📻 How Sonic DNA Connects Generations of Music /// Pudding

Such a fun web experience of listening through the history of samples.

🧊 The ICE Detention of a Turkish Student Is a Serious Free Speech Test /// The Present Age

If you’re genuinely concerned about free speech, this should be setting off alarm bells regardless of your position on Israel-Palestine. The government is literally snatching people off the streets for expressing political opinions and shipping them 1,400 miles away from their homes, lawyers, and support systems.

Between the lack of due process and the targeting of political speech without crimes being committed, or even charged, ever American should be angry right now.

⚾ What is a torpedo bat? How much does it help hitters? Inside MLB’s next big thing /// ESPN

The creation of the bowling pin bat (also known as the torpedo bat) optimizes the most important tool in baseball by redistributing weight from the end of the bat toward the area 6 to 7 inches below its tip, where major league players typically strike the ball. Doing so takes an apparatus that for generations has looked the same and gives it a fun-house-mirror makeover, with the fat part of the bat more toward the handle and the end tapering toward a smaller diameter, like a bowling pin.

It might end up being too late for baseball, but I continue to be amazed at the innovation and chances they are willing to take to make the game more enjoyable. It’s a lesson other sports need to learn from sooner than later.

And more from Defector

🖤 Maya /// People & Blogs

Maya is the best so it was no surprise that her P&B interview is one of my favorites to run so far.

🏈 Super Bowl Halftime Show Complaints Focused on Lack of DEI for White People /// Wired

The controversy over Lamar’s performance highlights the hypocrisy around the DEI backlash; experts say the term has come to serve as a modern-day slur wielded against people of color, while at the same time, the people offended by it see themselves as being victims of a lack of diversity.

What a joke.

📉 Elon Musk Says He Has Sold X to xAI /// NYT

Elon Musk said on Friday that he had sold X, his social media company, to xAI, the artificial intelligence start-up he founded in 2023, in an unusual arrangement that may raise conflict-of-interest questions.

This has sketchy financial maneuvering vibes written all over it.

🚨 Immigration agents arrested a U.S. citizen and created warrants after an arrest, lawyers say in court /// Chicago Sun-Times

“I was born in Chicago, Illinois, and am a United States citizen,” Noriega said in his statement, adding that on Jan. 31, after buying pizza in Berwyn he was surrounded by ICE agents and arrested. Officers took away his wallet, which had his ID and Social Security card. “They then handcuffed me and pushed me into a white van where other people were handcuffed as well.”

This shit is going to keep happening until Trump followers and Republicans in office say something and I don’t imagine that will actually happen anytime soon and it’s scary as hell.

🏀 ESPN: LeBron James, On ESPN, To ESPN: “ESPN.” /// Defector

“I know he’s going to be happy as hell when he hears me talking about him,” James said, to McAfee, about Smith. “He’s going to get home and grab some ice cream out of the fucking freezer and sit in his chair in his tighty-whities on the couch.” Rich imagery, and yes, Smith REACTED to the news Thursday morning with HARD TRUTHS. The substance of those truths is inherently uninteresting, though I find the form fascinating; Smith’s FIRING BACK exists alongside the ESPN NBA desk tsk-tsking James for his Windhorst comments.

LeBron James did something I thought was impossible. He got me to agree with Stephen A. Smith, because Smith is right and James is just a big baby who gets mad when people don’t cower to him and things don’t go exactly the way he wants.

🐯 Pikachu Spotted Fleeing Police Crackdowns During Turkey Protests /// 404

How great is this?!?!

🎶 Signal Leak /// Jesse Welles

Just some more fun signal chat stuff.

🤖 Hayao Miyazaki, Who Said AI Is ’Insult to Life Itself,” Reduced to AI-Generated Meme by OpenAI /// 404

Despite the lawsuits, outrage, and general resistance from artists, generative AI is already working its way into the workflows of many creative fields, including anime.

As fun as it is to generate these images of ourselves in all different styles, I wholeheartedly think these AI companies need to be stopped and sued for billions of dollars in copyright infringement.

😵‍💫 Foreign Spies to Team Trump: 👊🇺🇸🔥 /// NYT

This is an administration that actively, proudly rejects expertise. It casts those who have it as the corrupt old guard, the real enemy, the “deep state,” and it touts its own refusal to heed them as proof of its legitimacy and righteousness. By that view, the security establishment must be bent to the White House’s will, and if the people at the top don’t have the traditional qualifications for their positions, all the better.

