Colleen English Ross

🎶 'Alas, what hast thou done?
Thou art a pynke ponye girle
Yn the daunse at the clubbe!'
'Nay, modir! Ich am but seekinge mirthe
On the stage yn myne heeles
It ys wher Ich belonge:
Downe at the
Pynke Ponye Clubbe!
Ich shal keepe on daunsinge,
Downe yn West Hollywoode'
[LUTE SOLO] 🎶

Fit for Purpose? How Today’s Commercial Digital Platforms Subvert Key Goals of Public Education Digital educational platforms have become ubiquitous in American classrooms, with tools like Google Workspace for Education, Kahoot!, Zearn, Khan Academy, and many others now structuring curriculum, i...

Say it often, say it loud:

"Overall, research has not supported the common-sense presumption that digital approaches to schooling are better than non-digital alternatives. At the broadest level, widespread computer use in education has been found to be associated with lower student achievement."

Bessent Says US in Talks With Argentina Over $20 Billion Lifeline The US plans to extend a $20 billion swap line to Argentina and is ready to buy the country’s foreign bonds, providing much-needed financial support to President Javier Milei as he tries to regain inv...

Donald Trump wants to lend $20 billion of our money to bail out a political ally and his global investors before an election.

Oh, and Argentina just struck a major deal with China that crushes American soybean farmers already suffering from Trump's tariffs.

“America First.”

Great. Pedestrians and cyclists will continue to die.

BA in English and French (literature concentration) and I have been a technical editor and writer for 33 years and worked as a copy editor at a trade publication prior to that.

An update on the president's extracurriculars. pbump.net/outofoffice/

Bin Laden didn’t fly the planes himself. But he was responsible.

Manson didn’t kill anyone himself. But he was responsible.

Hitler didn’t operate the gas chambers himself. But he was responsible.

Trump didn’t storm the Capitol himself. But he was responsible.

Justice matters.

It’s the only system where you get hit up to pay while in your hospital bed. It happened to me during a recent hospital stay. I was also stuck in a hallway bed in the ER in one of the most affluent counties in the U.S.

Postal traffic to US drops more than 80% after trade exemption rule ends, UN agency says The de minimis rule that allowed small packages worth less than $800 to be exempt from tariffs ended on Friday, Aug. 29, 2025.

The de minimis rule that allowed small packages worth less than $800 to be exempt from tariffs ended on Friday, Aug. 29, 2025.

Parents who have to work and have at risk kids are f*cked.

In Trump’s Federal Work Force Cuts, Black Women Are Among the Hardest Hit

This is a particularly heartbreaking consequence of the federal workforce cuts — Trump has cut hundreds of thousands of jobs from the federal work force, disproportionately affecting Black employees. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/u...

We won’t notice it at first

Maybe an outbreak of cholera in southwest Kansas goes undetected

Perhaps the number of flu related deaths ticks up just a bit each year

But-ultimately, inexorably-the destruction of the CDC will lead to countless deaths

All because of two men

Trump and RFK, Jr

We need to stop using a framework of 'ChatGPT killed someone', it feeds into the myth of the system's agency & OpenAI's framing. The right framework to use: OpenAI is continuing to perpetuate an indefinite industrial disaster. The oil pipe is not at fault when it breaks. The company that built it is

This is a horrible public health decision.

National guard troops lounging outside a Krispy Kreme

Dearest Martha,

The National Guard stand solemn watch at the Krispy Kreme tonight. I cannot tell if they defend the people from the donuts, or the donuts from the people. Powdered sugar hangs in the air like cannon smoke. Jensen took a hot coffee to the face, he may never recover.

Yours in glaze,

DOGE Put Critical Social Security Data at Risk, Whistle-Blower Says DOGE team members uploaded a database with the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans to a vulnerable cloud server, according to the agency’s chief data officer.

Breaking News: DOGE put the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans at risk by uploading Social Security data to a vulnerable cloud server, a whistle-blower complaint said.

Pritzker makes a crucial point here: Members of the National Guard have full-time jobs outside of their service and responsibilities. By frivolously calling them up, Trump is upending their lives just to weaponize them against their own neighbors and fellow Americans. It's appalling.

Honestly, this may be one of the most important media graphs I've ever seen.

The claim: Democrats keep using annoying words.
The data: Republicans CLAIMS Democrats use them, which then becomes the narratives.

Then centrists attack DEMS for things GOPer CLAIM they say, not GOP for making stuff up.

“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.” ― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein could not have sold women and girls for sex without wealthy men buying women and girls for sex. I feel like more people should mention that.

It’s a shame because that room was lovely the way Biden decorated it.

DC’s homeless have nowhere to go. Trump might send them to jail. The president's crackdown is causing fear and uncertainty among the city's unhoused and their advocates.

I’m hearing from multiple sources within government and advocacy groups that law enforcement will begin arresting homeless people in DC by TONIGHT.

As I wrote yesterday, there are not enough shelter beds to accommodate the number of people who live outside in DC. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

www.advocate.com/news/meta-ro...

The First Federal Cybersecurity Disaster of Trump 2.0 Has Arrived The breach of the US Courts records system came to light more than a month after the attack was discovered. Details about what was exposed—and who’s responsible—remain unclear.

The PACER hack is a big bad deal. @lhn.bsky.social reports: www.wired.com/story/the-fi...

It’s not actually bulletproof. It’s just so that military cosplay dads don’t have frou frou baby gear ruining their image. Though the company does sell a bulletproof panel for the diaper bag.

Has your electricity bill gone up dramatically this summer? The heat isn’t the only force to blame. Dr. Sasha Luccioni and Yacine Jernite's piece for Tech Policy Press explores how AI data centers are causing home electricity bills to skyrocket across the country.
buff.ly/9sx8Lws

Reporter: There is new reporting that the Russians have hacked into some computer systems that manage U.S. Federal court documents. 

Trump: Are you surprised? That’s what they do….

Grok’s ‘spicy’ video setting instantly made me Taylor Swift nude deepfakes I didn’t even ask it to take her clothes off.

It is no accident that the early use cases for "genAI" consumer products revolve around the sexual harassment, abuse, and exploitation of women in power. It is no accident that the technology is immediately embraced as a tool of patriarchy and gender-based violence.
www.theverge.com/report/71897...

i have been thinking a lot about how the entire concept of “the deal” is antithetical to transparency, fair play and rule of law, as larry notes. the deal is necessarily nonstandard, ad hoc and dependent on the whims of the dealmaker