These scenes worked because everyone knew the story. They recognized features & could 'read it' But we also have art of lost myths This one's famous: Ajax & Achilles playing dice on the beach at Troy. This fun scene shows up hundreds of times. It was popular! But it's not in surviving texts. /10

I lived through one in Guatemala. The thing about civil war is that it empowers the very WORST dregs of society. They come out of the woodwork once civil rules have broken down. And it means that good people wind up dead in the ditch with their hands zip tied and plastic bags over their heads.

Just because a moral panic is bullshit doesn't mean its consequences aren't real. Trans people are dying. Trans children are dying. People are uprooting their entire lives and moving states, moving countries. This horror is everywhere and it's not stopping. If anything the evil side is winning.

Last night showed again #Ukraine ’s growing vulnerability to #ballistic missiles. According to Ukraine's Air Force, only 1 of 27 ballistic missiles was intercepted. The shortage of interceptors is often mentioned, but that's not the only problem. Some observations from my reporting this week:

“Let us engage in a thought experiment: what if the US suddenly annexed Greenland and Morocco annexed Ceuta and Melilla simultaneously, mirroring Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea? What would the EU do? 7/

Here's my story from yesterday: publicola.com/2026/07/30/m...

Police Chief Shon Barnes is Out, His Deputy Andre Sayles Will Serve as Interim Chief - PubliCola

By Erica C. Barnett After a silence of nearly 24 hours, Mayor Katie Wilson announced at 3:30 this afternoon…

publicola.com

Just a reminder, after a week full of scoops and general insanity at Seattle City Hall, that my work is funded directly and entirely by reader contributions and subscriptions. LOTS of options here, from newsletter subscriptions to one-time donations to my physical address, for checks!

If you issue an apology whenever a rights-infringing organisation, movement or state objects to your research output pointing out their character as a rights-infringing actor, you might as well close up shop, because that's always going to happen, so you'll never be able to oppose any of them!

I wonder if the guys who sincerely believe they will buy eternal life by jacking hardware into their brains and harvesting organs from their own clones are worried about the condition of the world they're leaving for future generations. 🤔

i'm sure you know this but the "freelance isn't free" law applies if the publication is located in NY. you as the writer don't have to be in NY. i believe it is worthwhile to file because i was told that they will watch how many get filed against individual outlets.

this is my new favorite diagram

it is very important that we have independent media and I am again tapping the sign for you to find billionaire free, worker run news to support how and when you are able

Joseph Cox@josephcox.bsky.social · 5d ago

That was fast. Google sent me a statement saying it is now “rolling back“ this AI feature after our demonstration and others from OSINT researchers www.404media.co/google-earth...

This really isn’t the app that I use for my fitness hobbies, but there is a major Nazi scandal going on in the powerlifting world right now where one of the beastiest (laudatory) women powerlifters in the world (Sonita Muluh) got robbed of a world record squat (over 700lbs) by a spotter

This is an important story, beyond the world of sports. There were BIG MONEY interests at stake here. But *organized opposition* to a cartoonishly corrupt sell-off torpedoed the plan. Almost immediately. There is a lesson here.

Infantino scraps FIFA World Cup sell-off plan after backlash

FIFA president Gianni Infantino has scrapped his proposal to sell stakes in the World Cup after widespread backlash, including from within global soccer's governing body, and a threatened boycott by European Nations.

espn.com

As polling gets worse, expect more "digital twin" proposals...which essentially cede epistemic power to whoever designs the simulation.

Jenny Cohn@jennycohn.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Milei “said he wants to…allow companies run by machines” & has also “announced a ‘social digital twin’ program, which wld use publicly available citizen data to create simulations intended to inform public policy...” (Thiel recently moved to Argentina & OpenAI opened a data center there.) 6/5/26 1/

your apartment, the sport of basketball, and the Republic of Korea are all social constructs. mere recognition of this fact does not actually make the question of whether you are standing in your own apartment, playing basketball, or a Korean national up in the air until settled by op ed editors

thanks for joining my livestream

no one asked for this

How to plant a nuclear plant in Iran

The question is: what on earth is Google doing?

digitaldigging.org

It’s really starting to grind me down

Hey! We were the No. 15 most-read nonprofit news site *in the entire country* last month—not bad! Nieman Lab's been keeping up w/nonprofit newsroom traffic month by month, & we've been steadily climbing up the ranks in some very good company...

