Marc Aidinoff

Allison Williams tells Las Culturistas she tries to be polite but mysterious when talking to AI in case the machines ever turn on her:

“I’m always going to be cordial with you, say thank you, please - I don’t think it’s figured out what I do for a living. I try to keep a distance.”

46 MILLION Americans will lose their health care—either outright or thru red tape

40 MILLION Americans will face drastic cuts to their food aid

So that the top 1% can get $107 BILLION in net tax cuts next year alone—more than goes to the entire bottom 60%

Reading the bill is the bare minimum

Literally begging you to tell your friends, your neighbors, your coworkers, your family.

People have vaguely heard of “the one big beautiful bill,” but very few people know Rs are WEEKS away from uninsuring millions - and will do it unless we can get a groundswell of opposition to stop them.

snap cuts, growing to 35% by 2034

chip and medicaid cuts growing to 12-14% by 2034

Cost estimate of the House-passed "Big Beautiful Bill" is out

It'd be the largest cut to Medicaid+CHIP and SNAP in history while still increasing deficits by $2.4 trillion due to $3.8 trillion in tax cuts

This'd be the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in history

Why I’m Resigning from the NSF and Library of Congress I cannot participate in systems that require dishonesty as the price of belonging.

"For me, the answer now lies in refusal, the withdrawal of participation from systems that require dishonesty as the price of belonging."

Today I am resigning from the National Science Board and the Library of Congress Scholars Council.

I wrote about my decision in TIME.

time.com/7285045/resi...

Nation Can’t Believe It On Harvard’s Side

Nation Can’t Believe It On Harvard’s Side

An outstanding public servant! When Dr. Blair says it's time for a new generation of leadership believe him.

Happy tax day! Hard to celebrate much these days, but let’s hear it for the income tax, which replaced tariff revenue, simultaneously reducing inequality and boosting growth. One of the greatest policy changes in US history, may we see another such change in the near future.

Opinion | Trump’s Crusade Against Antisemitism Is Extremely Bad for the Jews (Gift Article) Antisemitism is real. But the enemy of our enemy is not necessarily our friend.

"What our government is doing now is wrong in itself, but beyond that, it poses a bigger threat to Jewish people’s safety than all the campus protests ever could."

Exactly.

And also, it was exceedingly obvious what this was from jump.

Hearing from all corners of HHS this morning about a total bloodletting — firings of scientists, analysts and many more as delayed RIFs take effect.

Many folks didn’t see early AM email and showed up, only to be turned away when badges didn’t work. Was sent this photo of long lines at one HHS site.

State governments actively deciding to have no money to function is a disaster.

Nothing quite speaks to failed governance like Mississippi speeding up their reduction of the income tax because of a typo.

Trump’s Big Gamble on the Future of AI Development The new administration rethinks public funding for research, leaving it to private companies to chart the path ahead.

"The mythology of founders and Silicon Valley too often obscures the indispensable role of American taxpayers in the innovation economy"—my recent remarks to @bloomberg.com about the critical importance of federally funded research. www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

For better or worse, the fights over Project match and its successors turn debates about fraud & welfare rights into a fight about potential privacy violations. The coverage in ACM here is quite instructive. (And still taught as privacy debates in tech classes)
www.cs.cornell.edu/~shmat/cours...

I love the history of medicine and disability frame on this as a long history of "malingering." There is so much on the social construction of fraud, but for me the automated search for fraud really gets going nationally with Project Match under Carter's HEW (I can send you a chapter in progress)

It’s not cute to accidentally cancel Ebola prevention — a virus with a 50% fatality rate.
 
It’s even less acceptable when it turns out you didn’t “restore” the prevention for Ebola like you claimed.

Opinion | Trump Just Fired 6,700 I.R.S. Workers in the Middle of Tax Season. That’s a Huge Mistake. The Trump administration’s decision to fire over 6,000 I.R.S. workers will make the government less effective and less efficient, not more.

IRS commissioners appointed by Reagan, H.W. Bush, Clinton, W. Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden agree that Trump is making a huge mistake firing 6,700 IRS workers in the middle of tax season: www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/o...

I was surprised as I researched the book to see what a large role mobility had played in shaping the distinctive character of America, not just in terms of economics. Maybe the most surprising thing is what an enormous role it’s played in shaping the vitality of American community. When people relocate, they tend to feel lonely when they first arrive, and respond to that feeling by reaching out, by making connections, by making themselves do uncomfortable things like joining organizations. We often think of mobility as something that dissolves the ties that mean the most to us. In practice, though, in the US, mobility has usually served as a kind of social glue, as the thing which binds us to each other. And if you look at the last 50 years with a really sharp decline in mobility, we have simultaneously seen a really sharp decline in other kinds of social ties. That’s not coincidental.

Really interesting point from @yappelbaum.bsky.social about how mobility, not staying in one place, is what produces strong communities in the US:
www.vox.com/housing/3996...

This didn’t start with DOGE Elon Musk is using the anti-teacher playbook against the entire civil workforce.

Destroying public goods is much easier to think about in terms of concrete examples than abstracted process questions.

The example of hollowing out of public education in @rachelmcohen.bsky.social's piece is exactly how to make sense of DOGE

www.vox.com/donald-trump...

Government’s wins are often invisible: Systems that avoid plane crashes; alliances that avert war; surveillance that prevent pandemics.

Government wins are often *the avoidance of loss.*

So how do we tell the story of the destruction of government? The story of future losses *not* averted?

Confederate Sympathies Same-Sex Romance, Disunion, and Reunion in the Civil War Era By Andrew Donnelly

Andrew Donnelly's insights for this @myhnn.bsky.social's piece (a great preview of this forthcoming book *Confederate Sympathies*) adds so much depth to our understanding of Lincoln, Buchanan, and the post-Civil War reconciliationist culture: www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/linc...

Photo of a bald eagle under the headline "Bald eagle in Massachusetts euthanized after testing positive for bird flu"

Allegory alert!

I try to build on the work of @vtfeminist.bsky.social @libbyadler.bsky.social, Amy Zanoni, Premilla Nadasen, Salonee Bhaman, Janet Halley, Linda Gordon, Wendy Brown, and esp. @kmtani.bsky.social who have deepened my sense of what welfare rights and child support enforcement meant in practice.

The costs of this shift were enormous as welfare administration shifted further from an entitlement to an automated contract.

Unfortunately, it all feels dangerously relevant as engineering credentials increasingly empower bad faith actors to call just about everything they don't like as "fraud."

Liberals have tried desperately to change the politics of welfare.

The amazing editors of _Mastery and Drift_ helped me lay out how computerization offered libs a new politics of professionalized welfare administration w/o explicit reference to race or rights.

www.degruyter.com/document/doi...

They have access to *everyone's* bank account...I just don't know how much clearer to be about how frightening this is

A Posthumous Romance of White Male Reunion The history of deriving political meaning from Abraham Lincoln’s sexuality.

Today is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. Read our feature from this week on Lincoln, memory, and the politics of fraternal affection. www.hnn.us/article/linc...

A whole essay just to answer @bhighsmith.bsky.social's question