If I had to pick one iconic line spoken by Darth Vader in the Star Wars franchise, it would be this one. The confident evil of a villain who calmly acknowledges that the deal struck with him is changing and there is nothing that can be done about it strikes a chord. What’s odd is […]
Knowledge production doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Every great scientific breakthrough is built on prior work, and an ongoing exchange with peers in the field. That’s why we need to address the threat of major publishers and platforms having an improper influence on how scientific knowledge is accessed—or outright suppressed. In the digital age, the […]
Support us on Patreon » For two decades, the landscape of social media has been constantly changing, and the discourse about “free speech” has been changing alongside it. This week, we’ve got a bit of an open-ended discussion with TechFreedom‘s Corbin Barthold, host of the Tech Policy Podcast, about social media’s history and future, and the […]
Another “fuck you” has been delivered to federal courts by the Trump administration. This time, the extended middle finger is embodied by (extremely recently now-former) US Attorney Bill Essayli. Essayli has made headlines here before, mainly for yelling ineffectively at prosecutors who were unable to convert bullshit cases against anti-ICE protesters into federal indictments. Essayli […]
Fox News has a problem: when you build your entire editorial model around feeding your audience’s biases, you stop asking whether the stories feeding those biases are actually true. Case in point: last week, they published—and then quietly rewrote—a story about SNAP recipients threatening to “ransack stores,” based entirely on AI-generated videos that never happened. […]
The Learn to Code with React Bundle has 9 courses to help you learn more about React, Redux, and JavaScript. Used by the likes of Instagram, Facebook, Netflix, and Imgur, React is an efficient and flexible JavaScript library for building user interfaces. Meanwhile, Redux is a predictable state container that helps you manage the data […]
CBP commander Gregory Bovino has been given a temporary free pass by the Seventh Circuit Appeals Court to continue violating a court order he’s been violating since the lower court first issued it. So, that’s how things continue to go in terms of checks and balances here in the United States. You know, poorly. Not […]
The Trump administration is promising to block billions in already-awarded infrastructure bill broadband grants to any states that enforce net neutrality or try to impose any sort of meaningful oversight on the country’s unpopular, predatory broadband monopolies. That was the promise of Commerce Department official Arielle Roth, a former Ted Cruz staffer now in charge […]
Nintendo and the Pokémon Company’s lawsuit in Japan against PocketPair, makers of the hit game Palworld, is still ongoing. As we’ve reported previously, this isn’t the copyright or trademark lawsuit that everyone expected when Palworld was first released. Instead, probably knowing that they couldn’t get around the idea/expression dichotomy in copyright, at least, Nintendo filed […]
Why do some people endorse claims that can easily be disproved? It’s one thing to believe false information, but another to actively stick with something that’s obviously wrong. Our new research, published in the Journal of Social Psychology, suggests that some people consider it a “win” to lean in to known falsehoods. We are social psychologists who study […]
We know there’s a concerted effort to punish anyone who dares to show anything but complete, unqualified reverence for Charlie Kirk’s corpse. The man who made millions by denigrating anyone who wasn’t as white, straight, and “Christian” as he was is apparently above reproach now that he’s been murdered. That would be stupid enough on […]
60 Minutes is under new management and things are getting stupid faster than you might expect. Last night’s episode featured President Trump, which is currently being described as “nuts.” There are all sorts of crazy moments to call out, but let’s start with the recursively meta nonsense. 60 Minutes edited out a segment where Donald […]
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To say the irony was lost on them would be to assume they ever thought some irony might exist. DC resident Sam O’Hara came across a bunch of out-of-state National Guard troops and put his own spin on their Trump-enabled interloping. As he followed the troops through the neighborhood, O’Hara engaged in protected expression — […]
Much of the federal government is shuttered, but that’s not preventing the Trump administration from finding new ways to screw over struggling Americans. Last week, the Trump FCC under Brendan Carr voted to indefinitely suspend efforts to impose new, lower price caps on predatory U.S. prison monopolies that would have prevented them from over-billing inmate […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous comment on our post about how “neutrality” and “free speech” become excuses for bigotry: You can’t be neutral about bigotry “Neutrality” is for elements of policy, like “What should be the top tax rate” or “should we build a new interstate highway” […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2020, the RIAA tossed out a bogus DMCA claim to get a YouTube downloading tool pulled from Github, and was still flooding Twitch with takedowns that the company was responding to by freaking out and courting a lot of outrage from the users it failed to defend. Meanwhile, YouTuber […]
Both Google and Apple are cramming new AI features into their phones and other devices, and neither company has offered clear ways to control which apps those AI systems can access. Recent issues around WhatsApp on both Android and iPhone demonstrate how these interactions can go sideways, risking revealing chat conversations beyond what you intend. […]
ICE can generate multiple horrible stories a day but it still can’t seem to find enough brown people to deport daily to satisfy White House advisor Stephen Miller’s demands for 3,000 arrests per day. Trump and the GOP threw a lot of money at this problem with the Big Beautiful Bill. A lot of money: […]
When it comes to RFK Jr., I tend not to find much humor in the chaos he creates. The man’s work involves American health and illness, life and death, so it’s just generally not funny. And that holds true to Kennedy’s wielding of incomplete, inaccurate, and unsettled science to go before all of America and […]
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