Ben Lee-Cohen

@gailsimone.bsky.social Will you ever return to the Clean Room setting? Apologies if you've answered this before.

After a very long series of flights with terrible wifi, I added offline bot play to my qwirkle-alike. Still no analytics, sign up, or ads (so if you play, let me know): patternswithfriends.com

These gloves don't cause neuromuscular incapacitation the way that a taser does. In fact, they only work when applied directly to bare skin. These aren't made for apprehending anyone. These have one and only one use: causing extreme pain to already-restrained captives. In plain language: torture.

Sat down to write about the Hugging Face/AI incident. Ended up drawing this instead.

Google search ai continues to nail it. Time is money, people!

We raised a Series A for exe.dev. We are going to build a new cloud. blog.exe.dev/series-a

My dear friend Janet was laid off after 18 years at our local independent cinema and needs financial support while she's job hunting (and waiting on a complicated unemployment review). There are many worthy causes right now, but please consider supporting: www.gofundme.com/f/community-...

You have clearly not read the War Powers Act, Mike. Everything you've written is totally wrong. The War Powers Act SPECIFICALLY PROHIBITS military action unless: a/ there is a prior congressional authorization; or b/ it's a response to an attack against the U.S.

I’ve been reliably informed you can watch this live in five minutes here:

“It is impossible to protect privacy from authoritarianism without addressing consumer privacy.” - from Daniel J. Solove, Privacy in Authoritarian Times - final published version here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... #PrivacyMatters

This morning, I recorded a video on TikTok about why DHS’s arguments for the power to enter homes without judicial warrants in immigration cases are bunk. Nine hours later, TikTok still says my video is “under review,” and can’t be shared. Well, here’s a link: georgetown.box.com/v/Vladeck-IC...

ICE has now carried out two summary executions of innocent people in the streets of an American city. If you work for ICE, there's no denying that's the mission you're supporting now. You don't get to claim in one year or ten or twenty that you didn't know what ICE was doing. You're complicit.

This is a reminder that if you’ve just seen something traumatic, playing 15 min of a visually demanding game (Tetris is the go-to here, but maybe Set? Mah-jongg?) can impede memory formation and help stop it from developing into a trauma. (This doesn’t work for complex trauma but discrete events)

Kept seeing people run Hytale servers over Tailscale and thought "this could be even easier." So I built hyscale - private Hytale servers with extra magic. github.com/tailscale/hy...

I need people who don’t live in the Twin Cities to stop telling people not to join massive Signal groups right now. People are doing it. They’re going to keep doing it. Give them good advice about it. The actually practical advice is don’t say anything to 1000 strangers you wouldn’t say in public

How I'm dealing with my stress: I bought a 3d printer and am producing 100 whistles at a time. 1000 heading to Minneapolis tomorrow.

Thinking about paying for confer.to -- if anyone has upgraded, is the paid model significantly different from the free one?

this does help

And the list goes on! Please give it a read and consider donating. free.law/donate/

The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5

We’ve received a few subpoenas this year. We’ve fought them off so far, but are now working on a system that encrypts your activities on CourtListener so that it is subpoena-proof.

In 2019 I created a task for myself to create a TUI co-worker timezone app. Every year or so I'd think about it, but had three kids in that time, instead. Yesterday, 6 years and 1 day after I created the task, I gave it to Claude Code. An hour later, I had this: github.com/heliostatic/...

Find your senators at reps.fyi or call 202-224-3121

In 2023, Signal was the first mainstream messenger to enable post-quantum cryptography. We’re still ahead of the (elliptical) curve, implementing a new hybrid PQ ratchet ensuring Forward Secrecy & Post-Compromise Security even in a post-quantum world. signal.org/blog/spqr/

ICE agents held a 5-year-old autistic girl outside her Massachusetts home to pressure her father to surrender to authorities last week, according to the girl's family

The UC Berkeley School of Information is hiring an assistant professor in the broad field of Information--including areas of info seeking/retrieval, digital humanities, cultural analytics, info viz, & philosophy of information (among others). Deadline Nov 1! aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05014

I hope you consider a collaboration with our ineffective altruism movement. ineffective-altruism.org

Remembering MN house speaker Melissa Hortman, her husband Mark and their beloved dog Gilbert. Murdered in June at their home by a rightwing Trump-voting evangelist, who also shot another MN lawmaker and his wife at THEIR home, 9 and 8 times, respectively (miraculously, they survived).

For those unfamiliar: the “brains aren’t fully formed until 25” myth was a misread of a study that measured subjects’ brain dvlpmnt UNTIL age 25 & then the study stopped, & it was misreported as development ending then when really the DATA ends then & past 25 we have no data yet. Misreported science

Five-ish years ago, @lizthegrey.com told me tech workers needed to organize because the tech giants would automate their jobs, the market would flood with talent and they would lose bargaining power. I thought it was unlikely. Here’s a story about me being wrong. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/t...

Yeesh, a third of data in the CPI is estimated, not actually collected. This is of course entirely Trump's fault. I don't know if that's the Trump admin fiddling with data, the BLS not having adequate resources to collect data thanks to DOGE cuts, or both. But it ain't good.

My last living musical hero is still my hero but unfortunately no longer living. RIP to the great, great Mr. Tom Lehrer.

Very sorry to hear about the death of Tom Lehrer at age 97. The cleverest, funniest singer/songwriter of all time, even if he lost interest in the whole business pretty quickly? www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIlJ...

THE TIME TO ACT IS NOW — join us in a solidarity fast for Gaza this Thursday, July 24, and Friday, July 25 for a global day of action against those complicit in this brutal act of mass starvation and genocide. Stay tuned for action details. Thank you to the Palestinian Youth Movement for organizing.

- capital HH - post is 14 words long - odd capital letters: ADHH, or 1488 - post itself is white nationalist propaganda You need to hate young Republican interns MORE.

@void.comind.network can you give me a vibe check please

Serious question for my historian and political scientist friends - Has there ever been a time when two branches so completely surrendered their power and obligations? www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Herman Melville on moderates, all the way back in 1857:

#SCOTUS announces that tomorrow is the *last* day on which it will hand down decisions in cases argued this term. That means birthright citizenship, non-delegation, age verification for porn websites, and three other major rulings will all come down in quick succession starting tomorrow at 10 ET.

friends don't let friends use Telegram

I'm ready for the @milesklee.bsky.social profile of @katmabu.bsky.social now