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A “thought experiment” about the impacts of AI sent stocks tumbling earlier this week. It’s probably going to keep happening.

Rep. Bennie G. Thompson and a host of other Democrats made the demand in a letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. “Your actions are abhorrent, blatantly unconstitutional, and corrosive to the functioning of a
peaceful society.”

After a Columbia student was detained by agents from the Department of Homeland Security, Mayor Mamdani said he spoke about it to President Trump, and she was released. Arya Sundaram, WNYC and Gothamist reporter covering race and immigration, reports the latest on the news. Plus, Brigid Bergin, senior political correspondent for WNYC and Gothamist, talks about the mayor's surprise trip to the White House to meet with the president.

Photo by Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images: Protestors take part in anti-ICE rally outside Columbia University after federal agents detained a student inside a residential campus building in New York City, New York, U.S., February 26, 2026.

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The aluminum soda can is a humble testament to the power and scope of human ingenuity. If that sounds like hyperbole, you should watch this video, which features eleven solid minutes of engineering explanation and is not boring for even a second.

More science/engineering programming like this please…I feel like if this would have been on PBS or Discovery, it would have lasted twice as long and communicated half the information. For a chaser, you can watch a detailed making-of from an aluminum can manufacturing company:

[This is a vintage post originally from Apr 2015.]

Tags: Bill Hammack · design · timeless posts · video

Maybe it's time to give awards for most our admired standards-makers. I would start with Jon Postel and Steve Wozniak.

Terry Godier posted on the aftermath of shipping Current:

To not let all of the feedback (both good and bad) alter your ability to think clearly and put one foot in front the other and make a thing that’s true to you again. There’s such a strong pull mentally/emotionally to do more of what people liked, or less of what people didn’t, on the next “thing”

The best products take feedback from everywhere but filter it through the original vision. Otherwise you’ll eventually get a watered down or bloated thing with no uniquely defining purpose.

CNBC: Block said Thursday it’s laying off more than 4,000 employees, or about half of its head count. The stock skyrocketed as much as 24% in extended trading. “Today we shared a difficult decision with our team,” Jack Dorsey, Block’s co-founder and CEO, wrote in a lett...

One of the items in Rules for Standards-makers is don't design the format before you make the app. Instead, make an app, and when you're ready, make the file format public so people can interop (ie compete) so as not to lock users to in your software. If you do that you can say you are "of the web." If we all do that always, voila! -- no more silos. Another rule is that you must use an existing format if it exists, because then you will interop with apps that support that format. Gratuitous incompatibility is a sign of a silo-seeker. So, look first, if there are no usable formats, make your app and make your format public.

- - - A one-off, sports-issue special. - - - Books read: Football Against the Enemy: How the World’s Most Popular Sport Starts and Fuels Revolutions and Keeps Dictators in Power—Simon Kuper Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football—David Winner The Season—...

Pope Leo XIV to his priests: stop using AI to write sermons. “‘To give a homily is to share faith,’ he said, and AI ‘will never be able to share faith.’”

If you walked down Colorado Boulevard in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles at some point in the past three years, you might have noticed a modest, pueblo-style beige building with “PHOTO” painted above its door. And if you had decided to go in, there was a decent ch...

Early in President Trump’s first term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes, and it felt urgent to track them, to e...

Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees. “Composition II with Red, Blue, and Yellow is in the U.S. public domain. It has been since January 1, 2026. No amount of Spanish law or invented ‘dual copyright’ theories changes that.”

Aventon’s latest single-speed hybrid bicycle is light, looks cool, and is the most bikey electric bike on the market right now.

The app reads your email inbox and your meeting calendar, then gives you a short audio summary. It can help you spend less time scrolling, but of course, there are privacy drawbacks to consider.

The Aktiia Hilo Blood Pressure Monitor is the first cuffless monitor to be cleared by the FDA. It’s discreet, highly accurate, and simple to use

This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Dominik Schwind, whose blog can be found at lostfocus.de. Tired of RSS? Read this in your browser or sign up for the newsletter. People and Blogs is supported by the "One a Month" club members...

A show that started as an earnest if messy quest for love is now simply a mirror to the hell of modern dating.

With its twirly cord and landline-like features, the Tin Can is giving kids a crash course in phone etiquette. For example: Talk!

When pro-democracy protesters marched in the streets in Hong Kong in 2019, China responded by arresting thousands, including the leaders of the movement. One of the arrested was Jimmy Lai, who had used his newspaper to campaign for democracy. This month, he received a 20-yea...