This one is either secretly the hero or secretly the main villain of Alien:Earth; either way it's the breakout star.
VP, Education & Work, New America. Writes about education for the New York Times, Atlantic, Vox, etc. I’ve made my mind a sunless space.
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This one is either secretly the hero or secretly the main villain of Alien:Earth; either way it's the breakout star.
There's an "S" in the NY Times Spelling Bee? What is happening?
Well that only took four years Wordle 1,535 1/6* 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
youtu.be/UwGXMryTbwE?...
If Texas is this huge rich football-crazed state with 10,000-seat high school stadiums and Friday Night Lights, why can't the UT football team ever hang in with actually good college programs?
Not looking forward to zombie Trump ripping out its own spinal column and dealing stagger damage on the White House press corps
Reports say Trump is dying. I’d be careful — that’s usually when Phase 2 starts, a health bar refills, and the giant centipede emerges. Toxic damage incoming.
The website that I co-own Defector.com is hosting a RARE sale where you get three months of blogs for just $5! That’s something like 600 blogs for FIVE AMERICAN DOLLARS. Pretty good deal imo and you get to support worker-owned media.
This isn’t bad luck or coincidence or predestination. This is our choice. To live in a nation where our leaders teach hate, and military style guns are everywhere.
Update: it got funny again
There will be many casualties from UChicago ending ('pausing') PhD admissions in Humantities, but one which I am keenly aware of: this is close to a death sentence for teaching cuneiform in the United States (esp. Sumerian, Hittite, Elamite, Eblaite, Luwian) and it will affect the whole world.
Sandwich guy deported to Uganda in 3, 2, 1... www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/u...
Thanks, John.
My friend @kevincarey1.bsky.social dives into the authoritarian attacks on American universities and doesn't pull any punches. He pinpoints that higher ed leaders are unfamiliar with solidarity and collective action. And thus the destruction of the institutions they lead will continue.
“As for “existential terror,” there is simply no precedent in American history for the way Trump has turned the full force of the federal government against elite universities.”
I put all my hot takes and strong feelings about Trump’s assault on higher education into one convenient essay. Check it out! washingtonmonthly.com/2025/08/24/h...
Yeah, criminals are definitely stealing radios right out of new cars, that's absolutely something that happens today in 1987.
The most powerful form of propaganda is "of course as everyone knows" ground-truth establishing asides in straight news coverage. For example, this is, at best, a highly-contested opinion! www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
MPD, FBI, and others with non-agency specific gear arresting a guy for — get this — smoking weed on U Street.
“is anyone actually doing this” is the one question that it is apparently verboten for most political commentators to try to answer
Important www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/o...
Eric Schmidt (February) vs Eric Schmidt (August) is the fight of the century. [joking aside, this is a very significant shift] www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/o...
None of this is true
New research from Burning Glass concludes that only one in eight nondegree credentials yielded meaningful gains in earnings a year later. Given that returns to short-term certificates typically fade over time, this is not a great outcome. (gift link)
Throwing a sandwich at a cop: felony. Beating a cop unconscious with a flag pole: tourist behavior.
doing "fascism is the practice of colonialism redirected inwards" hyper literally
Jetlagged me woken up by the 4:30 AM sunrise on my first morning in Sweden
Bravely standing up for the right to apply affirmative action for white people.
How will Trump’s attacks affect higher education? Let’s look to history Germany's universities were the world's premier research institutions Hitler destroyed them How long did they take to recover? They haven’t
Without Harvard and Stanford I doubt it
“Medium income” 🤡 @megancnbc.bsky.social
Jim looks so young
Seems to me the attack was *extremely* provoked thetab.com/2025/08/06/m...
At least one of which is also about "Starship Troopers"
Holy shit. This exists. I have to have it.
OpenAI claims to be pursuing a "moonshot" in education. Today I provide a short annotated guide to what that "moonshot" entails, with nods to @mikecaulfield.bsky.social @simonwillison.net @audreywatters.bsky.social @leonfurze.com @janerosenzweig.bsky.social and especially @heymrsbond.com
WiDeLy OvErLoOkEd www.chronicle.com/article/the-...
