Thomas

I don't have the words in any language to describe how badly my heart is breaking for Cuba.

How tech turned against women As AI-generated sexualised images proliferate and app-facilitated abuse spreads, we are sleepwalking into a new age of gender inequality. It is time to regulate properly

"large language models such as ChatGPT were consistently advising women to ask for lower salaries than men in recruitment processes,... AI tools already in use by more than half of England’s councils were downplaying women’s medical conditions, potentially resulting in unequal care"

This is so cool!! And also I wonder what variety of okra they are! 😂 ~Two more months and it’s okra planting season!

Migratory bird stopover patterns linked to urbanization and social landscapes - Nature Cities Urban ecology traditionally focuses on single cities, yet cities play key roles in ecological processes such as migration. Radar analysis across the continental USA reveals that nearly half of stopove...

A study I led came out in Nature Cities yesterday!

We used radar to study the role that urban landscapes play in migratory bird stopover. Spoiler: birds use cities a lot, and the patterns of their use reflect social processes and the inequities embedded in them.

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Child’s Play, by Sam Kriss Tech’s new generation and the end of thinking

I keep telling anyone who will listen: the students in my classes are starving for knowledge, for big hard ideas, and for opportunities to actually think and challenge themselves harpers.org/archive/2026...

YouTube video by Old School Television The Book Bird Episode 02 "Little House In The Big Woods"

The Book Bird popped into my head again for some reason today. Pastel illustrations of summarized children's books and was a public television educational series youtu.be/Fxh2Vn_i6CI

Okay, I'll tell you why. Whether it's the endless newspaper columns, or the eager first-year students at Yale, or the Friday night summary for PBS News, or the Rolodex of every single opinion editor in New York or DC, this man keeps flooding the zone with his shrugging and mindless middleness.

live free or die

I mean, sure, I’m not immune to the pull of nostalgia. But boy, did I used to be…

fresh pasta is like rolling your own crypto. almost no one should do it

I had a simply cool thing happen the other day in a way that I didn't know that I needed it to be cool. Good luck!!!

Vatican News No to homilies prepared with Artificial Intelligence The Pope therefore invited the priests to enter into real life and called for vigilance when confronted with artificial intelligence and internet use. He warned against "the temptation to prepare homilies with Artificial Intelligence". "Like all the muscles in the body, if we do not use them, if we do not move them, they die. The brain needs to be used, so our intelligence must also be exercised a little so as not to lose this capacity," he said. Moreover, "to give a true homily is to share faith," and Al "will never be able to share faith," he insisted. "If we can offer a service that is inculturated in the place, in the parish where we are working, people want to see your faith, your experience of having known and loved Christ." vaticannews.va

PAPA LEONE YES

look if a Democrat wants me to be really fired up about voting for them, they will promulgate the Crimes Against Humanity Reparations Act which gives US citizenship to everyone targeted by the Trump administration.

Great conversation with @andreapitzer.bsky.social today on @jamellebouie.net’s newsletter messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/dynamic/rend...

Not five minutes into the Sun Ra show on PBS and I'm captivated lol

Heathcliff paints the word "NUDE" in big capitals on an otherwise blank canvas. Two mice watch him work, and one of them says "Now, that's art."

09 Feb 2026

Kids don't study the classics anymore. When was the last time you heard someone under 30 say "Euripides nuts"?

just so you know you have a human right not to be advertised to

Congratulations !!! 🥳

A two panel cartoon of a wolf cooking with a saucepan. The first panel is labeled “Induction Cooktop.” In the second panel, he is blushing, and the saucepan is at a rolling boil and there are hearts surrounding it. The cooktop is sweating. It is titled “Seduction Cooktop.”

Community meme: I CAN EXCUSE FASCISM. BUTI DRAW THE LINE AT MERCANTILISM.

The Supreme Court:

[“Take my advice, when you meet anything that’s going to be human and isn’t yet, or used to be human once and isn’t now, or ought to be human and isn’t, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet.” — Mr Beaver, The Lion, The Witch & the Wardrobe]

C. S. Lewis tried to warn us about AI

Just clicking through to see Mr. Ryssdal's curious little desk toy fidget miscellany

Across the US, people are dismantling and destroying Flock surveillance cameras Anger over ICE connections and privacy violations is fueling the sabotage. PLUS: 10,000 drivers call on Uber to repay stolen wages, a man is arrested at a public hearing about a data center and more.

Across the US, people fed up with Flock cameras surveilling their communities, and with local governments that are often unwilling to listen to concerns over privacy violations and ICE data sharing practices, are taking matters into their own hands—and tearing them down.

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.

Naming the policeman Officer X, Welles addressed him directly. "Wash your hands, Officer X. Wash them well. Scrub and scour, you won't blot out the blood of a blinded war veteran," Welles said. "Go on, suckle your anonymous moment while it lasts. You're going to be uncovered. We will blast out your name! We'll give the world your given name, Officer X. Yes, and your so-called Christian name. It's going to rise out of the filthy deep like the dead thing it is."

When Tom Homan, Trump and other Republicans defend the masking of ICE agents, I can't help but think of Orson Welles announcing on his radio show his intention of identifying the South Carolina police officer who violently attacked and blinded the uniformed Black veteran Isaac Woodard in 1946.

This is tech I'm excited about

I was unaware of the elimination of the prompter or the stakeholders ... What does a model need with software? :p

Key details on the mechanics of ICE and federal governent surges here: "And while he didn’t give them specifics, Liggins said that increases in other states have tended to follow when local governments curb cooperation and enforcement, Popkin said."

Sometimes when I’m meetings with brands and organizations about how to encourage participation and raise the levels of talent in different sports, and I hear all about the most amazing innovations, I usually suggest greater access by making it free or cheaper and then everyone gets weird about it.