Alondra Nelson

U.S. Races to Accomplish Iran Mission Before Munitions Run Out President Trump says the Iran campaign might last a week or longer, but dwindling stockpiles could limit his options.

i'm no fancy military strategist but "we didn't really plan so we're going to run out of munitions soon" seems not great

Forgot about Bahrain.

But while we're at it, add another one to this list: "Board of Peace" member Cyprus.

Al-Jazeera is reporting that a UK base in Cyprus was just hit by a drone strike. The UK had just authorized the US to use it to strike Iranian targets.

Ursula K. Le Guin — Nominate a Book for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction

It's time! Nominations are now open for the 2026 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, which will be given to a work of imaginative fiction, published in 2025, that reflects the concepts and ideas that were central to Ursula’s own work.

Gift of Mrs. David M. Levy

Jacob Lawrence, Housing for the Negroes was a very difficult problem, 1940-41
https://botfrens.com/collections/14377/contents/1134645

Tech execs provide their kids with liberal arts education to ensure their futures—-all while many state schools are becoming all STEM. www.wsj.com/lifestyle/ca...

It's getting to be you can't even profit off war deaths on the insider trading app anymore

UNC-CH Will ‘Scrap’ New Recording Policy, Chancellor Says The move comes less than three weeks after the controversial rules were enacted.

Congrats to @ncaaup.bsky.social & all who fought against this surveillance policy that would've allowed admin to hijack microphones in the classroom for secret recordings.

This move would've chilled classroom discussion & suppressed students' willingness to ask questions & take intellectual risks.

Six suspected insiders made $1.2M betting on a US strike on Iran

these wallets
• were funded in the last 24h
• specifically bet for February 28
• bought "yes" hours before the strikes

U.S. Strikes in Middle East Use Anthropic, Hours After Trump Ban Within hours of declaring that the federal government will end its use of artificial-intelligence tools made by tech company Anthropic, President Trump launched a major air attack in Iran with the hel...

Claude goes to war in Iran: "Within hours of declaring that the federal government will end its use of artificial-intelligence tools made by tech company Anthropic, President Trump launched a major air attack in Iran with the help of those very same tools."

OpenAI posted the terms of the deal. Reveals that it absolutely does allow for domestic surveillance. EO 12333 is how the NSA hides its domestic surveillance by capturing communications by tapping into lines *outside the US* even if it contains info from/on US persons.

openai.com/index/our-ag...

User Chris: What was the core difference why you think the DoW accepted OpenAI but not Anthropic Sam Altman: I can't speak for them, but to speculate with the best understanding of the situation. *First, I saw reporting that they were extremely close on a deal, and for much of the time both sides really wanted to reach one. I have seen what happens in tense negotiations when things get stressed and deteriorate super fast, and I could believe that was a large part of what happened here. *We believe in a layered approach to safety--building a safety stack, deploying FDEs and having our safety and alignment researcher involved, deploying via cloud, working directly with the DoW. Anthropic seemed more focused on specific prohibitions in the contract, rather than citing applicable laws, which we felt comfortable with. We feel that it it's very important to build safe system, and although documents are also important, I'd clearly rather rely on technical safeguards if I only had to pick one. *We and the DoW got comfortable with the contractual language, but I can understand other people would have a different opinion here. *I think Anthropic may have wanted more operational control than we did

I saw some folks asking what the difference was between what OpenAI signed with the DoD and what Anthropic said they wanted, and Sam more or less admits here the key point: OpenAI's deal requires them to trust the NSA. Anthropic's contract had real safeguards.

Mamdani Is Naming New York’s Next Culture Czar

We continue to build a team worthy of New Yorkers and the bold ambitions of the Mamdani administration. The latest addition is Diya Vij. Together we will make sure that art & artists are celebrated, culture and community are valued, and all of it creates more economic justice. Welcome aboard, Diya!

