New Working Paper with Micah Baum and Joaquin Endara: Students tend to become more liberal during college. We study whether individual faculty make their students more liberal. We find no evidence that faculty affect student partisanship. Working Paper: edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1538 1/

Do Faculty Affect Student Partisanship?

We study whether Democratic college professors make their students more liberal. We link voter data to salary records from 33 state flagships and show that faculty skew Democratic, especially in the h...

edworkingpapers.com

Longing for the days when a drummer could buy cymbals with great brand names like Borg, Krut, and Spizz

A stroll through the Right to Roam: "The Kinder mass trespass of 24 April 1932... included some 400 young men and women from Manchester, Sheffield & the surrounding mill towns who defied the law and walked across the privately owned plateau of Kinder Scout, which was then used for grouse shooting."

Retracing the defiant walk that changed Britain

Seventy-five years after the Peak District became Britain's first national park, visitors can retrace the mass trespass that helped open the countryside to everyone.

bbc.com

Portland HAD a Disability Accomodation Registry for first responders & disaster planning. It was also important context for police when, say, someone with IDD had a meltdown in public. But when I tried to sign up my son in 2013, I got a letter back that the list had just been discontinued.

OPB@opb.org · 6d ago

As wildfires spur thousands of evacuations across small cities and rural areas of Oregon, disability rights advocates are alleging in a lawsuit that Portland and Multnomah County are not prepared to help people with disabilities during a disaster.

I think this battle was lost shortly after Samuel Morse and Ezra Cornell erected their first telegraph poles in 1844.

Yikes: "Firefighters faced an especially dangerous situation in Vall d'Uixo... where the ground contains old ordnance from the Spanish Civil War that explodes when the flames reach the area, Chevi Bolumar, fire chief of the Valencian ​regional government, told public broadcaster TVE."

France and Spain race to curb wildfires before new heatwave arrives

About 220,000 people have been evacuated in France, while further south in Spain around 100,000 have been told to leave their homes or seek shelter.

reuters.com

You can sleep in Dylan Thomas's childhood home in Swansea, including what he described in a letter as his "tiny, renovated bedroom… Smelly. Painful. Hot water pipes very near. Gurgle all the time. Nearly go mad."

Sleeping in Dylan Thomas' house in Wales

Part time portal, part museum, the legendary poet's childhood home offers travellers an all-access stay in Swansea – and a surreal experience.

bbc.com

NEW: In a stunning admission, the Trump administration admitted in court documents that it canceled billions in energy grants to states "based solely" on politics -- and whether that state was represented by Democrats and backed Harris in 2024. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/24/b...

Trump Administration Admits Canceling Grants to States That Did Not Vote for Him

Federal officials said in court documents that they halted billions of dollars in funding for energy projects to states “based solely” on whether they backed President Trump in the 2024 election.

nytimes.com

Hadn't spotted this before today's Wired story, but this is a fascinating student press case in Marin. High school journalists looked up their county in the Epstein files, found stuff, reported it. Adults freaked out & the principal caved. Which is illegal. California law protects HS journalists.

Student journalists’ free press rights tested at Marin County high school

Administrators at Redwood High School in Marin County have been accused of violating a state law that protects the First Amendment and free press rights of student journalists at the Redwood Bark, the...

edsource.org

"Great" is truly a load-bearing adjective

shout out to The Strand bookstore staffer who did this

Today in “Headlines That Sound Like 1830”:

French court sentences Freemason criminal masterminds to up to 30 years in prison

After more than three months of hearings in a case involving a murder, two attempted murders and several violent assaults, 22 defendants involved in the criminal activities linked to a Masonic lodge i...

lemonde.fr

Pages from Romeyn Beck Hough’s unique 14 volume work The American Woods (1888–1913), a collection in book-form of more than 1000 paper-thin wood samples representing more than 350 varieties of N.American tree. More samples from the work here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/t...

I'd totally forgotten about Trump doxxing Graham in the '16 primaries

Anna Bower@annabower.bsky.social · 3w ago

For people who missed it at the time: We obtained and published Lindsey Graham’s Georgia grand jury testimony earlier this year. Read the transcript: www.documentcloud.org/documents/28... Also throwback to one of my first pieces for @lawfaremedia.org: www.lawfaremedia.org/article/lind...

