Symora

While reporting this, I had something happen that's never happened. A comms rep for one of the co's disputed my reporting and said what I was telling them was untrue because it was not in Grok, xAI's chatbot.

I was looking directly at the files. And this person was using AI to challenge the truth.

cannot possibly convey how actually crazy-making it can feel, after spending 20 years monitoring all these orgs blaming sex workers and the internet for enabling a vast sex trafficking network, to now see Jeffery Epstein’s inbox

I really think "12 year olds should be able to look up the size of each country's army" might be a load bearing column.

unless you’ve had unfortunate reason to research the subject, i can almost promise you: however much child abuse you think is happening within any community, the reality is way more.

so i think the og wikileaks theory that you could panopticon your government until it died was true, it just turns out julian sucked

stocks rise as cthulhu continues to cut a wide swath of destruction up and down the east coast - “eldritch horrors from beyond our realm have traditionally been against the capital gains tax” one wall street trader tells me

the old fourth estate is dying. the new fourth estate struggles to be born. now is the time of newsletters I guess

When the Bush administration was allowed to ban stem cell research using religious fanaticism as justification even at the time it was frustratingly clear that they sentenced so many people to unnecessary suffering & premature death smh

Glad China & other countries pressed on

I do wonder if we might eventually see *more* interest in text based media if we correct the whole “many American children weren’t actually taught how to read for a few decades there” thing

U-Haul Unveils Live-In Trucks To Sleep In While You Sort Some Shit Out

U-Haul Unveils Live-In Trucks To Sleep In While You Sort Some Shit Out https://theonion.com/u-haul-unveils-live-in-trucks-to-sleep-in-while-you-sort-some-shit-out/

It’s gotten to the point where you’ll be surprised if something terrible in the world wasn’t planned out in the Epstein emails. You’ll be searching for Wendy’s Spicy Chicken not hitting the way it used to and be like “wow I guess he didn’t have anything to do with that one”

My actual job description is activist and here’s what I tell people in despair all the time: do not underestimate how much harm you can prevent by being just a little bit annoying.

Finally, a Muppet Show Reboot That Understands the Original Appeal of the Muppets After countless failed gimmicks, this time it’s just like you remembered it.

I wrote about the new Muppet Show, which is, thank God, exactly like the old Muppet Show.

Blizzard renames Overwatch 2 to Overwatch, 4 years after deciding Overwatch was Overwatch 2, because "Overwatch is more than just a digit: it's a living universe," called Overwatch

I love video games

on the whole, I would not recommend “the long september 11th” as an era in which to spend one’s entire adult life

three thick big books, all titled "vegetable situation"

quick, someone help, we've got a vegetable situation

Fat Dad Sits On TV Remote Like Mother Hen Warming Young

Fat Dad Sits On TV Remote Like Mother Hen Warming Young

Man people talk a lot about how much different/better movies in the 90s looked and this is a great example of a great-looking aesthetic you just never see in any digital color grade:

I don’t particularly like living in the “leadup to” paragraph

Suddenly realizing that in 10-20 years, the MN Historical Society will have an exhibit about *all this* and there will be a whole wall showing different types of whistles

So, remember that Episcopal bishop in New Hampshire that told priests to get their wills in order because “we are entering a new era of martyrdom"?

I ran across historical precedent for that today.

It's from a radio transcript @rns.org produced about a Lutheran bishop in Denmark…

…in 1943.

i am trying not to joke about the Epstein stuff because it's so horrible but there's also this ridiculous element where it's like... discovering Dracula is real, he's taken over human society at the highest levels, he's involved in tons of evil and also he's a huge dipshit

chat they had to stop the surgery and call the bomb squad to this man’s ass

as a journalist, the gutting of wapo makes me anxious; as an american, it makes me terrified

chat is it a good thing when the US Attorney representing the DOJ is also afraid of getting disappeared by the same organizations they're representing

Spotlighting The World Factbook as We Bid a Fond Farewell Somewhat devastating news today from the CIA: One of CIA’s oldest and most recognizable intelligence publications, The World Factbook, has sunset. There's not even a hint as to why they …

The CIA just stopped publishing their World Factbook and took every page, including the archived copies of previous versions!

This sucks. It was public domain, so I recovered the 2020 edition (the last one published as a zip file) and shared it to GitHub simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/5/t...

it's probably fine

Trump Scolds Female Reporter For Being Adult

Trump Scolds Female Reporter For Being Adult

A train announcement board thing with the headline “What I lack in physical strength, I make up for in public hair”

We got one of these things for the office and every time the newest headline alarms me anew.

The behavior of our big beautiful billionaires over the past several decades is psychologically what I can only describe as "Crying out for consequences." They can't stop themselves and deep down they need to be stopped. They need it as much as we do