I didn't expect them to show their hand quite this quickly, but there you go: trans isn't the real problem: it's women.

Jess Piper@piperformissouri.bsky.social · 15h ago

The Heritage Foundation asserts that women never needed sports in the first place. To prove that Title IX has become a tool of “feminist social engineering.” To demonstrate that women don’t need sports and that “clubs, intramurals, and exercise classes” is enough. open.substack.com/pub/jesspipe...

It's all about billionaires lawyering & bribing their way into local politics. FAFO: they thought local government was weak. The people in office might have been, but local politics is famously bare-knuckled.

Tressie McMillan Cottom@tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 15h ago

I’ve been screening our documentary with organizing communities in the South. So far, the organizers mention data centers first at every single event. From racial justice orgs to old school activists who don’t usually think about tech policy. This has legs.

I am now forever and always going to call them pervert glasses.

Sean Jones KC@seanjones.org · 2d ago

Re: pervert glasses. Should it occur to anyone that they might use them to film court or tribunal proceedings, don’t do that. It’s a criminal offence.

Good article, but misses AO3, which is a clue that the authors are only moderately familiar with Gen-Z reading modes. 11 million users & 18 million works: one way this generation reads is by writing - way more writers than prior generations.

What the panic over Gen Z’s reading habits gets wrong

Despite dire warnings of a ‘postliterate’ generation, data suggests Gen Z is still reading – just in ways many traditional studies fail to capture.

theconversation.com

Good morning. A spotted lanternfly poses in front of a picture of Stephen Miller as a spotted lanternfly.

This seems like pretty clear evidence that "the invisible hand of the market" is a gullible dumbass.

Kevin Elliott@kjephd.bsky.social · 2d ago

Look, they're not gonna stop doing it until it stops working

There isn't a reading crisis. There's a publishing crisis driven by most of the market being taken up by 5 publishers who dictate what should be popular. People are reading. Just look at how many tiny literary magazines there are. Thousands! And they stay in business. Because, readers.

Your Reading is Out of Control

Which is why it is becoming popular to say it's "over"

rachaelreadingpolicy.substack.com

Me, personally, if I lived in one of the desert cities of the southwest that depend on Colorado River water, I'd be making plans to move somewhere wet that wasn't going to end up resembling @paolobacigalupi.bsky.social's The Water Knife in under a decade.

Everything you need to know about the new federal report on the Colorado River's future

Federal agencies released the first of several highly anticipated reports that will outline how the river will be managed for years to come.

coloradosun.com

Will she get 30 years like the guy who moved the zines? Tune in for another crazy ending on "Double Standards!"

tomwellborn3rd@wellborn.net · last wk.

Kim Davis told the court under oath she'd made no transfers over two thousand dollars in five years. Deeds show she moved three parcels worth over four hundred thousand to family members eight months before that. She wants the martyrdom without the debt.

"A US government map of Africa mislabeled every country during a state department presentation at a global conference in Brazil this week, causing a stir among attenders who took screenshots and posted them online."

US government map of Africa mislabels every country at global conference

State department ‘takes full responsibility’ for erroneous, widely shared chart displayed at Aids conference in Brazil

theguardian.com

Godfather fantasy.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · last wk.

Moreno to Fauci: "Who the fuck did you think you were?"

Another way of saying: you mourn the death of a family member? That sucks, but the rest of us were inconvenienced a little bit.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · last wk.

Rep. Ogles: "Look, I don't want to play down the effects of the virus, but at the end of the day it had a roughly 1 percent mortality rate. We coulda gotten through this."

There's a lot of concern about rare, antique books being scanned & pulped for AI in headlines, but I'm not seeing much evidence. The purchase requests in this article had ISBN's, a practice that started in 1968. IOW, so far they're not pulping original editions of Newton's Principia.

The odds are crazy low, actually. But I’m sure that won’t get in the way of MAHA sentiment.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · last wk.

Sen. Roger Marshall: "Who didn't have a friend who took this vaccine and had some time of complication? A stroke, a blood clot, a young man getting some type of heart inflammation. That's what destroyed the trust in the American people for our government."

It's not the chopping book bindings that's a crime. Anthropic stole copyrighted material and didn't pay royalties to authors for their creative work. That's the crime. I'm a librarian. When we weed collections we either throw the books in a dumpster or send them to Better World Books. Who sells them

Yeah, well, tell the people whose water & electricity rates are skyrocketing because of the giant parasite sucking out their local resources that the parasite is using less water than they use for watering their lawns.

Dave Karpf@davekarpf.bsky.social · last wk.

"Even if the number of data centers increases tenfold, we may still end up using less water on artificial intelligence than we use [to water our lawns/golf courses]." Hi, quick question: the hyperscalers are planning to spend like $7 trillion building datacenters. It that a lot or a little?

