Everyone knows that presidential pardons do not apply to state charges. What this order presupposes is ... maybe they do.

[shocked Pikachu face meme]

people made fun of this in 2014 but every last thing about it turned out to be true

Just so y'all know ... a huge part of content moderation and online safety at tech platforms is geared toward preventing the spread of *child sex abuse material*.

I wrote about the fake account blowup on X this weekend. A genuine post-truth nightmare and proof that these companies have polluted their platforms so thoroughly and traded reality for profit that they've undermined the very idea of what the internet is supposed to be.

The Queens Daily Eagle remains undefeated.

Apropos of nothing: The vast majority of my family is MAGA, and they've been obsessed for years with the idea that NYC some kind of criminal hellscape. They were also quite concerned with our recent local election, oddly enough. And I'm wondering now whether to send them some screenshots or nah.

Well worth the time to read this piece by the ACLU's Brett Max Kaufman on the Trump administration's boat strikes. Here's the kicker:

NEW: As Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick drives billions of dollars in foreign payments to help build AI data centers in the US, his sons help run a company earning tens of millions in fees helping finance AI data centers. A NYT investigation. (Free link) www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/u...

This experience mirrors reports of A.I. chatbots reinforcing delusional thinking in some people, as @kashhill.bsky.social has written about extensively. One good point is that certain communities on the internet did this already (think QAnon). But A.I. is available 24-7 and is even more insular.

Filing this under "What could possibly go wrong?" futurism.com/artificial-i...

Amid military strikes on Venezuelan boats, Trump's team has said Pres. Maduro leads the "narcoterrorist org Cartel de los Soles." But "Cartel de los Soles" is not a literal group. Just a Venezuelan figure of speech. More great work from @charliesavage.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/u...

Earlier this year, agents found videos showing violent sexual abuse of a young child. But the agents have since been asked to arrest undocumented immigrants, hindering progress toward rescue. This and more from @mhkeller.bsky.social and team in an important story. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/16/u...

Always love a story that involves reporters looking through thousands of hours of mind-numbing video. (I say this seriously.)

Meta earns $3.5 billion every six months from showing Faceboon and Instagram users 15 billion “higher legal risk” scam ad impressions a day, internal documents state. That haul vastly exceeds how much the company expects regulators To fine it for running scam ads. www.reuters.com/investigatio...

Both The New York Times and Airwars are tracking the U.S. strikes on boats in the Carribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. 64 or 65 killed in 15 separate incidents. NYT: www.nytimes.com/interactive/... Airwars: airwars.org/conflict/u-s...

PSA: Please stop giving advice on spotting the hallmarks of A.I.-generated videos. Even the pros are are having a hard time. We can't OSINT sleuth our way out of this problem. wapo.st/4ljYzJy

New from 404 Media: CBP has quietly launched a facial recognition app for local cops to do immigration enforcement. Scans their face, tells cops whether to contact ICE about this person or not. A truly rapid expansion of ICE's facial recognition app to local cops www.404media.co/cbp-quietly-...

Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who has repeatedly criticized his rival, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, for living in a rent-stabilized apartment, occupied a rent-stabilized unit himself when he was a young professional living in New York City in the 1980s.

New Yorkers: Come to City Hall Park tomorrow at noon and join the unionized reporters, photographers and editors of the New York Daily News, as we call on Heath Freeman and Alden Global Capital to pay fair wages and agree to worker protections.

Almost every major news story this week is about how the entire economy is now gambling, scams, bribes and theft.

Preliminary results show that the current framework of "AI" makes ppl less likely to help or seek help from other humans, or to seek to soothe conflict, and that people actively prefer that framework to any others, literally serving to make them more dependent on it.

Oh my God, its title is "Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence." The Wikipedia article about it is giving me a panic attack. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diella_...

Updating my LEGO White House

Aggregate measures say the economy is doing pretty well right now. But that obscures a growing divide: Wealthy Americans, buoyed by stock market gains, are spending. Low-and middle-income Americans are struggling amid inflation and a weakening labor market. #EconSky www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/b...

In Mexico, a doctor has to stitch kids up by flashlight. In Ireland, data centers consume more than 20% of the country’s electricity (!). In Chile, aquifers are in danger. Important story by @paulmozur.bsky.social @satariano.bsky.social, Emiliano Rodríguez Mega www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/t...

This good piece by @stuartathompson.bsky.social really drives home how much AI slop the president posts these days. Also, it uses the word "excrement" in the second paragraph. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

The only excuse Lois Lane has for why her interviewing Superman isn't unethical, despite their romantic entanglement, is that it would be even more unethical for the paper's other top reporter, who is Superman, to interview himself, yet she cannot say this. This dilemma should be taught in J-school.

Didn't expect anyone to take "internet of shit" quite so literally.

When Bashar al-Assad’s regime collapsed in Syria, many of the officials who enabled and enforced his brutal regime disappeared. Our reporting uncovers who they are, what they did and where they fled. nyti.ms/3J1W5Cs

BREAKING from PP We found immigration agents have held more than 170 *citizens* The govt doesn't track citizens held. So we did. We tallied: Nearly 20 kids, two w/ cancer More than 20 citizens held for day or more, incommunicado www.propublica.org/article/immi... by @nicolefoy.bsky.social

A statement from The New York Times on the Pentagon’s press pass policy:

That name sounds super Latin. Seems sus.

This is like a tweet thread from back when social media was good.

I hope you'll read this, all the way thru. A gift article on a really important thing that happened today in Newark. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/n...

As immigration agents have escalated their tactics, US citizens, many of them Latino men, have been stopped and in some cases taken into custody by law enforcement officers. Allison, Jenny and I took a closer look at the encounters. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/u...

Lawyers, tell me, is it bad when a federal judge describes having to "endure" your allegations and "florid," "enervating" prose? And then rejects your complaint as "decidedly improper and impermissible" without the defense even filing a word? (Trump v. NYT) storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

I experienced this last week & refused, saying I had never before been asked to provide the names of any analysts I was planning to quote to get a comment. Spox replied that maybe they were D donors. (In that case, it was 3 retired top military JAG officers.) I guess that was not a weird oneoff.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This is by Karl Rove.

The United States is a country where comedians must take care not to offend the ruling party if they want to keep their jobs.

And now, this…

Weird how I keep thinking about this

This is the essential point. This will go nowhere. 100% of the issue with all the other media suits is that a rogue president is a huge danger to a big diversified corp which also owns a media company. They can be hit everywhere. The NYT is just the NYT. No vulnerability.

In my inbox ...

This is a good take! I like to tell people that investigative journalism is way more boring and tedious than they assume.

As I have said to friends many times, the crises of the 21st century (GWOT, financial crises, etc) simply don’t add up in a material sense to the level of crazy and authoritarianism we are seeing today. Internet and social media are a much better root cause explanation.

The country’s most powerful bank became a critical cog in Epstein’s massive sex trafficking operation. JPM processed more than $1 billion in transactions for the sex offender. Here’s our investigation. @davidenrich.bsky.social @mattgoldstein26.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/m...

Teens calling Idaho's suicide hotline are being told they can't proceed with the conversation without parental consent. Many of the callers are then hanging up. Idaho approved a strict parental consent law last year. idahocapitalsun.com/2025/08/29/i...

Have we tried looking into the brain worms problem? I'm starting to think we should.