I wrote about the first national book banning bill, which effectively seeks to erase trans people. At the end I include a link to let your reps know that you oppose this bill and all it stands for. lithub.com/why-we-must-...
The question is always "what if a kid is wrongfully transitioned" and never "what if a trans kid is denied the ability to transition and endures years of excruciating dysphoria and has to have multiple surgeries later in life to fix the issues caused by going through the wrong puberty."
They’ll send you to kill and be killed but they do not give a single shit about you.
As a professor, providing accommodations doesn’t impact me at all, and it helps students out. The fact that anyone cares about this is baffling to me.
But then I remember that the country is currently run by eugenicist freaks and they’ve just found a new group to hound.
Heads up to people in the Buffalo area: I spotted a border patrol vehicle cruising around in Tonawanda on my drive home just now. Saw them right around where Colvin and Eggert run into the Twin Cities highway.
The approximate cause of death for Anne Frank was the Nazis. The specific cause of death was the outbreak of Typhus at Bergen-Belsen camp, which overtook her (and others) from chronic malnutrition and medical abuse. These conditions are not, in character, unlike our system of immigration camps today
In 2026, colleges must teach students that this is not the end of the world. We must teach hope. Current undergraduates can barely remember a time before the threats of climate change and authoritarianism loomed to catastrophic scale. Since 2010, the future depicted in TV, books, and games has been dystopian or apocalyptic, so for our current students the end of the world feels more familiar and realistic than a future with hope. Now we are asking them to choose majors and life paths when the desirability, indeed the very existence, of whole sectors of employment are in question, due to the overwhelming promises of LLMs and machine learning. As young people hear daily that vocation after vocation may vanish into automation’s maw, and that democracy, liberty, land, sea, and sky are all in jeopardy, despair is growing. Despair is very emotionally tempting. It means freedom from the responsibility to shape the future. This is a terrifying turning point, but many generations before us have faced such turning points, and met them. We can offer our students perspective. Only a few dozen institutions on Earth are more than 900 years old, and the vast majority are universities. The university system is not a house of straw to buckle in this storm: We are the rocks that have sheltered the knowledge, hope, and truth through tumults which have toppled kingdoms while classrooms endured. We can endure this, and be a guiding light through it, but only by recentering, by teaching citizens, not workers; power, not PowerPoint; aspiration, not apocalypse. Despair is how we lose. The classroom is where we battle it. All other battles flow from here. Ada Palmer is an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago.
This, from Ada Palmer as part of The Chronicle's survey of 11 scholars on the future of higher ed, is what I needed to end the week.
If you’re wondering what you can do, as many have asked: I know many are looking for a place to aim mean posts at them or whatever. It’s pointless. The real and much less id-focused answer is I need to find more work. So if you hear of any narrative design/game writing openings somehow, let me know.
“Many of their commanders are especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfill and be in 100% accordance with fundamentalist Christian end of the world eschatology.”
I saw a comment the said we aren’t “angry enough.” But all we are is angry. Our veins circulate it like acid. It cracks our sternums. It poisons and paralyzes us. We hiss and spit at each other, all impotent, helpless rage.
We don’t need more anger. We need more direction.
no nazi shit
No Nazi Shit
NO NAZI SHIT
NO FUCKING NAZI SHIT
I saw this and at first thought "no, there's no way 'we definitely had alternative leadership in mind for Iran but I blew them up alongside the schoolgirls using AI' is what the White House is actually saying, that's too clueless and evil to be real"
if you’re cis and you don’t get it this is LITERAL TORTURE
it will result in dead trans people
and with their other goal of making us “sexually explicit” for existing
you see the pipeline right?
we exist -> we’re jailed for it -> we’re tortured and die
WE NEED YOU TO STOP THIS
I know that I sound like a broken record but I think once this society was ok with accepting mass covid deaths just to be able to eat at Applebees then all bets were off.
every time one of these markets dissembles and parses and weasels their way out of paying people on a technicality my heart grows three sizes like the grinch. i love to watch these people get scammed on crypto and nfts and gambling. they deserve it and it's funny and it's not my problem at all
this is the part that reminds me that many people are good, but rich people almost universally are not.
so many of us have come together to help when the cost of doing so means deprivation in our own lives, so that people who will never know deprivation can make fake numbers go up even higher.
do archivists / preservationists / conservators read Flusser? they could! "But objects are malicious. Their tendency toward entropy will eventually cause all information engraved in objects to disappear...One who writes by digging can only hope the object one has engraved doesn't decay too quickly."
