A gracious concession: “I want to congratulate Abdul El-Sayed on winning the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. He is a doctor, a community health official, a Rhodes Scholar, and a dedicated Michigander. I am proud to offer my support as he takes on Mike Rogers in the general election…

Very interesting graf near bottom of latest NYT story on MAGA efforts to bend universities to its will, as if they were GOP Senators or the SCOTUS Six. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/u... Reminder number five zillion: Except for GOP Senators thinking of a lobbying future, appeasement never pays off.

Credulous headine and framing: sigh. To its credit, story itself points out that basically every week or so Trump & Co try to juice the market with one of these "just around the corner" chimeras. www.cnbc.com/2026/08/04/b...

Last weekend drove across Memorial Bridge for first time in months. Numbers suggest what a gargantuan waste this is. But until you see it in person, hard to grasp how completely amateurish, cheesy, lower-tier-casino it looks. Sort of like that notorious redo of 'Ecce Homo' in Spain in 2012.

BrooklynDad_Defiant!@mmpadellan.bsky.social · yesterday

If this obscenely gaudy gold shit doesn't piss you off, you're not even paying attention.

Bluesky is a "liberal bubble" because fascist chuds can't get traction without algorithmic assistance and because people here trained themselves to block "debate me" trybois the instant they roll up

The Verge@theverge.com · 2d ago

Bluesky's new CEO Toni Schneider on the platform's reputation for being a liberal bubble: "Yes, we definitely want that to change. It is already changing. It certainly wasn’t designed to attract one specific group of people."

A good reminder of how utterly useless any and all Republican senators are

George Pearkes@peark.es · 2d ago

*REPUBLICAN SENATORS DROP BLOCK ON TRUMP'S ATTORNEY GENERAL PICK

Odds on this guy ever having been to the two August 1945 sites? Or know what they are? (Which every Japanese schoolchild learns.) And why it was them? Or know about Curtis LeMay and Tokyo 1945, which was not a "surprise" but was... something he should know about? My bet is 0% on any of these.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2d ago

Trump: "Japan has been very good to us with the exception of Pearl Harbor"

@duckduckgo.com is having user survey of why people are going to Duck.ai. Sample page below, I also pay for/rely on Gemini, but these are some ways DDG stands out (Yes, I know, in some circs it's useful for Gemini/etc know context of your past queries. But nice to escape panopticon.)

The press obsession with "Dems in disarray because of Dem Socialists" reminds me of similar press obsessions w faint connection to voters' daily lives. I bet if you talked with voters in any sampling of Senate swing states, the "threat of Dem socialists" would be far down list of concerns.

Well done by Dana Bash. -RFK Jr: You don't understand this. You're not a scientist. -Bash: Neither are you. Reminder of why it's a race among this guy, Hegseth, S Miller, R Vought, Lutnick, Bondi->Blanche, Noem->Markwain, Tulsi->Pulte, etc for WORST and most destructive mini-Trump.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3d ago

😳 RFK Jr's epic CNN crashout 😳 Dana Bash pressed RFK Jr on Trump's culpability for mishandling covid and the misinformation he pushes about vaccines, and the segment wound down with him getting mad and barking at her like a rabid dog Here's the full thing:

The schools that stood up to Trump thug demands—first Wesleyan and Princeton, then Harvard, then many others who were emboldened—have won in court and earned honor in history and support from alums. Columbia showed that appeasement always loses. It's never enough. Don't do it, Yale.

Gregg Gonsalves@gregggonsalves.bsky.social · 3d ago

Need to have some frank talk about #Yale President McInnis, General Counsel Alexander Dreier and the trustees. First, they keep saying that they are compelled to enter into a settlement with the #Trump administration. Untrue. 1/

Guy who dismantled Washington Post’s Opinion section quits. Not a wet eye in the house. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

Adam O’Neal departs as Post Opinions editor after a year

O’Neal helmed a revamp of the section in a directive from Post owner Jeff Bezos.

washingtonpost.com

Yeesh. Amazing quote in this story by Kathy Gilsinan: www.politico.com/news/magazin...

Burgum was once a "respected" figure. Much like Marco Rubio and JD Vance, he ran against Trump for the GOP nomination and said he would never do business with him. Now this.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · last mo.

BASH: But it peeled off. Why did that happen? BURGUM: It didn't peel off. There was vandalism. There was box cutters. There have been 7 arrests. BASH: There are photographs of people cutting a 350 foot gash in the reflecting pool? BURGUM: Dana, I'm not sure why you keep questioning it

Update: Google just sent me a statement saying it is “rolling back” this AI feature that let anyone make completely bullshit satellite images. Comes after our demos of the tool and those from OSINT researchers. One of the worst AI tools I’ve ever seen bsky.app/profile/jose...

Joseph Cox@josephcox.bsky.social · 5d ago

New from 404 Media: Google Earth has introduced an AI feature that lets anyone fabricate completely bullshit satellite images. In our own tests, we added a “bomb blast and crater” to an area of Los Angeles. This is a misinformation time bomb, will 100% be abused www.404media.co/google-earth...

