Brain drain rocks US science community; Impact on our ability to innovate will be felt for decades. More US-trained PhDs are fleeing after graduation than any time in past 30 years. This does not bode well. We not just passing the torch; We’re yeeting it. 🧪🔭 doi.org/10.1063/sr.2...

We need the rain but it’s absolutely disgusting here — when the rain doesn’t cut the heat and humidity, and you’re just treading through it.

A caucus of violent, drunk ex-husbands controls three branches of government and both chambers of Congress.

The Bulwark@thebulwark.com · 3d ago

Rep. Max Miller: "My former wife has claimed that during a custody exchange at my home that day, I assaulted her…If I had assaulted her, would she have offered to cook me dinner six days later?"

This is ridiculously scary. Yes, we are currently talking about ballrooms and reflecting pools and inflation and Iran and Venezuela and Epstein and crypto grift and the moral rot of the GOP. But all that is going to be forgotten soon. Shit is about to get real, as they say.

Zeke Hausfather@zekehausfather.com · 3d ago

I'm not sure folks have realized just how crazy the second half of 2026 and 2027 will be for global temperatures – on the back of a record-smashing El Niño event. Here is my latest estimate of where both years will end up compared to global temperatures since 1850.

Received an email this morning that US mail is so messed up that our French magazine subscription is suspending delivery of paper copies while they try to figure out other solutions 🫠

"more teachers departed public school classrooms in Texas than at any point since at least 2007, the earliest year with state data...From 2020 to 2025, the state lost 35,000 teachers who would have stayed in the classroom...That’s equivalent to nearly 10% of the current teacher workforce."

Anne Lutz Fernandez@lutzfernandez.bsky.social · 6d ago

This new data compiled by @mattbarnum.bsky.social is invaluable. It makes clear that worries about the teacher shortage, downplayed by contrarians, were and are warranted. Importantly, it raises a largely ignored factor affecting student mental health, behavior, and academic success.

I was on LinkedIn yesterday, and I genuinely couldn’t tell whether half of the posts were AI-generated or not — AI output mimics LinkedIn voice, and many posts use the structure LLMs were trained on.

Linda Holmes@lindaholmes.bsky.social · 6d ago

On the one hand, sure. On the other hand, people are not reliably good at identifying LLM output, and I now *frequently* see examples of “this is AI” used as a weapon against somebody whose opinion people don’t like, and it’s incredibly difficult for them to prove it isn’t.

🧵 There's an entirely relational aspect to teaching that's often dismissed or ignored. Why is teaching devalued? It's care work. And the way AI is currently being used in educational spaces (for speed, for scale) takes the care out of the work of both educators and students.

Kayleigh Diaz 🫜@kayleighdiaz.com · last wk.

29 | In an industry that is increasingly becoming saturated with AI-generated content, how do you feel about the importance of art & human creativity? (If this reads like an essay prompt, yes. Sorry. Teacher. 😅) Also, how do you fight against it? #SummerOfStories #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompt

Where fiber history meets Pride. This is a large piece (10x28') of one of the two original 30x60' pride flags, the only known surviving section of either. They were designed, hand dyed and sewn by a community of queer artists. The colors are slightly different from most rainbow flags today.

Long-Lost Fragment of First Rainbow Pride Flag Resurfaces After Four Decades

The brilliantly colored banner—now on view in San Francisco—flew on "Gay Freedom Day" in 1978

smithsonianmag.com

I am absolutely gobsmacked. And trying not to pass out from hyperventilating. Thank you @barackobama.bsky.social — you just made my secret dream for DATA EMPIRE, spoken aloud to NO ONE, come true.

Barack Obama@barackobama.bsky.social · last wk.

It’s that time of year again: here are some of the books I’ve enjoyed this summer. If you’ve read any good ones, let me know!

The source of the crisis of masculinity is toxic masculinity. "dating violence has increased 55% over the last decade" www.yahoo.com/news/us/arti...

Nearly 1 in 3 Connecticut homicides tied to domestic violence, report finds

Nearly 1 in 3 homicides in Connecticut are related to domestic violence, and most victims did not have a prior history of enduring violence, a new state police analysis shows.

yahoo.com

Tom Dudchik@ctcapitolreport.bsky.social · last wk.

Nearly 1 in 3 Connecticut homicides tied to domestic violence, report finds... https://go.ctcapitolreport.com/3RY7tDO

NCTE Dissolves 77-Year-Old Composition Association The @ncte.org’s decision was met with swift backlash from Conference on College Composition and Communication members, who say their organization is vital to advancing composition research and improving teaching. https://bit.ly/4vVmjJk #EDUSky

It‘s quite possible that with this move, @harvard.edu could become the only Ivy League university without a writing center. www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

Harvard College Lays Off Writing Center Director, Consolidates Center | News | The Harvard Crimson

The Harvard College Writing Center will no longer operate as a standalone unit after its director was laid off and its functions were consolidated as part of a restructuring in the Faculty of Arts and...

thecrimson.com

Sigh. The days are already getting shorter. I know it’s the last week of July and there are still a few weeks of summer to go, but I’m already feeling the fall energy.

