A new survey from @knightfoundation.org and @ssrsresearch.bsky.social reveals a disquieting decline in how free Americans feel to use the freedoms protected by the #FirstAmendment without government interference or punishment. 🧵

Knight Foundation-SSRS Poll: Americans Feel Free Expression is Eroding - Knight Foundation

For more than two decades, Knight Foundation has commissioned research to better understand Americans’ lived experience with the First Amendment and free expression. As the country marks its 250th ann...

knightfoundation.org

i know votes are still being counted but the more i look at this michigan senate map the more it becomes clear that it kind of looks like a mitten

Here’s a PDF. Worth a few minutes of your time. users.wpi.edu/~zrbutzke/Do...

Adam Rawnsley@arawnsley.bsky.social · yesterday

Today, August 4, 2026, is the setting of Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” about a fully automated house continuing on after the family who lived there and the world around it died in a nuclear blast.

YOU GUYS GOTTA READ THIS

Kathryn Tewson@kathryntewson.bsky.social · 3d ago

I have just been sent the transcript of a deposition my grandmother gave in 1977 while she was serving as an expert witness in a series of tribal rights cases and let me tell you, if nothing else this is proof that I come by it honest for every conceivable value of “it”

100% supportive of this sentiment. The WNBA needs a crash course in online information dynamics and media manipulation. ASAP. Old school crisis response plans are going to fail spectacularly.

Ben Collins@bencollins.bsky.social · 3d ago

A good commissioner steps in now before every WNBA game becomes a rightwing performance space, like school board meetings were during peak CRT. You just have to throw the hammer down on this. Do not give them an inch.

"The legislation includes language to block President Donald Trump from finalizing a plan to put political appointees in charge of approving grants. The prohibition would last for the duration of the funding patch." 🎉🎉🎉

Politico@politico.com · 3d ago

Senate finalizes funding patch that would block Trump’s grant overhaul

Today I learned that baby cranes are called "colts" because their legs are so long and they can run around like idiots shortly after hatching. This is delightful, I enjoy knowing this.

In the end this is a political matter, not a legal one. They are choosing the path of appeasement thinking they’ll avoid the wrath of this administration. Scholars of authoritarianism disagree. 9/ www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/27/o...

Yale shouldn’t cut a deal with Trump - The Boston Globe

Yale should resist rather than negotiate away its independence.

bostonglobe.com

i just found the BEST photo from artemis ii.

I'm back! Each Friday night, I write a briefing on what happened in US science & higher ed. 🧪  July 31 (Year 2, Week 31) - student visas, asylum cases & ICE surge at airports - "Golden Age" & Vanderbilt reports - kangaroo courts, grant terminations & so much more buttondown.com/liminalcreat...

Year 2, Week 31

Jul 11-31, 2026 – the abracadabra of it all

buttondown.com

I wrote about science funding, science reform, and anti-science agendas. scatter.wordpress.com/2026/07/31/s...

science funding and the cherry picking problem

Science publishing–like all of science–requires money. There’s no getting around it, even with the open science movement. What appears free to many authors and readers still requires money and infr…

scatter.wordpress.com

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...

If you have an academic in your life, please be gentle with them this weekend because they're probably freaking the fuck out.

Joseph M. Adelman@jmadelman.bsky.social · 5d ago

Because the 1st is a Saturday, “How is it August already?!” will be observed today, Friday, July 31, 2026. Please panic accordingly.

This is more than the NSF social sciences division - now on the chopping block - awarded in grants last year. Think about that: a single AI company has the money to fund more social science research than the US govt.

Hetan Shah@hetanshah.bsky.social · 5d ago

Anthropic AI research fund offers $5m - $30m for social science research on themes of AI impact on workers; transition initiatives; income support; building worker stakes; and wider evidence on public investments. Total fund of $200m available www.anthropic.com/news/economi...

Today in “Existential threats to American higher education that make one wonder why university presidents are so totally absent from the public square in defending our interests” bsky.app/profile/mcop...

Eugene Vinitsky 🍒@eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · 6d ago

One weird trick to literally destroy America www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

this owl has just about had it with the bullshit and me too

1st book review! “Lombrozo unpacks the psychology of explanations in rich detail and sharply analyzes how explaining can help and hinder…The result is a fresh, engrossing take on an important aspect of human behavior.” 😀 www.publishersweekly.com/9780063395008

Why We Ask Why: The Science of Explanation and the Human Drive to Understand by Tania Lombrozo

People explain what they experience, feel, and encounter in order to understand the present and anticipate the future, according...

publishersweekly.com

"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

Brendan, Jaime, Magdalena, Olivier and I have been working on this paper for six years and it is finally out. Brendan summarized the findings but I wanted to speak to the process/design. We started off wanting to reduce misinfo exposure -- BUT that is challenging because...

