iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Trump signed off on 2 massive tax cuts in the last 10 years, which are on track to cost us $7+ trillion in the coming years and add ~$1 trillion to interest payments on our ballooning national debt. And these assholes are still arguing tax cuts will raise revenue.

“I would really like to pay my fair share of taxes, which is less than I’m paying right now,” Haggerty said in the recording.

Paxton responded, “I’m with you on that. I think tax cuts will actually generate more revenue.”

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Anyhow. Congrats, Ed Markey--whose focus on whose concerns matter most when it comes to standing up for trans rights generally and protecting trans kids specifically couldn't be more different--on your primary win!

Screenshot from The 19th article entitled "This 80-year-old senator isn’t backing off his support for trans rights":

“The demonization of the trans community requires political leaders to stand up and to protect them against the unconscionable attacks,” Markey told The 19th ahead of Tuesday’s Democratic Senate primary, where he faces a challenge from U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton. “I have had conversations with several dozen parents of trans kids. They make it clear to me how terrified not just the kids, but the family, have become.”

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

In a moderate's world, the worst thing that can happen is a bunch of fully grown adults excluding already marginalized children from a childhood activity get called bad people for their openly stated beliefs. What happens to the actually canceled trans kids? Who fucking cares.

He said fellow Democrats and Congressional colleagues have told him, "You're exactly right Seth, this is our problem. We try to cancel people rather than actually having debates about issues that Americans care about."

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

You ever read something and feel the sudden need to bleach your soul?

He noted the shop used to be popular, and during its busiest day had 86 people. Dan said business was good the day after conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk was shot and killed and the day after Trump launched his war on Iran.

Hays recalled the days following the assassination attempt on Trump in July 2024, saying it was "huge" for his business.

“People were waiting to walk in the door. Everybody was going ‘Choo Choo Trump train,’ and this whole building was moving," Hays said. "I mean, it was just, it was unbelievable.”

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

So Lindsey Graham was the human sacrifice required to resurrect Mitch McConnell. Got it.

Mitch McConnell and his wife, former Sec. of Labor and Sec. of Transportation, Elaine Chao. McConnell is smiling in a hospital bed wearing a button down and jeans, holding a current newspaper.

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

To be an out lesbian who professionally writes about queer culture and to say this during PRIDE, of all fucking things, is blowing my mind. You have a job where you can be open about your sexuality because decades of LGBT+ people refused to be quiet, to hide, or to go back into the closet.

I also think about this in terms of representation, where on the podcast we’ve been more skeptical of the value of representation and “firsts” and stuff in movies. The “exclusively gay moment” in Disney movies or, like, people breaking the glass ceiling or whatever the gay version of that is—the mesh ceiling. I don’t think that’s doing the most for us either. It turns out representation in politics only really does a lot when you have a robust and functioning democracy, which we don’t really have right now. And so while I think it’s certainly valuable to have queer and trans people at the table in politics, I’m just a little skeptical that it’s done much for us.

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

I'm so fucking tired of white cis LGBs who don't know know the decades of brutal public policy and discrimination their elders endured *for them* to live openly, but are the biggest beneficiaries of that activism and sacrifice of their elders while throwing their contemporaries under the bus.

On the other hand, I completely agree with you, Bryan, that visibility—for trans people who just wanted to live their lives, not necessarily stealth or anything, but literally just live without being a political movement and a hyper-politicized identity and an issue—visibility has been terrible. And I’ve been thinking a lot about why it was so different for LGB people, because that was Harvey Milk’s big strategy, to come out, and it worked. That was why the gay rights movement wasn’t quashed in its early stages, because people came out and everyone realized, like, Oh, queer people are all around us and they’re, like, pretty OK, or at least as OK as cishet people.

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But I think trans identity really threatens the underpinnings of gender and gender hierarchy in a way that gay identity only kind of brushes up against. And you can see that in the issues that the right has pinpointed, like gender-segregated spaces, sports, and bathrooms, and for a political movement that is really invested in a gender hierarchy and gender norms, transness is super threatening. They can make the argument that “This really threatens our way of life” in a way that gay marriage or whatever doesn’t, where you just have to kind of don’t pay attention to that if you don’t want to.

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

This is the crux of it, isn't it? Democratic party leadership fails even to inspire their most faithful, enthusiastic voters, shuts them out of the conversation when they ask questions, then doubles down on the shit message that's not even working with their loyal base when pushed. "We know better!"

When I reached out to Clyde, the Ohio Democrats chair, to ask about her experience at the GRR meeting, and about what specific lessons Democrats have learned since 2024, her office sent back a statement that did not directly address any of my questions. “Ohio Democrats are laser-focused on lowering costs, protecting Ohioans’ freedoms, and getting our state and country back on track,” the statement attributed to Clyde stated. “Ohioans of all political backgrounds are getting involved with our Democratic candidates because of the strength of their winning message.”

