“A Penn professor thought she’d sell 1000 copies of her ‘Odyssey’ translation. She sold a million this year alone, thanks to Christopher Nolan.” “West Philly's Emily Wilson, who penned a highly acclaimed translation of the epic poem in 2017, is having a big summer.”

A Penn professor thought she’d sell 1000 copies of her ‘Odyssey’ translation. She sold a million this year alone, thanks to Christopher Nolan.

West Philly's Emily Wilson, who penned a highly acclaimed translation of the epic poem in 2017, is having a big summer.

share.inquirer.com

I tell everyone at the end of my shows: if you are unable to by a book thats cool, an even better thing is to ask a library to buy a copy then you are purchasing it for the whole community and you haven't spent a damn penny!

Sunny Moraine@dynamicsymmetry.bsky.social · 2w ago

If you want to read a book and your library doesn’t have it, it is truly a massive favor to an author to request that the library acquire it. It really and truly is

"The classroom device pullback is the latest sign of a growing global reckoning over how tech giants and their products have upended childhood, adolescence and education." www.nytimes.com/2026/03/29/t...

Chromebook Remorse: Tech Backlash at Schools Extends Beyond Phones (Gift Article)

No more YouTube or video games on school laptops. Textbooks and pencils are back. Some seventh graders say they prefer learning offline.

nytimes.com

“In his Instagram post, Encina thanked Gomez, the Getty photographer, whose presence on the train he said was ‘quietly reassuring.’ In the interview, he said seeing a photographer there gave him some comfort because someone was documenting what was happening.”

Christopher Wiggins@cwnewser.bsky.social · last mo.

My interview: “I came to this country as an infant and became a U.S. citizen,” Roswell Encina said. “So sitting there, on the Fourth of July, I couldn’t help but think about the promise of America and the work still required to protect it.” www.advocate.com/news/people/...

Liz Soto and Savanna Batten are 2 of those sentenced to 50 years in prison for Prairieland. I visited them in a north Texas jail—11 months into their incarceration over a July 4 noise demo—to meet the Trump admin’s “Antifa terrorists”. from behind glass, Soto said, “They didn’t like my book club.”

‘This is injustice’: how leftist zines were used to sentence anti-ICE protesters to decades in prison

Advocates sound alarm after zines were used as evidence to convict protesters of terrorism charges tied to 2025 protest at Texas ICE facility

theguardian.com

Grok is now in the history manipulation business. And what more important history to distort at this moment than that of the 14th Amendment.

Anthony Michael Kreis@anthonymkreis.bsky.social · last mo.

There is a pernicious and sustained effort to distort the historical record and do violence to the public’s memory.

It is a damn GIFT when @mckinneykelsey.bsky.social writes about art!!!

Misery And Memory In Two Van Goghs | Defector

Beneath soaring ceilings, in a small darkly painted gallery off the main hall of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, two immense sunflower paintings hang side by side. The paintings are bigger than I expe...

defector.com

New article from the Brennan Center (co-authored by UW colleague Rachel Moran) on how news deserts leave voters vulnerable to election misinformation. www.brennancenter.org/our-work/res...

News Deserts Leave Voters Vulnerable to Election Misinformation

The disappearance of local news outlets means Americans across the country turn to less reliable online sources for election information.

brennancenter.org

Musk buying twitter, Bezos buying WaPo, Ellison buying CBS—all are less profitable now. But they’re political investments that increase the value of the new owners’ portfolios Wealth concentration makes this possible, and that’s one mechanism by which inequality destroys democracy

This is excellent from @jamellebouie.net. The Trump administration is not conservative in any meaningful sense of the word. They are revolutionaries undermining the constitutional order. Any competent response from Democrats needs to face this reality squarely.

Opinion | America Broke Something When It Gave Trump a Second Chance

nytimes.com

Amnesty International understanding that this "generative AI" shit as currently conceived and deployed is a project which enables fascism and endangers the already vulnerable and marginalized populations of the world.

Alix Dunn@alixdunn.com · 2mo ago

Oh hell yeah @amnesty.org comes out swinging: "Amnesty International finds that standalone generative AI systems... are fundamentally incompatible with IHRL. As such, Amnesty International is calling for a prohibition of such systems." www.amnesty.org/en/documents...

A functional democracy depends on its participants being able to understand the operations of their government. In honor of the 250th anniversary of the US's founding, we've published five essays about the interpretative skills required of participants in a democracy. style.mla.org/the-mla-demo...

The MLA Democracy Project: Essays on Teaching Democracy and Literature | MLA Style Center

A functional democracy depends on its participants being able to understand the operations of their government. The knowledge and skills that come from MLA disciplines–language, literature, writing, a...

style.mla.org

Google is transforming Search from a list of links into an AI-powered experience filled with conversational answers, autonomous agents, and interactive interfaces — a shift that could further reduce traffic to publishers across the web.

Google Search as you know it is over | TechCrunch

Google is transforming Search from a list of links into an AI-powered experience filled with conversational answers, autonomous agents, and interactive interfaces — a shift that could further reduce traffic to publishers across the web.

techcrunch.com

"Fake citations have turned into a nightmare for research librarians, who by some estimates are wasting up to 15 percent of their work hours responding to requests for nonexistent records that ChatGPT or Google Gemini alluded to." open access link: archive.ph/qt59c 2/🧵

AI Is Inventing Academic Papers That Don't Exist -- And They're Being Cited in Real Journals

Academic articles from authors using large language model are creating an ecosystem of fake research that threatens human knowledge itself.

rollingstone.com

If you want to feel empowered this morning, here's a gift link of @tressiemcphd.bsky.social banger article on women seeing through influencer attempts to convince us that we should fear the AI www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/o...