Let me tell you, having chronicled Pentagon-style war game on attacking Iran nearly 25 yr ago, every single "surprise," "darkening turn," "narrowing option," spreading warfare," "rising casualties," "no easy exit," etc that comes drip-by-drip is EXACTLY why GHWB WJC GWB OBAMA BiDEN did NOT do this

This is not true. (In case you were wondering.)

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 7d ago

Trump claims air traffic control towers are "literally falling down"

Ask anybody in DC-land: The *last* thing you want to connect your personal brand to is Dulles airport, IAD.

Subscribe to Radio Free America (link in bio)@kleinman.bsky.social · 7d ago

Feels notable that his big announcement today is redesigning Dulles www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Harvard is doing the right thing here.

Robert Reich@rbreich.bsky.social · 7d ago

Yale is on the verge of cutting a deal with Trump to change its admission procedures. Reminder for any school dealing with Trump's extortion: You can't appease a tyrant. Surrendering to authoritarianism only invites more of it.

Whenever this person talks about something you actually know about yourself.... (I'm writing on this topic now.) "By the way": Trump's insistence on changing the code for Palm Beach from PBI to DJT has caused huge expense and disruption to aviation databases around the world.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 7d ago

Trump: "The last major airport built in the US was Denver in 1995. It hasn't gotten very great reviews. So we're doing something with Dulles that's gonna make it I think maybe the top anywhere in the world. By the way, Palm Beach is gonna be one of the top too."

Have spent decades in print, but also some experience w documentaries, an HBO film, to-camera segments, etc. TV is much, *much* harder for print people than it seems.

Boston Tom Levenson@tomlevenson.bsky.social · last wk.

I expect wingnut welfare will take care of Mr. Douthat no matter what, but I do think he's going to find television a much harder medium than he thinks. I spent fifteens making PBS documentaries. Worked with a lot of talent. The leap from print to in-front-of-the-camera was never an easy one...

Trump is getting institutions to delegitimize and weaken themselves. No institution that has made a “deal” appears to be better off now than other comparable institutions. That’s particularly the in higher ed. Here’s hoping that Yale does not follow in Columbia’s footsteps

Greg Sargent@gregsargent.bsky.social · last wk.

"Universities like Columbia are not better off for having capitulated last year. They compromised their independence and suffered reputational damage, yet are still subject to [Trump's] arbitrary behavior." Read @ryanenos.bsky.social on need to resist Trump: www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/27/o...

J Andres deserves world acclaim he receives. I've seen his work during emergencies first-hand. Z Beddows of Economist is type of journalist "serious" people always say we need. Deeply and broadly informed, never cowed into both-sides-ing. Brit willingness to say, "But that's not true.." Musk...

Ron Filipkowski@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social · last wk.

Elon has been melting down and raging nonstop since his interview with The Economist and Chef Andres is one of the best and kindest humans on planet earth.

NBC's kristen welker was caught laughing it up with Stephen Miller. Stephen Miller who architected the family separation policy. Stephen Miller who pushed the Muslim travel ban. Stephen Miller who oversaw the killing of Americans by ICE agents. This is why independent media is crucial.

I've been around since kindergarten classmates were in "iron lungs" from pre-vaccine polio, since "duck and cover" grade-school nuclear-attack drills, through all of the intervening chaos, earthquakes and floods and all, up through Covid and beyond. 2026 "explosive diarrhea" news is a first for me.

Michael J. Stern@michaeljstern.bsky.social · last wk.

"As cases of explosive diarrhea continue to rise across the US this summer . . . . " - CNN Is America great again? www.cnn.com/2026/07/25/h...

It's been hard to do my job this year. Being back reporting — and in print again — means more than I can say. Please spend some time with my story about a Trump administration crackdown on faculty speech at West Point, and one professor's lonely rebellion. wapo.st/4fo0lts

-Bezos WaPo stewardship rivals DOGE-era Musk in destruction. Editorial page seems run by high-school Ayn Rand-ers. (Check out their podcasts.) Much of paper is straight AP clips. -But still, still it has strong reporting. Like this powerful story, which I read in today's (print) paper. Pls read.

Hannah Natanson@hannahnatanson.bsky.social · last wk.

It's been hard to do my job this year. Being back reporting — and in print again — means more than I can say. Please spend some time with my story about a Trump administration crackdown on faculty speech at West Point, and one professor's lonely rebellion. wapo.st/4fo0lts

@kairyssdal.bsky.social, naval aviation veteran, is right. -Excellent reporting by @nytimes.com team, @gregjaffe.bsky.social and Kate Kelly. -Appalling portrait of Hegseth era military.

Kai Ryssdal@kairyssdal.bsky.social · last wk.

Well, this is depressing. But somehow completely expected. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/26/u...

bloomberg has a fun article today arguing that the Cybertruck is the biggest flop in automotive history. it includes this glorious graph.

The NYT decision back in 2007 to stop attending the WHCA seems more correct every day