Snippet of my Bluesky bio
Hi! This is another edition of 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. Pullquotes will cite the author of the article above, not necessarily the quote's speaker.
I recently learned how to access the Wall Street Journal through the Montgomery County Library, so expect to see a few gift links from there!
Here are a handful—all read in their entirety by me before adding—that I wanted to share:
Government:
In the wake of Citizens United, wealthy donors are funneling money to political campaigns anonymously through nonprofits (New York Times gift link)
About 17 percent of the money donated to super PACs in the 2024 election cycle — about $1.5 billion — came from organizations that did not disclose their donors, the review showed. That was more than double the proportion that came from these dark-money groups in 2020, which in turn was a major spike from 2016.
Finally, historically-wrong democratic strategists are brave enough to suggest running a straight, white, Christian man for president (Axios)
Has affordability gone “woke”? Democratic 2028 presidential hopefuls can’t get their message straight (Slate)
May encounter paywall
Israel passes a law to hang Palestinians—and seemingly only Palestinians—if found guilty of state violence (New York Times gift link)
Under the new law, Israeli civilian courts — which try both Israeli Jewish and Arab citizens — can apply the death penalty only for homicides intended to “negate the existence of the State of Israel.”
Given that, it would effectively be impossible to execute Jewish extremists like Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli settler who gunned down 29 Palestinians at a West Bank holy site in 1994, said Yoav Sapir, a former head of Israel’s public defenders office.
“The intent is clearly for the law to apply to Palestinians and not to Jewish terrorism at all,” said Mr. Sapir, now a professor at Tel Aviv University.
The first in Trump’s orbit to lose their cabinet positions have been women. Does this show how he really sees them? (The Cut)
May encounter paywall
Related: Attorney General Pam Bondi has been fired (New York Times gift link)
Single tear: the vibes are looking horrid at the most recent Conservative Political Action Conference (New York Times)
May encounter paywall
Baltimore mayor Brandon Scott doesn’t care if people think he’s too online (Baltimore Banner)
May encounter paywall
As the Iran war continues into its second month, here are 12 times that Trump promised, like for real this time, that the war was ending (Axios)
The Supreme Court heard the Trump administration’s arguments for revoking birthright citizenship. Thankfully, it didn’t seem to go anywhere (The Atlantic gift link)
Today’s proceedings will come as a relief. The justices overwhelmingly appeared dismissive of Sauer’s legal arguments. Chief Justice John Roberts deemed Sauer’s reasoning “quirky” and “idiosyncratic.” Justice Neil Gorsuch accused the solicitor general of relying on obscure “Roman-law sources,” in a tone that sounded as if he were rebuking Sauer for leaving a moldy Tupperware in the fridge. Justice Amy Coney Barrett cut Sauer off mid-sentence, demanding, “Yeah, yeah, yeah—what about the Constitution?” The three liberals were similarly skeptical.
Related: additional context on what’s at stake (Capital B)
Department of Defense secretary Pete Hegseth fires Army Chief as frustrations with leadership boil over (New York Times)
May encounter paywall
Related: in an incredibly rare move, Hegseth also requested two Black and two female officers be struck from a promotion list (New York Times)
The Supreme Court has ruled against a Colorado ban on conversion therapy (Associated Press)
In “Please do anything else with your time” news, democratic elites have a problem with platforming popular Twitch streamer, Hasan Piker (The Guardian)
Abdul El-Sayed understands that you can’t meet this moment by hiding from the people who are actually reaching the voters you’ve lost. The Democratic establishment’s problem isn’t Hasan Piker. It’s that they’ve run out of ideas, and they’d rather police who progressives talk to than offer the country something worth voting for.
