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:
People and Relationships:
Influencers claim to have cracked the code for Hinge’s infamous “rose jail” (the Cut)
May encounter paywall
The thing about hacking Hinge is that the hardest part of dating isn’t the algorithm — it’s what happens once you’re free from its clutches. You can’t hack the part that takes place in the real world, with real human beings, who are sometimes flaky and sometimes annoying and who are famously bad about knowing what will make them happy. Even the most game-changing Hinge hacks work for only a few weeks tops, then it’s back to boosting.
Breaking: Conservatives really want people to think that empathy is bad (Current Affairs)
The case for setting up your friends (Washington Post gift link)
For daters who have tried everything, setups appeal because they feel intentional, direct and personal. Branfman has tried meeting a partner by using dating apps, going to social events and spending time in bars. Generic dating wisdom, he said, is maddeningly vague: “Just put yourself out there!” and “You’ll meet people doing things you love!” “The advice seems to be, like: float around, outdoors, and eventually through vibrations of the universe beyond your control, the moment will come and you will be cast in that role,” he said. Asking to be set up, on the other hand, is explicit. It’s not just “putting yourself out there,” it’s putting your heart in the hands of your friends, neighbors and entire social network.
Ask your doctor if locking in is right for you (Vox gift link)
A new survey shows Gen Z doesn’t mind dating for a free meal (USA Today)
Hear from Cybertruck owners on what its like having the polarizing vehicle (Wired)
Some incredible Q&A snippets in there
How a Richmond, VA organization is helping queer people find gender affirming care despite hurdles from the state government (Advocate)
How the internet turned trans visibility into a trap (The Verge)
This story is part of a larger package about being trans on the internet
Sapphic erasure? Kim Kardashian’s bush weave thong is upsetting lesbians online (Them)
[Video] Thanking Boomers for the world they’re leaving current generations (New York Times gift link)
Block Club Chicago started a WhatsApp channel to update residents about ICE raids (Block Club Chicago)
D.C.’s famous Scooby-Doo mansion could be the latest casualty as a crucial TOPA amendment is struck down (Washington Post gift article)
Art, Music, Culture and Food:
More than 1,000 people showed up to an impromptu Daniel Caesar concert in Houston before it was shut down (Houston Public Media)
The Grammy’s made a whole subgenre of country music after Cowboy Carter. What does the “Beyonce rule” mean for future hard-to-define Black artists? (The Hollywood Reporter)
Whether or not the change had anything to do with Beyoncé, it matches a consistent Grammy pattern: Instead of admitting that genres bleed together, they double down on splitting hairs. The truth is, genres themselves have already splintered beyond recognition. Country exists in two realities at once — the fiddles-and-steel-guitar traditionalists on one side and glossy crossovers on the other. See: Lady Gaga’s Joanne, or Post Malone’s yeehaw experiment F-1 Trillion.
Smaller Houston-area art organizations are getting creative to fundraise without pricey galas (Houstonia Magazine)
Out has released its Out100, a list of LGBTQ+ artists, educators and innovators (Out)
Texas State Fair had historically low attendance this year. Many blame tariffs for price hikes (The Barbed Wire)
“When you walk into the voting booth next November, remember this $25 turkey leg,” Talarico said.
Broadway musicians union authorized a strike as operating costs affect every aspect of their productions (Marketplace)
Staff at several prominent D.C. concert venues, including 9:30 Club, The Anthem, and The Atlantis intend to unionize (The Hollywood Reporter)
Organized labor! A “meticulously planned” heist occurred that resulted in several artifacts stolen from the Louvre (CNN)
How will AI-generated video affect influencers? (The Hollywood Reporter)
Diversity W? Timothée Chalamet wins first ever White Boy of the Year award (Vulture)
May encounter paywall
[Video] Meet the 100 year-old Italian barista (Inside Edition)
Deep dive into the variety of Hispanic/Latin American restaurants in Texas (Houston Chronicle)
Books:
October is Black Speculative Fiction Month (Shenanigator Books)
“Reading is the most subversive thing we can do,” James author Percival Everett said (Word in Black)
[Podcast] Saving money through your local library (NPR)
The man who coined the term “enshittification” wrote a book on the subject (New York Times gift link)
Video Games:
Preview of an upcoming chess rougelike dungeon crawler (Aftermath gift link)
A Borderlands fan brute-forced 3000 runs to demonstrate how poor the game’s rare loot drop rate was (Kotaku)
Here’s the full color-coded spreadsheet he made on Reddit, if you’re curious
The studio behind Hyper Light Drifter has laid off staff (The Verge)
Capcom made Street Fighter 6’s Capcom Cup pay-per-view and people are not happy (Kotaku)
Ubisoft allegedly cancelled an Assassin’s Creed game set after the Civil War, but some argue that company leadership would’ve once again failed to meet the moment (Aftermath gift link)