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

So what are these big, bold ideas Project 2029 is putting forward as a rebuttal to Project 2025's 900-page behemoth of nightmare fuel and corruption? The same boilerplate bullshit that's been in every Dem spam mailer begging for cash for the last decade.

01
Reward Hard Work
Our economy should reward hard work and not just huge wealth. We need to rebuild the ladder of opportunity for Americans and for American communities getting left behind.

02
Give Americans Their Government Back
In today’s Washington, wealthy and well-connected people and interests call the shots and drown out the voice of the people. Government needs to work for everyday Americans – and it just plain needs to work by delivering real progress.

03
Restore Law and Order
No one should be above the law – whether they’re on the street corner, in the corner office, or in the Oval Office. It’s time we strengthened our laws and our law enforcement to crack down on dangerous criminals, corporate wrongdoers, and corrupt public officials.

04
Make America Affordable Again
Americans are working harder but still finding it harder to make ends meet. They’re getting crunched by rising costs for housing and health care and squeezed for time as they try to take care of their kids or parents. We need to give them a helping hand and stop corporations from ripping them off.

05
Jumpstart Economic Growth
America needs to win the global race to make sure the jobs and technologies of the future in areas like AI and clean energy are here at home. New innovations need new rules of the road so that we protect consumers, lower prices, and stop big businesses from stifling entrepreneurs and competition.

06
Protect America’s Security and Prosperity
It’s time for a new global agenda to open the doors of global economic opportunity for American workers and business and to ensure America stands on the side of democracies and not dictatorships.

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Genuinely, why do people who feel like this--and this take bubbles up every few weeks--stay here? I'm here because I like it. My friends are here. I like the content. I'm not on X because it had stopped being fun to me. Why be in a place you don't like being?

‪Corey Atad‬
and fwiw, the users are definitely the problem here, because in a way it's why they came here. to escape the constant, ugly drama of other sites and protect against that. but the platform itself is a problem. so much effort toward self-moderation has meant a culture of people talking to themselves.

‪Corey Atad‬
when this critique is made, it often feels like it's about politics, like the answer is to just let the Nazis on here, but that misses why X, despite it all, is still a more fun place. it's because the "no fucks given" style there means *more* willingness to engage in roiling, exciting conversation.

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

I just cannot believe that this is the product of a major national political party analyzing what went wrong in the last election cycle. The best parts of this read like an earnest high school essay. The worst parts are just not there at all. democrats.org/wp-content/u...

Effective parties, understanding history rarely repeats itself, it does often rhyme, make it a point to study electoral outcomes after each cycle to identify potential improvements to every aspect of their campaigns. John Adams argued “Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right…and a desire to know.”
This desire to know, to understand what is going well and needs to be maintained, along with understanding what is not working and needs to evolve, is at the heart of any substantive effort to evaluate the relative impact of strategies and tactics tied to a specific election cycle and
specific candidate matchup in order to generate insights about what happened. A thorough review can provide a blueprint for future campaigns, establishing a series of “lessons learned” to drive continuous improvement in future efforts.
In this regard, the 2024 election was no different from any other. There were many dramatic moments framing the narrative of the national campaign, thousands of candidates seeking support from voters, and billions of dollars spent across the ballot and throughout the electoral
ecosystem to advance particular interests.
There are many books already written, and many more to come, presenting analyses of “what happened” for both sides, the efficacy of the strategies advanced, decisions made, and actions taken during the presidential campaign. These analyses, in order to present a thorough picture of the will of the people and the choices they made, must extend beyond the presidential campaign to include those strategies, decisions, and actions taken by other federal, state, and local candidates on ballots nationwide to examine why so many were able to succeed where others came up short.
Understanding that “little d” democracy is the will of the people and “Big D” Democracy represents the systems and structures in place to advance or inhibit the will of the people, there must also be a review and analysis of the

Why Now?
Democracy is a very old institution, and yet what keeps democracy going is the ability of those who seek to lead to look at the data and determine the source of success as well as setbacks. This after-action report specifically aims to identify and elaborate upon the actions the Democratic Party must take after what happened in the 2024 cycle. The report identifies the programs and priorities for consideration and implementation to build our Party to win over the next ten years, and to again become the party of the people well into the future.

This report includes a thorough evaluation of voter behavior in the context of the individual-level collection of voter contact data and localized demographic data. The analyses aim to identify gaps in participation, determine the correlation between the frequency and distribution of partisan voter contact, and

Executive Summary is highlighted with a line to an outlined red box that reads "This section was not provided by author."

