Julie K. Brown's friends, family, former editors, and colleagues say her backstory — lean times with her single mother, a circuitous route to journalism, and formative years as a reporter in Philly — made her tough enough to expose Jeffrey Epstein, and the prosecutors who gave him a sweetheart deal.
Hi all.
I'm not directly barnraising for a need tonight (tho I will be soon!) but it seems we are officially in the on-ramp to May rents and we received many requests today for help.
The impact of ICE and Metro Surge has been enormous and isn't over. Please consider contributing toward a rent:
Alright, I’m home now so here’s the Norm update. Yesterday at 4pm, I got a text from a family I’ve been helping who had a loved one abducted a couple of days after Renée Good’s murder. This was the family that Norm Nation kept from being evicted (and you delivered). ICE had released their loved one.
Meta will begin keystroke logging US employees at work -- complete with mouse movements and periodic screenshots -- to train better AI agents.
This comes after Boz posted about a future in which AI will "primarily do the work" at meta.
It's a new era for tech labor. www.reuters.com/sustainabili...
This Is Just To Say
I have turned off
the AI features
that were in
the update
and which
you were probably
hoping
to monetize
Fuck you
they were stupid
so unnecessary
and so annoying
bring back shame
In the same manifesto, Palantir's owners argued that we need a national military draft, that soft power is over, and that we were too hard on Germany and Japan after World War II. I don't think that company should be allowed to exist anymore.
“Take a moment to think before you dive in. That’s the best advice for Google Photos users, as the company confirms its latest update can scan all your photos to “use actual images of you and your loved ones” in AI image generation.”
www.forbes.com/sites/zakdof...
The most striking bits of the Shadow Docket docs:
Lots of hand wringing over costs to power plants, not even a mention of the benefits of cutting CO₂ pollution.
Yes, the 5:4 SCOTUS majority doing the fossil industry's bidding, and not even trying to hide it
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
What a story. What a blessing she was to the fight.
"At that first meeting, Dr. Long realized that the activists needed a guide who was fluent in science to help them expedite the approval of drugs to treat AIDS & the H.I.V. virus that causes it.
“She was their scientific North Star."
#GiftLink 🎁
Every time a Democrat mentions how to talk to "ordinary people" they mean "how I was told to talk by a handful of weirdo consultants in DC with gross fixations on throwing certain groups under the bus and who would not last a day in an ordinary job interacting with ordinary people."
Child: I know your name. Mamdani.
Obama: What’s his first name?
Child: Mayor.
Just sobbed hardest I have since my mom died in 2020.
She missed these trials by a few months.
One of most ruthless cancers. Hard to fathom that maybe she'd still be here.
I feel such a hole inside.
In case you're wondering if we should fund mRNA research instead of another stupid war ... yes.
You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t, not without your help. But you’re not helping. Why is that?
Book cover of "There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America" by Brian Goldstone, displayed against a pink background beneath the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes logo and the words "Current Interest — Winner."
Honored and humbled (and truly stunned!) to have won the LA Times Book Prize.
My profound thanks to the five families at the heart of this book, whose trust and generosity made it all possible. I will never stop being grateful to them.
I know this lady husband name not “dick tips”
An aquarium in Japan created a map to chart the “romances, friendships, and beefs” among their penguins www.tiktok.com/t/ZTkmab85o/
Kash Patel experiences what it’s like to work in tech in 2026.
True! Fun fact: They did this because someone leaked Robert Bork’s rental history during his confirmation battle.
Award-winning Kuwaiti-American journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin has been in Kuwaiti detention since March 3 for simply sharing publicly available, verified footage. Journalism is not a crime.
Join us in calling to #FreeAhmed
“It’s a couple of things that work beautifully in concert. First: no music. Audiences are so sophisticated, but what they’re not accustomed to is not being told how to feel,” Wyle says. “You take all that out and it forces a level of engagement where you’re now looking for clues within the frame of the screen, which forces you to look up from your phone. And I think that is extremely engaging, especially to young viewers who aren’t accustomed to being asked to participate in a nonpassive way in the viewing experience.