Just got a letter from the Washington Post that they got hacked last summer & "data that was affected by this incident included your name and SSN." The last piece I wrote there was in 2013. Wtf are they doing retaining this 12 years? There's NO reason to retain W-9 info for that long.

Weirdly fascinated by this 1988 FBI report on coin-push carnival games

Fascinating Smithsonian piece on the Philly inventor who - as her colony had no patent office - had to sail to London in 1712 to become the first American granted an English patent. Her hominy milling machine was patented in her husband’s name, because women still weren’t allowed to hold patents.

When Patent Protections Couldn’t Keep Pace With Ingenuity in the Colonies, One Inventive Woman Took Her Case to Britain

Sybilla Righton Masters devised a novel way to work with grains available to her in Philadelphia. A long journey led to the first patent issued to an American (though it went to her husband)

smithsonianmag.com

Might start signing all my emails like this

From the Domestic Policy Council, which has a defunct homepage (whitehouse.gov/dpc/) & hasn't updated its Government Manual page in 5 years. So who's on it? Well, of the 13 known members, it appears to include one (1) woman. Any people of color? Go on, guess. www.legistorm.com/organization...

Steve Herman@newsguy.bsky.social · last mo.

The White House has issued a 162-page report accusing the leadership of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History of extremism "to divide, dispirit, and discourage our citizens.” www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...

We need fun national problems, like “Do we tax hot-air balloons as air transport or leisure?”

French taxman targets hot-air balloon sector

France's Finance Ministry accused hot-air balloon operators of applying a reduced VAT rate, reserved for air transport, instead of the higher rate for leisure activities. Business owners argue that th...

lemonde.fr

Great moments in U.S. History.

This is *absolutely* bananas; the wildest (not complimentary) thing you'll read about education today. And the names in the story (both real and fake) are amazing.

Kevin Carey@kevincarey1.bsky.social · last mo.

1/ Important new investigative report from my colleague @jbeowulf.bsky.social about "Maestro," advertised as "the AI University" on TikTok, that turns out to be a chatbot bolted onto a failing for-profit business school in order to illegally harvest Pell grants. www.newamerica.org/insights/the...

It blows my mind that e-book sales are actually declining, even though e-book readers are better, more varied, and more capable than ever. But not better than printed books, it seems! I can't think of any other medium where the latest way to consume it hasn't won.

Mel Brooks has been around for 40% of the US's existence.

NEW: @opb.org and ProPublica found that water from one of Oregon’s most iconic rivers, the Deschutes, is largely given away to wealthy landowners who are turning the high desert green with lush pastures and landscaping.

An Oregon Law Lets One Wealthy Region Turn the Desert Green. When Drought Hits, Farmers Pay the Price.

In the high desert of Central Oregon, the Deschutes River is a lifeline for farmers and landowners — but a century-old water law entitles just a few thousand people to more than half of its volume.

propublica.org

Yesterday Radio France debuted flute and harp compositions cowritten -- or written and then revised, really -- in 1778 by Mozart and his pupil Marie de Guînes. Previously unknown pieces, they were found in the pupil's old composition book this February. You can hear them here:

Première mondiale : écoutez l'œuvre inédite de Mozart découverte par la BnF

En février 2026, la BnF a découvert un manuscrit inédit de Mozart, né de leçons données à une harpiste parisienne en 1778. Deux musiciens de l'Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France ont enregistré c...

radiofrance.fr

Our latest investigation: How giant trucks and SUVs are far deadlier for pedestrians. “Before the driver knows what’s happened, the pedestrian’s head is under the wheel.” www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

The Deadly Rise of Giant Trucks and S.U.V.s (Gift Article)

The vehicles on American roads have grown larger — and they are killing thousands more pedestrians, a Times investigation found.

nytimes.com

I'd just like to point out that the next time someone asks what you can do with an English major, you can now answer: "Probably be the next Prime Minister."

Who is Andy Burnham? Ex-Manchester mayor who wants to lead the country

The outgoing Greater Manchester mayor is lining up a third attempt to be Labour leader following his return to Westminster.

bbc.com

Mark Singer's obit reminded me how in 1990 Spy magazine sent 58 prominent people $1.11 checks for an unexplained "overcharge... for services rendered." 26 signed it. Then Spy sent 64¢. Half signed that. Then they sent 13¢. Two cashed it: arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, & you can guess the other.