David Simpson

I’m sorry for your loss.

Winning!

I imagine it was extremely disturbing

One of the students I’m (remotely) advising is a true freshman and thusly one year younger than my eldest grandchild.

I thought this was just me being old and cranky! Parents 10 yards from children in parking lots as if a car might not move!

Mainstream journalists—and not just mainstream journalists—love compromise and bipartisanship for its own sake. It is a shibboleth that partisanship distorts perspectives, and that if we could just overcome our divisions, we could find common sense solutions that transcend party. Trump, in this thinking, may be extreme and bad in many ways, but serious legislators need to work across the aisle, and should find some way to work with him on something. Isn’t that what the great deliberative Senate is all about? Cool that tea, Senators! Make sure our democracy isn’t too democracyish!

Nailed, by @nberlat.bsky.social.

open.substack.com/pub/noahberl...

Democrats should get up in the Senate and talk around the clock about these outrages until the administration caves. If that’s weeks, so what? What’s more important?

And the oh-so-smart Democratic funders and strategist should back it up with advertising and support for protests at every site.

"After years without accidents, Maria started wetting her pants and her bed. She cried through the night, asking when she and her parents would return to their apartment in New York. She begged to start breastfeeding again."

Gladys Mae West obituary: mathematician who pioneered GPS technology She made key contributions to US cold-war science despite facing huge barriers as a Black woman.

No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition.

Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

London was a turbulent place, where immigrants’ place was contested and a source of social strife among laborers. And while their children too faced stigma as times, they were not strangers to the realm. Their birth on the king’s lands made them Englishmen.

“At least some young men supported Trump because they believed that he would enhance their crypto investments, and have remained favorable because he seemed to be delivering. I don’t know how many bitterly disillusioned bros there will be now, but there will be some.”

🤞

Paul Krugman’s Substack post is headlined “Cryptocrash” and features a photo of Wile E. Coyote suspended in air looking mournfully at the camera as he realizes he has run off the edge of a cliff.

I am not a sophisticated tech bro crypto investor. Is it bad when @pkrugman.bsky.social’s latest post starts with this?

1. Build huge subscriber base by telling them their $ supports democracy.
2. Don’t establish other revenue sources.
3. Rug-pull subscribers by pushing opinion side to the right.
4. Subscribers leave, revenue falls.
5. Enact crippling newsroom cuts.

I agree, David. That he didn't show up to face the staff today makes it impossible to believe that he cares about the Post.

If Jeff Bezos could afford to spend $75 million on the Melania movie & $500 million for a yacht to sail off to his $55 million wedding to give his wife a $5 million ring, please don't tell me he needed to fire one-third of the Washington Post staff.

Democracy dies in oligarchy.

Jeff Bezos’s wealth has increased an average of $70 million every day of 2026, meaning that he could have offset The Post’s losses with what he’s made since Monday.

Aiming for 500,000 subscribers by 2026, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution takes a big swing on growth “We want to cloak ourselves in all things Atlanta. And frankly, in recent years, we haven't necessarily done that.”

Indeed. They now report 100,000, which would be strong growth over 60,000 in 2023. But Morse acknowledges they’re losing money.

Note: I get an AJC.com subscription as free perk for giving to public radio. Wonder how many pay full price.

www.niemanlab.org/2023/10/aimi...

Headlines: House cancels contempt vote as Clintons agree to testify on Epstein Westminster Dog Show highlights: Penny, a statuesque Doberman Pinscher, captures Best in Show Trump, changing course, throws Harvard deal talks into chaos

The three top stories on this morning’s @nytimes.com newsletter. As the kids don’t say these days, I can’t even.

Bezos orders deep job cuts at 'Washington Post' The Washington Post embarked on severe cuts despite appeals by the newsroom to owner Jeff Bezos. The paper is to narrow its focus largely to politics and national security.

Well, this sucks. Bezos could fully staff this thing and get it back into profitable fighting trim with what for him would be pocket change.

www.npr.org/2026/02/04/n...

again we do not really do a good job of explaining how wealthy people like Jeff Bezos are

his net worth is $253.2 billion.
so he could take one million dollars, and just light it on fire
and then do it again tomorrow
and again the day after that
and then do it every day for 693 years and 8 months

The owner of Amazon killed the Washington Post books section.

The AJC to cut staff as it continues digital transformation The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said Tuesday it will lay off staffers in the newsroom and other segments of the business.

Nothing says integrity like closing your doors to employees.

“Staffers were informed late Tuesday that the AJC offices in Midtown will be closed Wednesday ... Affected employees will receive details in meetings Wednesday.”

www.ajc.com/business/202...

My take today on Jeff Bezos since I met him at his struggling start up in the 1990s in Seattle: Twice the muscles, half the man.

Pinned lizzie johnson @lizziejohnsonnn · Aug 19, 2021 Almost three years ago, my editor called me early one November morning. A wildfire had sparked near a town called Paradise, he said. Could I go? (1/13) 0:02 / 0:10 lizzie johnson @lizziejohnsonnn · 47m I was just laid off by The Washington Post in the middle of a warzone. I have no words. I'm devastated. Quote lizzie johnson @lizziejohnsonnn · Jan 25 Waking up without power, heat, or running water. (Again.) But the work here in Kyiv continues. Warming up in the car, writing in pencil — pen ink freezes — by headlamp.

A publisher who lays off a reporter whose pen is freezing because she's covering a frigid war zone while dodging missiles is not an editor you want to work for, in a more perfect world

We have a winner!

We did not properly punish the confederates. We did not properly punish the insurrectionists on January 6th. We have to punish ICE.

They can’t be allowed to slink back into their communities quietly. Expose them. Arrest them. Convict them. Imprison them.

This is the CDC map for homicide rates by state for the most recent year on their website.

Gov. Landry, who leads one of the states in the nation with the highest murder rate, is on television chiding Minnesota, one of the states with the lowest murder rates.

Spot on. Journos IMO are terrible at change (turns out they’re human), but OTOH their experience with it is exactly as you describe.

Today, the House passed the appropriations bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security and its ICE agency.

DHS and ICE are terrorizing our streets, from the murder of Renee Good to the detention of a 5-year old. The Senate MUST reject this bill to protect our communities.

Screenshot of an X.com post by Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) saying AOC called out the media for focusing on Biden’s cognition while not covering Trump’s alleged cognitive decline and erratic behavior, adding “None of this is normal…,” with a video still of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking in a hallway (MeidasTouch/PabloReports branding visible).

Mainstream media, we’re looking right at you.