![“Second point, shooting it with almost exclusively 50-millimeter or 65-millimeter lenses, which is the most comparable to the human eye—and only shooting from the point of view of a human being that’s present in this space. There are no cameras on gurney wheels going in the hallway. There’s no cameras on the ceiling looking down from a God point of view. You are limited to the perspective of a participant. You can look away, but you can’t leave, and it becomes an endurance test for you to stay on your feet as long as we’re on our feet. Which [brings me to my] third point: real time. Real time has an aggregate sense of tension that you don’t get in any other form of storytelling. What happened before is happening now, and these two things are going to add up to the next thing. And if we throw more ingredients into this cooker and keep ratcheting it up, it’s going to pop.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:guthikarwozoldkzhueivkl6/bafkreihklvhtymho7wpemo5mj2f7xaiq6ulvfvcwnzo6hjstg3wixzgesy)
“Second point, shooting it with almost exclusively 50-millimeter or 65-millimeter lenses, which is the most comparable to the human eye—and only shooting from the point of view of a human being that’s present in this space. There are no cameras on gurney wheels going in the hallway. There’s no cameras on the ceiling looking down from a God point of view. You are limited to the perspective of a participant. You can look away, but you can’t leave, and it becomes an endurance test for you to stay on your feet as long as we’re on our feet. Which [brings me to my] third point: real time. Real time has an aggregate sense of tension that you don’t get in any other form of storytelling. What happened before is happening now, and these two things are going to add up to the next thing. And if we throw more ingredients into this cooker and keep ratcheting it up, it’s going to pop.”
Wyle makes eye contact for his next point, delivering it with a Robby-esque matter-of-factness. “Fourth point: The election went the other way,” he says with a shrug. “We could have been a really good show with a lot of nice things to say in a perfectly normal Kamala Harris universe. And instead we became almost a beacon of hope and humanity in an alternative universe. But in the midst of that, fifth point—this is essentially competence porn. You’re watching really smart, dedicated people do what only they know how to do at a level that you don’t know how to do it, and you’re so fucking glad that they’re there doing it, and compartmentalizing their own stuff to put your broken pieces back together. You’re so reassured by knowing that there are people out there that laugh and joke and have the ability to lock in like that.”
this is fucking unreal stuff from Noah Wyle on the magic of The Pitt. www.gq.com/story/noah-w...
Greetings all. I'm looking for a podcast producer to help do a (much) more regular BLOOD IN THE MACHINE show. I thought I'd start by reaching out here, and to the broader BITM community. If this sounds like it's up your alley, details are in the link below:
“The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants, yet it is held together by a multitude of supportive brothers and sisters…as numerous as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand on the seashore.”
~ Pope Leo
www.vatican.va/content/leo-...
First New College, then Hampshire College. We're coming to the end of the attempt to make higher education something other than hackwork, slavish devotion to job training for working and middle class, pre-wealth studies for the "elite." How fucking dull are these times of ours.
The most vicious part of the assault on US higher ed in general and international students in particular is that it is an all out assault on one of the most world historically effective systems of producing knowledge outside and beyond strictly policed social hierarchies, both local and global.
BREAKING: Maryland is about to become the first state in the nation to ban the use of surveillance data and dynamic pricing at grocery stores.
The Maryland House has just passed the Protection from Predatory Pricing Act.
Governor Wes Moore plans to sign the bill.
The report from the Committee to Protect Journalists on the arrest of Ahmed Shahib-Aldin cpj.org/tags/ahmedsh...
The acceleration of the closure of small liberal arts colleges is such a gut punch. These are often the kinds of places that are life-changing experiences for students, providing opportunities for exploration, connection, and learning outcomes that aren't possible at larger universities.
It’s infuriating when a woman comes forward about a man raping her in his hotel room after drinking and the response is “Why would she go to his room?” “Why would she drink with him?” This is Mike Pence logic. Women should be allowed to hang out with men without expecting they will be raped.
American higher Ed is a golden goose that’s delivered medical, tech, and science innovations, bolstered soft power internationally, and is one of the largest employers in every state.
This admin is doing everything it can to kill it.