Agree although in this case "largely overlooked" is in the second graf of the article -- it's like "We are the only source of news that matters and since we didn't cover this initially, that lack of coverage is now, itself, a news hook"
NY Times waits two weeks to cover something lots of people were discussing the minute Columbia settled, proclaims it "widely overlooked"
I work in education policy and live among highly-educated DC rich people and I can tell you with 100% certainty that when that class purchases expensive private education for their own children they're not buying some bullshit about "prompt engineering"--those kids are reading and writing.
the trump administration is selling its war on higher education as a strike against the elites who have disadvantaged ordinary americans. in actuality, the administration is destroying advanced education for *everyone* in pursuit of its effort to deskill the american public
i think i disagree with the idea that the ferritor should have been allowed to follow his own path during his schooling, neglecting assignments and being coddled for his apparent genius. i think, in fact, that this was the problem. www.thebulwark.com/p/the-boy-ge...
Although helpful when people reveal themselves that way.
This is a very funny sentence: "In office conference rooms, hacker houses, third-wave coffee houses or over Zoom meetings, knowledge of terms like neural network, large language' model and graphical processing unit has become mandatory.
Important details from this story: 1) Yet another news-break by student journalists (this time @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social) www.thecrimson.com/article/2025... 2) Harvard saying "see you in court," not "let's make a deal." 3) Per Garber, WH/MAGA leaked news of a "deal." NYT then ran with it.
Statement from the largest economics association about the BLS firing As context: AEA approximately never makes such public statements This is a big deal
Ally McBeal creators, cast, crew brought up on federal charges after White House intern googles "Unisex bathroom"
John Cloud was a Loser
uh oh
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/29/b...
Remarkable that this was published *after* the Columbia settlement. Like saying "Putin can't just invade another country, it's against international law" while bomb craters are still smoking in Kiev.
Robert, turn on your TV and fire up the Starz television series Outlander, starring Sam Heughan and Caitriona, also available on Netflix! It has time travel, historical drama, incredibly lusty romance, and after Season 4 a lot about the Scottish diaspora in North Carolina.
Not me -- Outlander Season 1 is A++ 10/10 television.
Is that where all the characters from Outlander lived?
1/ I wrote for @theatlantic.com about what happened when Trump and Linda McMahon fired half the U.S. Department of Education: Everyone responsible for preventing higher education fraud is now gone. It's open season on students and taxpayers. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
Just to reiterate: What this administration is doing right now is orders of magnitude more dangerous for academic freedom and free speech than anything the right has spent the last 30 years complaining about.
Holy shit, they did it. They wrote the headline.
Excited to share that my book "Rediscovering Kindergarten: Embracing Play and Joy in Learning" will be published by @GryphonHouse in June 2026! 📚✨
5/ 5/ The six-member Republican majority on the Supreme Court is letting the firings proceed because they apparently believe that upholding your oath to faithfully execute acts of Congress includes firing every single person responsible for enforcing the law.
2/ The DOGE-led purge of federal employees was allegedly in the service of cutting waste, fraud, and abuse. But ED's job is to *prevent* fraud in the enormous federal financial aid system. Those people have all been fired. So expect to see a lot more like this in the years ahead:
1/ I wrote for @theatlantic.com about what happened when Trump and Linda McMahon fired half the U.S. Department of Education: Everyone responsible for preventing higher education fraud is now gone. It's open season on students and taxpayers. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
5/ The six-member Republican majority on the Supreme Court is letting the firings proceed because they apparently believe that upholding your oath to faithfully execute acts of Congress includes firing every single person responsible for actually enforcing the law.
