Snippet of my Bluesky bio
Hi! This is the very first Link Roundup here at Forney’s Findings. If you follow me on Bluesky or Instagram (or happen to be in a Discord server with me), you’ll know I love me some links. Here are a handful—all read in their entirety by me before adding—that I wanted to share:
Government:
A Houston-area district attorney tried to charge a woman with murder for getting an abortion despite this not being illegal…decades earlier, he had an affair and paid for the woman’s abortion. It only gets weirder from there. (Houston Chronicle gift link)
“…Ramirez must have known much earlier that Gonzalez inducing her own abortion was not a crime — in part because he allegedly paid for one in the mid-1990s while having extramarital affairs with a pair of sisters, before he became the D.A.”
"They were not interested in actually coming up with a more productive use of the space," said Tim Krepp. "There's no willpower to actually come up with a creative use for the space. It's just giving away a lot of city land to billionaires."
FEMA employees are being reassigned to ICE to fulfill Trump’s new staffing goals. Forcing people into roles they a) didn’t want to do and b) aren’t qualified to do won’t improve the numerous human rights violations we’ve seen under ICE and this administration (The American Prospect)
What DC’s federal takeover means for Black communities (Capital B News)
Texas Democrats leave the state to block Governor Abbott’s racist special session gerrymandering (The Texas Tribune)
Breaking: vibes-based tariffs are, in fact, not good for the economy or people’s anxieties (NBC4 Washington)
A group of non-profits, Indigenous tribes, and local governments sued the EPA and demanded climate funds unfrozen and programs reinstated nationwide (the Guardian)
Colonialism, environmental justice, and deep sea regulation collide as U.S. territories join up with American Samoa against deep sea mining (The Guam Daily Post)
For Adi Martínez-Román, co-director of Right to Democracy, the deep seabed mining issue represents a broader pattern of colonial exploitation affecting all U.S. territories.
"This issue is deeply tied to legacies of colonial rule, perpetuating a long-standing pattern of extractive exploitation in our territories," Martínez-Román stated in the release. "Pacific and Caribbean territorial communities have borne the brunt of resource extraction and exploitation made without our consent."
The CDC shooter’s radicalization showed just how far dis- and misinformation has come (New York Times gift link)
“The intersection of disinformation, conspiracy theories and political violence is getting scarier by the day,” said Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist at Bellevue Hospital Center. “I’m very worried about how this is now going beyond defunding of infectious diseases and public health to political violence against the people working in those fields,” she said.
Music, Arts, and Culture:
A South Carolina Uber driver single-handedly saved a Young Jeezy concert in Baltimore (Baltimore Banner paywalled)
“Divine Femininity” may be another rabbit hole to gender essentialism (Teen Vogue)
Bookstore Romance Day was Aug. 8. and I wrote an overview of the holiday (Washington City Paper)
Daniel Kaluuya & Ajon Singh are developing a Spider-Punk animated feature (Deadline)
Steven Yeun will be adult Zuko in Avatar the Last Airbender movie (IGN)
I feel for Dante Basco, but I understand the business decision here…
Have we reached peak matcha hype? Is this sustainable? (Atmos)
In Japan, stock is depleted by tourists buying unprecedented quantities of ceremonial matcha and resellers vacuuming up the tea to list on marketplaces like eBay. Marukyu Koyamaen published a list of global unauthorized resellers on the company website, along with a contact form so people can name and shame others.
“In November, all our suppliers said they had more than enough leaf supply until the next harvest,” Chun said, “but one by one, they started falling off the availability list.” In Kyoto, which is considered Japan’s matcha mecca, “we started seeing other shops run out of matcha by November, December,” Chun recalled, leaving them without stock until the next harvest in months, or up to a year.
Sports (okay, actually just basketball):
Crypto people continue to get cornier in real-time by throwing dildos at WNBA games (Andscape)
It started as a funny joke that even the players got in on. Then it wasn’t (Them)
The Indiana Fever are in need of point guards. Walk-ins welcome (The IX Basketball/The Next Hoops)
Alyssa Thomas is the first player in league history with three straight triple-doubles (ESPN)
She’s also currently top 5 in multiple categories
Technology:
Airlines are using AI to show people different prices for the same flight (Vox)
Computer science students—who listened to “learn to code” crowd years ago—are struggling to find entry-level work, let alone six-figure starting salaries (New York Times gift link)
❝But now, the spread of A.I. programming tools, which can quickly generate thousands of lines of computer code — combined with layoffs at companies like Amazon, Intel, Meta and Microsoft — is dimming prospects in a field that tech leaders promoted for years as a golden career ticket. The turnabout is derailing the employment dreams of many new computing grads and sending them scrambling for other work.
Among college graduates ages 22 to 27, computer science and computer engineering majors are facing some of the highest unemployment rates, 6.1 percent and 7.5 percent respectively, according to a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That is more than double the unemployment rate among recent biology and art history graduates, which is just 3 percent.
Natasha SingerIllinois becomes the first state to regulate the use of artificial intelligence in mental health services (Mashable)
Job market is doing great, if and only, if you’re looking at the AI field (Heatmap News)
Facebook’s parent company, Meta, gave rural Colombian students access to AI bots, then their academic performance fell off a cliff (Rest of World)
If you had a Capital One savings account between Sept. 2019 and June 2025, you may be entitled to a settlement (USA Today)
An AI chatbot user and a genius, but it’s really just two besties telling each other “exactlyyyy” (New York Times gift link)
Instagram Maps and its updated reels page could expose your exact location and/or tendency to like thirst traps. Check your settings accordingly (WIRED gift link)
Why are DC electricity rates so high? Spoiler: it’s corporate greed (The 51st)
Microsoft plays dumb when asked about how its technology has been used by the Israeli military to listen in on Palestinian phone calls (the Guardian)
Science:
See a Spotted Lanternfly in the streets? You know what must be done (Montgomery Community Media)
When mice failed us, bats rose to the occasion. Neat critter science (Chemical & Engineering News w/ chance of hitting the paywall)
People and Relationships:
“Mankeeping” (v): the practice of heterosexual women being expected to taking on a disproportionate load of invisible emotional labor, often supporting men through intense feelings of failure and isolation from friends (Huffington Post)
Restaurant worker co-ops joined up in Baltimore to share strategies for a new path forward (Baltimore Beat)
❝As the restaurant convening wound down with a reception at Mera Kitchen, participants carried with them more than just new strategies for democratic workplace management. They had witnessed proof that another economy is possible — one built not on exploiting workers but by building dignity at the workplace through cooperation and community control.
Jaisal NoorHere are the names of the journalists Israel has killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023 (Al Jazeera)
More than 2,300 teachers left Houston ISD in June under state-appointed superintendent Mike Miles (Houston Chronicle gift link)
People are getting very creative (read: annoying) about business return policies (USA Today)
Black women help each other start on the path to homeownership and wealth-building (The 19th)
How Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies could collapse the American food industry (the Guardian)
Nazi’s are continuing to have a moment on Substack. There are plenty of other platforms to host your content, like Beehiiv—where you’re reading this now. (The Handbasket)
A month in, how are DC residents adjusting to WMATA’s Better Bus network redesign? (the 51st)
Is a celebrity being open about the cosmetic procedures they’ve had done improving or exacerbating unrealistic beauty standards? Hard to say (New York Times gift link)