Look, for my money the absolute game changer technologies right now are batteries and biosciences, not statistically modeling a mid conversation, but you do you.

What’s interesting here is they say “culture” when they mean “people” but they think that this maintains a veneer of deniability about what they’re really saying. In any case it’s true that the “culture” of the tech billionaires is morally and intellectually depraved rot bsky.app/profile/elio...

mamdani being a cheerful normal guy that people project absolute insane things on is one of the things that make him very relatable to me, personally

i will vote for any candidate who offers up this slogan

Friend snuck this photo last week on his commute. My life is complete now.

not only is this exciting — the lt. governor’s office should, uh, contact me — but it is a not so subtle way to claim some of virginia’s most potent historical symbols — its universities and the affiliated figures, like madison and jefferson and george mason — for the libs

#ItaloCalvino
Portrait by my father
Carl Köhler (1919-2006)

i said last year that these people were segregationists and that “merit” just meant “white and male” to these people

ah - the great @elizkolbert.bsky.social already wrote this up with incredible video here:
www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Mother Tongue - Words Without Borders With equal parts humor and pathos, Osdany Morales imagines an alternate life for the Cuban-born Italian writer Italo Calvino.

"Mother Tongue" by Osdany Morales, on @wwborders.bsky.social in my translation.

It is about Italo Calvino. It is not about Italo Calvino.

wordswithoutborders.org/read/article...

I want to say that if this dragnet snags enough white people, we might finally get meaningful action. But I am pretty sure the elites have already called off even the pretense of caring about poor white people AND they’re actively making middle class white people poor. Sooooo…

Let me just say that having been there, the idea of being a Black woman in labor in America and having to go before a judge is terrorism.

Ms Rachel talking to Deiver Henao, a 9yo in an immigration detention center

www.instagram.com/reel/DVzUzoz...

What a world

At Largest ICE Detention Camp, Staff Bet on Detainee Suicides, AP Reports Camp East Montana has received several 911 calls in the span of five months about immigrants trying to harm themselves.

Staff at the nation’s largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility have placed bets on which detainee will be the next to die by suicide, according to new reporting from the Associated Press based on 911 calls and detainee accounts.

I have seen a lot of cursed stuff in my time in academia but this is among the *most* cursed.
Grammarly is generating miniature LLMs based on academic work so that users can have their writing ‘reviewed’ by experts like David Abulafia, who died less than two months ago.

I have two poems in the new @pnreview.bsky.social 288. One is a Propertius (via Grigory Dashevsky). You can read it here:

www.pnreview.co.uk/archive/two-...

there are a lot of people working in the government right now who want to intentionally trigger an apocalypse to create the conditions for the return of jesus christ and I know how crazy that sounds but its absolutely true

Callers to Washington state hotline press 2 for Spanish and get accented AI English instead Callers to Washington state’s driver’s license agency who select automated service in Spanish are instead hearing an AI voice speaking English with a strong Spanish accent.

Callers to Washington state’s driver’s license agency who select automated service in Spanish are instead hearing an AI voice speaking English with a strong Spanish accent.

My god this story.

📰 [TMR EDITORIAL TEAM]

Meet Abdelrahman ElGendy, our new literary editor and author of forthcoming Huna (Penguin Random House, Sept 2026), exploring dissent and erasure in post-revolution Egypt.​

#TheMarkazReview #TMRteam #AbdelrahmanElGendy #SWANALit

Behind the scenes with Managing Editor Lara Vergnaud: Why #MotherTongue is our first bimonthly issue theme.

Mother Tongue goes live in a week, on March 6th.

I keep saying to people in my life that the problem with writing in these days is that you sound absolutely off your nut for simply saying what is happening.

Translated fiction: books by Maria Stepanova, Édouard Louis, Anna Nerkagi, Michelle Steinbeck, Helle Helle and Pirkko Saisio New books in translation from Russia, France, Switzerland, Norway and Finland

Latest Irish Times fiction in translation column is now online for subscribers. I have a couple of these in my TBR – lucky me, it seems.

Translated fiction: books by Maria Stepanova, Édouard Louis, Anna Nerkagi, Michelle Steinbeck, Helle Helle and Pirkko Saisio

www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...

Current status of the fundraisers for those killed by ICE:
Renee Good: $1,499,580
Alex Pretti: $1,289,249
Keith Porter, Jr. $302,423
Parady La: $45,848
Heber Sanchez Dominguez: $47,991
Luis Beltrán Yanez Cruz: $18,640
Victor Manuel Diaz: $2,538
Geraldo Lunas: $2,260
Luis Gustavo Núñez: $1,935

They know what they say is untrue, they do not care it is untrue.

The media know that what they repeat is untrue, they do not care it is untrue.

Their supporters know what they are told is untrue, they do not care it is untrue.

Telling the truth is not enough, unless people care about the truth.

Medical examiner believes death of man in ICE custody was homicide, recording says A fellow detainee says he witnessed Geraldo Lunas Campos being choked to death by guards at the ICE detention center in Texas on Jan. 3.

"He said he saw guards choking Lunas Campos and heard Lunas Campos repeatedly saying, 'No puedo respirar' — Spanish for 'I can’t breathe'..."

www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...

Borges and “Borges” An essay by Esther Allen

Our free newsletter subscribers have just received Esther Allen’s (@eallen.bsky.social) essay from the new Winter 2026 issue—a Borgesian tale of petty feuds and international rights, obsessive friendships and tangled copyrights. nimrodjournal.substack.com/p/borges-and...

Esther Allen (@eallen.bsky.social) can spin the woolliest yarn with scholarly precision… You know who else was known for such things?

I really want ppl w/o Minneapolis connections to understand

You might've heard that Mpls public schools went hybrid bc so many families are in hiding. Well, a coworker just told me that today, during his kid's hybrid class, a kid's apt building was raided onscreen

*Everyone has stories like this*

“.. In the last four months alone, immigration officers have fired on at least nine people in five states and Washington, D.C. All of the individuals targeted in those shootings were, like the woman killed on Wednesday, fired on while in their vehicles.”

@nytimes.com
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/u...