Education:
News Media:
Don’t like how a particular outlet covers the tech industry? Consider buying them (The Hollywood Reporter)
Related from Wired (may encounter paywall)
Black journalists describe discrimination and hostility at this Baltimore-area station (Baltimore Beat)
How Will Lewis lost the Washington Post (Washingtonian)
The day after the Post’s bloodletting, Lewis was photographed—by a former Post sportswriter—walking the red carpet at a pre–Super Bowl event in San Francisco. More outrage ensued. Two days later, he was gone for good, announcing his departure in a terse email. Few mourned. “I’m glad Will Lewis has been fired,” Post reporter Katie Mettler told the New York Times. “I wish it had happened before he fired all my friends.”
An AI company claiming to bring news to news deserts, ended up copying the work of actual journalists instead (Poynter)
Reporting from at least 53 journalists across 29 outlets appeared on the Nota News sites without attribution. The versions were lightly rewritten but largely kept the same structure and information as the originals. They appeared under the bylines of Rolz, Rodríguez and — in one case — “NewsDesk.”
Rodríguez confirmed that, as part of his work for Nota, he took articles from local news outlets, ran them through Nota’s AI tools and published the generated text under his name.
The result was dozens of articles containing typos, misquotes, missing context, awkward phrasing and misleading sentences — and work stolen from journalists who were actually local.
Please stop engaging with news aggregator accounts like Culture Crave and Pop Crave (Aftermath)
Consider supporting actual journalists and outlets doing this work
Federal judge rules that Trump’s funding cuts to NPR and PBS were unconstitutional (The Washington Post gift link)
Young people want their news to be more fun, survey finds (Nieman Lab)
Kalshi prediction forecasts coming to Fox News (The Hollywood Reporter)
Science, Healthcare, Critters and Environment:
Can OnlyFans models finally get through to the masses about climate change? (The Guardian)
Telehealth company Hims & Hers announced a customer data breach (TechCrunch)
Could this new fishing technology reduce bycatch? (Knowable Magazine)
NIH grant terminations affected women scientists much more than men (STAT)
May encounter paywall
Check out the first photos from the recently-launched Artemis II moon mission (New York Times gift link)
In just two weeks, the war in Iran produced more carbon dioxide emissions than 84 other countries combined (The Guardian)
“Every refinery fire and tanker strike is a reminder that fossil‑fuelled geopolitics is incompatible with a livable planet. This war shows, yet again, that the fastest way to supercharge the climate crisis is to let fossil fuel interests dictate foreign policy.”
Scientists invented a fake disease, then AI chatbots told users that it was real (Nature)
Soon after Osmanovic Thunström first posted information about the phoney condition, it started showing up in the output of the most commonly used LLM chatbots. On 13 April 2024, Microsoft Bing’s Copilot was declaring that “Bixonimania is indeed an intriguing and relatively rare condition”, and on the same day, Google’s Gemini was informing users that “Bixonimania is a condition caused by excessive exposure to blue light” and advising people to visit an ophthalmologist. On 27 April 2024, the Perplexity AI answer engine outlined its prevalence — one in 90,000 individuals were affected — and that same month, OpenAI’s ChatGPT was telling users whether their symptoms amounted to bixonimania. Some of those responses were prompted by asking about bixonimania, and others were in response to questions about hyperpigmentation on the eyelids from blue-light exposure
Novo Nordisk launches a multi-month subscription for Wegovy, its weight-loss drug (CNBC)
Urgent care clinics are trying to fill Planned Parenthood’s shoes in providing rural abortions (KFF Health News)
The government and regulators let down the residents of Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley”, can nonprofits and community groups fill the air quality data gap? (Chemical & Engineering News)
May encounter paywall
While industry pushes to scale up, groups in St. James Parish are seeking a moratorium on any new construction or expansion of petrochemical plants near their neighborhoods along this industrial corridor. Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to weaken environmental rules.
“Without the EPA being an aggressive enforcer, and without the state having the capacity to put monitors in all these places and follow up, it falls to the communities to try to do what they can,” says Starfield, who advises LEAN on its air monitoring work. But it remains to be seen how and to what extent community air monitoring will empower residents to advocate for cleaner air in Cancer Alley.
