Andie

The asymmetry of the value placed on human life is so striking. Israel has a goal to recover 40-year-old remains; to do so, it invades a sovereign country, and the lives of 26 Lebanese are an afterthought. Their names not even worth printing in the New York Times.

the feeling I'm getting using Claude at work is that if you're a good engineer with deep knowledge of the codebase, it can make you a lot more productive. if you're a mediocre engineer with surface level knowledge of the codebase, it can also make you a lot more productive, which is BAD.

It's also just plain counterfactual. The same people who advocate conversion therapy now would have thrown effeminate gay boys into anti-trans conversion therapy just to be safe back then, too! We know because THAT'S WHAT THEY FUCKING DID, LOOK:

xtramagazine.com/health/drop-...

If you, as a social scientist, believe that AI is now a better social scientist than you, then (a) you’re probably right, and (b) sure sounds like a skill issue, y’know?

This is disgusting. Rationalizing the bombing of a school that reportedly killed 108 girls.

But since she asked,

"Currently, 161 public schools operate on military installations across the United States."

www.militaryonesource.mil/education-em...

"And our governments are very much the same."💥

As of tonight, licenses of trans people across Kansas are being invalidated en masse, enabling the overnight criminalization of an entire group of people for going about our lives. It’s often said you never know when you’re living through history, so let me assure you: that’s what’s happening now.

If you live in New Hampshire, you may want to call local authorities to check on the people who may be on this plane. Not positive this is an ICE flight, but if it is, these people would need help ASAP.

when my kid was 7, "at 7, it's marginal, right?" was in regular rotation

The term is so rare that out of over 300,000 news entries, it only appeared first in May 7 2024 in a "news" article on evangelical blog World News Group called "Giving evil a pleasant label." This was logged two days before EPPC posted the document on May 9.

web.archive.org/web/20250908...

The whole point was reverse incrementalism, exploit low-knowledge voters and readers with salacious descriptions of things they’d never heard of, and in a few years they’ll be willing to eagerly feed a whole community of people they don’t know to the wolves. And NYT brokered it to the liberal press.

The political effects of X's feed algorithm https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10098-2 Received: 16 December 2024 Accepted: 4 January 2026 Published online: 18 February 2026 Open access • Check for updates Germain Gauthier,5, Roland Hodler?5, Philine Widmer35 & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya3,4,5 m Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects'. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk's platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users' feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X's algorithm has persistent effects on users' current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.

A new paper shows that less than 2 months of exposure to Twitter’s algorithmic feed significantly shifts people’s political views to the right.

Moving from chronological feed to the algorithmic feed also increases engagement.

This is one of the most concerning papers I’ve read in awhile.

0-3 minutes / 3+ minutes

In my humble opinion, if we want to push back on the current political culture of trampling on the very concept of civic virtue, we're just gonna have to live with some people tying those virtues to their faith.

It's okay to talk about why a belief in Jesus makes you want to be a good person IMO

CFPB Staffer Alexis Goldstein Fired for Confronting DOGE Members, Announces Run for Congress The Trump administration has fired Consumer Financial Protection Bureau program manager Alexis Goldstein for documenting a meeting a year ago between the agency and Elon Musk’s Department of Governmen...

My friend @alexisgoldstein.bsky.social was fired from the CFPB for standing up to DOGE. Now she’s running for Congress. www.democracynow.org/2026/2/18/al...

I am 100% sure that have been more articles about youth gender surgeries than actual youth gender surgeries in 2026. When is someone going to reckon with the fact that ‘pivoting’ on this issue means signing on to a moral panic?

Punishing students for protesting ICE is an excellent way to communicate that you are not there to serve the community or keep them safe. No points for humanity or basic decency but bravo for honesty, I guess.

