The Continent magazine has published an investigation I carried out alongside Kenyan journo James Okong'o exposing how Rwanda's government manipulates social media - secretly paying influencers - in support of the M23 occupation of DRC. Thank you @pulitzercenter.org for your support.

sports coverage or war reporting?

It should not be lost on anyone that collective punishment was actively used by the Nazis themselves as “atonement exercises.” In 1941, the Nazis killed around 4,000 Serbs as an atonement for attacks that killed German soldiers.

Over the last month I saw that human editors are now stripped of control. I could no longer stop the system from auto-inviting "reviewers" with zero relevant expertise. Even worse - the AI began actively revoking the invitations I manually sent out to actual, qualified experts.

😬

How to Watch the Knicks Parade on NYC Traffic Surveillance Cameras

Artist Morry Kolman will be livestreaming feeds of the NBA champions’ ticker-tape parade from NYC’s traffic cameras—and this time, the city’s Department of Transportation isn’t demanding he stop.

wired.com

50,000 page views/PDF downloads and counting Full blown Streisand effect in play diabetesjournals.org/care/article... #ADAGate continues #ADA2026

New from 404 Media: companies are using Reddit manipulate ChatGPT and Google AI Search. The strategy is to systematically manipulate answers provided by chatbots by manipulating the underlying source material those chatbots scrape—in this case, a popular subreddit www.404media.co/companies-ar...

🧵 NEW PREPRINT on AI risks: 272 AI experts (I was one of them) used a 3-round Delphi to answer: which AI risks are worst, who's most vulnerable, and who's responsible? Key findings below. 👇 arxiv.org/abs/2606.0... 1/8

Prioritization of Risks from Artificial Intelligence: A Delphi...

Artificial intelligence poses many risks, ranging from familiar present-day harms to unprecedented and potentially catastrophic ones. Effective risk management requires prioritization: we must...

arxiv.org

"Founded in 2010, Retraction Watch has become a central institution in contemporary science watchdog journalism, conducting sustained investigative reporting on scientific retractions, paper mills, instances of image manipulation, and research misconduct."

Shining Light on “Dark Science”: Mapping the Field of Science Watchdog Journalism | Article | Media and Communication

Aljosha Karim Schapals, Michelle Riedlinger, Silvia Montaña-Niño, Artem Rednikin

cogitatiopress.com

👋You can take issue with Haidt’s methodology and still think that elevating the issue of social media/phones/kids so parents start to recognize their own agency and obligations as parents is a very good thing. The cell phone ban in my 16 yo’s high school has transformed her learning experience.

has any man ever been more vindicated? x.com/stuartbuck1/...

Hey folks, I'm starting to think AI might be a tad problematic for the integrity of science publishing! A study published as Correspondence in @thelancet.com found 4,046 fabricated references across 2810 papers, presumably generated by AI By @bruceylee.bsky.social www.forbes.com/sites/brucel...

Fabricated Citations Found In Over 2,800 Biomedical Journal Articles

A Lancet correspondence described how over a three-year period, 4,046 references in 2,810 published scientific journal articles had been fabricated, many likely by AI.

forbes.com

danah boyd recently argued that social media (as we knew it) is mostly dead; what we have now is parasocial media: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... I agree. Networked social media is disappearing, replaced by a new logic/structure of content creator, creator-centered community, & algorithm.

Social Media Is Now Parasocial Media - danah boyd, 2026

When practitioners used the term “social media” to describe the internet tools that emerged in the mid-aughts, they were giving a name to the kinds of platforms...

journals.sagepub.com

“In a friend-of-the-court brief, two senior psychiatrists at Mount Sinai Medical Center with a combined 40 years’ experience in emergency psychiatric units identified “exactly one instance” in which they remembered police officers agreeing to remove a patient’s shackles.”

Doctors Asked Officers to Unshackle a Patient. They Refused for 26 Days.

nytimes.com

Again, please share. In every aspect of American history you will run smack dab into the critical contributions of Black people. It’s not Black history. It’s American history. Trying to erase it is a fool’s errand. We live it every day. time.com/5836444/blac...

The Forgotten Black History of How Memorial Day Started

Historians like the Pulitzer Prize winner David Blight have tried to raise awareness of freed slaves who decorated soldiers' graves in 1865

time.com

Every summer I repost this article on how to spot drowning. Please read it and pass on. In the last few years I’ve had SIX messages from people who saved a kid’s life after clicking on the link from my feed. slate.com/technology/2...

Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning

Drowning is not the violent, splashing call for help that most people expect.

slate.com

“the thing holding the coalition together is a base-line eco-fascist motherhood politics that merges libertarian individualism with consumer choice and frames keeping track of it all as women’s natural, right and proper societal role.”

Opinion | The Moms Delivered for Trump. Now He’s Scamming Them.

nytimes.com

"As the book goes on, it becomes clear it was more the second explanation rather than the first—DOGE’s destruction of the agency was driven primarily by animosity rather than ignorance." prospect.org/2026/05/22/w...