Just think of how a loud minority of fans reacted to Yasuke’s reveal
Sports (not just basketball this time):
Indonesia blocks Israeli athletes from participating in gymnastics championship (The IX)
Terry Rozier and Chauncey Billups among those arrested in gambling and poker rigging case (NBC News)
Men are betting whether or not certain WNBA players on their periods (Wired)
Apple acquires exclusive streaming rights for Formula 1 (The Verge)
Grand Sumo Tournament was held in London (BBC)
The winner took home a giant bottle of soy sauce and a Hello Kitty plushie (BBC)
The gentrification of WNBA coaches (The IX)
The Las Vegas Aces are the 2025–2026 WNBA champions; their third title in four seasons (WNBA)
Government:
MAGA’s removal of Black officials demonstrates how antiblackness supersedes qualifications (Capital & Main)
Surveyed federal judges express concern about Supreme Court, calling it a “judicial crisis” (New York Times gift link)
North Carolina republicans push gerrymandered map through to appease Trump (NC Newsline)
Check out how people nationwide are protesting for No Kings events (States Newsrooms)
The Trump administration’s knee jerk demonization of these protests shows how vulnerable they really are (New York Times)
May encounter paywall
Trump then posted an AI-generated video of him wearing a crown and pooping on protestors, but The New York Times and other legacy outlets refused to call it poop, opting for things like “brown liquid” (New York Times)
Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson calls for general strike (Huffington Post)
A slim majority of voters approve Governor Wes Moore’s time in office, few can name a specific reason (The Baltimore Banner)
Oh hunny… no. Trump commutes George Santos’ prison sentence for some reason (Advocate)
Let future historians know that we see this moment as fascism (The New Republic)
A newly-elected Arizona representative could be the deciding vote to release the Epstein files…if Mike Johnson ever swears her in (NPR)
Trump calls online concern over White House East Wing demolition for his new ballroom “manufactured” while instructing staff not to post photos (CNBC)
Pete Hegseth knows he doesn’t deserve to be here. He’s making it America’s problem (New York Times)
A Telegram chat from young Republican organizations leaked and it’s exactly as racist and bigoted as you’d expect (Politico)
Good on Politico to name names in the story. Some people rightly lost jobs and opportunities as a result of this reporting
Led to some finger pointing (USA Today)
The government cannot process all of the retirement requests after laying off much of the department responsible for them (Washington Post gift link)
Trump administration reaches deal with AstraZeneca to exempt them from tariffs; the second pharmaceutical company to sign such a deal (CNBC)
Federal worker layoffs begin as shutdown continues. Trump told the media that they’re targeting “Democrat-oriented” divisions first (Washington Post gift link)
After firing hundreds, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire CDC staff (New York Times)
May encounter paywall
“This is going to be devastating to Americans and to the global community,” said Dr. Debra Houry, who served as the agency’s chief medical officer before she resigned in August in protest against the administration’s policies. “They are dismantling public health,” she added.
Hundreds of Portland cyclists strip to protest Trump’s calls for federal troops into the city (USA Today)
Trump continues to lie about crime in D.C. to justify federal occupation, this time child gang members in hand-to-hand combat (The Intercept)
Baltimore awarded taxpayer money to a nonprofit ran by the mayor’s wife. While technically legal, the exchange has raised some eyebrows (Fox 45 Baltimore/Spotlight on Maryland)
Two vastly candidates with three decades—one 41, the other 77—between them, emerge as the Democratic front runners for Maine’s crucial Senate seat, showing a diverge in the party’s goals (Axios)
Thanks to collective lobbying and organizing, American Indigenous tribes were to stave off some of the worst effects of the federal shutdown so far (High Country News)
Federal workers refuse to be used as bargaining chips for Republicans as shutdown stretches on (New York Times)
May encounter paywall
Single tear: architect of Project 2025, White House deputy chief of staff, and general eugenicist bigot Stephen Miller is selling his multimillion dollar Arlington home after activists wrote messages like “DEI enriches everyone” on the sidewalk (ARL Now)
Rapper Vic Mensa wrote an op-ed describing the impact federal troops and ICE are having on Chicago (New York Times gift link)
Economics:
Job insecurity and unemployment can eat self-esteem, produce the drowning buzz of crippling anxiety, shorten the range of a person’s hope and belief in the system, in their future, in themselves. It can produce zero-sum, suspicious thinking, slowly and insidiously making people see other people as their competition, and wondering if their identities are a small part of the reason they are getting passed over. The mental-health impact of long unemployment is well-observed in research; people on the job search for a long time struggle with anxiety, depression, feelings of failure, and (both real and perceived) social stigma.
