoon in October, my phone lit up with a notification. I glanced down at the message. “Anna, Lindsey Halligan here,” it began. So began my text exchange with the woman who is prosecuting the president's perceived political enemies. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/anna...

#Murderbot as a trans journey: 🤖💗🤍💙🏳️‍⚧️ "Life Lessons From a Murderbot" By Anya Johanna DeNiro Published on June 26, 2023, about the #books 🪐📚 reactormag.com/life-lessons...

The Oregon Republican Party tried to help Donald Trump make the case for military intervention in Portland with an image of a fiery protest — but since Portland is calm, they had to fabricate one by merging old photos of police in Ecuador and protesters in Brazil www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

It only took me a decade or three to notice that Benicio del Toro and Guillermo del Toro share the same last name (but are not related).

Absolutely fascinating!

[writing the constitution] Benjamin Franklin: Write down "no dumb fucks as president" Alexander Hamilton: Stop saying that Benjamin Franklin: I'm tellin' you. You're gonna regret not writing that down

No worries! All good here! www.theregister.com/2025/07/22/w... The researchers call the technique “privacy preserving”, but it seems more like it will add more signal to identification processes, reducing privacy measures more.

Agreed!! > The real takeaway is that Thiel desperately needs to stop besmirching Tolkien’s legacy by naming all of his nefarious projects after stuff from The Lord of the Rings. 1/2

I reshare this essay once in a while because it’s just that good

EXCLUSIVE — The Onion has a full-page ad in today’s NYT featuring part of an editorial calling out congressional fecklessness towards Trump. They also sent a copy of their latest issue to every lawmaker. My report, with an excerpt from the full editorial: www.thehandbasket.co/p/exclusive-...

I try not to be judgy, but these noisy people sat down near me in a slightly removed grassy area of the park I’m lying down in, AND one of them is SOOOOO idiotic. Thankfully, the other is quieter and maybe more thoughtful, because the first seems to be describing Catholics as an alien-loving cult. 😩

Has your boss ever tried to boost morale only to have it fail spectacularly? Here's my story. What's yours? shkspr.mobi/blog/2019/06...

Sigh. arstechnica.com/health/2025/...

I need to find my Romeo + Juliet soundtrack CD, because a couple tracks I remember fondly can’t be streamed, apparently. Oh, wait, I don’t have a CD player! 🤦🏻‍♂️

Very concerning: prospect.org/power/2025-0... Two sad (but darkly funny?) things: * with all that’s happened since this was published, it feels like I “forgot” about the AI bubble. (Cont’d)

Nation Could Have Sworn Russell Brand Was Already Convicted Sex Offender

Remarkable. A whole article that might be titled how all us super powerful people turned out to be Donald Trump bitches www.politico.com/news/2025/04...

🧵In the late-90s I got obsessed with cars. Not Ferraris and Porsches, ALL cars currently in production in Britain. I'd buy What Car magazine and I used to carry around a copy of Parkers guide. I dreamed of presenting Top Gear.

I need the “I hate this” button so I can Like this post.

This is horrible behavior!

Everything is heartbreaking now, but societal measles vulnerability is especially bad: arstechnica.com/health/2025/...

My 1st thought, probably unoriginal: “It’s not champagne if it doesn’t come from the Champagne region of France.”

> “A lot of the work [CDC probationary employees] do is duplicitous with AI,” … > “I happen to be a doctor. I know a few things.” 🧐🧐

Portuguese editorial cartoonist Zez Vaz reaches back to Tiananmen Square to call on American defiance.

I generally disdain op-eds as they too frequently seem to be more opinion than supported fact, but I read www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti... by economist Allison Schrager because I'm every hopeful. Long story, short: It's got cites and plausible analysis until it gets to the bads of single-ness. 1/3

The Stonewall Inn released a response to the National Parks Service removing the word transgender from the park outside of the Inn. A great reminder that we have to look after each other

See here's how to do a headline. fortune.com/2025/02/13/e...

It's going to be a long four years, especially if we make ourselves insane misreading budget documents. This is a story where multiple things are true at the same time and it's a warning about how we consume information going forward gizmodo.com/the-400-mill...

Amy Berman Jackson: "Michael Fanone’s heroism will never be moot" www.emptywheel.net/2025/02/07/a...

"If you encounter a broken web interface, which you will, today, probably multiple times, this setup is fundamentally why it sucks so badly. It’s not the binary in your computer at fault; it’s the binary we ascribe to our brains." Why is everything binary?

Around 35% of SpaceX’s revenue comes directly from the federal govt. Less than 1% of NPR’s budget comes from the federal govt.

Evidently, this is Venus next to the moon. Apologies for my crappy phone camera.

Turns out egg prices were only a justification not to vote for a woman of color.

As the article notes, OpenAI ingested vast amounts of data of un-stated provenance to train its LLMs. Not sure I feel much empathy for the allegations that their data was stolen to train DeepSeek. Also, the allegations feel conveniently timed.

Everything is so damn stupid.

My dad was tortured by the Gestapo for 4 days and thrown in a concentration camp for being in the Norwegian Resistance. Growing up, he would tell me things he learned in the Resistance. I thought, I'm never going to need this stuff. Here's some of those things #Thread

RIP David Lynch

No women I know listen to audiobooks. /s Though it probably is hard for some women to listen to the named podcasters.

From the article: “But others came to Hegseth’s defense. “I’ve literally never heard of ASEAN and I’ve followed geopolitics all my life,” one X user said.” The X user is 4?

Tori Amos interview from a month ago: www.theguardian.com/music/2024/d... I’m also sad about the things she is grieving about (Trump and Gaiman, mostly), so I hope I can find ways to make our world better.

I'm introducing a version of a thing you already have, but now it has AI Imagine being able to do something you would never ever want to do. Well now it's finally possible thanks to AI

This article describes so many astounding and fishy aspects of this new fluoride-in-water study. If people really want to change that policy (or really any major policy change), I wish they would insist on consistent, unbiased, and verifiable methodologies.

Missed this a month ago. I’m not surprised by this becoming more relevant to us. arstechnica.com/ai/2024/12/y...

"In the U.S., an average of about 900 people a week have died of COVID-19 over the past year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

From the linked PBS article: “In the U.S., an average of about 900 people a week have died of COVID-19 over the past year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

Still the best take I’ve seen on the story.