I’ve yet to read an article about Cambridge’s decision to turn off (and now turn back on) ShotSpotter that mentions any facts about how many investigations its helped or crimes its stopped. Seems like a key piece of data! www.bostonglobe.com/2026/08/04/m...

In Cambridge, a political anomaly: Officials publicly changed their minds - The Boston Globe

Was it a flip-flop under pressure, or a show of humility from elected leaders willing to give the public more say in how decisions are made?

bostonglobe.com

imagine asking someone on a plane in 1986 if they would trade more leg room and the meal (that was already bad enough it was the butt of standup comedy routines) for: cheaper flights, a tv in every seatback, more routes, buy tickets on your phone, safer planes. They’d say yes in a second!

Constantine@ajaxsinger.bsky.social · 16h ago

Food, man. Food is so much better than it was in 1986. All of it. Poor-people food, restaurant food, fresh food, frozen food. Food is just a hell of a lot better.

As someone who divorced themselves so much from the in and outs of the Maine senate race to the point I didn’t know how to spell Platner’s name, I strongly urge everyone to adopt the same stance on Wisconsin before it’s too late. Save yourself some agita!

robert j bennett, ceo, results omega@robertjbennett.bsky.social · 6h ago

The hong/thanksgiving stuff has escaped containment, my mother in law knew about it

The correct way to watch election results

Lot of stuff happening fast

The existence of bigotry implies the existence of lil’otry.

After launching an aggressive investigation into what family member, friend, or caregiver had been feeding my kid coffee, I belatedly discovered that she thought Starburst were called Starbucks.

Had to gently beg the guy to go into the basement because I got there so early they hadn’t put the new books out yet, but thus can definitively say I was the first person to purchase A Trade Of Blood at my local bookstore.

Can’t be president if you don’t say trying-to-be-President-lip-servicey things. If this one got you, it’s going to be a rough 2028.

Mikhail Gorbaechev@mikhailgorbaechev.bsky.social · 2d ago

Damn people really can't let AOC cook huh

I see Jonah Hill has not consumed 10,000 forum posts and short form videos about whether BJJ let you win in a street fight and whether size and strength matters in grappling sports.

Dan of the Year@downwithdan.bsky.social · 2d ago

He will never understand that being "the fat guy from Superbad" is infinitely better than being "the martial arts chud nobody likes"

Not to be glib but just in terms of public opinion, I do think the AI industry needs to get the proverbial cancer cure pretty soon. If not, right now the consensus position in both parties’ 2028 primaries feels like it will be pretty stridently anti-data center unless something changes.

Christopher Mims@mims.bsky.social · 2d ago

Do you have any idea how unpopular your industry has to be to get the governor of Texas to pause approvals of your newest facilities? Abbott just halted all data center approvals in his state until they're properly vetted: www.texastribune.org/2026/08/03/t...

“One of the sports most accomplished managers” 🤔

The Washington Post@washingtonpost.com · 2d ago

Mauricio Pochettino has signed a new contract to remain coach of the U.S. men’s national soccer team through the 2030 World Cup, a significant coup that will give one of the sport’s most accomplished managers a full four-year cycle to shape the team.

Having lived on the east coast my whole life, I had to scrap and re-plan our entire summer vacation when I found of my kid’s start date for her first year in a California public school. August 12 had not even occurred to my East coast bias brain.

Conor Sen@conorsen.bsky.social · 2d ago

The biggest coastal media bias is not recognizing that the first half of August is back to school for most of the country, and post-Labor Day is the outlier.

I have a strict no Yankees policy on my fantasy team and this is the first time I’ve ever had a player convert to a Yankee mid-season, let alone one this good. Going to have to do some extra complicated sophism to make this ok.

Passanthallich@passanthalbot.bsky.social · 3d ago

@JeffPassan tweeted The Yankees will be sending four prospects to the Nationals in the Luis García Jr. trade, sources tell ESPN.

The upcoming baseball strike/lockout is going to be so interesting from a labor perspective: management engaged in a brutal war amongst themselves while both sides of that conflict are also in a battle with labor is a fascinating dynamic.

