I'm not joking when I say mRNA technology is more important than "AI" and it's a tragedy we're throwing billions into one while our government is aggressively defunding the other.

… my large library of Canadian music WHOSE CDS I OWN cannot be played in ITunes in the United States where I live because “this content is not available in your area”. So, I don’t purchase music any more. (2/2)

First gen iPod: could use a user name and password. Then, they made me use an email-based password. My purchases got divided between two accounts. Then, the old account was deprecated. Then, all my imported CDs got converted from local storage to in the cloud. Then (1/2)

Ah, the limits of popularism.

Candidates Round 14: Sindarov and Vaishali Are Officially the WCC Challengers GM Javokhir Sindarov, who finished the Open Candidates on 10/14, will face reignnig world champion GM Gukesh D in a match later this year, while GM Vaishali Rameshbabu, who finished the Women's…

The 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournaments are over!

GM Javokhir Sindarov and GM Vaishali Rameshbabu have been crowned the next challengers for the World Chess Championship and Women's World Chess Championship titles, respectively.

➡️ Read our final FIDE Candidates Recap: lichess.org/@/Lichess/bl...

How the Iran War Has Rippled Across the World (Gift Article) Deflated balloons? Pricier sugar? The fighting in the Middle East has played out across the world in sometimes surprising ways.

Qatar produces 1/3 of the world’s helium

Canadian living in Florida detained by ICE, sent to infamous ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Douglas Dixon was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Florida and has been detained at the detention facility known as "Alligator Alcatraz."

www.ctvnews.ca/canada/artic...

Dear god. Very, very serious allegations of mass civil rights violations at the State of Florida's Everglades immigration detention center (officially known as "Alligator Alcatraz").

Hamburgers are over represented in the North American diet. I like a good hamburger, but every time I eat one I feel like my life just got a bit shorter.

[screenshot of a headline and subhead from the Washington Post website] U.S. fertility rate hits a new low as teenage births fall, CDC says Experts point to economic pressures and delayed marriages as two factors in the downward trend, which has been a political flash point.

[Donald Glover saying good.gif]

Final Exam for the Class “What a Presidential Candidate Can and Cannot Survive, Apparently” Taught by Howard Dean 1. Which of these public utterances would immediately end a candidate’s presidential ambitions? A. “I want to be a dictator.” B. “If [she] weren’t my daughte...

1. Which of these public utterances would immediately end a candidate’s presidential ambitions?

A. “I want to be a dictator.”
B. “If [she] weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.”
C. “YEEEAAAAAWW!!!”

Pretty nice set of structure drawings at NYT here #chemsky

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

This is real.

Oracle slashes 30,000 jobs with a cold 6 a.m. email Oracle began laying off up to 30,000 employees globally, notifying them via a 6 a.m. email from "Oracle Leadership" with no prior warning from HR or managers.

Nothing says "this is a healthy way of organizing a society" like Oracle cutting 30,000 jobs without warning in order to free up cash flow for building AI datacenters.

Naomi Klein - Wikipedia

So for my friends who don't follow Canadian politics, the New Democratic party just chose Avi Lewis as their leader. That means the Badass Dr. Naomi Klein could be our first lady. I am pretty pumped about these two amazing humans being involved in Can politics.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_K...

Wolf bites woman in a shopping area in Germany's 2nd-biggest city Authorities say a wolf has bitten a woman in a Hamburg shopping area, in what experts call Germany’s first known wild wolf attack on a person since 1998.

Come ON people!

“Wolf takes bite out of Hamburger” was RIGHT THERE

Author’s viewpoint, from lying on a couch with one leg extended. A grey tabby kitten with a blue flexible cone around her head is laying alongside the leg, facing the camera, sleeping.

She was spayed today. 10 days in a cone, isolated from her brother in the sunroom. 10 days of isolation of me in the sunroom, sleeping on the couch, to keep her company.

The prompt:

i have to choose a book for book club. i thought i would use the opportunity to YIMBY-pill a new audience. what's the best, most readable, most fun & engaging book about the glories of good urban design?

I put it into Claude, Gemini, & ChatGPT. Wanna compare what they said?

When all the people with institutional knowledge are fired or quit, government agencies are left in the hands of inexperienced practitioners or political ideologues.

You then have 3 – 5 years to get them back. After that, "what right looks like" is gone forever and you have to start from scratch.

