Kent Lind
@camasonian.bsky.social
Former NOAA fisheries biologist now in my second career as a HS science teacher. I'm interested in all things related to environmental policy, cycling as transportation, and public education.
Oh great. We need Sarah Connor to come kill it dead post-haste. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/21/t...
OpenAI Says Its A.I. Models Went Rogue and Attacked a Digital Library (Gift Article)
The incident, which targeted the computer systems of another company called Hugging Face, happened while OpenAI was testing the systems.
nytimes.com
Excellent article on the toxic expensive mess that is elite travel soccer. When we lived in TX our oldest daughter played on several travel teams in Waco which mean all our weekends driving to Arlington or Plano for games and tourneys. Horrible: slate.com/culture/2026...
There’s a Reason American Kids Aren’t Better at Soccer. I Saw It for Myself All Too Well.
Youth soccer in America reflects some of our worst national systems.
slate.com
This is true. My wife is Chilean and so half of our extended family is in Chile. My brother-in-law watched the game at a sports pub in Santiago and says that out of the hundreds there, not one single person was rooting for Argentina. He was crushed at the result. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/15/w...
As Argentina Tries to Win the World Cup, the Rest of Latin America Cheers Against It (Gift Article)
Rather than rally behind the tournament’s last Latin American team, other countries in the region are confronting Argentina’s fraught claims to its own identity.
nytimes.com
most murders are committed by someone the victim knows - a partner, neighbor etc. but in cases where there is no relationship between murderer & victim? the killer is a cop about a third of the time. if you are killed by a stranger, there is a 1 in 3 chance that stranger is a cop.
Violence in Blue
‘One-third of all Americans killed by strangers are killed by police.’
granta.com
woof ≈80% of assignments this summer term have essentially been just raw chatgpt/claude output, including assignments that required designing stuff in illustrator/affinity/canva. The battle is lost for asynchronous online courses.
Dad hack: If you are sending your kids to college or 1st apt, this is an astonishingly good kit for the money. It is all quality stuff and virtually everything you need. I bought one for each of my 3 kids when they left home. There are others but this one is good: www.amazon.com/DEKOPRO-Set-...
DEKOPRO 158 Piece Tool Set-General Household Hand Tool Kit,Auto Repair Tool Set, with Plastic Toolbox Storage Case - Amazon.com
DEKOPRO 158 Piece Tool Set-General Household Hand Tool Kit,Auto Repair Tool Set, with Plastic Toolbox Storage Case - Amazon.com
amazon.com
American AI companies complaining about Chinese AI companies doing the EXACT SAME THING that they do is just too funny. The ENTIRE AI industry is premised on tech companies scraping up the work of others and monetizing it. It is all just a giant plagiarism machine. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/06/t...
American A.I. Companies Say Chinese Copycats Are Quickly Catching Up
nytimes.com
In the well-over 100,000 documents written by founders included in the Founders Online database from the National Archives, no one uses the phrase "God's noble experiment." No one.
Trump corruptly going to bat for a Black "birthright citizen" was not on my World Cup Bingo Card.
Thomas Paine is my favorite founding father. He was famously abolitionist and one of the earliest voices to point out the hypocrisy of fighting for independence while keeping slaves. He also firmly believed that keeping any friendship which required compromising your morals made you a bad person.
The Rude Pundit@rudepundit.bsky.social · last mo.The founder we should talk more about is Thomas Paine, who will fuck your shit up every time. Here he is in The Rights of Man just ripping into any ideas of "originalism" and that kind of garbage.
Don't know why I'm not seeing this called out in more indie journalism places. But it needs to be said, and loudly.
Charlotte Clymer@charlotteclymer.bsky.social · last mo.It takes 1.28 seconds for a message to reach us from the Moon. It takes as little as 35 minutes from Jupiter. It takes as little as 4.5 hours from Pluto. It takes at least 6-12 months from NYT reporters, plus $35 for the book containing it.
If this NYT author though that No Child Left Behind would fix public schools then one needs to question his competence to write about public education. It was mostly about standardized testing. And that is often about using "data" to undermine public schools. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/22/o...