Who Died When Elon Musk Killed USAID? - The American Prospect

Nicholas Enrich’s new memoir details the human toll of the agency’s dismantling.

prospect.org

"approximately 15% of churches in our sample engaged in direct political advocacy during the 2020 and 2024 presidential election cycles, and about 8.4% during the 2022 midterm" www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

Many of the babies’ autopsy reports were clear: Vitamin K deficiency was the immediate cause of death, or contributed to it. The reports also included details about parents refusing the vitamin K shot, a long-standard injection, for their newborns.

What I Can’t Forget About the Babies Who Died After Not Receiving a Vitamin K Shot

Babies have died after not receiving the vitamin K shot at birth. Their autopsy records underscore how preventable their deaths could have been.

propublica.org

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com “I’ve seen Ebola up close. I got it while treating patients in West Africa in 2014,” Craig Spencer writes in a guest essay. “I know how destructive the disease can be — and how unprepared we are for its return.”

Opinion | Ebola Is a Terrible Disease. I Saw It Firsthand.

The Trump administration cut the programs meant to coordinate an Ebola response.

nyti.ms

My essay pairs nicely with @parkermolloy.com's recent piece in @damemagazine.bsky.social: www.damemagazine.com/2026/05/20/s...

Can Treating Journalism Like Public Infrastructure Fix Our Broken Media?

States are experimenting with tax credits and public funding to keep local reporters employed as America’s news desert crisis worsens.

damemagazine.com

Victor Pickard@victorpickard.bsky.social · 3mo ago

New essay for @knightcolumbia.org that argues for why democracies must fund robust public media systems and begins to develop what I've been calling the "Public Media Center" model. I will be expanding on this work for @rooseveltinstitute.org in the months ahead: knightcolumbia.org/blog/reimagi...

The contrast between the number of media requests I got when rich people on a cruise were facing a deadly, but contained outbreak versus now that some of the poorest people in the world are facing a deadly and devastating epidemic is just so so stark and it just really annoys the hell out of me.

Wow, this story. Since 2013, Maricopa County officials have approved $226 million in sheriff’s office spending related to a settlement aimed at rooting out racial profiling. Auditors found that more than 70% of it was misattributed or misappropriated. W/ @azluminaria.org

This Sheriff’s Office Says Racial Profiling Reforms Are Too Costly. Auditors Found It Misused $163 Million.

Since 2013, Maricopa County officials have approved $226 million in sheriff’s office spending related to a settlement aimed at rooting out racial profiling. Auditors found that more than 70% of it was...

propublica.org

Where’s your free market now, Moses? www.kcrg.com/2026/05/20/i...

Iowa lawmakers move to mandate students take Center for Intellectual Freedom classes amid low enrollment

A last minute Republican legislative push could force University of Iowa college students to take classes at the newly-created Center for Intellectual Freedom. It's exactly what a report highlighted w...

kcrg.com

It's also important to see how this is covered across media. Hard to find on WaPo, non-existent on Fox.

Greg Sargent@gregsargent.bsky.social · 3mo ago

This juxtaposition of headlines perfectly captures how MAGA oligarchic fascism really works. Trump loots our country to enrich himself, while persuading his paramilitary street thug wing that his corruption and self-dealing are in their interests, because they get a cut of the spoils.

I have no words. Actually I do. Just not today. www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

American Bar Association votes to eliminate DEI rule for law schools

A longstanding diversity and inclusion requirement for U.S. law schools is teetering amid mounting pressure from the Trump administration and Republican states.

reuters.com

New dataset published: this is the audio + transcripts of AI-generated podcasts using NotebookLM to analyse how it "translated" source documents from different times and cultures. My favourites are the 20 podcasts generated from an empty PDF. The paper about it is in press. doi.org/10.18710/RNT...

A dataset of AI-generated podcasts created using NotebookLM

Audio files and transcripts of AI-generated podcasts created using Google's NotebookLM. Four podcasts were created by uploading specific PDFs. Twen...

doi.org

Yale undergraduate Mateo Ramírez-Valentini writes about families who travel long distances for experimental treatments. He focuses on how some of these treatments are scams or over-hyped. One Argentinean family raised $350k after being enticed by notorious cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski.

Migrating for a Miracle: The Geographic Divide in Rare Cancer Treatments

BY MATEO RAMÍREZ-VALENTINI Medical Migration in Rare Pediatric Cancers In 2021, an eight-year-old girl named Delfi Bollo traveled from Córdoba, Argentina to Houston, Texas, seeking a treatment that…

yaleglobalhealthreview.com

However appalled you are by this, it’s not enough. It’s a frank statement that Trump and Trumpists are above the law and need not even plausible excuses to loot your tax dollars. It’s a total failure of our civic institutions.

Scott MacFarlane@macfarlanenews.bsky.social · 3mo ago

And then there's this: The settlement gets sweeter for Team Trump In a newly-posted, one-page document, the Justice Dept details that it is now prohibited from pursuing tax claims against Trump or his family in the future Signed by Todd Blanche