"At the beginning of this year, ED employed about 220 people to make sure that money actually went toward paying for students to attend legitimate educational institutions. But no such investigations are being conducted today." Read @kevincarey1.bsky.social: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
come on now
"Sony sues Tencent for allegedly ripping off 'Horizon' video games" Well alright but surely it can't be that blata— lmao
I grew up a mile from the UConn Dairy Barn. Top 10 Proustian memories for sure.
I just think that even the most low-level employee of a London newspaper would never use the phrase "former American president Bernie Sanders"
Apparently the wave of resignations and layoffs at the Washington Post got rid of all the people who know that Jeremy Corbyn was never the U.K. Prime Minister.
To paraphrase: "There are bad people. Look around."
Columbia has agree to let whomever Trump designates conduct a "statistical analysis" of its undergraduate admissions process to decide whether the university admitted too many Black people. What kind of naive moron would trust in the integrity of that process?
Here's Larry Summers exploring the theoretical limits of credulity by assuming the Trump administration will act legally and in good faith when implementing an agreement it obtained by acting illegally and in bad faith.
The authoritarians have agency. Stop acting like these are acts of God. There is no "fight" between Columbia/Harvard and Trump. Trump is attacking Columbia/Harvard. (Also, the idea that the procedural violations are equivalent is absurd.)
[scribbles note to self: be more grim, wrest kicker spot from Dominique]
The America First geniuses managed to send hairdressers and soccer players into a gulag and *import* a triple murderer into the US. Nice work. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/24/w...
He didn’t! He just changed the regulations in ways people like Rick didn’t like.
Congress specifically passed a law giving the Secretary of Education the authority to waive student loans in a time of national emergency, but somehow Biden using that is the same as Trump's lawless authoritarianism. You will know people by the boots they choose to lick.
A master class in passive voice and false equivalence from AEI's Rick Hess. The consequences "were going to follow", like the laws of physics, and not a decision that his fellow travelers made and are responsible for. www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...
Hey, quick question: If Columbia (and all subsequent universities that take or are forced into this deal) does admissions with no awareness or consideration of race, color, and national origin, how is supposed to get and report information on those exact things re: the students it *rejects*?
Yes
Columbia University has handed over its undergraduate admissions process to Donald Trump and his MAGA allies, who will now decide at their sole discretion whether the university has admitted enough white people. It's no longer an independent institution.
Columbia University has handed over its undergraduate admissions process to Donald Trump and his MAGA allies, who will now decide at their sole discretion whether the university has admitted enough white people. It's no longer an independent institution.
If you are that worn out from parsing distinctions that do not matter in the context of what someone is talking about or matter practically to anything important that is happening right now, I would invite you to stop.
This article is as clear and coherent about what is happening at Virginia institutions of higher education as anything I have read. It has nothing to do with antisemitism or civil rights; it is a coordinated and hostile political takeover.
I don't think we call things bangers anymore, but if we did, this piece from @mattseybold.bsky.social would be one. theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/how-ventur...
Du Bois on what these assholes were really like
Theo died?!
i have been stuck on JD Vance's claremont speech for almost two weeks now because it is structurally identical to roger taney's opinion for the court in dred scott
kind of just endlessly sad and grieving that there are so few voices in the public sphere making the basic principled argument that immigration is an affirmative good in every way and the best way for this country to serve humanity is to welcome people who want or need to leave their homes
But I also read everything Kerry Howley writes because in addition to being brilliant and relentless her voice is very distinctive in a way that make my eyes get wider. So there's your New Yorker v. New York contrast I guess!
I think l've been unavoidably influenced by the style-as-no-style consensus that emerged partly in reaction to the excesses of New Journalism. E.g. Rachel Aviv is one my absolute favorites, her prose is so restrained it's actually bold and audacious.
They’re just outright saying it now:
Now I’m wondering which voice I’ve been writing this book in for the last year!
First time I’ve learned a new word from the Wordle 🟩⬜⬜🟨⬜ 🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
You can’t turn sideways in our nation’s capital without bumping into a white Ivy League graduate.
Ah, this explains why none of my white friends went to college
