Rebecca Long

a girl riding on the back of a flying dragon ALT: a girl riding on the back of a flying dragon

Movies don’t get much better

This is the key to understanding our very, very broken economy.

Column: The Corporation for Public Broadcast is ‘winding down.’ What does that mean for public radio and TV? The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced it is “wind-down” operations. What does this mean for public radio and TV?

Column: The Corporation for Public Broadcast is ‘winding down.’ What does that mean for public radio and TV?

I talk with media studies professor and public media expert Josh Shepperd for an explainer. In short, it's dire

Gift 🔗

Sabriel by Garth Nix

Today's Classic Cover of the Day is Sabriel by Garth Nix, illustrated by husband-and-wife pair Leo and Diane Dillon!

It's so weird

My local library has a bi-monthly writing group, and it's so cool to see so many people quietly trying to create art in their spare time during such dire times. Joy exists on the local level everywhere, and I'm so grateful for it 💙

Congress eliminated public media funding, and the president signed it into law. At a time of deep division, public media brings us together.

Help keep it strong. Join our monthly donors today: n.pr/458sOhq

“Wikipedia is this economic anomaly. In many ways, it’s sort of magical that people will just volunteer without explicit economic incentives to create artifacts that are meant to share knowledge with everyone in the world”

Most of the internet used to be like this. This is actually the default, it took companies enclosing the internet and adding weird, soul-killing incentives to make people behave the way they do now. In a way, there is truly nothing special about Wikipedia except that it survived longer.

I'm excited/scared/thrilled!!!!!

I just started reading Realm of the Elderlings for the first time, and whew, what's the point of attempting to write when Robin Hobb can write LIKE THAT?!

GBH lays off 13 staff at American Experience, pauses production of new documentaries The move follows Congress' clawback of $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

This is horrible. Just devastating.

@jamesgunn.bsky.social's Superman has the biggest virgo energy I've ever seen

I implore you, US politicians, to understand that what the majority of people want, is simply for you to DO THE JOB OF GOVERNMENT. That is, ensure the bottom two rungs of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, so that we can pursue the other three. That's it. That's all. No more. Just that.

36%

We love Toni

On July 5, as floodwaters were starting to recede, FEMA received 3,027 calls from disaster survivors and answered 3,018, or roughly 99.7 percent, the documents show. Contractors with four call center companies answered the vast majority of the calls. That evening, however, Ms. Noem did not renew the contracts with the four companies and hundreds of contractors were fired, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter. The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answered 846, or roughly 35.8 percent, according to the documents. And on Monday, July 7, the agency fielded 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, or around 15.9 percent, the documents show.

oh my god www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/c...

I'm writing my long book!!!!!!!!

4.6 Billion Years On, the Sun Is Having a Moment In the past two years, without much notice, solar power has begun to truly transform the world’s energy system.

Globally, roughly a third more power is being generated from the sun this spring than last. If this exponential rate of growth can continue, we will soon live in a very different world, @billmckibben.bsky.social writes.

I'm an "A.i." abolitionist.

No consumer-facing LLMs or generative "A.i." in anything.

Sure, machine learning in science and a few other limited applications is fine.

But consumer-facing LLMs and generative "A.i." that are based on theft, push disinfo, and can be manipulated by billionaires?

No.

You are cordially invited to our Anti-Prime Sale, where every purchase will financially support bookstores, NOT billionaires 🥳

Welcome to the Golden Age of International Reality TV While scripted television may not be at its prime anymore, reality television is—and international reality TV is having a moment. Here are five global hits to get you started.

This season of Love Island USA is a dumpster fire, but Love Island UK is knocking it out of park rn.

A reminder that international reality TV is *really* good, and if you don't know where to start, I made a little guide for Observer!

observer.com/2025/04/welc...

Companies That Tried to Save Money With AI Are Now Spending a Fortune Hiring People to Fix Its Mistakes Companies that rushed to replace human labor with AI are now shelling out to have IRL workers to fix the technology's screwups.

🤷🏿‍♂️

Democracy Gave Us This. There Has To Be a Better Way. Brazilians held a lot of hope for democracy after the military dictatorship. But the past forty years have proved that democracy comes at a great cost to those most marginalized.

Unfortunately the piece I just published at @thenation.com is incredibly relevant. We have to fix democracy, what we are doing right now is not working.

www.thenation.com/article/worl...

Fox Mulder from X-Files saying “Hey, you got to stay alive if you want to stick it to the government”

“If you die, you let them off the hook.”

Needed this reminder today.

Flyer advertising “Flash Frogtober”. In the middle is a frog typing on a typewriter with a ghost coming out of it. The text around reads “We want your ghost stories” “July 1-31st” “Free to Sub” “Pays $25” “1000 words max” “www.flash-frog.com”

It's that time of year again! Send us your ghost stories for Flash Frogtober! flash-frog.com/submit/

There was a period of time in the 2010s when you could lazily pitch an article on Twitter and an editor would see and assign it to you.

These were my halcyon days.

This is low on the list of things going wrong today, but to be clear, ALL of NASA's streams should be free and accessible to anyone. It's wild that a publicly funded governmental organization is partnering with a PRIVATE company to CHARGE viewers to watch shuttle launches.

He's SO good! What are they thinking?