I’m honestly running out of things to say about this shit…

🤡 Trump’s Border Czar Admits ICE Is Arresting Plenty of Innocent People /// The New Republic

So he’s drawing innocent people into the crossfire as he alleges all of ICE’s targets are rapists and terrorists—unsubstantiated claims that none of the detainees can defend because they won’t get a day in court.

We are so far beyond ridiculous clown behavior at this point…

📽️ Why Every Shot on ‘The Studio’ Is One Elaborate Long Take /// Indiewire

Really loved the first two episodes of The Studio. While we were watching the first episode, I said to myself, this feels like they were directly inspired by Birdman with the way the camera moved and the music. Sure enough, the music is done by the same guy, drummer Antonio Sánchez, and the “oner” is not only pivotal in the second episode, but the entire show.

🌏 DOGE is going global. It needs to be stopped. /// Disconnect

Really wish this were an area the world wouldn’t follow our lead… the whole world is about to crumble.

📹 One Battle After Another /// Trailer

I am so excited for the new PT Anderson (and Wes, which should also be dropping a trailer this week) that I’m breaking my rule and posting this here instead of saving for RoL. Test screenings had pretty polarizing and negative leaning reviews, but I don’t care; it looks incredible.

🪙 Is Genocide Good for the Dow? Our Columnists Weigh In. /// Slobstack

Sure, cities are leveled, families torn apart, but have you seen what Lockheed Martin’s doing with drone optimization? It’s incredible.

A third, new site from Joan Westenberg as they continue to absolutely kill it. The Index is already a go-to for contextualizing the news, and now Slobstack will fit nicely next to The Onion and McSweeney’s in doing it through satire.

📨 March 25, 2025 /// Letters from an American

President-elect Roosevelt asked Perkins to serve as Secretary of Labor in his administration. She accepted only on the condition that he back her goals: unemployment insurance, health insurance, old-age insurance, a 40-hour work week, a minimum wage, and abolition of child labor. She later recalled: “I remember he looked so startled, and he said, ‘Well, do you think it can be done?’”

Another great letter and history lesson from Heather that hits home a lot of great things this country has done that are currently being dismantled without regard for the effects to the American people.

🏀 The NBA’s next big insider may be an outsider /// Nieman Journalism Lab

Insider reporting can be a ruthless, zero-sum game. There are only so many scoops to go around, and journalists can be extremely protective of their sources. That makes Stein and Fischer an interesting team.

Pretty cool to see this. I had no idea about Fischer even though I follow basketball pretty closely.

🐔 Bird flu continues to spread as Trump’s pandemic experts are MIA /// Ars Technica

The White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (OPPR)—established by a congressional statute in 2022 in response to failures during the COVID-19 pandemic—used to include a staff of around 20 people. Now, only one staffer remains, and it’s unclear who they report to.

Why am I not surprised. And RFK Jr. is out here talking nonsense.

🤖 Cloudflare is luring web-scraping bots into an ‘AI Labyrinth’ /// The Verge

when it detects “inappropriate bot behavior,” the free, opt-in tool lures crawlers down a path of links to AI-generated decoy pages that “slow down, confuse, and waste the resources” of those acting in bad faith

Look at that, something positive happening in the AI space for once.

🌏 The New World Order Is Here, And America Isn’t Part Of It /// The Index

The collapse of American influence isn’t happening because the U.S. military is weaker or its economy smaller. It’s happening because trust in American judgment, consistency, and commitment has plummeted.

It’s the same thing with the stock market—no one knows what the hell is happening while a bunch of amateurs make rash, uninformed decisions. It just makes me so sad that there are people, people I know even, that will continue to defend this shit.

💸 Seniors won’t complain if they miss a Social Security check, Lutnick says /// Axios

A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling and complaining

Or you know the people who put money into social security every pay check in their life and now rely on it to pay for their food, rent, and survival—they might complain a bit too. Not everyone has a billionaire son.

🤡 Trump’s firings at the FTC watchdog agency, explained /// Vox

The FTC’s setup is meant to tilt power toward the party in power, as the president picks the board’s chair. But it’s also supposed to reflect bipartisan priorities, as no more than three commissioners are supposed to come from either party. Unless Trump’s firings are overturned, the board will solely reflect Republican priorities, which Democratic critics say will mean a lax, pro-corporate approach to enforcement of consumer protections.

🎞️ I can’t keep doing this /// struthless

This was a superb video about self-promo and dealing with the aspects of life such as criticism that come with being seen in the public eye. And the editing was absolutely delightful taking you through a rollercoaster of emotions and layers of inception.