Yes. She’s brilliant. Also: it’s fine to disagree with her! That’s the entire point of criticism. It’s a starting point to a conversation, and discussion is one of the pleasures of scholarship.

Siobhán McElduff@siobhanmcelduff.bsky.social · last wk.

I think Emily Wilson has earned the right to have whatever opinion she likes about adaptations of Homer. Her translations are amazing achievements and she's already survived several rounds of outrage about a female translator of such a manly poet.

This is a really clearly written explainer of new DHS rules, which impose massive barriers for international students wanting to get graduate degrees at US universities.

Austin Kocher, PhD@austinkocher.com · last wk.

Two new rules target legal immigration, hitting student visas and the public-charge test. Cato's David Bier notes neither affects anyone who crossed illegally, only people who followed the law. www.cato.org/blog/trumps-...

Not used to seeing my hometown in the news. This is my childhood library. Yinz = All Yinz!

Authors Against Book Bans@authorsabb.bsky.social · last wk.

Are you in Monroeville, PA? If so, make sure to tell your city council members that Pride displays in libraries are for young readers too!

The success of Emily Wilson's translation had nothing to do with Christopher Nolan. The hardcover edition came out 9 years ago and was a huge success. The paperback has been in steady demand since 2018. My store has sold 75 copies (a lot for 1 book for us) and 66 of those were before January.

Ignacio Gallup-Diaz@igallupd.bsky.social · 2w ago

“A Penn professor thought she’d sell 1000 copies of her ‘Odyssey’ translation. She sold a million this year alone, thanks to Christopher Nolan.” “West Philly's Emily Wilson, who penned a highly acclaimed translation of the epic poem in 2017, is having a big summer.”

Extremely well deserved. It's an incredible translation.

Ignacio Gallup-Diaz@igallupd.bsky.social · 2w ago

“A Penn professor thought she’d sell 1000 copies of her ‘Odyssey’ translation. She sold a million this year alone, thanks to Christopher Nolan.” “West Philly's Emily Wilson, who penned a highly acclaimed translation of the epic poem in 2017, is having a big summer.”

The difference between reading ability and reading comprehension… 🤦🏾‍♀️

Robert Komaniecki@komaniecki.bsky.social · 2w ago

This utter muppet of a conservative Canadian politician in New Brunswick forgot to remove the LLM text from his floor speech and read it out loud.

The quotes and replies to this made me laugh.

James McLeod@jamespmcleod.ca · 2w ago

It's safe to assume that all major LLMs are scraping Bluesky data to train future models. As an open protocol, Bluesky is one of the few sources of fresh human-generated content that anybody can gobble up. So all this is probably going in the models. There are submarines in the Great Lakes.

We took our kid and a friend to see another friend play the lead in her theatre camp show, and the whole thing was so freaking delightful. Middle schoolers are great.

the visual here (it is a whole-ass brown bear sort of draped over the T of a utility pole against a perfect blue sky with little white clouds) is amazing but it's the audio that really makes it, imo.

Yours in negritude, Ryan K. Smith@mewefree.bsky.social · 2w ago

WTH? LOL

I took this photo of World Cup food specials at a pub in the Vancouver area on Sunday. It’s difficult to overestimate how angry Canadians are at the US.

🩷

Scott Westerfeld@scottwesterfeld.bsky.social · 2w ago

The Mortons, my book with @larbalestier.bsky.social, is out today! Here's an essay about the process that we wrote for @people.com people.com/the-mortons-...

I was packing my kid's lunch for camp this morning, and I included dried seaweed snacks, which my kid likes and my kid's best friend *loves* so I packed a second snack for him. M: *head shake* You. Me: What? M: Nothing. Just -- you. Apparently this is also "a Maman move."

This is kind of an incredible website: Why your stuff stopped lasting, who profited, and what's still built right.

Worse on Purpose

The brands you trusted quietly gutted quality to protect margins. Investigative essays on corporate enshittification. Free newsletter.

worseonpurpose.com

Woohoo! We have an advance book contract: "THE ARCHIVE WRITES BACK: Minoritized Literatures & the Digital Textual Paradigm" Happy to be working with series editor @roopikarisam.bsky.social and publishing in the same series w/ @aearhart.bsky.social @elikaortega.bsky.social @eve.gd & many others.

Ian Wright saying we shouldn’t forget the way the Iranian team and the Somali referee were treated. Correct.

Happy for this guy.