2026-04-07

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Social media is turning into a freak show

It’s not hard to notice that Twitter has become extremely right-leaning. But I’d argue there’s an equally important trend: the top accounts are of incredibly low quality. Elon, with the algorithmic boost he built in for himself, is at the eye of the storm, of course. But “Catturd” literally gets far more engagement than the New York Times, for instance.
When Virality Is the Message: The New Age of AI Propaganda
The Team Behind a Pro-Iran, Lego-Themed Viral-Video Campaign

Very small engines

people are people sized and tend to make things out of parts on people scales. If you start thinking about other length scales, things get very different. For the same reasons you can’t just make a lathe very small and expect it to function similarly, you can’t make an efficient heat engine very small and expect it to work the same way. For example, the surface area to volume ratio in smaller engines becomes unfavorable for standard designs. Combustion looks different on millimeter length scales than it does in fist sized objects; it’s much more unstable, and the droplet size from something like a fuel injector or carburetor isn’t so favorable to very small motors.

Gavin Newsom's a failed governor

Gavin Newsom is hiring a New York PR firm to sell California — ahead of his likely presidential bid — at a cost to taxpayers of $19 million.

10 Years Ago, Trump Promised to Eliminate the National Debt. It Has Doubled
VOA's Legal Fight for Independence
The Intelligence Failure in Iran
NY Times publishes headline claiming the "A" in "NATO" stands for "American"
Was Trump oblivious to the realities of Netanyahu's promised 'easy' war on Iran?
NPR didn’t quote a single member of Michigan synagogue after attack — but interviewed terrorist’s pals in Lebanon.
- Is NPR’s coverage of the wars in Iran and Lebanon fair?
News consumers don't want or need a patriotic press cheerleading the government. We need journalists to independently cover wars. People in the United States deserve to know what their government is doing and why.

The journalistic purpose of the story was to explore the connection between the terror attack on the Michigan synagogue and the family that was killed on the other side of the world. Simply documenting that relationship and humanizing the family does not imply that Ghazali's attempt to kill more than a hundred children was justified. When important voices are missing from coverage, it distorts the audience's perception of everything else.

In doing all this, NPR has given Americans what they need to understand their government's motivations and to hold their elected officials accountable for this war. That's what the press is supposed to do, when covering a war.
What oral argument told us in the birthright citizenship case

Trump admin to investigate suicide death of paralyzed rape victim, Noelia Castillo: leaked cable

Top US Embassy officials were also told to convey to the Spanish government the Trump administration’s “serious concerns” with the “many systemic human rights failures” that led Castillo to seek out assisted suicide and allowed the terminal act to be performed even after she reportedly “expressed hesitancy” in her final hours. “We are deeply concerned by allegations that Ms. Castillo was repeatedly sexually assaulted while under state care and that no perpetrators have been brought to justice,” the cable reads. “We are also aware of reports that Ms. Castillo expressed hesitancy to undergo euthanasia in her final hours, but that these indications were ignored,” it continues. “This case raises serious concerns about the application of Spain’s euthanasia law, particularly in cases involving psychiatric conditions and non-terminal suffering.”