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

The rocketship Gen Z is being offered a seat on:

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

This paragraph about parent outrage at their kindergarteners stuck out to me. Not only do parents not know how the data being collected from their children is being used, but also, no one knows whether the use of ed tech will be helpful or harmful in the long-run*.

When Pelz, Dugan’s wife, came to the microphone, she had her young son in her arms and her kindergarten-age daughter at her feet. “You are experimenting on our children,” she told Chancellor Samuels. School administrators are telling parents “that AI is inevitable,” she said, but when Pelz asked about specifics, no one had answers. How are AI-based learning programs learning from her children? What do the programs really help her kid learn? “If it is so good for my children, why is it a secret?” she asked. Every few sentences, she shifted her son, now sucking his thumb, back onto her hip. She warned of a “groundswell” of rage from public-school parents as the city stocks classrooms with AI-enabled screens: “My kindergartener has been given an iPad. It came home in her backpack. Shame!”

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

The solutions offered up? Boosting attendance, identifying students who need more targeted support, and teaching reading with phonics instead of the whole language approach. All of these are legitimate.

Superintendent Brawley credited a number of other strategies, including giving short, weekly quizzes to assess student learning and using the results to identify students who need tutoring. The tutoring happens during the school day — not after school — an approach he says is crucial for reaching the neediest students.
Washington, D.C., another district with test score gains, has also invested in tutoring, and was an early adopter of the science of reading, which emphasizes direct, sequential teaching of phonics, vocabulary and other skills.

The new report found that science of reading reforms were necessary, but not sufficient, to improve scores. Only states that had embraced science of reading reforms showed improvement from 2022 to 2025 — yet not all of those that did saw gains.
Washington, D.C., has also taken more unusual measures trying to find “the right recipe,” said Lewis D. Ferebee, the chancellor. Teachers who are deemed highly effective, a rating that includes raising test scores, are eligible for bonuses up to $25,000. Teachers receive a bigger bonus for working in the highest-need schools.

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

To be clear: the evidence shows that when students have less access to personal devices at school, there is no improvement in their performance.

It’s harder to keep students’ attention, even after the district banned personal phones and smartwatches during the school day, said Sharon Schaefer, assistant to the superintendent: “We know screens are so stimulating to our students.”

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Most schools who are no longer teaching full texts are doing so because they are trying to teach kids to pass standardized tests, which require reading *passages* not books. But let's not talk about how standardized testing is fucking up education. Let's blame it on iPads.

In turn, schools expect less from students, assigning fewer whole books and simplifying the curriculum, said Carol Jago, associate director of the California Reading and Literature Project at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Up next: we're going to blame kids spending too much time on screens. Is there evidence to back this conclusion? No. Are we going to argue it anyhow, because "kids these days"? Yes, yes, we are.

Few rigorous studies have teased out the role of devices in academic outcomes. Yet educators say there’s no question that swiping has decreased students’ focus and persistence, and time on devices has displaced time spent reading or studying. Far more teenagers — nearly one in three — now say they “never or hardly ever” read for fun.

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

So what does the NYT see as the root of declining test scores? The roll back of NCLB and thus the notion that accountability pressures on schools and teachers lowered. Nevermind that NCLB was *replaced* with ESSA, which shifted accountability responsibilities to the states.

The end of federal accountability
Some experts believe that the end of No Child Left Behind, the contentious school accountability law signed by President George W. Bush in 2002, explains some of the recent test score declines.
The law set a goal that all students would be proficient in reading and math, and schools that did not show progress could face penalties. It coincided with a period of rising test scores, especially in math, though reading scores improved more modestly. Low-performing students saw the biggest gains.
The law, though, was deeply unpopular with many educators and parents. Critics said it put an outsize focus on testing, pushing schools to teach to the test and spend less time on other important subjects, like the arts or social studies. In 2015, Congress replaced it, and many states dialed back on requirements.

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

This data is based on the Education Scorecard, produced by the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University and the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University. educationscorecard.org/about/ I'll want to go down the rabbit hole on funding and methodology of this later.

Almost everywhere in America, students are performing worse than their peers were 10 years ago, according to new, district-level test score data released Wednesday by the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford.
Compared with a decade earlier, reading scores were down last year in 83 percent of school districts where data was available. Math scores were down in 70 percent. The declines have affected both rich and poor districts, and crossed racial and geographic divides.

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

I wonder if the loss of $600+ billion in public education funding since 2016 will be mentioned in this article. My money is on no, but I would love to be proven wrong.

The New York Times

The Upshot

Your School District Is Probably Scoring Worse than 10 Years Ago
The drops in US scores go beyond the pandemic and cut across income, geographic and racial divides, new data shows.