We wholeheartedly agree. Irion and Egli breached the trust that we must have in the lawyers appearing before us. They have brought the profession into disrepute. Irion's and Egli's failure to comply with the basic rules of our profession has forced us and the City to unnecessarily expend time and resources on a case that should have been litigated and resolved straightforwardly but was not. More importantly, by breaching our trust, we can no longer rely on the representations in Irion's and Egli's briefs, harming both their clients (whose cases are now viewed with skepticism and this court who must now independently verify everything Irion and Egli write. Finally, Irion and Egli have sullied the reputation of our bar, which now must litigate under the cloud of their conduct. We therefore issue these sanctions to Irion and Egli, the rationales for which we will explain below: 1. Irion and Egli must jointly and severally reimburse appellees in full for their reasonable attorneys' fees on appeal in all three appeals. 2. Irion and Egli must jointly and severally pay double costs to appellees for costs incurred under 28 U.S.C. § 1920 on appeal in all three appeals. 3. Appellees must file an accounting of their costs and attorneys' fees on appeal, with supporting documentation, no later than seven days from the date of this

order. Irion and Egli shall file any responses or objections to appellees' requests for costs and attorneys' fees on appeal no later than seven days thereafter. There will be no replies. 4. Irion and Egli must each separately and individually pay $15,000 to the registry of this court as punitive sanctions for the proceedings in this court in all three appeals. 5. The clerk will forward a copy of this order to the chief judge to consider disciplinary proceedings under Sixth Circuit Local Rule 46. 6. If Irion and Egli are financially unable to comply with some or all of the requirements of this order, they must file an affidavit under seal describing their financial situation along with their objections to appellees' fee requests.

Everyone stfu the Sixth Circuit issued *gigantic* AI sanctions

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

A screenshot of the landing page for a story from the Independent reading: Delta flew 5-year-old Liam Ramos and his father to ICE detention in Texas, new video shows A photo of federal agents detaining Liam Conejo Ramos in Minnesota outraged people across the nation last year Ariana Baio Tuesday 17 March 2026 16:15 EDT

A screenshot of the landing page for my story reading: Video proves Delta flew Liam Ramos and his dad to ICE detention center Three plainclothes federal agents can be seen boarding a Delta flight while guarding the 5-year-old boy and his father, right under unsuspecting passengers' noses. Gillian Brockell 16 Mar 2026 - 8 min read

A line from the Independent story reading: “The airport footage was obtained through an information disclosure request to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport by activist Nick Benson with MN50501 - a Minnesota-based organization that advocates against Trump's policies.” I’ve highlighted the part where it links to MN50501.

A screenshot of a browser window showing that the MN50501 link includes “?ref=gillianbrockell.com”

This @the-independent.com story is such an obvious lift of mine that they didn’t even bother deleting my site’s referral URL.

And no, they do not credit me for reporting it first or (intentionally) link to my story.

In j-school, rewording someone else’s reporting was called plagiarism. 1/

If you're not familiar, the format for a "truth sandwich" is:

* start with a true statement

* introduce the newsworthy lie or distortion

* true statement again

The idea is that the false claim should not be the first or last impression. It's useful when you think a lie should not be ignored.

Concise and accessible description of yet another way this war will be costly for everyone.

Presenting…. my first gopher of 2026!

I'm using Google Translate a lot to work out how to say certain things in French and sometimes when a sentence involves the second person it chooses the wrong form for what I need (tu vs vous) but it turns out I can get it to use the desired form by ending the sentence with either "buddy" or "sir" 🙃

TODAY IN MY BUSY LIFE AS A BUSINESS CAT:

I SUPERVISED MY HUMAN WHILE THEY WORKED

THEN I JOINED A MEETING. I MADE SURE TO LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE CAMERA AND SIT VERY STRAIGHT IN MY HUMAN’S LAP

THEN IT WAS LUNCH…BUT MY HUMAN DIDN’T SHARE

THIS WILL BE NOTED ON THEIR PERFORMANCE REVIEW

This interview with the great @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social was a "wow" moment for me. Thanks, New York Times and David Marchese.
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/m...

I couldn't help noticing the question that seemed the most Times-like to me.

I can't compete with this.

Coffee, straight out of my nose.

Now I’m wondering if there are strong feelings on dichloromethane vs. methylene chloride. I’ve used both Interchangeably, but I dislike the DCM acronym for unknown reasons.