POV I'm being asked to make basically any decision, no matter how trivial:

French New Wave Memes@fnwave.bsky.social · 3d ago

🧏‍♀️

Airbnb should give me some credit for the appliances I fix when I’m at the house.

I desperately need an omniscient god to tell me which of these are real and which are excuses for something else they did while drunk or high (or are real but because of being drunk or high).

Cooper Lund@cooperlund.online · 5d ago

Let's remember some Baseball Injuries! I'll go first: Glenallen Hill having a nightmare about spiders that was so bad he fell out of bed and through a glass table

Out running in rural Maine a woman in a pickup waved me down to ask if I had seen her lost cow. That Real America stuff hits so hard.

Maybe a crank opinion (and applicable to areas of expertise far outside academia), but I think academics could work a little harder at preventing these concepts from escaping the seminar room without context. Seems like on balance more harm than good has come from it.

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 5d ago

there are a lot of philosophical concepts that get egregiously misused out of the seminar room (and in the seminar room, to be fair). but in terms of sheer pernicious misuse "social construct" has gotta be top 5 somewhere and it's not number 5

People joining the Peace Corps, you don’t hear so much about it anymore.

Just finished one of those NYRB reissues, it was about a disaffected man struggling to cope with modernity in a gritty, post-war world. Grabbed another one, it’s about disaffected man struggling to cope with modernity in a gritty, post-war world.

What did the author of a Perfect Storm’s girlfriend say to him when she was upset he hadn’t proposed yet? Sebastian, I’m not getting any JUNGER!

Lost in all the discussion of the possibility of full self-driving is how much a new car does currently to keep you from hitting things. It’s remarkable and when you get back into an old car after getting used to it, the correct reaction is to be like “I can’t believe we used to drive like this.”

bendwalsh.bsky.social@bendwalsh.bsky.social · 6d ago

"He’s accustomed to complaints about things like blind-spot monitoring or rear cameras, but doesn’t see the industry returning to its analog days." I think at lot of this, at its core, is that people are dangerous drivers and don't want to be reminded of it www.wsj.com/lifestyle/ca...

Got me thinking of what my actual list is: Argo Oceans 11 Meet the Parents High Fidelity Empire Records Good Will Hunting A Hard Day’s Night Yellow Submarine You Can Count on Me

Patrick Wyman@patrickwyman.bsky.social · 7d ago

Film you've watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Star Trek, Star Wars, LOTR, Marvel, Disney, or Ghibli.

You know what towering work of western literature has the now-popular story of the Odyssey and very Nolan-esque complex and murky flashbacks and chronology? That’s right: Nolan must adapt Ulysses.

Matt Pearce@mattdpearce.com · 7d ago

I need Christopher Nolan to keep adapting towering works of literature as a sort of Keynesian stimulus for literary culture.

Spend enough time on Instagram and you discover there’s a OnlyFans girl doing content marking in every hobby. Rock climber onlyfans, equestrian girl onlyfans, LEGO onlyfans, running onlyfans, hiking onlyfans, Olympic weightlifting onlyfans. So of course there’s someone doing MAGA OnlyFans.

Razzball@razzball.bsky.social · 7d ago

What if they created 10 million Erika Kirks?

I don’t mean to be snarky but the funniest thing about this endless controversy is that the seniors in question do not even park in the lost parking spots in question. They mostly perform insane (often illegal) maneuvers to park in the parking lot of the grocery store they’re trying to go to.

The Berkeley Scanner@berkeleyscanner.com · 7d ago

Despite a sharply divided public, Berkeley has approved protected bike lanes on Hopkins Street. CM Shoshana O'Keefe (who reps the district) called it "absolute madness." "This is about more than just a bike lane," countered CM Mark Humbert.

Maybe I’m misremembering but the general tenor of coverage and the general gestalt felt very different when W. was at these numbers.

Jacob Smith@jacobfhsmith.bsky.social · last wk.

Trump at 32/58, D+7 generic ballot in Quinnipiac poll.qu.edu/poll-release...