Tl;dr start the thread here for my "solutions" to the right-wing media problem.

If you’ve never called your congressional reps before, do it right now.

🤚

If anyone on here works at one of the 57 forest service research stations that are going to be closed and you want to tell me about your work there and why it's important, reach out: jmckenzie@thebulletin.org

Thinking about this all the time.

Join The Onion Don’t just read the news. Feel it. Be among the first to feel the news.

Folks, good news: The Onion is a hundred or so subs away from reaching the long-awaited number of 69,420 paid print subscribers.

If you’re that one magic subscriber, we’ll send you a mystery gift box as a thanks.

Sign up or regret it forever. We’re on sale for a week. Make sexweed number history.

Plug for our #SCMS26 panel Sunday @ 9a,
Feeling the Virtual: Embodiment and Sensation in Games, Porn & Haptic Media, w/ Marilia Kaisar, Cecilia Chen & Teddy Pozo. Featuring extensive NSFW discussion of Kiiroo, at least one ref to @buttplug.engineer/teledildonic Rocket League & haptic navel-gazing.

… or when X, Y, Z — the moral rot of the market knows no lower limit.

I cannot explain how much my blood boiled at that video. The arrogance and smugness is just off the charts.

Taser Chess Teaches Valuable Lessons the Hard Way Hackaday Article

Taser Chess Teaches Valuable Lessons the Hard Way

Oh yeah, that’s a thing at MTU as well. They’ve also just announced they have hired Huron consulting…

Definitely not. Guy’s a schmuck.

Just seeing this post put it in my head.

Building the camps The warehouseification of detention and initial thoughts on stopping it.

When I got the contract to write a history of concentration camps in 2014, I hoped to keep the US from ending up here. That didn't work out! But now it's critical to understand how much is already in process and the enormity of what's coming. The sooner we act to stop it, the more people we'll save.

1/ ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken.

Hundreds of kids are still detained.

We’ll let the children’s words speak for themselves. 🧵

There's been a lot of solid reporting from the latest Epstein dump but I think this is the smartest angle I've seen.

Let’s make it viral folks. Thank you @histoftech.bsky.social.

The end of tech-brained solutionism cannot come fast enough, but eventually it will come.

TVsitter, time to shine!

Turns out markets don’t give a shit about regular people. Who knew.

Jeffries Won’t Whip Vote Against ICE Funding - The American Prospect While the House Democratic leader announced personal opposition to a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security, he won’t pressure his colleagues to do the same.

His personal opposition is irrelevant - his actual job is to unite the House Dems. It ain't over til it's over - now's the time to push for a strategy shift. Call your rep and ask them to:
1) Publicly oppose ICE funding
2) Call on Jeffries to whip the vote
prospect.org/2026/01/21/j...

This is the best speech, just from a pure rhetoric perspective - its sophistication and persuasiveness - that I've seen a politician deliver in a good long while. Really recommend watching or reading the whole thing.

Have read! Agree it’s a wonderful series! Works on so many level. Features one of my favorite protagonists.

I’m a data scientist who is skeptical about data After millennia of relying on anecdotes, instincts, and old wives’ tales as evidence of our opinions, most of us today demand that people use data to support their arguments and ideas. Whether it’s cu...

For the "data scientists" out there who are throwing things at machines (e.g., LLMs) and trying to extract "insights," I recommend (re)reading this piece:

"Data is therefore only as useful as its quality and the skills of the person wielding it."

qz.com/1664575/is-d...

I still remember Ma telling me five years ago that if these insurrectionists on January 6th were Black, then they would be dead. Five years later, they are almost all alive, out of jail, and their guy is back in the White House. If that’s not White privilege, then I don’t know what is.

I think this is why STS's focus on the non-teleological nature of technological change — and fields like media archaeology, which examine minor tools and history's losers — are so important in countering the "progress" and "inevitability" myths.

Yeah. Despite my dad being a power lineman and teaching the dangers of electric outlets, I just had to find out what would happen if I put a screw driver in each socket and completed the circuit. Luckily the handles were plastic and the breakers worked.

Join us for the 9th HMC Preconference 🤖🎉
We’d love to see your work!

Submit by January 31, 2026 (12pm ET).

Find more information at humanmachinecommunication.org/pre-post-con...

Texas universities deploy AI for course audits Records obtained by The Texas Tribune show how universities are using the technology to reshape curriculum under political pressure, raising concerns about academic freedom.

Last week, Jon Penney, Sarah Brayne, & I discussed the role of AI and surveillance in transforming and scaling restrictions on academic freedom & speech. @jessicapriest.bsky.social has an excellent story on how gen AI is being used to do so in Texas universities

www.texastribune.org/2025/12/15/t...