March 1st is the Disability Day of Mourning, in memory of people with disabilities who were killed by family members or caregivers. At Rewire, we are committed to centering disability justice in our coverage. Thread below 🧵:
If you haven't read the hidden semi-canon Expanse short story The Last Flight of the Cassandra, it's apparently part of a humble bundle right now along with a gazillion indie comics (?!).
Go for the fiction, stay for the charity (Comic Book Defense Fund).
www.humblebundle.com/books/indie-...
The group Elevated Access can fly you for free to a provider that is further away. Help is out there, you’re not alone. There is still time.
www.elevatedaccess.org
AI hallucinations -- still the weirdest fig-leaf synonym for "errors" -- are fundamental to how LLMs function.
When errors are fundamental to your tool, you shouldn't use it in any cases where errors have adverse consequences.
This is becoming my Carthago delenda est.
I think the bigger security risk is the gestapo she runs that murders people for standing in the street and kidnaps children to put them in concentration camps. But sure, if the shoe thing gets her shitcanned, do what you gotta do.
In addition to accessibility, alt text is important because it describes things a viewer could overlook because there might be a lot going on in the image.
I want Anthropic to survive long enough to be destroyed by paying out billions to the artists and writers it stole from.
The truth is not the average of a fact and a lie.
The American Library Association strongly denounces new federal book banning legislation proposed in Congress. Call your Reps. Tell them to oppose H.R. 7661. Capitol switchboard: 202-224-3121 American Library Association, Show Up For Our Libraries
"Parents, not politicians, should guide their children’s reading. In our school, campus, and public libraries, materials are selected by trained literacy professionals who understand child development and community needs. Their work is grounded in one clear purpose: helping young people become lifelong readers. H.R. 7661 isn’t fundamentally about protecting kids. It’s about giving politicians broad authority to restrict whose stories are allowed on the shelves. That should concern anyone who believes in the freedom to read and the right of families to make decisions for themselves.” - ALA President Sam Helmick
"Rather than targeting librarians and teachers, Congress should invest in them. The Right to Read Act offers a better path, supporting well-staffed and well-resourced school libraries, strengthening evidence-based literacy instruction, and protecting the dedicated professionals who help young people discover books that open doors and expand horizons. When we trust families, support educators, and protect the freedom to read, our young people thrive.” - ALA President Sam Helmick.
NEW: ALA strongly denounces new federal book banning legislation introduced in Congress, HR 7661.
As ALA President Sam Helmick said, "Parents, not politicians, should guide their children's reading." Call your Rep and tell them to oppose this new bill.
More from ALA: www.ala.org/news/2026/02...
Also, they sell cookies
I really can't emphasize enough that you are a complete freak if you care about Boy Scout genitals
The FCC just opened public comments on SpaceX's plan to launch a million satellites to do AI compute in space. Under the current proposal, an environmental review won't be required. Please consider submitting a public comment to oppose this damaging plan.
darksky.org/news/two-sat...
A screenshot of a post on X (formerly Twitter) by Kristen Waggoner. The text of the post reads: "Everyone should read this important essay by @jessesingal in the @nytimes. Then, take a moment to drop a quarter in the “Clarence Thomas was right” jar. THREAD🧵⬇️" Below the text is a preview image of a New York Times Opinion Guest Essay. The headline reads in large font: "Medical Associations Trusted Belief Over Science on Youth Gender Care." The publication date is listed as Feb. 24, 2026. The article features an illustration of a medical professional wearing green scrubs and a stethoscope. The top half of the person's face, from the nose up, is entirely obscured by a transgender pride flag (consisting of blue, pink, and white stripes) stretched across their eyes like a blindfold. Small text at the bottom reads "Illustration by The New York Times."
Here's the legal director of ADF, the organization that wants to criminalize LGBTQ people and ban care, praising Jesse Singal's NYT op ed.
This is the goal of Singal, to spread uncertainty and undermine liberal support so that the far right can pass their anti-trans policies without resistance.
