I have so many thoughts.

Jason Koebler@jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 2w ago

Instagram influencers are repeatedly going viral by making fake cease-and-desist letters from Flock that suggest they are at risk by talking about surveillance. These videos have millions of views. Meanwhile, useful projects like DeFlock got actual cease-and-desists www.404media.co/the-rise-of-...

bro is Thomas's entire concurring opinion just him noting that the court's opinion should have been more vicious towards trans people

30 years for moving some zines www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

The biohackers subreddit banned all posts about peptides and HRT because peptide companies were spamming + manipulating the sub in order to manipulate Google AI and ChatGPT answers. Very insidious industry that is drastically changing the internet www.404media.co/companies-ar...

Companies Are Using Reddit to Manipulate ChatGPT and Google AI Search

Peptide companies have been doing AI-engine optimization by spamming the biohackers subreddit to manipulate ChatGPT and Google.

404media.co

1/ Tear gas was created to incapacitate grown men. So when I started seeing reports of kids hurt by tear gas deployed by federal immigration agents, I wondered how often it was happening. My colleagues and I started to count:

In the spirit of that, read my FULL story! www.theverge.com/report/92000...

Your feed is overrun with clips — this is the cutthroat community of “clippers” behind it

In the age of clips, what’s the value of the full-length work?

theverge.com

New: Manosphere influencer Clavicular is everywhere, and that’s not an accident. A paid marketing campaign is spreading video clips of his controversial antics across social media. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

The Video Clipping Machine Behind Clavicular’s Viral Fame

Videos of the influencer Clavicular are inescapable online. Social media is awash with clips of his sharp-featured face and muscular body — the result of a “looksmaxxing” regimen that can include test...

bloomberg.com

After a breaking news event, unverified speculation and bs seeks out your attention because it moves faster than the process of verifying facts. It tells you what you want to hear. This is no different. I am once again asking people not to pollute online.

AltWatcher@altwatcher.bsky.social · 3mo ago

In the replies to AltNPS's posts, the OVERWHELMING majority of commenters immediately jumped to claiming the shooting was fake, or staged. AltNPS isn't helping matters by speculating, literally saying "something doesn't add up."

I probably worked harder while a student at Hampshire than I have at any point in my life, and yet, this college was often a place of healing and recovery for me. I figured out what I wanted to do with my life there. I'm sad to see it go.

Jeff Sharlet@jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I am broken-hearted at the terrible news that my alma mater, @hampshirecollege.bsky.social, after 56 yrs, is closing. Its death is a victory for conformism, for corporatism, for higher education's dull love of hierarchy & status. It's a grievous defeat for imagination & experimentation.

Pete Hegseth believes that Jesus guides Tomahawk missiles, even when they hit elementary schools. I wrote about the roots of his militant faith - from the Crusades to the confederacy - and what they mean for the US and Iran today.

Pete Hegseth’s holy war: the militant Christian theology animating the US attack on Iran

The bible-thumping US defense secretary is overseeing another strategic disaster in the Middle East. Is this a war or a crusade?

theguardian.com

Conservative parents’ advocacy groups are using commercially available artificial intelligence tools to help them flag more books they’ve deemed pornographic to be removed from public schools and libraries (the books aren't actually pornographic) www.404media.co/blockade-the...

‘BLOCKADE’: The Right Is Using AI Content Scanners to Try to Supercharge Book Banning

Groups that challenge books have begun using Gemini, ChatGPT, xAI, and other AI tools to try to get books banned.

404media.co

Good morning, Baltimore (and beyond)! Proud to roll out our data exploration tool. This interactive visualizer lets you see how—and where—DHS is spending its $190B+ budget.

Introducing the DHS Contract Visualizer

A new tool to explore how DHS is spending its budget under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act

substack.com

Btw the PWHL (women's hockey)'s season starts up again on Thursday and if you're in the US at least you can stream their games on Youtube for free www.usatoday.com/story/sports...

NH state house passes "CHARLIE Act," which bans teaching, I kid you not, "critical consciousness" & "prohibited world-views," such as that queer people exist, or that slavery involved race, or, implicitly, that the Nazis murdered Jews based on identity. newhampshirebulletin.com/2026/02/19/h...

