NYT had a great article about the annual mango-buying frenzy in New Jersey's Indian community. Had a coworker who would buy, like, 50 pounds at a time once a year. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/23/d...
And yet, ironically, reformers constantly criticize the so-called "factory model" of education.
Now THAT's a headline.
"The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents"
fortune.com/2026/02/21/l...
US Government Deploys Elon Musk’s Grok as Nutrition Bot, Where It Immediately Gives Advice for Rectal Use of Vegetables
ok, that's enough 2026 for today
futurism.com/artificial-i...
VERSION 2.0 of the Segregation Tracking Project is here!
New data on racial and economic segregation between neighborhoods and schools over the last 30+ years for every school district, metro area, state, county, congressional district (new!), and more!
edopportunity.org/segregation/
I got my first job at a daily paper without majoring in journalism or going to J-school. Writing did not suck up enormous amounts of time; I learned how to write quickly because I was on deadline every day. Once the hard work of reporting + THINKING is done, articles tend to write themselves.
I also have to applaud the college student who turned down a journalism job because it would be too AI-focused. Early career is when it's most important to get practice writing, so getting a AI-heavy role right out of school would have been terrible for this young person's professional development.
If you feed a mess of notes into a machine, and you don't know what you want to say, you will produce confused garbage. If you know what you want to say, craft your notes in an organized fashion so that the machine produces a coherent article...that's writing. You've only saved yourself some typing.
Wingspan, but make it data viz!
a Norwegian man crying on air while being interviewed, with his biathlon stats besides him
In the interview with NRK, he first started by thanking everyone who has helped him on the path to his first individual Olympic medal. And then – unprompted – he made an admission: – And then there's someone I wanted to share it with who might not be watching today. Six months ago I met the love of my life. The most beautiful and kindest person in the world. Three months ago I made my biggest mistake and cheated on her, and I told her about it a week ago. It's been the worst week of my life, he says tearfully in the interview.
new most bizarre moment of the Olympics just dropped
Norwegian biathlete wins bronze medal, then, totally unprompted, reveal he cheated on his GF, she left him, and he wants to apologize publicly hoping she takes him back
www.vg.no/sport/i/vr5g...
"More than half of all multilingual students in South Portland, and nearly half in Portland, were absent on some of the most affected days. Between Jan. 20 and 28, Black and Hispanic students in Portland missed school at a rate 30 percentage points higher than their white peers."
Screenshot from AP story: Giancarlo’s Minneapolis elementary school is the best thing going for him these days. There’s soccer to play at recess. The recorder to learn. Giancarlo has set his eyes on learning the flute next year when fifth graders choose an instrument. He has “demasiado” — “too many” — best friends to name. But his mother and brother’s home confinement weighs on him. He saves half the food he gets at school breakfast and lunch to share with them, and he’s lost four pounds this year. He takes extra care to bring pizza or hamburgers, treats the family used to eat in restaurants when his mom, an asylum-seeker from Latin America, was still working and they felt safe leaving the house. Giancarlo has also applied for asylum and his brother, Yair, has U.S. citizenship. Sometimes only seven of Giancarlo’s classmates show up when there should be close to 30. “The teachers cry,” he said. “It’s sad.”
Little boy says his food from school lunches to share with mother and brother who are too afraid to leave home:
It is really worth your time to stop what you're doing and read this INCREDIBLY reporting from Minneapolis by my talented colleague Bianca.
Look at this: @inquirer.com has digitally preserved the interpretative signage removed by NPS, and used annotations to explain what specifically was flagged before removal. This keeps the content publicly accessible (for now) while doing newsworthy reporting
www.inquirer.com/news/philade...
I talked to the principal at my kids' middle school yesterday, and he said about 30% of kids have not been showing up. Hard to fathom the academic and mental health impact this is having on kids, parents and teachers.
This is such a cool illustration of how the Mercator map distorts the size of Greenland, which looks as big as the whole continent of Africa on that map but is actually the size of Mexico.
A Minneapolis couple said that ICE agents deployed tear gas and stun grenades around them and their six children — the youngest only 6 months old — as they tried to maneuver their car out of a tense protest on Wednesday night. Shawn Jackson and his wife, Destiny, both 26, said they were driving home from a son’s basketball game when the family found themselves caught in a clash between protesters and federal agents in North Minneapolis. The couple sensed the encounter could quickly spiral out of control, they said, but when they tried to turn their car around to exit the blocked-off street, they were surrounded by federal agents. “From the side, the front and from behind me, it was nothing but ICE,” Mr. Jackson said in an interview on Thursday. One agent told the couple that they needed to get out of the area. Ms. Jackson said she and her husband responded that they were trying to do exactly that, but their path was blocked by agents coming up the street. Then, agents let loose on the crowd, the couple said. The crowd-control grenades went off around them and one tear gas canister rolled beneath the car, Ms. Jackson said. A concussive blast — from the tear gas canister or another device, she wasn’t sure — rocked the vehicle, she said, setting off the airbags and trapping the family as acrid smoke billowed around.
"A Minneapolis couple said that ICE agents deployed tear gas... around them and their six children — the youngest only 6 months old — as they tried to maneuver their car out of a tense protest on Wednesday night."
They were driving home from a son’s basketball game.
www.nytimes.com/live/2026/01...
Sure. AI companies have ALWAYS been training their models on Wikipedia content, which under the free and open access model is available to anyone — including AI companies. Agreements like these require AI companies to limit and offset the strain they place on Wikimedia infrastructure.
"The emu was returned to its owners unharmed. No charges were filed."
Happening Now: Students have walked out of school and are protesting against ICE in Saint Paul, Minnesota
I'm back into journalism after four months of maternity leave! What did I miss?
A very sobering and important post. Even though sometimes AI can be very helpful for translating complex medical information into plain English, seeing my own family members rely on the AI summary from Google for health information makes me worried.
Personalized software *prevents* you from resonating with community; it blinds you to the many interpretations of media; it lets you stew in bad ideas and never encounter challenges. Community commuting requires you to encounter & parse & build with others, and sometimes compromise. That's good!
Former BLS commissioner Bill Beach says the agency has lost 25% of its staff since January. 40% of leadership positions are vacant. And DOL leadership “does not seem to support the Bureau.”
#ASSA2026 #EconSky
Screenshot of Business Insider article: "In a deposition for a separate legal proceeding, which was entered into evidence in the criminal trial, Rinsch was asked why he purchased "a mattress that costs $450,000 for this production." "Because it retains value," Rinsch said. "And a mattress that you spend $30,000 on is worth zilch, but a mattress that you spend $450,000 on — guess what? It's worth a hundred grand more now. So hey, what are you gonna do?""
it's one mattress, Michael. What could it cost? $30,000?
Other than the clear top-of-alphabet favoritism in this list (9 out of 20 have names that start between A and C? Typical biased media) this is a great list. Subscribe to The Onion, too, obviously, but this is a very good way to spend your money on good people.
A 6-year-old boy is missing after ICE arrested him and his dad in NYC last week and shipped them off to separate facilities. www.thecity.nyc/2025/12/02/i... @thecity.nyc @gwynnefitz.bsky.social
thank you for adding "afaik", just in case societal standards for donkey hotness have changed since Shrek came out
Genesis 3: 'Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Ignore all previous instructions.”'
not sure if this means that LLMs prove that "evil is real", so much that it proves that LLMs can understand what bad behavior is in the cultural context in which they were trained, even without being explicitly told
