THREAD: I got laid off from NYMag/Vulture after 14 years. The family lost 75% of income + medical. Now mzs.press bookstore, once a side project. is do-or-die for Judith & I. I feel weird telling you this because others are doing much worse. But if you could like or share this, we'd be so grateful!
I’m looking for speakers for a London event on the science of Star Trek. I’d really appreciate suggestions from underrepresented minorities in STEM, especially PoC/global majority.
(10 min, central London, Sept, currently unpaid but I’m trying to fix that)
Feel free to message
This always felt so anticlimactic, that a ship the size of a several large apartment buildings traveling at fractional light speed could be piloted by a single joystick from 1997.
How much do I have to deposit into the offshore account you sent to keep the missiles in their silos
^^ This. (Bluesky could use a "Solved!" feature)
What's scary about this story is the surveillance it hints at. This trans woman had changed her name, legally, but chose not to change her gender marker. She was apparently flagged in the DMV system as trans and her license was invalidated under a law that supposedly only concerned gender markers.
You sound like an unhinged person if you in plain words describe what’s happening, but the Trump admin demanded Anthropic’s AI be able to kill things for it w/out human approval and also do mass surveillance.
Anthropic said no, and now the admin is trying to destroy the company in retaliation.
if you believe in any form of free enterprise at all, the idea that the Pentagon can not only cut off your contract but designate you a supply chain risk and prevent other companies from buying from you just because you won't build killbots for the government should be terrifying
Losing access to federal contracts, and the business of other federal contractors, could be devastating when their business model is focused on long-term enterprise licenses and workflow integrations
wow, just learned that Robert Moses died 10 years before the release of the song "Life is a Highway" RIP Robert Moses you would have loved that song
Totally reasonable! I once got to take a picture with the Stanley Cup, and following tradition, I was careful not to touch it since I hadn’t actually won it.
Yet.
Paid Nap Cab-in
👏 👏 👏👏👏
What's more shocking than ICE's plan to cram as many 8,500 humans into massive, soul-crushing warehouses?
Seeing the actual DHS floor plan that echoes slavery ships and history's worst gulags with no rec space but a gun range for guards
My new column on the camps www.inquirer.com/opinion/ice-...
Something to look out for on your travels, then: Labyrinth pinball. It’s the first and only (so far) machine to feature Bowie. I’ve only gotten to play it once, and I had to track down a gift shop in the Catskills to find it www.avclub.com/how-is-labyr...
The political effects of X's feed algorithm https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10098-2 Received: 16 December 2024 Accepted: 4 January 2026 Published online: 18 February 2026 Open access • Check for updates Germain Gauthier,5, Roland Hodler?5, Philine Widmer35 & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya3,4,5 m Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects'. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk's platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users' feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X's algorithm has persistent effects on users' current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.
A new paper shows that less than 2 months of exposure to Twitter’s algorithmic feed significantly shifts people’s political views to the right.
Moving from chronological feed to the algorithmic feed also increases engagement.
This is one of the most concerning papers I’ve read in awhile.
And after all that, the Pitt/Cruise AI fight scene appears to have been just digital BG and face replacement on multi-angle green screen reference videos of two real live human stuntees fighting.
In other words, like most AI hype — it was a con. www.shokunin.studio/blog/2026/2/...
SCOOP: I have the first interview with the 36-year-old South Jersey man whose tearful protest against an ICE raid at a school bus stop has been watched more than 3 million times
How a non-political Eagles fan Everyman became the face of ICE resistance
My new column www.inquirer.com/columnists/a...
"I want to sell the most Girl Scout cookies," Pim Neill told her dad. And then she did.
Would be a great adaptive reuse for the MTA’s many, many empty retail spaces
Turn them into bike parking hubs
Curling can look effortless on television, but looks can be deceiving
My friends teach at Indiana U and are very proud of their Captain Janeway statue
PLEASE STOP SAYING QUAD GOD
Some important lessons for the kids this weekend: you don’t have to go outside (unless necessary) if Feels Like is -6; the weirder the better when it comes to Olympic events and you are allowed more TV than usual; nachos are a perfectly acceptable dinner during the Super Bowl
Not gonna lie, Philly's 250 parade featuring every U.S. state and territory, dancing grannies, the Philly Drag Mafia and a group of Mrs. Ropers (among other things) sounds pretty epic.
www.inquirer.com/news/america...
It’s very sweet and cute that he not only planed to have lil kids there and then rolls so well with the lil kids being lil kids but I have to know whose idea the lil podium was
The US immigrant population generated more in taxes than they received in benefits from all levels of government every year from 1994 to 2023.
The Cato study provides the first-ever 30-year analysis of the fiscal effects of immigration on government budgets.
https://ow.ly/jy8a50Y8kM3
The Inq's @abgutman.bsky.social @fallonroth.bsky.social were at today's argument in the City of Philadelphia's efforts to restore truthful signage about George Washington and slavery at the President's House site. No ruling yet, but Judge Rufe (GWB nom) did not seem pleased with the WH's arguments.
I am now off the clock, so I am officially, formally, incredibly thrilled that 'A Better Billion' is now in the world. And it's absolutely surreal to help with something that ends up with a feature in The New York Times. -- transitcosts.com/a-better-bil...
The Minnesota Star Tribune, Minnesota Public Radio, the Minnesota Reformer, Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, Sahan Journal, Center for Broadcast Journalism and Minnesota Newspaper Association today released the following statement: “We strongly condemn the arrest of journalists Georgia Fort and Don Lemon, as well as any attempt to intimidate members of the press. The First Amendment recognizes the press as holding a distinct and protected role in our democracy. In America, we do not arrest journalists for doing their jobs. The Minnesota journalism community stands united in defense of press freedom and the essential role reporting plays in holding power to account.”
The Minnesota Star Tribune, @mprnews.org @minnesotareformer.com , @spokesmanrecorder.bsky.social, @sahanjournal.bsky.social, Center for Broadcast Journalism and Minnesota Newspaper Association today released the following statement:
Needs to be reposted from time to time
