Jürgen Habermas, influential German philosopher, dies at 96 Jürgen Habermas, whose work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world’s most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figure in his native Germany, has died.

Habermas dead. Arguably outlived the public sphere. apnews.com/article/juer...

Not in the UK but I see these headlines everywhere. Yet I work with hundreds of GenZ men, in a male-dominated environment, and we discuss ethics and power open-endedly in required classes they don't even want to take, and I really don't find them to be close-minded little shits, in general. Idk.

Yes! The more things change, etc.

‘We’re losing accessibility’: America says goodbye to the mass-market paperback The so-called ‘pocket book’ sold in supermarkets is being phased out across the US, the latest sign of an ongoing shift in how people are choosing to read

At the same time, I also feel like I'm seeing some of the traditionally pulpy genres -- murder mysteries, romance -- bring back books as bourgeois objects, with multiple editions with sprayed edges and special covers by cover artists with social media followings.

1/27/26: Asylum Lake preserved - NowKalamazoo An attempt to rezone land near Asylum Lake Preserve has been rejected by Kalamazoo city leaders. Also: Hundreds gathered in Kalamazoo to protest federal crackdowns in Minneapolis. And the Vine neighbo...

The suit's lawyer thought "don't worry, it won't be a car wash; it will be a strip mall!" would cheer everyone up, but instead folks stayed at the meeting for 5 hours until 1:30am and convinced the commissioners to unanimously vote no on rezoning a beloved nature preserve. Nice work, Kzoo

Every thing I have to say right now is ugly.

I don’t want to hear anything from an elected official unless it’s a plan to defund the DHS and impeach Noem, Bovino, etc. No texts. No emails. No talk about the economy. Step up or step off.

- No wifi needed when you want to look for that one line you're thinking about later

- Some are made with high-quality materials and sewn bindings, making them desirable to own for a lifetime

I could go on, but the simple fact is: people come here because they want books, not just content.

(9/11)

Photo by Pierre Lavie. Yes this is me. And I threw my Leica. It landed on the bass plate with hardly a scratch. Another Photographer grabbed it along with my phone and I was able to track him later. I was held face down tear gas deployed right in front of me and pepper sprayed directly into the eye.

Shout out to Gmail’s unsend button

The Vanity Fair subject matter is obvs bleak but seeing the internet light up with a million tiny observations about human-centered art and how portrait photography can tell a story is making my humanities professor heart sing.

I kind of feel like calling the guy "man" repeatedly might not be completely unintentional -- there's a plainspeaking pathos in the difference between "that is not correct, sir" and something like "that ain't right, man." I'm kind of here for it, tbh

Just saw a Parkland survivor post about being on lock down at Brown University.

We've failed generations of kids with our gun fetish

WE WON. I am *begging* you to take note of who did this. *Not* UCLA admin—they’re still scuttling around behind closed doors, attempting to appease—but FACULTY AND STAFF, led by AAUP.

When it comes to money, a husband is like a room you are locked inside of. You can't access your own shit without his permission, but nobody bothers you about it, either.

My single friends get to be "Account Holder" instead of "Spouse," but also have to endure every bro's unsolicited advice.

I have told literally everyone I know IRL about this book. Hands down my favorite this year.

“What did Watson and Crick discover?
Rosalind Franklin’s notes.”

It’s devastating

Nobody pities you like your own teenage progeny.

Opinion | A Nazi Tattoo Exposes Democrats’ Greatest Weakness

You gotta embrace a *little* Nazi shit, or you'll lose the "white working-class" -- a population famously averse to confrontation!
Or maybe, from the author of Lower Ed: "racism is not a natural condition of poverty but a political weapon that rich men use to constrain poor people’s political power"

Cursory lookup suggests this was Mad Magazine, 1969. The first thing you learn when you study old newspapers is that our stories have always been exactly the same. The only thing that really changes are the names (fewer Franks and Hermans these days) and the fonts.

lol great advice, instead of buying bananas you can just grow some in your garden in Michigan in November. Also you should probably get a cow or something

Pam Bondi Hearing Cold Open - SNL YouTube video by Saturday Night Live

these jagoffs hate getting laughed at, so I'm just doing my civic duty here www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSfC...

In other words: like Jaron Lenier said, "the Turing Test cuts both ways." What if the human judge in the Turing Test can't judge?

On Working with Wizards Verifying magic on the jagged frontier

Haven't read the book but I like the "wizard" analogy in this post. AI critiques are often either values-based or focused on specific technical limitations that might well get resolved. This one identifies an inherent practical problem: is anything "good" if humans have no way of evaluating it?

literally biblically, I'm pretty sure

Have a loved one who's literally never set foot on a uni campus yet is 💯 positive that universities are poorly run + medical research is harmful because if we just got people to avoid seed oils they wouldn't need cancer treatment. No way to argue with that. Maybe our best hope is arguing around it?

Idly wondering about the media practices of people in countries limited to state TV. Does everybody just quit bothering with TV and do something else? (The "trust" section of the "state media" Wikipedia entry, which is all the effort I've put into learning about this, is sparse and contested.)

Jarvis: I hate to say this to my friends here at CNN, mass media is dying, so they're taking the last of these vestiges of institutions that matter and they're trying to turn them into propaganda organs under threat from the head of the FCC