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. Here are a handful—all read in their entirety by me before adding—that I wanted to share:
Government:
Trump fires a Black Surface Transportation Board member, the first and only member ever dismissed (Trains.com)
American cosplay? French government collapses (CNN)
Deep dive into the (mostly white) gays in Trump’s administration (New York Times)
Trump’s DC takeover:
Students at DC-area universities organized protests against the occupation (Washington Post gift link)
DC Restaurants are losing business with National Guard and ICE roaming the streets (NBC4 Washington)
Most of the people they’re arresting do not have criminal records (NBC4 Washington)
Muriel Bowser signed an executive order to allow for the indefinite (and expensive) occupation of DC (WJLA)
Related: Republican governors of states with comparable crime rates to D.C. oddly mum about sending troops to their cities (New York Times gift link)
National Guard nowhere to be found East of the River in DC (WJLA)
Bowser continues to miss the moment (Greater Greater Washington)
Republican-led cities have higher murder rates than the Democratic-led ones that Trump wants to deploy troops in (The Guardian)
After a public Twitter shouting match with Trump, Wes Moore was spotted with his wife on George Clooney’s yacht in Italy over the Labor Day Weekend (Spotlight on Baltimore)
He paid for it out of pocket, but that didn’t stop Republicans from taking their shots (Maryland Matters)
Texas Senate passes bathroom ban for trans people in government buildings and schools (Texas Tribune)
Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett compares our current political moment as a burning house that some—while choking on smoke—are refusing to acknowledge (Glamour)
New Mexico becomes the first state to make child care free, regardless of income (The 19th)
National Nurses United put out a joint statement asking for Robert F. Kennedy’s resignation (press release)
Black women have been hit the hardest by federal layoffs under the Trump administration (New York Times Gift Link)
But a report published by the National Women’s Law Center, which compiled and analyzed the now-deleted O.P.M. data, showed that government agencies that were targeted for the deepest cuts had employed the highest percentages of women and people of color. Both populations also made up large portions of independent agencies, like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, that Mr. Trump has targeted, the report found.
According to a New York Times tracker of Mr. Trump’s cuts, agencies where minorities and women were the majority of the work force, such as the Department of Education and U.S.A.I.D., were targeted for the largest work force reductions or complete elimination. Black women made up nearly a quarter of the work force in agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service that also saw deep reductions, according to a Times analysis.
News Media:
Washington Post publisher, Will Lewis, acted as a secret advisor to former PM Boris Johnson (The Guardian UK)
You actually don’t have to eulogize terrible people just because they’re dead now (Aftermath gift link)
Have newsroom promises of diverse hiring and coverage actually panned out, post-2020? Not really (Nieman Lab)
“Ultimately, racial equity is good until it’s hard for [the company],” the reporter said. “No amount of ‘reckoning,’ programs, or whatever is the corporate equivalent of the black Instagram squares would result in anything that could potentially hurt their pockets.”
People, Labor and Relationships:
A man tried to steal ice cream and attacked an employee with a hatchet before being arrested (DC News Now)
Trump’s tariffs are hurting Etsy’s small businesses, mostly ran by women (The 19th)
Jobs report is actually worse than it seemed, and it was already historically bad (CNBC)
Letting a dating app tell you when to meet up? Swiping through friends of friends? (New York Times)
Do marriage and having kids really equal happiness? Studies show it’s not that simple (Slate)
People are flocking to a DC matchmaker citing frustration with dating apps (WTOP)
Are single men causing their own problems? (Vox gift link)
The lottery, especially Powerball, brings out all kinds of people. This year’s $1.8 billion pot brought even more players to the mix (USA Today)
[Podcast] Could the performative male memes do more harm than good? (NPR)
How age verification laws are hurting queer adult industry workers (The 19th)
Books:
September is National Library Card Sign-up Month! (American Library Association)
Anthropic will have to pay authors whose work they pirated $1.5 billion (Wired)
DC local bookstores report a significant loss of business during federal takeover (NBC4 Washington)
Not news but you can support indie bookstores through Bookshop.org they also started selling eBooks recently. Libro.fm for audiobook people
A beginner’s guide to book annotation (1000 Libraries)
The New Yorker’s National Book Award longlist is up
V. E. Schwab on vampires, queerness, and patriarchy (Washington City Paper)
Education:
Illinois students can no longer be fined by student resource officers or police because that was something that was possible before (Chalkbeat)
Reading scores for high school seniors are at their lowest in decades according to a recent study (New York Times gift link)
“Only about a third of 12th graders are leaving high school with the reading and math skills necessary for college-level work”
Related: on the “math gap” in Maryland children’s test scores (Baltimore Banner)
Might hit the paywall
Science and Critters:
Many scientists are leaving Twitter (X) for Bluesky (Ars Technica)
Chester the toucan was rescued from behind a dishwasher (ARLNow)
Hurricane Katrina’s 20th anniversary:
Recent studies show just how much climate change enhanced Hurricane Katrina (Grist)
Polo Silk’s dedication to documenting New Orleans before Katrina (Capital B News)
More of his photos can be found here
What was lost, 20 years later (Verite News)
Technology:
Justice for em dash enjoyers (The Ringer)
Meta adds fact-checking to its Community Notes feature. People will be notified if they interacted with a post that received a note or correction (TechCrunch)
Can AI suffer? Who cares. Its creators should though (Aftermath gift link)
The same judge who declared Google a monopoly in a landmark antitrust case ruled that they don’t need to disband search, Chrome, or Android (CNBC)
Elon Musk tries to make Grok “politically neutral” after hearing answers he doesn’t like (New York Times gift link)
Can’t forget about the MechaHitler arc (CNBC)
After 15 years, Instagram finally has an official iPad app (TechCrunch)
Yet another unrealistic beauty standard? Apple announces very thin new iPhone (TechCrunch)
Sports (OK, Just Basketball):
Aces finished the season winning 16 in a row
The Lynx have the best record going into the postseason (34-10)
Napheesa Collier became the first player in WNBA history to average 20 ppg for a season while joining the 50/40/90 club (The Sporting News)
The Golden State Valkyries made the playoffs in their inaugural season; a historic feat for a WNBA expansion team (Sports Illustrated)
Team’s social media announcement
Despite not playing in Oakland, the city is embracing the Valkyries and holding out hope the WNBA will bring the team to the Town (Oaklandside)
The NBA will count full- and half-court buzzer-beater attempts as team field goals instead of individual ones (CBS Sports)
The Unrivaled league will add two new teams, multiple roster spots and a player development program (ESPN)
Unrivaled was going to remain at six teams for Year 2. But because the league outperformed its projections financially as well as in viewership numbers and player demand, Unrivaled decided to speed up its growth process.
Video Games:
Playnist wants to become Goodreads for video games (GameIndustry.biz)
Silksong came out and it wasn’t $80 (The Verge)
The meme surrounding Silksong never releasing will be laid to rest (Wired)
Music, Food and Culture:
The Times put out a list of 100 easy dinner recipes
I will be trying pepper steak and celery stir-fry with lemon then spiced ginger shrimp with burst tomatoes
Matcha shortage expected to further raise prices (CNBC)
Madison Rose on how queer identity, mental illness and industry hardship affected her sophomore album (People)
