Chemical leak at a West Virginia plant kills 2 people and sends 19 to hospital, officials say Authorities say a chemical leak at a West Virginia plant has killed two people and sent 19 others to the hospital, including one person in critical condition.

apnews.com/article/west... There was a time when this would be some of the biggest news of the day.

BREAKING:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Department watchdog says it is reviewing the department's compliance with law mandating release of Epstein files.

This morning’s sunrise 💛

I hope something good happens to you today ✨💕☀️🫶

Hope isn’t blind optimism — it arises in the face of uncertainty. If you look at our history, we’ve gone through some rough patches. But we tend to come out on the other side of them stronger than before.

ICE has violated almost 100 court orders.

Let me say that another way. 100 times ICE was caught brazenly ignoring the law. 100 times a court told them to immediately stop. And 100 times they ignored the order.

That's an out-of-control agency that shouldn't get another dime.

BTW friends, Hapoy #EarthDay 🌎show us your favorite photo of our beautiful little planet!

Long Lane Wood #trees #woodland #treeclub

Magens Bay Beach, St. Thomas USVI

Why is the USA incapable of removing an obviously insane and incompetent President?

Trump coughs up another headline hairball...and the media chases it like it’s filet mignon. Panic...outrage...ratings. Rinse, repeat. The circus isn’t covering him… it’s performing for him.

Contributor: ICE raids and migrant pay cuts are devastating California economies Many of the harms of recent immigration enforcement are incalculable. But researchers have put a number on the economic toll in Southern California's agricultural communities.

"Early research quantifying the economic impact of ICE raids in Oxnard estimates direct crop losses of $3 billion to $7 billion with significant spillover into other sectors of the economy."

The DOJ says that there are no Epstein files left, and Congress is going to have round tables discussions instead of hearings. Do they really think we are going to forget about this when they are just making themselves look even more complicit.

Eartha Kitt performing in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 1955

NASA’s Artemis II was a major success—so why couldn’t the crew flush the toilet? The space environment—microgravity, extreme temperatures and more—make it near-impossible to truly test a space toilet like Artemis II's ahead of launch, experts say

The space environment—microgravity, extreme temperatures and more—make it near-impossible to truly test a space toilet like Artemis II's ahead of launch, experts say

Connecticut Just Told Masked ICE Agents to Show Their Faces SB00397 bars masks on every officer in the state, forces feds to show badges, and opens state courts to sue them. A first in the country.

No law enforcement officer operating in Connecticut—federal, state, or local—can wear a mask on duty. ICE and CBP agents have to show their faces and badges. And when an officer assaults someone recording them, commits false imprisonment, false arrest, or malicious prosecution, they lose immunity.

"We live in a society where we've basically become totally callous to the idea that someone can gun down eight kids...and that's just the way of life. We deal with it and we move on, because we have become accustomed to it."

@samsteindc.bsky.social on America's numbness to mass shootings.

Senate Republicans Ram Through Plan to Bankroll ICE in Dead of Night Senate Republicans are pushing a plan to cut out Democrats from the funding process.

Senate GOP Rams Through Plan to Cut Out Democrats and Bankroll ICE | TNR

newrepublic.com/post/209415/...

ALSOBROOKS: I have the recording. I can play it

RFK Jr: I do not believe that every Black kid should be re-parented on a wellness farm and I have never believed it

ALSOBROOKS: Well you said it, sir, I have the video

RFK Jr: I'd have to see the transcript

Reporter: What do you make of Republicans saying that Virginia—

AOC: Wah wah wah.

We have asked Republicans for 10 years to ban partisan gerrymandering. And for 10 years, Republicans have said no.

What they’re just mad at is that they have been accustomed to a Democratic Party that rolls over.

The unflattering secrets revealed so far in Elon Musk’s latest legal feud Hundreds of court filings have revealed cringey texts, emails or private diary entries of Musk, Sam Altman, other OpenAI founders and other public figures.

Gift article:
wapo.st/4sOqKUo

Cancel the White House Correspondents’ Dinner Trump will be guest of honor at the “nerd prom,” with journalists serving as suck-ups

Cancel the White House Correspondents’ Dinner
open.substack.com/pub/stopthep...

Every university needs a @msroth.bsky.social as president. Wesleyan's head grades Yale's shameful retreat: "That’s not a mission; it’s a defense strategy. And the retreat from public purpose will not enhance trust; it will further erode it."
Gift link:
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/22/o...