Stonepeak’s Investors The source who provided me with the Pitchbook list of Stonepeak’s investors did so on the condition that I not reveal the whole list or how many investors are on the list. In order to keep this commitment and provide the most helpful information, I am naming only the public funds in blue/swing states, where it is more likely voters and public-employee pension members will want to pressure state officials and fund administrators to reconsider their Stonepeak investments. Many of these funds have ESG policies that the human rights abuses on Omni’s ICE flights may violate. California: California Public Employees’ Retirement System, California State Teachers’ Retirement System, Regents of the University of California Retirement Plan, Sacramento County Employees’ Retirement System, San Diego City Employees’ Retirement System, San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System, Santa Barbara County Employees Retirement System Connecticut: Connecticut State Employees’ Retirement System Illinois: Illinois State Board of Investment, Teachers Retirement System of the State of Illinois Maine: Maine Public Employees Retirement System Maryland: Maryland State Retirement and Pension System Massachusetts: City of Quincy Retirement System, Massachusetts Laborers’ Annuity Fund, Massachusetts Laborers’ Pension Fund Michigan: Michigan Department of Treasury, State of Michigan Retirement Systems Minnesota: Minnesota Laborers Pension Fund New Jersey: New Jersey Pension Plan, New Jersey Division of Investment

New Mexico: New Mexico Educational Retirement Board, New Mexico Public Employees’ Retirement Association New York: New York City Board of Education Retirement System, New York City Employees’ Retirement System, New York City Police Pension Fund, New York City Fire Department Pension Fund, New York State Common Retirement Fund, New York State Teamsters Conference Pension & Retirement Fund, Teachers’ Retirement System of the City of New York Oregon: Oregon Investment Council, Oregon Public Employees Retirement System, Oregon State Treasury Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Public School Employees Retirement System Rhode Island: Employees Retirement System of Rhode Island Virginia: Fairfax County Educational Employees Supplementary Pension, Virginia Retirement System Washington: Seattle City Employees’ Retirement System, Washington State Investment Board It is unlikely any of the fund administrators were aware of Stonepeak’s involvement in ICE flights. The funds’ investments with Stonepeak are likely a small fraction of the total size of the fund. Please let me know if you contact any of these funds and what they say. I would love to keep track of and report on any community pushes to divest. You can email me at gbrockell at proton dot me. Thank you again for reading. As I wrote earlier this week, I will be focusing on publishing my ICE Air reporting here going forward. Please consider subscribing, paying for a subscription, or sending me a one-time tip, so I can continue tracking ICE Air.

@gbrockell.bsky.social's list of all the public funds in blue/swing states that are invested with the private equity firm that owns ICE’s [EVIL] charter airline for Africa and Asia deportations.

Her full article on this subject: gillianbrockell.ghost.io/more-on-omni...

It is, in fact, exactly like this. The pivot to demonizing trans people began promptly in 2015 as soon as they lost the fight against gay marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges. The specious arguments against trans people now are directly reused from those against gay/lesbian people in the 90's.

This thing can't even count past 20 and they want our entire society to bend the knee to it, huh

Every single time a story like this is reported, we must assume that there are many many more that do not.

“He got Me Tooed” “He got Epsteined” amazing that people have re-invented the police passive for rapists.

Live updates: Federal authorities announce end to Minnesota immigration crackdown The immigration crackdown in Minnesota is coming to an end after thousands of arrests and two killings, Trump's border czar says. Over 2,000 federal officers are leaving.

I also think it's really important to note that

THE NATIONAL GUARD IS STILL IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

and

PEOPLE ARE STILL BEING KIDNAPPED IN MAINE AND LOS ANGELES

So even if they leave Minnesota, the struggle to end the kidnappings continues

apnews.com/live/trump-i...

i am increasingly bothered by terms like "showdown" or "face-off" or "clash" when used to describe corrupt and fascist power coming up against resistance because there's an implied symmetry that does not exist.

New York Magazine’s coverage from 2007 treated her as a joke & backgrounded Epstein raping her. (“rococo law filings filed by William J Unroch, Esq, on behalf of his client and maybe-girlfriend, Maximilia ‘Ava’ Cordero, a self-described model who claimed that at 16 she was molested by…Epstein”)

they are weapons intended to make it impossible to hide and indiscriminately kill any living thing in the area

Administrative burdens: policymaking by other means

Since the #Olympics are on, let's repost a classic thread here: a brief history of the practice of "sex verification" in sport.

Content warning: This thread will mention anti-intersex discrimination, FGM practices and body shaming.

this is literally going to strongarm every queer user into giving info after they declared every single lgbtq+ server to be "adult servers" years ago.

so now it's literally give us your info or lose access to your communities and resources.

fuck you discord.