Opinion | Is the Era of Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss Finally Over?

nytimes.com

"We are experiencing a widespread GOP attempt to undo the Reconstruction Amendments that, along w/later civil rights reforms, form the constitutional foundation for our multiracial democracy." Good @aselrod.bsky.social intervention (cites my reporting on VA): www.liberalcurrents.com/democrats-ne...

Democrats Need to Realize What Time It Is: On Conjuncture, Revolution, and the Next American Republic

We are living through a revolutionary moment, whether Democrats want to do their jobs or not.

liberalcurrents.com

In a moment that is testing me, I’m lucky to have these women standing with me in the fight for accountability from this administration.  I spoke with Marie Claire about why I’m not backing down—and how it’s easier to stand up with my fellow congresswomen by my side.

Inside the Pact to Keep a Congresswoman Out of Prison

“I think that [the Trump administration] thought they could move in ways that are cruel, targeted, and unprecedented, and that maybe no one would care.”

marieclaire.com

The United States now has the most government restrictions on academic freedom of any high-income country. www.chemistryworld.com/news/academi... Raw data from @vdeminstitute.bsky.social —> academic-freedom-index.net/research/Aca...

Teens on TikTok and Instagram are there for news more than Snapchat. About four-in-ten or more on TikTok and Instagram say it’s a reason they use it, compared with about a quarter on Snapchat.

Teens’ Experiences on TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat | Pew Research Center

About this research This study is Pew Research Center’s latest effort to explore the landscape of teens and technology today. It focuses on social media and how the views and…

pewresearch.org

Man Who Threw Molotov Cocktail At Sam Altman’s Home Claims He Was Following ChatGPT Recipe For Risotto https://theonion.com/man-who-threw-molotov-cocktail-at-sam-altmans-home-claims-he-was-following-chatgpt-recipe-for-risotto/

This study shows that disinformation spreads, not as “false facts”, but as narratives. Compare that to how mis- and disinformation are often operationalized in the big-N quantitative and experimental research in the Nature/Science journals — that’s a major weakness in the field.

alice e marwick@alicetiara.bsky.social · 4mo ago

🚨NEW DISINFO PAPER🚨 TLDR; disinformation circulates as narratives, not false facts. This paper took five years (!!!) and a rotating cast of collaborators and GRAs. Our case studies include the pee tape, and we have an entire appendix justifying that. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

we'll see how it shakes out over the course of years, but as of right now, mamdani is definitely showing how the future of good progressive governance means "use government to do good things and then post about it" both parts are important!

Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani@mayor.nyc.gov · 4mo ago

Ever wonder how to get rid of a mattress? Or how to find resources for a neighbor in need? Call 311.    311 is contacted 100,000 times every day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. No call is too small.    So on the anniversary of 311 (3/11), I decided to answer some of those calls myself.

The story of how disparate and diverse communities are stepping up to deny the federal government a detention infrastructure is a big one, and it’s inspiring. 👇🏾

Project Salt Box@projectsaltbox.com · 4mo ago

🟢 Durant, OK warehouse has sold… to the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma! ICE previously sought to buy the space to create a mega detention center capable of holding 8,500 people. This is the 13th warehouse they have been denied.

Earlier this week, @drkatemarvel.bsky.social resigned from her role at NASA in a move that was covered by Scientific American, The New York Times, Bloomberg, and others. www.scientificamerican.com/article/top-...

A top climate scientist just resigned from NASA. Here's why

Climate scientist Kate Marvel talked to Scientific American about her decision to leave NASA amid federal government turmoil and funding challenges

scientificamerican.com

Protect Democracy spells out Trump's "rigged election" strategy for 2026: "to spread disinformation & conspiracy theories; tilt the electoral playing field and manipulate election outcomes; and, if necessary, try to overturn unfavorable results." Here's a rough graphic of how this strategy works:

Protect Democracy@protectdemocracy.org · 4mo ago

Trump is pushing *hard* for the SAVE America Act to pass knowing that it’s bound to fail. Why? It's a pretext. Read about the administration’s much broader strategy to undermine the midterms and what we can all do about it. 🔗 https://www.ifyoucankeepit.org/p/whatever-happens-with-the-save-america

You know how your phone finishes your sentences? “I love…” → “you,” “coffee,” or a full email sign-off. Now AI tools do it everywhere. And because they predict the most common phrasing, more writing is starting to sound the same.

With AI finishing your sentences, what will happen to your unique voice on the page?

Chatbots tend to produce solid writing, but their prose largely reflects a single, uniform voice.

theconversation.com

The new V-Dem report was released today. There are dramatic declines in democracy in the US. Much worse than during Trump I.

I'm one of many professors quoted in this report from Alice Speri. I really appreciate The Guardian taking an angle which has basically eluded every other major outlet.

‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI

As AI has upended the way students learn, academics worry about the future of the humanities - and society at large

theguardian.com

It's nice to see more academic journals cover the importance of scientists meeting people where they are (social media) in order to share evidence-based information. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The science influencers going viral on TikTok to fight misinformation

Scientists and medical experts are countering climate denialism, vaccine scepticism and wellness pseudoscience on social media.

nature.com

% of Americans who have a great deal of confidence in journalists to act in the best interests of the public All US adults: 6% Republicans: 2% Democrats: 9% www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...