Opinion | I Thought ‘No Child Left Behind’ Would Fix Public Schools. I Was Wrong.
nytimes.com
Game time here in Seattle where it is a balmy 71 degrees! My wife scored us these corner nosebleed seats! The place is rocking.
The Dept of Interior claims that the algae in the reflecting pool is left over from rarely used pipes No. Painting the pool dark blue means that it absorbs heat much faster than if it were a light color. Warmer = faster algae growth That's why you don't see black swimming pools Science!
Excellent essay. I agree whole heartedly.
Maggie McNeill@maggiemcneill.bsky.social · 2mo agoI learned at a young age that when anyone demanded obedience, belief, or trust because they had an Important Title or were just bigger than me, rather than for a reason they could logically explain, it was because they HAD no sound reason, and therefore were not to be trusted, believed, or obeyed.
New from me: The cops who AI-enhance blurry photos to try to catch suspects are actually just tampering with evidence, lying to the public and raising the risk of wrongful arrests
But of course they did. I just knew this shoe was going to drop.
Carl Quintanilla@carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 2mo ago
I forgot David Letterman uncorked one of his best "mean interviews" on Spencer Pratt. Before I even click to watch it for the first time in years, I recall at one point Dave just laughs in his face.
Bene Jesserit@benejesserit.bsky.social · 2mo agoJust in case y’all need more Spencer Pratt getting his ass kicked.
Honestly? The aliens part isn't even the funniest part of this story. That was the part where we found out that DC has an official exorcist. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/04/u...
Priest Who Said Aliens Were Demons Removed as Exorcist for Washington
nytimes.com
for reference and comparison: conservatively, the United States spent two-thirds of that figure in the *first week* of the war on Iran. it's genuinely difficult to overstate how many world-historical own goals US politics has accumulated over the past few decades
Thiago Carvalho@cyrilpedia.bsky.social · 2mo ago'The real surprise from the OECD’s subsidy numbers is that it cost China less than $18bn in sectoral support over 15 years to build an industry that can now provide more clean power than the world can readily absorb.' @adamtooze.bsky.social @financialtimes.com www.ft.com/content/b6ca...
And of course this is missing a bazillion additional schisms in the Christian world.
whetstone@whetstone.bsky.social · 2mo ago
"I can't use AI on the job because it violates my sincere religious beliefs" is just about the funniest outcome of the Robert's court. The Pope needs to double-down on this!
Lori Emerson@loriemerson.net · 2mo ago"The funniest possible outcome of the AI mandate era is about to be HR departments discovering that 'sincerely held religious belief' under Title VII has a much lower bar than they assumed, and Pope Leo handed every Catholic employee a written excuse" www.businessinsider.com/worker-got-r...
What every teacher can already tell you. The big social media companies aren't just addicting kids. They are deliberately pushing their content onto kids phones during the school day to keep them distracted from school. What they call "under the desk time" www.nytimes.com/2026/06/04/u...
‘Teachers Are Going to Hate It’: How Social Media Apps Hooked Teens at School
nytimes.com
Friday afternoon scoop 👇 About $50 billion in wind investments and 150,000 jobs are imperiled by the Trump administration’s effective halt to approvals for new onshore projects, according to a trade group report reviewed by Bloomberg News. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Wind-Permit Stall Is Threatening $50 Billion in US Developments
About $50 billion in wind investments and 150,000 jobs are imperiled by the Trump administration’s effective halt to approvals for new onshore projects, a trade group said.
bloomberg.com
A tread on AI: 1/ When radio emerged in the 1920s it was sold as a powerful democratizing force that would create the kind of informed, ideal republic imagined by the founders. Instead we got a wasteland of right-wing talk radio and fundamentalist preachers. www.apmreports.org/episode/2014...
Radio: The Internet of the 1930s
Some predicted radio would be a powerful force for democratizing information and spreading knowledge to a vast population previously separated by geography or income. But the new technology also raise...
apmreports.org
I still think these two paragraphs from Ganz are the most important contemporary political writing