Video Games:
After backlash, Overwatch has redesigned new hero, Anran’s face (IGN)
Live-service games are not in a good place these days (The Verge)
May encounter paywall
Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game has a release date (IGN)
In honor of its first anniversary, enjoy this reflection on South of Midnight and what it meant to Black, Southern gamers (Scalawag)
Playing a game that doesn't shy away from its Blackness is a relief in comparison to the toxic gaming community. In a disappointing sea of Black characters in popular games subjected to the "Killmonger cut" — a lazy, comedically-tiresome hairstyle by game developers — and considering the infrequency of Black women protagonists in video games, I'm grateful to see a Black girl with two stylish feed-in braids. Our stories are rarely recognized or celebrated, and incessant misogynoir thrives in online gaming communities as Twitch streamers experience doxxing, hate raids, and slurs.
Art, Culture and Entertainment:
Maximalist interiors are having a moment for the wealthy (Wall Street Journal gift link)
On top of already being AI-generated, the viral AI fruit microdramas have a misogyny problem (Wired)
May encounter paywall
Migos’ Offset was shot in Florida. He’s currently in stable condition (Variety)
Meet some of the concert photographers showcasing D.C.’s music scene (Washington City Paper)
Would you pay $50 for a lobster roll in New England? (NBC Boston)
Following weight loss and lawsuits, fans ask “who actually is Lizzo?” (The Guardian)
Inside the Manosphere documentary creator explains why it pays to be a dick on the internet today (Wired)
May encounter paywall
When Theroux messaged Tate about the possibility of spending some time with him, he says Tate responded: “I'm the most relevant man on the planet. And who are you? You were relevant years ago?”
Tate then followed up with a screenshot of Google Trends that showed a blue line at the top of the graph indicating search interest in Tate over time and a red line along the bottom of the graph showing interest in Theroux over the same period, according to Theroux.
“So his blue one was, sure enough, quite high all the way along,” Theroux says. “And mine was like, down near death. But then the funny thing was, at the very end, mine picked up and actually overtook his. I was like: ‘Dude, I’m actually more relevant than you are. Look at your own screenshot.’” Theroux said Tate didn’t respond when this was pointed out.
In defense of letting Robert Pattinson lie a little bit (Vulture)
May encounter paywall
Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) has been banned from entering the UK after festival sponsor pulls out (The Guardian)
Why are concerts getting so expensive? (Wall Street Journal gift link)
Sony Pictures Entertaintment will lay off hundreds (Variety)
A review of the Super Mario Galazy movie by a four-year-old (Gamespot)
Technology:
A Pentagon under secretary pushing the agency to adopt AI made millions selling his shares in xAI after the government signed a contract with them (The Guardian)
Spotify will allow artists to manually approve new releases to clampdown on AI-generated impersonators (The Verge)
Samsung will no longer support its own Samsung Messages app, users will need to switch to Google’s (USA Today)
Breaking: Hannah Einbinder says AI creators are losers (Vulture)
May encounter paywall
Gig workers describe the absurd conditions they were asked to help train AI models under, including but not limited to: pornography narration, identifying people’s friends in Facebook photos and more (The Guardian)
Move over SEO, it's AI optimization time (The Verge gift link)
The CIA is hoping generative AI “co-workers” will help them analyze intelligence data (Politico)
People and Relationships:
The case for minding your business: many non-Aubrey Plazas have opinions about her recent pregnancy announcement a year after her ex’s suicide (Huff Post)
How extreme wealth alters your brain (Intelligencer)
May encounter paywall
Fellas, is it bad to ask your son (fat) to go on Ozempic before you buy him a house? Asking for a friend (New York Times gift link)
What is the “Gen Z pout” and how did we get here? (Yahoo Life)
Related: Millenial cringe versus the Gen Z pout (The Washington Post gift link)
Why the manosphere loves a “pilates girl” (The 19th)
Do aging parents put an unfair burden on their adult children? (The Guardian)
A woman’s arm was ripped off by an elevator at a D.C. apartment complex. Tenants have complained for months, but the city may finally be doing something (The Washington Post)
May encounter paywall
Why Druski’s impression of Erika Kirk isn’t “whiteface” because that isn’t a real thing, as explained to a hypothetical racist five-year-old (Contraband Camp)
May encounter paywall
To be fair, I understand why it can be confusing. White people love to accuse Black people of being racist by saying, “If a white person did that…” But the only way this disingenuous straw-man argument works is to pretend that America’s long history of white supremacy didn’t exist. Thomas Jefferson actually compared Black people to monkeys. So did Ronald Reagan. It’s a racist trope that has been used by America’s greatest filmmakers and Florida’s most mediocre governor.