This morning's Reliable Sources has the latest on Kash Patel, Comcast, Mike Vrabel, Zeteo, Bill Maher, WBD, and much more... cnn.it/4sVXcEH

Very excited to join @nymag.com and work with the brilliant @intelligencer.com team

That said, the AI industry resembling a multitrillion-dollar broken-up polycule can't be helping. One influential anonymous X account run by an OpenAI employee - speaking of interesting communications strategies! — worries that it might have some downsides: tweet from Roon: the ai labs, in competing with each other, are burning huge amounts of the commons on public trust in ai to win minor points against the others. their lobbyists, pr machines, lawsuits. it's the very opposite of what marxist class struggle analysis would tell you end tweet. From inside the industry, or even if you spend enough time steaming in the Al hothouses of X or LinkedIn, this map of intra-AI rivalries and vendettas is legible and, for some of these guys, ideologically coherent, rooted in old and substantive disagreements about how to build intelligent machines. From the outside, though, old, festering disagreements about alignment, AI safety, and novel corporate governance structures tend to lose a lot of texture, and the situation can be read, accurately if not necessarily sufficiently, as something simpler and more familiar: Another new industry in the throes of massive expansion, its investors desperate for upside and its principal actors engaged in a ruthless land grab and fight for dominance that feels, to them, like a matter of life or death. That fight is all in pursuit of an outcome that they've explained is (1) probably inevitable and (2) might be pretty bad, and which therefore sounds awfully predatory.

It can be deflating to reimagine the Al boom as a more pedestrian business story with particularly colorful executives expressing contempt for their rivals and making things personal on the way to, say, packaged-beverage dominance. But the maximally dysfunctional dynamics of the pre-takeoff AI industry can also be read as an early, bad sign of how things might play out for everyone else: like they always do, but maybe worse. Here is a visible, prepared, and substantively aligned "small group of elites," including a few of the richest people in the entire world, suggesting that it's time to collectively "rethink the social contract" and warning that we're about to be "tested as a species," as they're in the process of succumbing completely to a crude, winner-take-all market logic, utterly failing to coordinate among themselves, fighting regulation with lobbyists, getting pissed as hell in public, and opening up a bunch of fronts in a total industrial war for scarce resources — power, compute, water - with immediate and unmitigated externalities. (Granted, comprehensive high-level coordination among them might look like something else people don't particularly love: a cabal.) Individually, to receptive audiences, they can explain how all this happened and rationalize their own roles. To much of the rest of the world, though, they just look like a group of people who worried about building the thing and then couldn't figure out how not to, who cautioned against getting trapped in an arms race and then started one anyway. They see people warning about the speed of change as they step over one another to make it accelerate. They see people urging humility and accusing one another of having God complexes while engaging in a naked struggle for power.

I wrote about the mutual contempt that motivates our polycular AI elite nymag.com/intelligence...

Meredith Shiner & Michael Calderone Podcast Episode · Fast Politics with Molly Jong-Fast · April 23 · 50m

Talking with @mollyjongfast.bsky.social about the press corps toasting the First Amendment on Saturday night alongside Donald Trump and his allies

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/m...

“Stop Paramount’s Corruption Gala” April 23 at 5:30 pm ET in Washington, D.C. - Public Citizen WASHINGTON, D.C. – Hundreds are expected to protest David Ellison’s swanky, invite-only dinner to “honor” President Trump outside the now-shuttered…

Here’s a righteous WHCD weekend activity: www.citizen.org/news/stop-pa...

Eric Trump -- the president's son -- is on Maria Bartiromo's show bragging about one of his companies landing a $24 million Pentagon contract

Trump Rages Over Epic Self-Own in Virginia—and Reveals Deeper Weakness As Trump’s gerrymandering scheme backfires, triggering his fury, a sharp observer of Democrats explains how this should steel them to aggressively pursue post-Trump accountability.

Good @brianbeutler.bsky.social ideas on how Dem House can pursue Trump:

*defund agencies of Trump officials who flout subpoenas
*subpoena corps that "settle" his lawsuits
*end filibuster, reform SCOTUS

On pod, Brian is good on Trump display of weakness in VA fight:
newrepublic.com/article/2094...

Warner Bros. Discovery Shareholders Overwhelmingly Approve Paramount’s Megadeal, but Vote Against Exit Pay Packages for Zaslav and Other Execs Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders approved the merger with Paramount Skydance but symbolically voted against payout packages for CEO David Zaslav and other WBD top brass.

The shmendriks who sold out Warner Bros are getting something like a billion dollars in this deal. (The shareholder vote on exit pay is not binding.) variety.com/2026/film/ne...