“They invoked academic freedom and then began erasing fields of study they found politically inconvenient. They railed against ‘indoctrination,’ and then argued that the state is entitled to control everything said in the classroom.” www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1...

All The Things You’re Not Allowed To Say In Texas

The state now controls what professors can teach.

theatlantic.com

Google finally updated some of its satellite images of Gaza and my god, it's horrific. The entirety of Rafah has been demolished. The majority of Khan Younis is in ruins. Entire towns completely leveled and erased of the map.

Since it can be hard to believe that political and corporate elites would actively give up on our shared future on this singular planet, we made a short film so folks can hear from the end timers and judge for themselves. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor: the future according to end times fascism

In a new video, Klein and Taylor outline a ominous evolution taking shape on the far right – and how to stay loyal to this planet and each other

theguardian.com

I spoke to the @theintercept.com on how we're entering very dangerous and anti-democratic territory when AI companies, in seeking to deploy their technology in US military, are put in a position to self-report and determine the risks of their very own products.

Sam Biddle@sambiddle.com · last mo.

The documents I obtained include an OpenAI contract with the Pentagon requiring that the military AI it sold to Hegseth would maximally comply with the military's commands. The story behind this doc became very strange (thread) theintercept.com/2026/09/08/p...

Aside from footie, Cape Verde also has some of the best music on this planet: may I introduce y'all to Cesaria Evora and Mayra Andrade www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3um...

Excerpt from documentary Kontinuasom / Mayra Andrade - Dispidida

YouTube video by Mayra Andrade

youtube.com

"Those in power may pretend not to know where the present political trajectories are taking us, but they seem to sense that they’ll have to hide." www.bostonreview.net/articles/a-y...

A Year of Magical Thinking

Elite impunity has fueled the fantasy that catastrophes are for other people.

bostonreview.net

Expect to see a lot more of this kind of sovereignty-preserving market intervention.

Pieter Haeck@pieterhaeck.bsky.social · 5mo ago

BREAK: The Dutch government blocks the acquisition of a vital Dutch supplier to a widely used online identification tool, which was set to be acquired by a U.S.-based company. open.overheid.nl/details/ec64...

Knet-ter-gek die Markuszower. Oproepen tot geweld en het vermoorden van vluchtelingen.

Vandaag ben ik uit vrije wil gestorven, in het gezelschap van mijn beste vrienden. Het hoe & wat daarvan staat in mijn allerlaatste stukje: www.spaink.net/2026/05/08/e....

Jesus Christ, this is more dystopic than anything Philip K Dick ever wrote but it’s what the Russo Brothers want for your AI Slop future

quite interesting (if very partial) interview from the NSA Deputy Director during the Snowden affair. he says the quiet part out loud — that people didn’t understand how the FISA law relates to technology was itself an NSA capability www.darkreading.com/cyber-risk/n...

NSA Chief During Snowden Affair 13 Years Later

Chris Inglis was the head civilian in charge at the NSA when the Snowden leak exploded. He gets candid about mistakes the organization made.

darkreading.com

Author @gilduran.com was just banned from “free speech absolutist” twitter for criticizing the Palantir CEO’s manifesto— so here’s his upcoming book: www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Ne...

After years of regulating tech that flows through clouds, we ended up in a race to build more of it. In a new 📝 at @reggovjournal.bsky.social w/ @fencesitter8.bsky.social & @jvh.bsky.social, we explain how we got here and ask for some breathing room for lawyers and policymakers.

I wrote up my concerns about the CJEU's Russmedia ruling. This is the first of two posts, it's about the bad results of relying on the GDPR (and displacing laws like the DSA) to define platforms' liability for content. Post two will review arguments that the case is more limited. 1/

In Russmedia Ruling, the GDPR Displaces Europe's Rules for Online Speech

The ruling shows the serious problems that can arise when European courts rely solely on the GDPR, writes Daphne Keller.

techpolicy.press

BREAKING: in March 2026, *every single one* of the 1,341 refugees admitted in the United States were white South Africans: In FY 2026, the U.S. has admitted a total of 4,496 white South Africans, three Afghans (back in November), and nobody else. www.rpc.state.gov/documents/Re...

Alex Ip 葉清霖@alexip718.com · 6mo ago

An update: in February 2026, *every single one* of the 1,507 refugees admitted in the United States were white South Africans: In FY 2026, the U.S. has admitted a total of 3,155 white South Africans, three Afghans, and nobody else. www.rpc.state.gov/documents/Re...