The institution of American policing evolved from slave catchers. Today, law enforcement officers still disproportionately stop, search, arrest, beat, shoot and kill Black people. That’s why it’s stupid for anyone to wonder how Druski, Obama or these imaginary Black people that live in white people’s brains would react if “if a white person did that.” In every single case…
White people actually did that.
Racism has nothing to do with how a person feels or what the person intended; it’s about what a person does. And there is only one word for a person who commits an act of racism.
Sports (oops, all basketball):
A Q&A with Oluchi Okananwa on her viral moment with Maryland’s head coach (The Stop and Pop)
The WNBA’s two new teams held their expansion draft. Check out the storylines to watch going into the league-wide draft and training camp (NBC Sports)
After a public falling out with the coaching staff, Chicago Sky young star, Angel Reese, is on her way to the Atlanta Dream (USA Today)
Double-check that your recreation league referee isn’t actually NBA hall of famer Adrian Dantley (Baltimore Banner)
May encounter paywall
The Houston Comets are coming back after the Connecticut Sun are purchased for $300 million (Houston Chronicle)
May encounter paywall
UCLA won its first NCAA Women’s championship over South Carolina
On the way there, a notable confrontation between SC’s Dawn Staley and UConn’s Geno Auriemma (The Athletic gift link)
Iowa State’s star Audi Crooks is entering the transfer portal following her team’s early exit (ESPN)
Worth noting that Crooks joins NINE other players on the roster entering the portal
This still isn’t as bad as Tennessee, whose program now consists of a single recruit (Just Women’s Sports)
Rapper J. Cole signs contract with Chinese basketball team, Nanjing Monkey Kings (ESPN)
Unclear if the name was potentially a dealbreaker for Cole
The Washington Wizards issued an apology after an allegedly scripted April Fool’s prank involving a fan thinking he made a half-court shot went viral (Mediaite)
North Carolina will hire former Denver Nuggets coach Mike Malone for its newly-vacant head coaching job and he’s set to make bank (NBC Sports)
Hear from players, coaches and executives about the NBA’s tanking problem (ESPN)
It's a popularizing strategy -- adding, activating and overusing midtier G League players -- that NBA sources insist spawned in Oklahoma City a few years back. "It's a copycat league," an executive on a currently tanking team told ESPN. "All the models and ideas, there are always further iterations. That's what happens when it works."
Economics:
USPS will suspend pension contributions and possibly raise stamp prices as the service faces financial limbo (Associated Press)
An investment group including Kevin Durant have purchased the former Six Flags property in Maryland’s Prince George’s county (WTOP)
Get ready for affiliate content all over Facebook and Instagram (The Verge)
UNIQLO sees an opportunity with middle America (Bloomberg)
Oracle lays off thousands to finance data center expansion (The Times of India)
This influencer rakes in millions making fun of corporate bros (Wall Street Journal gift link)
Who can actually afford to get ahead in America? (NBC News)
California small businesses will no longer offer loans to Green-card holders (Associated Press)
Books:
JD Vance used a photo of a Methodist church that he’s never attended on the cover of his book about Catholicism (The Washington Post)
May encounter paywall
Project Hail Mary (the movie) has done wonders for sales of Project Hail Mary (the book) (Wall Street Journal gift link)
Yesteryear author Caro Claire on the enigma of the modern tradwife movement (The Guardian)