House passes bill banning ‘leftist indoctrination’ and LGBTQ+ teaching in public schools • New Hampshire Bulletin

New Hampshire House Republicans are moving forward with a new attempt to regulate teaching on race, history, and LGTBQ+ issues in public schools. On Thursday, the chamber passed a bill that would ban ...

newhampshirebulletin.com

“Beyond laundering bigotry as news, digital blackface exposes Black users to a level of personalized abuse and harassment that harkens to a minstrelsy heyday when racists were fully empowered to express their bigotry unbidden.”

Digital blackface flourishes under Trump and AI: ‘The state is bending reality’

From TikTok deepfakes to smears put out by the White House, fake videos modeled on Black archetypes are running rampant - putting Black users at risk

theguardian.com

Ben Goertzel, popularizer of the term AGI and creator of the Sophia robot, congratulating Jeffrey Epstein the day after Epstein was released from prison. Goertzel is mentioned in the files nearly 800 times, including well after the Miami Herald investigation in 2018.

On Thanksgiving, the immigrant children held at the Dilley detention center gathered in the gym for what they thought was a holiday feast. The kids salivated over a spread of turkey, sandwiches, pastries and pies, a family told me. But the food wasn’t for detainees — it was for the staff.

Looks like The Baltimore Banner is going to fill the gap left by the Post's end of sports coverage.

Baltimore Banner@thebaltimorebanner.com · 6mo ago

The Banner announces coverage of Washington sports

He Was Laid Off at The Washington Post After Working There 60 Years www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/b...

He Was Laid Off at The Washington Post After Working There 60 Years

nytimes.com

I've got a "Democracy Dies in Darkness" t-shirt and a Washington Post mug with a "#freepress" hashtag printed on it from my time working there. Both have faded to the point of being basically unreadable over time, just astronomical levels of prescience emanating from them.

Former executive editor @postbaron.bsky.social says the Post is "a case study in near-instant, self-inflicted brand destruction." www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

The auteur lens of the creator economy too-often makes invisible the infrastructure necessary to do most work well. That is exponentially more true for work like journalism & scholarship that needs institutional memory, costly databases, EDITORS, fact-checking, & when really vital/risky, LAWYERS.

Karen K. Ho@karenho.bsky.social · 6mo ago

A lot of people cannot just start a paid newsletter or become freelancers to sustain their careers. The sports, metro, and international desks did work that requires *team* resources, like legal checks, documents, access to archives, and long-term beat experience.

WaPo laid off: -- A journalist covering protest movements and extremism -- A Pulitzer-winning local enterprise reporter -- the race and ethnicity beat reporter -- ... the Amazon beat reporter In addition to so many others

Furious for the friends and journalists I admire still working at WaPo, this is such a sad and extremely avoidable situation

Anyway here's something I wrote a couple years ago on how Huberman plays the role of an illusionist in the MAHA landscape www.vox.com/technology/2...

The misleading information in one of America’s most popular podcasts

The Huberman Lab has credentials and millions of fans, but it sometimes oversteps medical fact.

vox.com

"Believe your eyes" - great piece from @cwarzel.bsky.social @theatlantic.com on people risking their lives to document ICE. Includes an interview with @startribune.com photographer Richard Tsong-Taatarii. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Believe Your Eyes

People are risking their lives to document agents in Minneapolis.

theatlantic.com

I guess one good thing to say about being online this week is that we learned that the war guy also has terrible form on kettlebell swings

Armed ICE agents trapped US citizens in a restaurant and demanded their papers. Federal agents walked into East African restaurants in Cedar-Riverside, MN. They closed and blocked the doors. Then they demanded to see everyone’s papers. Every person present was a US citizen.

Federal agents use chemical irritant on crowd in Somali neighborhood of Minneapolis amid Trump crackdown

Federal agents have used chemical irritant to disperse a crowd in a heavily Somali neighborhood in Minneapolis. This happened Tuesday during a identification checks amid the Trump administration's cra...

mprnews.org

“It’s a story about volume, value, and what journalism becomes when “content” grows functionally infinite.” - @davey.bsky.social www.niemanlab.org/2025/12/in-2...