Will the Chinatown Renewal Initiative succeed where the Task Force failed? D.C. residents are uncertain (Greater Greater Washington)
Nestle announces 16,000 layoffs, stocks rose after the news (CNBC)
It’s worth noting the same company had to fire its second CEO in a year this September due to an “undisclosed romantic relationship” (CNBC)
D.C. evictions are skyrocketing as tenant protection laws are overturned and rents remain high (51st/Street Sense)
Additional tariff hurdles have international shippers confused and frustrated. Some packages are being tossed (USA Today)
Three-fourths of surveyed employees said they’d look for new jobs if they were forced to return to the office full-time (CNBC)
This woman wanted to be a trad wife until she got dumped, now she’s reinvented herself on OnlyFans (USA Today)
News Media:
Many popular news outlets refuse to sign Department of Defense’s agreement barring reporters from sharing unauthorized information about the military (Common Dreams)
The Trump administration has allowed a select number of conservative influencers into its spaces to push their agenda mainstream (Wired)
Do local newsletters need to cover local news to matter? (Nieman Lab)
Locally-owned newspapers are closing at an alarming rate, particularly rural ones (Axios)
Today, 213 of all 3,143 U.S. counties have zero locally based news sources, up from 206 in 2024. There are 1,524 counties with only one local news source remaining, usually a weekly newspaper.
NBC News lays off 150 people as it focuses on sports and an upcoming subscription service (The Hollywood Reporter)
The cuts mostly hit the teams focused on its more diverse programming and coverage
From Advocate
Public media sees a surge in donations following federal attacks on its funding (Current)
Fox News employees post serious concerns about publication’s direction in anonymous survey (The Guardian)
Education:
Department of Education braces for the worst as special education staff are laid off (USA Today)
A false alarm from an AI-powered gun detected camera system led to armed officers pulling up on a kid eating chips (The Baltimore Banner)
Houston ISD superintendent Mike Miles is preventing certain elementary school teachers from reading to their students, opting for AI-generated worksheets instead (Houston Chronicle gift link)
With very little to show for it, the CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools accepts a second job at Yale. People are asking questions (Fox 5 Baltimore)
Without a shred of irony, far-right groups sued a California university to open a Black student scholarship to all races (Cal Matters)
In the last two decades, the percentage of Black school board members has halved (Word in Black)
AI is altering the courses STEM high school students want to take (Wired)
Cuts to special education funding have conservative parents conflicted (The 19th)
Mr. Beast was supposed to start an academic program at East Carolina University, years later no one will say what happened (USA Today)
Technology:
Here are the states where Android users can add their state IDs to their Google Wallets (9to5 Google)
OpenAI will limit the use of AI-generated videos of MLK at the request of his estate and other sentences I wished didn’t exist (TechCrunch)
Several major record labels sign deal with Spotify to produce AI-generated music (The Hollywood Reporter)
The world is not prepared for the amount of AI propaganda Trump is putting out (New York Times gift link)
An Amazon Web Services outage rendered certain smartbed owners unable to control the temperature or sleep angle (404 Media)
May encounter paywall
Study finds most people don’t use AI all that much, but those that do are more likely to be insufferable (PsyPost)
OpenAI’s Sora 2 is bad and going to make things much worse (Vox gift link)
Trump-led government agencies joined Bluesky and were promptly ratio’d, topping most-blocked account lists (Wired)
OpenAI launches an AI browser that even they warn of potential security concerns (Axios)
Generative AI’s obsession with scale may not be sustainable soon (Wired)
Slack it is turning into an AI assistant (The Verge)
Did you notice the YouTube redesigned player? (9to5 Google)
Science, Critters and Environment:
Coral reefs have hit an ecological tipping point (Grist)
Coral reefs, then, are both ecologically and economically essential, yet civilization is woefully unprepared for them reaching this tipping point — to say nothing of the other looming tipping points, like the retreat of glaciers. “We are now in a new reality, and we can no longer rely on the institutions and policies designed for the old one,” Manjana Milkoreit, who researches global governance at University of Oslo and coauthored the report, said during a press conference announcing the findings.
How one former chemistry student pivoted to stand-up comedy (Wired)
Shout out the Northern Mockingjay one time (Chesapeake Bay Journal)
Mosquitoes spotted in Iceland for the first time ever. Experts say it’s a mark of climate change (Independent UK)
Despite government shutdown, bird flu clocks in for seasonal shift (New York Times gift link)