Means-testing for food. No. Just, no. Maybe look into *why* completion rates are low for low-income students. My bet, as someone who tried to help students failing out of a fancy eastern private college: it's familial & personal crises. Withholding food won't help them finish.

Compton College Ties Basic Needs to Academic Milestones

Starting in fall 2027, students need to meet a set of academic requirements to get free meals and other supports. College leaders say the move will increase completion rates. But basic needs experts a...

insidehighered.com

BREAKING: SAG-AFTRA, the actors union comes out in opposition to the Paramount-Warners merger. Plenty of actors & SAG members have been a part of our #BlockTheMerger coalition from day 1 but still, this is big. My hometown of Hollywood does not want this misbegotten mashup & neither does democracy

Paramount Skydance - Warner Bros. Transaction Update

sagaftra.org

The International Olympic Committee is lifting the suspension of Russian boxers while Russia is bombing the old boxing center in Kherson. The IOC is on the wrong side of history.

I wrote about the Nolan Odyssey for the LRB. I'll summarize some of my main points below, in case you don't feel like reading all that. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Emily Wilson · An Uncomplicated Man

As they say at the awards shows, I was humbled to learn that Christopher Nolan has read at least the first line of my...

lrb.co.uk

Polls should always be accompanied by a short fact-based quiz, and a correlation with poll answers and quiz answers.

Bylines Network@bylinesnetwork.co.uk · last wk.

Here’s a puzzle. Why do people still think immigration is "out of control" when the numbers tell a different story? Economist Jonathan Portes explores the gap between statistics, trust and public attitudes. @eastangliabylines.co.uk

Yay. More space junk. But I kind of love that the trend Elon accelerated to coat the planet in a gauze of satellites could ultimately make his (impossible) daydream of settling the universe even more impossible.

Carl Quintanilla@carlquintanilla.bsky.social · last wk.

(Reuters) - Amazon's Leo has proposed a new constellation of up to 5,105 satellites to provide direct-to-device voice and data connectivity, joining a growing race among satellite operators to beam cellular service directly to smartphones. @reuters.com $AMZN

Among the new slang I want to yeet* into the sun, "simp" is a standout. But I realize that it's just a replacement for older, even worse terms like "pussy-whipped," and yeeting it won't destroy the misogynist word-machine that created it. *yeet is on the favorites list

There's nothing to "join" in the Democratic Party. It's a brand with products I spend my vote on once a year at the democracy store. Most people's experience of it is an endless stream of texts that read like scams, their reward for donating or signing a petition. No wonder DSA is growing

Omar Wasow@owasow.bsky.social · 2w ago

Why has DSA grown? One argument from this research: not just ideology, but organization. Strong membership plus ongoing and continuous participation in social movements creates credibility, committed volunteers, political skills, and durable electoral capacity. www.niskanencenter.org/inside-the-d...

Brilliant move. A significant % of those "pied-à-terre" are owned by someone who's actually 15 shell corporations in a trenchcoat, and this will give NYC a lever for uncovering who owns them.

Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani@mayor.nyc.gov · 2w ago

In addition to a public health threat, it's so poorly managed that these so-called pro-business conservatives are ruining produce companies. People aren't buying *any* lettuce because they can't trust the understaffed CDC to identify the actual sources.

Representative Becca Balint@balint.house.gov · 2w ago

Actions have consequences. It turns out that when we slash research funding and fire public health experts, we see entirely avoidable disease outbreaks.

A public records request reveals how @mayorwu.boston.gov's election-year "review" of transportation projects created a duplicate layer of authority inside City Hall that fomented confusion and stalled urgent safety initiatives: mass.streetsblog.org/2026/07/22/f...

Failures of Communication and Accountability Plagued Mayor Wu's Election-Year 'Review' of Transportation Department - Streetsblog Massachusetts

An internal "30 day review" of city transportation projects that Mayor Wu requested during her re-election campaign last year was supposed to improve the public's trust in the city's ability to manage...

mass.streetsblog.org

GALLEGO: Would you say as a former auditor you pride yourself on catching waste? DENNIS: Yes G: Let's do a test. Is $600m on a ballroom, half paid by taxpayers, is a good fiscal decision? D: Oh, I'm not going to get involved in what the WH is doing G: As HUD CFO, this is literally the job

Private equity gutted Steward Health Care and closed two hospitals in Massachusetts. Patients & health workers suffered, and communities were left to clean up the mess. Never again. I’m proud to reintroduce the Health Over Wealth Act with @jayapal.house.gov to stop this corporate greed.

its been like 5 weeks now since we’ve had an accurate and reliable count of how many us senators are alive