It is in fact racist to call an Arab with views you disagree with an antisemite. I know this will be a surprise to many but unless that person is actually saying something antisemitic, the Arab is not genetically predisposed to antisemitism

I wrote about how immigration arrests are at all-time highs, even as ICE is trying to assume a lower public profile. How are they doing this? Look to your local police.

ICE’s Secret Weapon Is in Your Community

While attempting to maintain a relatively lower profile, ICE is managing to arrest record numbers of people. Here’s how it’s doing that.

newrepublic.com

Exceptionally well done look at the shape of war in Ukraine, new kinds of hell defined by cheap and abundant and expendable drones, a new far-ranging kill later on top of 20th and 21st century weapons and machines www.reuters.com/graphics/UKR...

Inside Ukraine’s Kill Zone

Drones now dominate the war in Ukraine. Fly through the front line’s deadly “kill zone” and discover how surveillance, kamikaze drones and new tactics are reshaping modern warfare. An immersive Reuter...

reuters.com

OUT TODAY, the AAUP just released the first comprehensive account of how the Trump administration has taken the same playbook it's used on law firms & foreign governments & turned it on American universities. US higher ed has, in effect, become a target of a massive extortion racket. 🧵

New Report on Extorted Compliance Charges “Massive Extortion Racket” Against Higher Ed

A new AAUP report, "Extorted Compliance: A Threat to Institutional Autonomy, Academic Freedom, and Shared Governance," exposes how the Trump administration has extended its pay-to-play approach to gov...

aaup.org

Interesting: DoorDash is supporting the GOP bill in Congress to limit D.C.'s ability to increase or decrease taxes and fees, largely in response to the D.C. Council's recent vote in impose a new 20-cent delivery fee to help fund food-access programs. www.notus.org/metro/uberea...

That Food Delivery Is Soon Going To Cost You a Little More in D.C.

DoorDash unsuccessfully fought a 20-cent fee approved by the D.C. Council that will also affect UberEats deliveries.

notus.org

In 2021, there were roughly 101 gender clinics offering care to transgender youth offering a full range of gender affirming care. By July 2026, there are only about 31 left that still prescribe hormones and puberty blockers.

If you're even a _tiny_ bit into security and privacy, pay attention to this one. A court filing in a case against cyberhacker Peter Stokes revealed Microsoft's GDID embedded in EVERY Win11 install provided the FBI the ability to trace his PC across VPNs(!!) & proxies(!!) across three countries.

Microsoft admits Windows 11 has a GDID tracker with no off switch, first documented publicly in an FBI hacker complaint

GDID is the persistent Windows ID that helped FBI trace a Scattered Spider hacker despite VPNs. Here's how it works and how to limit it.

windowslatest.com

I’m a clinic escort. We try to keep it professional and pleasant for the patients - avoiding interactions with the harassers. We LOVE when passersby cuss them out for us. 😂

Gravel Influencer@gravelinfluencer.bsky.social · 2w ago

This video of a woman telling an anti-abortion asshole to, "Shut the fuck up" is exactly what I needed to see on a Monday morning

"Bill Maher says he's open to voting for JD Vance in 2028" my brother in christ I am 99% sure he didn't vote blue in '24 anyway, he's a tremendous piece of shit who somehow made a career out of finding the veins of racism and misogyny that were still at-the-time allowable in liberal spaces

friends, please: don’t use transreads dot org they claim to support trans authors, but take our entire texts, post them for free, fundraise off it, and have the gall to claim it’s about preservation they are literally taking money from trans creators and make it harder for us to keep creating