Here's the link to the free pdf of my new book The Inattention Economy: How Women of Color Built the Internet. Access is so important and I'm grateful that the press is platforming it as one file that is easy to download. www.upress.umn.edu/978081669906...

The Inattention Economy

Revealing the unheralded contributions of women of color to the foundation and development of the digital economyThe Inattention Economy challenges the wides...

upress.umn.edu

This is a really sharp post on Audre Lorde and her master's tools essay and how it fits with technological critique. And it's an even sharper critique of how Doctorow (apparently) invokes the quote.

It’s always interesting to see which subjects Meta will refuse to do content moderation on because “free speech,” and which content moderation the CEO will volunteer to do in advance to curry favor. In this case it was “naming a DOGE employee”

Hadas Gold@hadasgold.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Some new exhibits just dropped in Musk v Altman trial including these texts with Mark Zuckerberg and Musk

NRC dacht "fuuuuck gescoopt door Trouw, deze Anthropic-PR-slop hadden wij ook in de krant willen hebben" en publiceert daarom alsnog een gelijksoortig stukje lulkoek: www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2026/...

Opinie | Nederland is niet klaar voor de AI-golf die nú op ons afkomt

Kunstmatige intelligentie: De komst van artificial general intelligence is het ingrijpendste dat onze generatie gaat meemaken, schrijft Michiel Bakker. We moeten nu voorbereidingen treffen.

nrc.nl

Trouw@trouw.nl · 7mo ago

Opinie: Wees er niet gerust op, AI gaat straks wel degelijk uw baan overnemen

I'm often reminded of Arendt's remarks on how the base vulgarity of fascist leaders found fertile soil in Europe in large part because they were merely expressing bourgeois values, only cleansed of hypocrisy and pretense. And unmasking hypocrisy is "such terrible and wonderful fun."

Paul Eric@pauleric70.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Absolute bombshell. Trump casually admits on live TV to intentionally sinking 158 Iranian ships instead of capturing them because it was more fun. He then jokes about systematically extinguishing two entire sets of 88 Iranian leaders. The absolute hubris is staggering.

This is what evil states do - torture - mass torture of people in detention. “Israel is systematically torturing Palestinians on a scale “that suggests collective vengeance and destructive intent”.”

Israel systematically torturing Palestinians in custody, says UN expert

Report by Francesca Albanese says 'torture in detention used on unprecedented scale as punitive collective vengeance'.

aljazeera.com

The US President casually announcing his intention to commit war crimes on social media. That's where you're at, America.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 7mo ago

Trump: “If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Shout out to the American Historical Association for these uploads! youtu.be/UDwAOrDi1wk?...

Nathan Cavanaugh Deposition in ACLS-AHA-MLA Lawsuit About the NEH, Part 6 of 6

YouTube video by American Historical Association

youtu.be

"𝑃ℎ𝑜𝑡𝑜𝐷𝑁𝐴 is unreliable for the detection of illicit content: it is easy to incriminate someone by sending them false content with a hash value close to illicit content (a false positive) and to avoid detection of illicit content with minimal modifications to an image (a false negative)."

spooky Deirdre Connolly¹ ² at a distance@durumcrustulum.com · 7mo ago

eprint.iacr.org/2026/486

This is so true. A bunch of the outlets that featured this kind of writing have disappeared, and many of the still-existing publications that used to pay people to do this kind of writing killed off those sections.

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌@chanda.blacksky.app · 7mo ago

it feels like a small thing in context of all of the other things but it is a piece of the larger authoritarian project that there are fewer places to publish essays now and the carefully edited essay as a public form for thinking and responding and criticizing and analyzing is in trouble, i think

“Many of their commanders are especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfill and be in 100% accordance with fundamentalist Christian end of the world eschatology.”

Jonathan Larsen@jonathanlarsen.bsky.social · 7mo ago

EXCLUSIVE: At more than 30 installations, U.S. commanders told troops the war on Iran is a Christian war. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has been “inundated” with more than 110 complaints. One NCO said they were told the U.S. war is to bring about Armageddon and the return of Jesus…

Wrote about how the incredibly thin-skinned leadership of Palantir sued a small Swiss publication for publishing a deeply researched article that was only mildly embarrassing for the company (about why the Swiss gov't keeps ghosting them).

Techdirt@techdirt.com · 8mo ago

Palantir Sues Swiss Magazine For Accurately Reporting That The Swiss Government Didn’t Want Palantir If you run a company whose entire value proposition is the ability to see patterns, predict outcomes, and connect dots that others miss, you'd think someone in the building might have flagged that…