Miles O'Reilly

Well this is eleventy-million kinds of Fucked Up. @latimes.com (who once contracted with me as a freelance reviewer and whom I struggled to get paid by) asserts that *merely reading its website* constitutes a permanent waiver of your right to sue it under *any circumstances*.

Am I missing something or is this far more existentially threatening than AI?

Every time I think I’ve hit the bottom of my outrage, they find a new pocket…

If we apply a consent regime (not a property regime) to privacy rights, then the entire commercial surveillance industry would cease to exist.

And made up on the two issues that many Democrats could have done much more about (reproductive and trans rights). Some blue legislatures have indeed codified reproductive rights, but much it has been by voters, including Republicans. Trump himself admits the Republican view here is unpopular.

This belongs in the Smithsonian.

Here's a sentence that stopped me in my tracks last week: "The statement that 'the cemeteries are full of indispensable people' is just as true of nations, and in particular the US": crookedtimber.org/2026/07/16/5... 1/

If you’re a Democrat and plan to vote this fall, please acquaint yourself now with what looks to me to be a highly skilled extrapolation of where that’s headed. Which is by definition not merely a best guess.

well that went way deeper than I was expecting

Wow, I had been running out of patience with Yegge’s uncritical #GenAI boosterism, but this is epic: “The AI Vampire.” As usual with Yegge, it could have been edited down to half its size, but go read it anyhow. I’m going to adopt that “AI Vampire” phrase and start using it, a lot […]

Carlos Lozada writing in the NYT about the norms of democratic society remarks that "Guardrails are particularly valuable when something is slamming into them." Ain't that the truth. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/o...

Obviously generative AI makes copyright violation extremely easy, but I couldn't agree more that AI training is fair use. People want to blame the tool for abuse and not the wielder.

This is literally what I've been writing and podcasting about for years. I was planning to do an essay on this, but here's a 🧵. The main reason is psychology. Due to personal, family, and cultural histories, some people are inherently scared of the world.

Share and tell CBS to air this! Sharyn Alfonsi, the veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent who reported a segment about migrants sent to the El Salvadoran torture prison CECOT, just sent a blistering letter to colleagues, sounding the alarm that Bari Weiss spiked the story for political reasons.

The optimum outcome is for neither of these takeovers to happen. There are already too few players in Hollywood. It does nothing for the health of the industry to allow either merger. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...

I love this so much. To anyone who says what's the point of the arts (or public funding): art digests thought and feeling, feeding it back and allowing us to see from new angles, enriching our own experience of the world and every now and then that fresh perspective will trigger a precious insight.

Margaret Atwood acerbically on target as ever www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

"The.. complicity of major media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post & Reuters in repeating the Israeli narrative w/out verification made them partners in covering up crimes, justifying genocide & creating conditions for the targeting of journalists" www.thecanary.co/global/world...

Read, and perhaps sign, this open letter against fascism. I was an early signer and support the message. stopreturnfascism.org

Would we need such strong nudging for diet shifts, if we got the key conditions right? New survey from the US, where the meat and dairy culture reigns supreme: www.pcrm.org/news/news-re...

The cottagecore, romantic path to starvation and environmental breakdown. This week's column is on the latest delusions about how we might produce our food. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

It’s day 4 of #NoMeatMay & we’re focusing on chickens, the most abused animal on the planet. The mega farms where they are bred, never seeing the sun, are sources of air & water pollution. Read the Animal Sentience Act here: www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2022/22 @nomeatmay.bsky.social

The thing is, frugality is also crucial to address climate change, and important for health too!

1. This is a thread about why Food Waste is so often, and wrongly, identified as the major problem with the food system. Yes, it's an issue, but in the rich world, it's far smaller than many others. It’s massively over-emphasised, while other, far more important problems, are ignored and avoided. 🧵

“If you abuse millions of animals in a systematic, industrial process, you’re hailed for your business acumen. That’s an uncomfortable contradiction at the heart of modern dining,” our columnist @nickkristof.bsky.social writes.

Hilarious account of a fight against a disaster: "For more than 150 years... the grazing regime in the West has been a slow-moving environmental catastrophe, & there’s no sign of let-up. Conservation biologists have called it the 'most insidious & pervasive threat' to biodiversity on rangelands..."

"if we all stopped consuming animals and permanently swapped to plant-based food, we could return 3.1 billion hectares of farmland to forests and natural grasslands." That's the size of the US, China, the EU & Australia combined. 8Gt of CO2 would be removed each year. www.bbc.com/future/artic...

Consuming More Plant Protein May Aid Healthier Aging In Women by @GrrlScientist via Substack #health⚕️ #PlantBased🌱 #women #aging #SciComm🧪 grrlscientist.substack.com/p/consuming-...

A team of marine biologists from the NGO Condrik Tenerife have documented the first ever recorded sighting of a deep-sea black devil anglerfish (Melanocetus johnsonii) in daylight near the surface, just two kilometers off the coast of Tenerife. #Nature #Animals #Science

Having watched with growing alarm the developments of the last 24 and 36 hours in Washington, I thought I’d take a stab at how the US media would cover this story if it was happening in a foreign country. Here’s that story that should be written this weekend: www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/musk-s-jun...