BexM

I had no idea that 5-pin bowling with smaller bowling balls is Canadian. The more you know! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-pi...

Really not into my arch-Zionist coreligionists becoming the official Court Jews of Fascism 2.0

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.

And if you specifically want to read a Yiddish translation of a childhood favourite, have a look at the Yiddish Book Center! They have Kipling, Andersen, Stevenson and more.

The three journalists who helped ruin Ava Cordero's life when she tried to stop Epstein in 2006 *currently* work at NBC News, New York Magazine, and News Corp Australia. The one at NBC News is covering... Epstein.

bluesky, the canadian sports app

Holy fuck! 🧪

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

OK, the title is hilarious, but this is seriously a brilliant takedown of Fennell's film that doubles as a passionate appreciation of Emily Brontë. My review gave this movie an "eh, not for me" shrug bc at least it was not as actively evil as Promising Young Woman. But it really is stupid as hell.

JANUARY A postcard writing game for two people, set in a kaiju-filled alternate history, about distant but persistent friendships.

JANUARY is a postcard-writing game about two artists living ordinary lives over five decades, in a world besieged by giant kaiju.

By Indiecade-winning, Ennie-nommed game designer and artist Shing Yin Khor, in collaboration w/ illustrator Jared Andrew Schorr.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/shi...

"I'm wanting a 'taste of honey', *if you know what I mean*."

Put it this way: the main online cisgender understanding of the trans community by career journalists is that the trans community are unreasonably shrill and constantly tear them apart over coverage.

This is a direct result of a media environment where cis journalists have no correction in print.

Looks like a ship’s hold

Rabbi @abbystein.bsky.social on the moon, trans power, and the refusal to be erased.

With @socialists.nyc last night at Stonewall. 🏳️‍⚧️

For LGBTQ Winter Olympians, visibility matters just as much as medals There's a record-breaking number of out LGBTQ+ athletes competing in the 2026 Winter Olympics, including medal winners for Team USA.

"She posted pictures of her and teammate Alysa Liu with their Olympics team skate gold medals on TikTok with the caption: “They hate to see two woke bitches winning."

[GOLD for Alysa!]
www.usatoday.com/story/sports...

Not for over a decade, unfortunately.

Shame on NYU Langone for ending gender-affirming care & kicking trans New Yorkers to the curb. It's a violation of their promise to treat all people equally, kindly, and respectfully — and a violation of NYC's human rights law as well. Bending the knee is bad; denying people care is even worse.

Silicon Valley’s Favorite Doomsaying Philosopher Nick Land believes that digital superintelligence is going to kill us all. In San Francisco, his followers ask: What if, instead of trying to stop an A.I. takeover, you work to bring it on as fast as ...

We should be talking a lot more about how the San Francisco tech scene is populated by a strange cult of doom acceleration nerds who fantasize about using computers to destroy humanity.

www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

i think about this pictures for sad children comic a lot lately. very prescient, though maybe unnecessarily mean to speedrunners

Not great. Suboptimal even.

Meat Eaters, Meredith McClaren, Oni Press Flip, Ngozi Ukazu, First Second Simplicity, Mattie Lubchansky, Pantheon Hunger's Bite, Taylor Robin, Union Square & Co Strange Bedfellows, Ariel Slamet Ries, HarperAlley

It's Hugo Award nomination time! I'm looking forward to sharing what a great spec fic landscape there is in comics/GNs right now.
If you're a Worldcon member, might I suggest this slate: @iniquitousfish.bsky.social @ngoziu.com @mattielubchansky.com @taylor-robin.bsky.social @arielries.bsky.social

teeth beach
cheab theet
TEETH BEACH
CHEAB THEET

flaminghydra.com/teeth-beach-...

I wish more folks knew that crowdfunding really fucks with your brain in ways you cannot expect.

We have new creators do small projects 1st because it helps you learn what it’s like.

Weird chemicals, highs and lows, backer feedback loop. It’s a trip.

Misogyny is a supremacist ideology. A lightly adapted social media thread.

I have finally turned my messy thread about misogyny as a supremacist ideology, and white supremacy's dependance on misogyny to function, into a slightly less messy Medium post.

Read and/or share at will!

With NYU Langone desisting from offering trans care, I feel the need to re-up this recent paper about how ‘the evidence is low-quality’ arguments are bullshit and how we can do better when evaluating scientific evidence.

Grammarly Revisited - Carleton College A close look at Grammarly's new AI tools

This (about the 'new' Grammarly AI toolset) is absolutely terrifying, not because the tool is good, but because it is an easy, all-in-one, way to avoid thinking any thoughts or doing any work at all *and 3000 universities say its OK to use*.
www.carleton.edu/ai/blog/gram...

Morning.

Doug Ford: How students, weavers respond to OSAP shift For members of the Toronto Guild of Spinners and Weavers, Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s unprompted jab at “basket-weaving courses” while he urged students to pursue “jobs of the future,” landed close to home.

live your life in such a way that you do not draw the ire of the Toronto Guild of Spinners and Weavers

www.ctvnews.ca/toronto/arti...

You want to read this.