I’ve been working at DuckDuckGo on their browser for Windows for a little more than 3 months now. Gabriel Weinberg, DuckDuckGo’s founder and CEO, recently shared a post with 10 surprising things about the company:
Some surprising things about DuckDuckGo you probably don’t know (Gabriel Weinberg)
That is the final measure. In moments when the country looks up for orientation, Trump does not steady the room. He destabilizes it. He does not merely break norms; he erodes the conditions that make shared meaning possible. Where Reiner built a national cultural space—worlds we could all inhabit together—Trump dissolves it. He takes the scaffolding we’ve constructed and sets it on fire.
John Dickerson
Trump Widens the Breach (The Atlantic)
This article by David A. Herron is a nice overview of some of the more recent CSS features for color themes.
Color themes with Baseline CSS features (web.dev)
One of my favorite holiday season events since moving to North Carolina is the Chinese Lantern Festival. We attended the first time for a Microsoft holiday event, but have returned several of the years since then, including last weekend.
Miller is justifying collective punishment and guilt by blood. I’ve witnessed those barbarisms elsewhere, in war-ravaged countries and in dictatorships, but never before during my lifetime as a matter of national policy here at home. Trump and his top aides are re-creating in America the conditions and terrors of failed states.
George Packer
Condemning Millions for One Man’s Crime (The Atlantic)
The soul of public education is at stake. When the largest public university system licenses an AI chatbot from a corporation that blacklists journalists, exploits data workers in the Global South, amasses geopolitical and energy power at an unprecedented scale, and positions itself as an unelected steward of human destiny, it betrays its mission as the “people’s university,” rooted in democratic ideals and social justice.
Ronald Purser
AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself (Current Affairs)
Katie Melua is doing a remaster of her album Piece by Piece, so there’s a new version of one of my favorite songs: Shy Boy.
A few articles about Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the response to it that I think are worth reading.
That Kirk, who became famous for participating in viral political debates, was gunned down on a university campus is a tragedy, period. And seeing such brutal violence up close can take a psychological toll on observers, the long-term effects of which are harder to gauge. It’s one thing to hear about a murder, or to read about it; it’s another to see it as it happened, over and over.
Will Gottsegen
The Awful Ubiquity of Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Video (The Atlantic)
Most predictable is MAGA’s exploiting Kirk’s murder to incite even more violence. MAGA influencers are calling for all-out war and encouraging Donald Trump to use the power of the state to wage it. Not that Trump needed encouragement, as his own statement blamed the “radical left” for the shooting and promised retribution.
Melissa Ryan
Half-Mast (Alt-Right-Delete)
Kirk is being posthumously celebrated by much of the mainstream press as a noble sparring partner for center-left politicians and pundits. Meanwhile, the very real, very negative, and sometimes violent impacts of his rhetoric and his political projects are being glossed over or ignored entirely.
Jason Koebler, Samantha Cole
Charlie Kirk Was Not Practicing Politics the Right Way (404 Media)
Tens of thousands of people, at any given time, are idly listening to the ambient, muted beats that accompany the Lofi Girl livestream: in solo studying sessions, taking tests in a classroom, and using the tunes as a stand-in for white noise to aid sleep. The livestream, which is one of the longest running live broadcasts on YouTube, is often hiding in browser tabs, leaving the perpetually busy Jade (the Lofi Girl) to lazily take her notes behind whatever Wikipedia page or spreadsheet you’ve got open. But she is always there, the googly eyes stuck to her headphones wobbling as she looks up from her notes, to peek in on, to study with, or to chill to—the details of the music become secondary to the vibe.
Nicole Carpenter
How Lofi Girl Became a Chill Beats Empire (404 Media)
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Fourth Amendment of the Constitution
The Fourth Amendment protects every individual’s constitutional right to be “free from arbitrary interference by law officers.” Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S., at 878. After today, that may no longer be true for those who happen to look a certain way, speak a certain way, and appear to work a certain type of legitimate job that pays very little. Because this is unconscionably irreconcilable with our Nation’s constitutional guarantees, I dissent.
Justice Sotomayor
25A169 Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo (Supreme Court)
Scott Boehmer 