Laprofmme

Same as it ever was with the tech boosters. Who needs formal education (or basic science) when a couple of smart guys in a garage (or a SV startup office with Herman Miller office chairs) can do it all themselves?

They don’t realize, or that’s exactly the goal?

Oh, and city payroll taxes and public schools with poor kids in them. All so very very yucky

This is interesting. Here, I suspect many of the middle-class white folks being sucked rightwards have no interest whatsoever in living in a city, gentrified or otherwise. Bc they believe cities are full of Black people, buses, and sidewalks, which they find both scary and distasteful.

L’amour est dans le pré 2025 : les portraits des 13 agriculteurs de la saison 20 dévoilés, Karine Le Marchand aux anges C'est bientôt le grand retour de la 20ᵉ saison de L'amour est dans le pré et Karine Le Marchand est déjà conquise par cette nouvelle édition.

Did you ever see the French matchmaking show L’Amour est dans le pré, about farmers looking for love? It’s been running for TWENTY seasons!!!

Taking the phone out of the bedroom is a gamechanger

Pritzker also needs to be sharing a plan to eliminate the remaining R seats in Illinois

Maybe it’s different in the UK, but in the
US, it’s not people who live IN diverse places who go this route. It’s people who in the suburbs and hinterlands who see them on their local news

This is the best one

4/
Yet again proud of the student journalists at @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social and scores of other college papers across the country.

So many student journalists, and local journalists, doing great independent work.

(From 3 years ago: fallows.substack.com/p/this-is-wh... )

Headline from Harvard Crimson: "Harvard President Garber Tells Faculty He Is Not Considering a $500 Million Deal With Trump."

Text of story: Harvard prez Garber says report of a deal "was apparently leaked to the press by White House officials." NYT ran with it as a story.

Important details from this story:

1) Yet another news-break by student journalists (this time @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social) www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

2) Harvard saying "see you in court," not "let's make a deal."

3) Per Garber, WH/MAGA leaked news of a "deal." NYT then ran with it.

3 Aug 25 - New study shows vast "over-representation of trans boys" turns out to be vast _under-representation_ of trans girls bec. they: a) come out ~10 years later; b) start puberty later; & c) delay transitioning longer because of deep social animus towards AMAB femininity.
tinyurl.com/yrwvmxws

For every new GOP seat that Texas gerrymanders, California, New York, and Illinois each create one new Dem seat

Screen shot from the cheating site "Grades Fixer. There's a royal blue band across the top with the company logo on the left and a yellow button the right reading "Hire writer now." Below is a pale yellow text box with black type that says "Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on 'Abina and The Important Men Summary" followed by a yellow button reading "Get original essay."

Checking out the essays floating around the internet about one of my course readings, as is now SOP in syllabus planning, and am struck by both the *terrible* quality of the essays (C work at best) and by the below … which … that's just not how plagiarism works 🗃️

The Mothership Vortex: An Investigation Into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine How a single consulting firm extracted $282 million from a network of spam PACs while delivering just $11 million to actual campaigns.

The annoying spam texts destroying the Democratic brand:

$678M raised through those spam tactics

$282M to one consulting firm: Mothership Strategies.

$11M to actual campaigns (1.6%)

The party isn’t just treating donors like marks—it’s being fleeced itself yet continues to back Mothership.

When you’ve gone too far for the Kinkade folks …

France prepares law to fast-track return of art looted during imperial conquests France's government on Wednesday discussed a bill that would streamline the process of returning artworks and cultural artefacts looted from the country's former colonies over more than a century of…

This is a big deal 🗃️

Niemöller was asked by his concentration camp cellmate why he had ever supported Hitler and the Nazis. Reportedly, this is what he had to say for himself:

You have made the basic category error of assuming these are rational economic actors at work

It feels like we should be making a bigger deal of “we actually did in fact find a cure for AIDS”

I think the use of chatbots for stuff like this is intended to train people to use it to avoid everything that’s painful or hard. It can write the obituary, the breakup text, the complaint letter. It’s meant to separate humans from their difficult feelings. Seems bad.

Real bad. I have a whole class on this, btw.

you know the world is ending when Summers is supporting a woman in STEM

*here

Only answer I get from anybody is “It’s hear to stay so we have to teach students how to use it,” which is just the lamest surrender of agency ever. Lots of things are “here to stay” that we would never think of deliberately inviting into our classrooms or homes.

Lovely piece @bytimgraham.bsky.social . Had me tearing up at the breakfast table

Also of note: holder of a double MA in English and History from Harvard 🗃️ #skystorians