Corey Stoughton

Susan Stamberg, a Longtime Voice of NPR, Is Dead at 87

💔Susan Stamberg, a Longtime Voice of NPR, Is Dead at 87 www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/b...

As an advocate for free speech I don’t tend to get that worked up when powerful people lose one of many platforms available to them. But when that loss is the result of threats from government regulators it’s a different ballgame. A very authoritarian ballgame.

I also personally commend footnote 9 to everyone

This victory belongs not just to the university administration but to the faculty, who first stood up to fight these attacks on Harvard and who the judge rightly recognized are directly harmed and entitled to enforceable relief. I’m proud to represent them.

Love that ranked choice voting lets candidates embrace collaboration amid competition, this is the world I want to live in

@kateshaw.bsky.social Stick with Cahokia Jazz! There is a lot of world-building at the front it’s true but the payoff is brilliant.

Let me state in no uncertain terms that when they RIF the social media manager for the National Park Service, that is my Rubicon. Whoever they are, they are the Best of America.

I promise I take this issue seriously but it is very hard not to automatically root for Pope Pizzaballa

Francis, the First Latin American Pope, Dies at 88 After decades of conservative leadership, Francis tried to reset the course of the Roman Catholic Church, emphasizing inclusion and care for the marginalized over doctrinal purity.

Most of my feelings about my Catholicism are complicated, but not my grief in this moment.

A Cheapskate in London: Travel on a Budget Our Frugal Travel columnist took a budget-stretching, four-day trip to one of the world’s most expensive cities. Would chasing bargains lessen, or enhance, her experience?

As a longtime/part-time Londoner I endorse every word of this excellently curated London itinerary except the choice to take the Heathrow Express over the tube.

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/t...

UK supreme court rules definition of woman in Equality Act refers to ‘a biological woman’ – live Judges were asked to rule on whether the definition of woman in the Equality Act 2010 included transgender women with gender recognition certificates

Quite shocked that the UK Supreme Court interprets its equalities laws to harm trans people in a manner even the US Supreme Court rejected…really says something about the pervasiveness and effectiveness of the radical anti-trans movement in the UK

www.theguardian.com/law/live/202...

Harvard Professors Sue Trump Administration Over Threat to Federal Funds The administration is reviewing about $9 billion in federal funding that the university receives.

Few things have made me prouder than to stand up in court to fight for the very people who taught me how to do it

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/12/u...

You have to envy a nation whose biggest politics story at the moment is the reassignment of a cat to an overseas posting.

Thousands of U.S. Government Web Pages Have Been Taken Down Since Friday Federal agencies moved to satisfy Trump’s orders to remove topics like diversity initiatives and “gender ideology.”

A small but ludicrous illustration: a major city police department tried to share information about their proposed new training last week as part of a police reform settlement and the link they sent was dead. We will get past this obstacle but it’s all just so silly.

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/u...

West Virginia coal wars - Wikipedia

I am in my 40s and studied American History in college and am only just now learning about the Battle of Blair Mountain and the West Virginia coal wars?? Incredible. What a story. (Thank you Barbara Kingsolver).

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Vi...

If you are looking for a new book Zadie Smith’s new one, The Fraud, is really really really very good. I’m sure she’d have some more compelling adjectives to use here but I’m just gonna tell you to read it.

Charles Feeney, Who Made a Fortune and Then Gave It Away, Dies at 92 After piling up billions in business, he pledged to donate almost all of his money to causes before he died. He succeeded, and then lived a more modest life.

Charles Feeney seeded the movement to improve public defense services in New York in the early 2000s, the most successful initiative I’ve ever been part of. Like everyone else who spent his money, I didn’t even know who he was until years later.

www.nytimes.com/2023/10/09/b...

Search drinks in your camera roll

Alongside word of a 9th death of 2023 at Rikers, a 27 year-old condemned to die in this indefensibly unsafe jail, today we have another scathing report from the federal monitor acknowledging things are getting worse all the time, and the City’s response is “limited and ineffective.”