David Bering-Porter

Proofreading has some real highs and lows. Sometimes you are reminded why your argument is actually pretty good and the next moment you see that you've misspelled "the" for the 15th time.

A perfect, concise reading of Trump's idiotic press briefing. No notes.

A more complete report on the DOGE fiasco. I say we, the people, sue to get our money back.

I don’t think we know enough just yet to understand how this will affect NPR and PBS but both received a very small percentage of their budgets from the CPB. This will however have an immediate effect on local public radio and TV affiliates, esp in rural & Indigenous areas

More info here (gift 🔗)

Let that sink in. What DOGE burned through in six months, through sheer stupidity, carelessness, and cruelty, could have funded the NEH for more than a century. This was never an attempt to save money, it was a mugging.

Wall Street Journal headline and deck: "New York Shooting Puts Mamdani on the Spot Over Policing Views: The killing of four people in a Midtown office building rattled a city where mass attacks are rare and violent crime has declined."

It's really weird to demand accountability from a NYC mayoral candidate for a deadly NYC shooting rather than the current NYC mayor, an ex-cop who campaigned on a "tough on crime" platform and promptly got indicted for crimes

I acknowledge that the new system is better, but sometimes I miss "ibid."

Preparing a final manuscript means going down some very weird rabbit holes to clarify some very minor points.

I love that this is the summer that my car's air conditioning has decided to die.

Faculty Support of George Mason’s President Draws Federal Investigation

Faculty who wrote to defend their president and object to a DOJ investigation of their university...are now being investigated by the DOJ.
The most banal defense of free speech and academic freedom will trigger the full wrath of the US government now.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/u...

It's not fair to be existentially exhausted on a Saturday.

Reading this right now and it's great!

What fresh hell is this?

www.tesla.com/tesla-diner

The bootlicking continues.

www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

Difficult to overstate what ICE will become. As a civil rights lawyer, I’m already struggling to find friends & journalists and activists picked up needlessly by ICE & essentially disappeared within the immigration system. It will get worse. We have to get in formation & I need funders to help.

Really good analysis by Meredith Whittaker of agentic AI and the privacy concerns that come with it.

Genuinely thrilling that New York comes through tonight.

Live Updates: Mamdani Stuns Cuomo in N.Y.C. Mayoral Primary, as Ex-Governor Concedes

A little good news to end the evening!

www.nytimes.com/live/2025/06...

Gods damn it.

Great to see you there!

Watching this feud unfold brings me a lot of joy.

I suppose it was inevitable that I'd end up mucking around in Lacan's writings on math and set theory.

This is my favorite post about Sam Neill, which seems even more charming after listening to @blankcheck.bsky.social on Jurassic Park a few weeks ago.

It's time. And by that I mean that it's time to undertake a major re-watch of The X-Files over the summer.

The show was tremendously influential on me as a kid and I've always feared it wouldn't stand up to watching it again, but I think I need to take the dive back in. #thexfiles

@realDonaldTrump I am considering taking Three Billion Dollars of Grant Money away from a very antisemitic Harvard, and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land. What a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!! 2.14k ReTruths 8.64k Likes May 26, 2025, 8:27 AM

FYI to media outlets, you're misleading your readers if you repeat this at face value.

There's no lawful way for him to redirect these grants elsewhere. It's a lie to distract from how the GOP budget guts educational funding, including Pell Grants at trade schools.

RFK Jr. rejects cornerstone of health science: Germ theory In his 2021 book vilifying Anthony Fauci, RFK Jr. lays out support for an alternate theory.

Everything is normal and cool.

arstechnica.com/health/2025/...

Trump Officials Blame Mistake for Setting Off Confrontation With Harvard An official on the administration’s antisemitism task force told the university that a letter of demands had been sent without authorization.

OMG.

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/18/b...

flashback to how americans acted the last time federal agents started kidnapping their neighbors

Harvard Will Not Comply With a List of Trump Administration Demands Federal officials said Harvard must enact “merit-based reform” in hiring and admissions and report international students who broke rules, among other steps. Harvard called the demands unlawful.

It's a start.

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/u...

This is such a smart take.