Brendan Nyhan@brendannyhan.bsky.social · 7d ago

🚨New Science Advances🚨 Untrustworthy sources on Facebook and Instagram in 2020: Concentrated exposure but no attitudinal effects www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... -Exposure very low but highly concentrated -Reducing exposure by ~70% for months had no measurable effects *even among frequent consumers*

New in PN: The new "science golden age" looks suspiciously like a grift "It’s impossible not to wonder whether part of Trump’s loathing for universities is that there's no way for him to corrupt the process and make money off it in the same way he can by giving billions to Silicon Valley types."

The new "science golden age" looks suspiciously like a grift

Trump wants to run scientific research like his family business.

publicnotice.co

Solidarity is needed. The attacks on vaccines and public health are coming for the rest of us eventually, just as they came for asbestos science, smoking science, and climate science before vaccines. Fixing democracy requires fighting against the attacks on science. And the converse. /end

Yuuuuuup. As a dude with an Italian last name, I am well aware how recently Italians were given "white" status here in the US, and how much of a scandal it was when my first-generation Italian grandfather married my Yankee grandmother whose forebears helped found New Amsterdam.

Kevin M. Kruse@kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 7d ago

Just want to drop this bit of nativist paranoia about Italians here. Check out the labels.

The GOP scapegoating attacks on Dr. Fauci, a spectacle designed to affirm the conspiracy theories of a brain-wormed base, are chilling. What scientist or public servant, in their right minds, will choose to put themselves on the line during the next pandemic or crisis? www.cnn.com/2026/07/29/p...

Dr. Anthony Fauci repeatedly invokes the Fifth in dramatic Senate hearing about Covid pandemic | CNN Politics

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the US government response to the Covid-19 pandemic, invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, refusing to testify Wednesday just minutes into a Capitol ...

cnn.com

🚨New Science Advances🚨 Untrustworthy sources on Facebook and Instagram in 2020: Concentrated exposure but no attitudinal effects www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... -Exposure very low but highly concentrated -Reducing exposure by ~70% for months had no measurable effects *even among frequent consumers*

👇🎯 Again, this is what both political parties & societal institutions like the media need to to do in a functioning democratic polity, & we’re not going to get anywhere by continuing to allow the far right authoritarian party to set new terms of what is acceptable behavior in politics & society.

[Christopher M. Federico]@chrispps.bsky.social · last wk.

this sounds elitist but our recovery from the present moment will depend in part on being able to once again effectively malign, ostracize, and refuse a platform to cranks

A decade ago, Facebook was so worried about rising misinformation that it paid various news outlets to hire writers specifically tasked with publishing Snopes-like fact-checks. Today, the company is leaping into bed with a purveyor of misinformation to toy with a tool known for getting facts wrong.

When people seek guidance from science, they expect it to work more than once. I have TWO new articles on commercial forces & proprietary models that make science less reliable, with pointers to communities and ideas that might help. This post offers a summary: citizensandtech.org/2026/07/comm...

New Studies: How Commercial Forces Make Science Less Reliable

Computational social science has been distorted by commercial forces, and AI is making it worse.

citizensandtech.org

$229 billion = annual amount spent in USA on alcohol $166 billion = annual sports gambling handle in USA (excluding pred markets) $300 billion = annual total gambling handle in the USA (casinos + sports) $600 million = NIAAA annual budget $0 = annual federal research funding for gambling

Gordon Hodson@gordonhodsonphd.bsky.social · last wk.

#AcademicSky We talk a lot on here about AI-relevant concerns. But we should be talking more about gambling. Wow, that's a TON of money spent on risky activity. What could go wrong? fortune.com/2026/07/26/g...

by way of idle wishful thinking - would be great if NYT hired a science writer/thinker for the op-ed page to tell us what’s happening and what’s at stake in the sciences, at a time when they are under attack in a way Galileo would recognize, while newspaper science journalism is facing extinction

Rufo was "supplying policy blueprints and social-media firepower for an ambitious conservative overhaul. In return, FL became Rufo’s proving ground, elevating the up-and-coming activist into one of the movement’s most influential cheerleaders." www.chronicle.com/article/flor...

Florida’s Great Conservative Crack-Up

In the behind-the-scenes effort to install Stuart Bell as the flagship’s new president, Gov. Ron DeSantis played a starring role — to the chagrin of his onetime allies.

chronicle.com