Max Coleman

Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class.

Great piece on the corporate & institutional pressures to assign fewer books to students. Less about what kids “can’t” do (because of dwindling attention spans), and more about the incentives that are pushing educators away from books and toward excerpts.

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/u...

LEFT TO OUR OWN DEVICES Notes from The Online Real World

Thanks to my husband @robrankin.bsky.social for sending me the Pew study—check out his phenomenal writing on digital technology, including this essay on giving up his smartphone: robrankin.substack.com/p/left-to-ou...

Even so, I've never seen data on these massive racial differences in social media use until today. It reflects a familiar pattern: health threats once concentrated in higher-status folks, such as high-SES Whites (remember the "digital divide?") end up predominating in socially disadvantaged groups.

Race-Related Traumatic Events Online and Mental Health Among Adolescents of Color Viral videos of the detainment of undocumented immigrants in cages and police killings of unarmed citizens are two of the most pressing traumatic even…

Scholars have already pointed to the circulation of viral "race-related traumatic events online" (like the murder of George Floyd) as an explanation for increasing distress in Black youth. For example, see Brendesha Tynes's work: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Black teens are 4x as likely as White teens to say they're on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube almost constantly.

And Black teens are 11% more likely (68% vs. 57%) to use AI chatbots.

In my view, these findings help explain the steep rise in suicidality among Black youth in recent years.

Teens, Social Media and AI Chatbots 2025 Roughly one-in-five U.S. teens say they are on TikTok and YouTube almost constantly. At the same time, 64% of teens say they use chatbots, including about three-in-ten who do so daily.

Stunning new research from Pew on racial disparities in the use of social media, the internet, and AI chatbots among American teens. For example, only 27% of White youth say they're online almost constantly, compared to 55% of Black youth. (Thread) www.pewresearch.org/internet/202...

Thank goodness Trump didn’t call half of Somalis something like “deplorable” else it would have been the biggest scandal ever

My vote is Daniel Radcliffe!

In retrospect having an elite class composed of people who are really good at rising through the ranks by not rocking the boat left us in a really, really bad place at the moment that elite institutions faced their greatest moral test

Losing India’s Guardian Angels - The American Prospect USAID funding supported efforts to eradicate tuberculosis in India, one of the country’s deadliest diseases. Now, that money and support is gone.

The impact of the destruction of USAID is so wide-ranging. We got a field report from one of the poorest states in India, where foreign aid funded "TB champions" who educate and assist tuberculosis patients. Without their help, advocates expect a 36% increase in cases & 68% rise in deaths from TB.

Therapists Can’t Fix What Society Broke What the Classical Social Theorists Knew about the Price We Pay for Progress—and We’ve Forgotten

“Modernity was a package deal, and the price of its benefits was the loss of much that made life livable.”

A fantastic essay on the value of classical social theory in understanding today’s world.

stevenmintz.substack.com/p/therapists...

Our crisis is not loneliness but human beings becoming invisible | Aeon Essays Our crisis of work and technology is one in which too many people feel that nobody sees them as a fellow human being

Are human beings becoming invisible?

The Unseen
(Allison J Pugh • Aeon)

Our crisis of work and technology is one in which too many people feel that nobody sees them as a fellow human being.

aeon.co/essays/our-c...

Opinion | This Is the Story of How the Democrats Blew It on Gaza

“It is not healthy for a party to be this out of step with its own voters and stated beliefs. The simplest thing to do would be the right thing: refuse to provide military assistance to a government that has committed war crimes,” reject annexation, and more.

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/o...

Gmail can read your emails and attachments to train its AI, unless you opt out A new Gmail update may allow Google to use your private messages and attachments for AI training. Here's how to turn it off.

Google has started automatically opting you in to let it read your stuff to train AI. You need to turn this off in SEVERAL places in your settings (not just for Gmail), if you want to maintain privacy and confidentiality.
www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/20...

My husband is an amazing composer and thinker — I know I’m biased but I highly recommend this lecture!

It’s refreshing to hear a Senator speak so plainly in the face of authoritarianism — I just wish that courage weren’t so rare.

👇🎯

Trump re-pardons a Jan. 6 defendant to erase unrelated gun conviction The new pardon ends a legal clash over the limits of Trump’s sweeping Day One clemency for those who stormed the Capitol.

This is so abhorrent. Trump has now re-pardoned a Jan 6 felon because the original pardon didn’t clear his (unrelated!) felony gun convictions.

The man “has identified himself as a member of the Oath Keepers and Gray Ghost Partisan Rangers militia.”

www.politico.com/news/2025/11...

Government Reopens as Trump Signs Bill to End Nation’s Longest Shutdown

“‘People were hurt so badly,’ said Mr. Trump, whose administration fought in court to not fund food stamps, tried to fire thousands of federal workers and threatened to withhold back pay from others during the shutdown.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/u...

"In conditions of hegemony, even the righteous anger of the oppressed can be incorporated into a toothless identity politics in which difference becomes a hot commodity."

—Patricia Hill Collins, "Fighting Words"

Harm to SNAP recipients, federal workers, and others is real. In a normal democracy it’d make sense to prioritize reducing that harm in the short term.

In a rapidly backsliding democracy, harm is happening no matter what. Preventing authoritarian consolidation is the most harm-reducing move.

@ezralevin.bsky.social Can Indivisible coordinate with other orgs on a massive grassroots campaign to replace Schumer as minority leader? Maybe someone like Chris Murphy — or anyone else who is a fighter?

What will it take for the Senate to remove Schumer as minority leader?

My family has been without half our income for 40 days. It has been.. very hard.

We are willing to feel that pain so people can have health care next year, or to undo these illegal recissions.

We are not willing to have been put through this for NOTHING.

i think this is key. taking the deal would amount to taking the blame. it would turn a clear political victory into an unambiguous defeat.

Public Health Was a Place for Warriors Once. It Needs to Be Again. It's time for us to reconnect with the radical, system-changing spirit that was once at the heart of our field.

It’s time for us to reconnect with the radical, system-changing spirit that was once at the heart of our field. #publichealth #episky #medsky #activism www.thenation.com/article/acti...

Opinion | Sudan Is in Free Fall

A really important article about the (current!) genocide in Darfur. The authors argue that we need to pressure the UAE—which provides weapons and other support—as well as American companies like Disney & the NBA that have financial ties and can exert leverage.

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/o...

"Silence itself—the things one declines to say, or is forbidden to name—[is] an element that functions alongside the things said... There is no binary division to be made between what one says & what one does not say; we must try to determine the different ways of not saying such things." —Foucault

‘Food is not a privilege’: Utah Democrats tell GOP leaders to use rainy-day funds for SNAP Utah Senate Democrats are calling on the Legislature’s GOP supermajority to use rainy-day funds to make up for the unfunded portion of Utahns' SNAP benefits.

Utah Senate Democrats are calling on the Legislature’s GOP supermajority to use rainy-day funds to make up for the unfunded portion of Utahns' SNAP benefits.