Screenshot of New York Times article: “OpenAI Reaches A.I. Agreement With Defense Dept. After Anthropic Clash”

Screenshot of text from article: “Under the deal, OpenAI agreed to let the Pentagon use its A.I. systems for any lawful purpose, a term required by the Pentagon. But OpenAI also said it had found a way to ensure that its technologies would adhere to its safety principles by installing specific technical guardrails on its systems.”

My major takeaway from the last year of reporting on generative AI chatbots is that safety guardrails can fail when conversations run long and that everyone who works in this space knows that

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/t...

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres: “Military action carries the risk of igniting a chain of events that no one can control in the most volatile region of the world"

Great 🧵 with many links to what political science research & history can tell us about FIRCs:

The Jazz Pictures the FBI Silenced Fearing for her safety, Lisette Model buried her photos of artists like Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong, but a new book reveals them to the world.

"The Jazz Pictures the FBI Silenced---Fearing for her safety, Lisette Model buried her photos of artists like Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong, but a new book reveals them to the world" hyperallergic.com/the-jazz-pic...

It’s packed ❤️🥰

No to war in Iran!

Yes

OpenAI strikes deal with Pentagon after Trump orders government to stop using Anthropic On X, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he had moved to label Anthropic as a "supply chain risk" and cancel Defense business with the company.

One way to read the AI/Pentagon news from last night (I covered it but didn't skeet) is that the Department of Defense wants AI to automate weapons and/or spy on Americans and that Anthropic would have the best AI to do that, but OpenAI is at least the second-best so they'll just use that instead.

Melania Trump will preside over a UN Security Council meeting in a first for a first lady U.S. first lady Melania Trump will preside over a U.N. Security Council meeting in what the United Nations said Thursday would be a first.

File under: the new multilateralism apnews.com/article/mela...

Iran Strikes Feel Like 2003 All Over Again Less than a year ago, US President Donald Trump gave a speech in the Middle East in which he excoriated his predecessors for their habit of launching “forever wars” in that region. Alluding to the Ame...

“If ever history demanded that Congress reclaim its constitutional monopoly in declaring war, that moment is now.”
www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

At least 63 girls killed in strike on school in southern Iran Eyewitness tells MEE girls aged between seven and 12 seen lying dead across their school

This account includes an eyewitness.

Also: “At least 85 people, almost all of them young girls, have been killed in an air strike on a primary school in southern Iran, the Iranian judiciary said.”

Opinion | Trump’s Strikes on Iran Were Unlawful. Here’s Why That Matters.

The strikes on Iran are blatantly illegal. I explained in June why the strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities were unlawful under US and international law. Everything I wrote then is true today, but this is a far larger assault with far graver consequences.

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/23/o...

Don’t worry everyone, American media is definitively on this shit.

On the liberal MSNOW you’ve got a former Republican congressman talking about his conversation with Trump about the “terrorist regime” and over on CNN Wolf Blitzer is asking guests how they come up with the names of the operations.

How US tech giants supplied Israel with AI models, raising questions about tech's role in warfare U.S. tech giants have quietly empowered Israel to track and kill many more alleged militants more quickly in Gaza and Lebanon through a sharp spike in artificial intelligence and computing services.

I would like to remind people that AI has already been used to kill people

OpenAI and Microsoft supplied Israel with AI models to track and kill people in Gaza which led to increased civilian deaths

apnews.com/article/isra...

Once again our first thoughts should be of human cost of conflict in Middle East, price paid and risks incurred by innocents.

A judge just tossed out Columbia University's disciplinary actions against 22 students over the 2024 Hamilton Hall occupation, finding the school relied on sealed arrest records and held individuals responsible for group actions, violating its own rules.

iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/Documen...

Would have been weird if someone saw the gap between policy and rhetoric coming, right @costasamaras.com @geomblog.bsky.social?

Once again, in actual democracies, people do not need to engage in permanent litigation & political mobilization to retain the basic right to vote, because none of the major political parties make restricting suffrage the central pillar of their policy platform. We also don't have to live like this.

Here's one we baked already www.programmablemutter.com/p/who-loses-...