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Higher education institutions with name recognition, massive alumni groups, and even more massive endowments will survive, not because of their football teams, but because they will continue to receive support from wealthy individuals and institutions and be a prestige target for potential students.

And the death of our current universities? What does that look like?
I think there’s contraction. The big flagships are going to stay the same, because they have the football players and all the other things. I’m at the University of Utah—I think it’s going to be fine. We’re going to pick up the lifeboats from the places that crumble. But, ultimately, at the very top, presidents and provosts are going to have to understand that expertise is their mission. Yale, even, went back to making their mission statement about knowledge, not about making a better world. We’re not in the making-a-better-world game anymore. We’re in the knowledge game, and that means getting rid of some of the feel-good stuff. ♦

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

1) Why is education portability a problem in the first place? 2) If you support specialization, it seems like the ability to transfer would be a massive benefit, because it means students can change schools when their need/desire for specialization changes. So what's the objection?

I think there’s going to be some move-fast-and-break-things. Parents are going to have to stop asking, “If my kid starts here and it doesn’t work out, will they be able to transfer?” That question has to end. That question is the problem. If you start approaching education as portable, transferable to other institutions, then you’ve already not bought into what you’re buying. The kid needs to think, I want to study with this person who knows these things so that I can learn those things, in a kind of apprenticeship model.

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

The Alpha School is a massive grift that claims AI can teach kids at a wildly exorbitant cost to parents. It's not even AI education. It largely leverages non-proprietary, non-AI digital education software, like IXL (which is used in many public schools, including Austin ISD), to "teach".

But what I think will spring up are these small institutes. I spent some time with the Alpha School people in Austin—that’s pre-K through eight, two hours a day on A.I., and then enrichment. I think that can be scaled up for higher ed. I wrote a piece called “The Two-Minute Mile Problem” on what that would look like. Why does it have to be four years? Can you get through faster? Can you get student loans that are based on semesters, if you get through everything in eighteen months?

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

I went to the UT Austin in the Vince Young era. It was a top research university, but also a famous party school with an amazing football team and a massive Greek presence. Again, do I have some news for you about why kids were deciding to attend certain colleges 25 years ago...

What does the destruction of the current model look like?
Even right now, we’ve seen big institutions pivot to selling experience. The experience is still going to sell to a lot of people who can afford it—I’m getting the college experience, the frats, the football. You’ll get a lot of things that are very hollow. Maybe that will get you a job. But what I

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

The great middle of America is not going to be able to afford to attend college because of the rising cost of higher education and caps placed on student borrowing. This is a backlash to the democratizing of higher education and how accessible college degrees have become to those outside the elite.

Do you think an OnlyProfessors model would be good? That the dissolution of the vast majority of the higher-education infrastructure, with this replacing it, would be a good outcome?
I worry about where the great middle of America is going to go. I do think students are going to have to withdraw enrollment from schools unless things change. And I don’t think institutions are going to change themselves. They’re caught up in this bureaucratic system, this transfer system, these standardization agreements across state lines, so that anybody can move anywhere. The idea of delivering a standard education product is so embedded within the current structure that it will never change unless students say, “This is not what I want from going to college.” So, yes, OnlyProfessors is an alternative.

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

I need a shower after reading this.

There’s a growing idea I’ve seen in some circles that college could be replaced by conversations between an A.I. tutor and a student. When I think about your model, I wonder why college even needs to exist. If I can just seek out a tutor, somebody that I like, and they just charge me a little bit, and we go through these edge-knowledge cases together, what’s the degree for? Couldn’t you, as Hollis Robbins—not only a specialist in African American sonnet traditions but also an idiosyncratic thinker on the subject of A.I. and the future of the academy—just set up your own shop?
I was in Austin, Texas, a couple of times in March with a bunch of twenty-five-year-old billionaires. This is what they’re looking at. Instead of having the credential from the institution, why not have the credential from the professor? If you have a Hollis Robbins education, what would that signal? What would that credential mean as opposed to a degree from a university? There was some conversation about what that would look like, and one guy at the end of the dinner said, “Instead of OnlyFans, it’s like OnlyProfessors.”

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Ma'am, I have some news for you about how a whole lot of students were getting their information to pass their college classes 25 years ago...

They’re going to be coming in with a different baseline. Once upon a time, you walked into class and a hundred per cent of what was delivered to you was through your professor. Now, you go to a class, maybe you’ll do the reading, but you’ll also ask ChatGPT or Claude. And so your course content is already coming from somewhere else. This is a problem that higher ed has not addressed substantially. What does it mean for me to grade you on something where you got all your information from somewhere else and not from my reading list? That is a complicated question. The only thing that works is for us to get to the edge quickly.

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

AI can definitely produce *a* paper on the poems of Marcus Christian. Will it be good? No. But the same is true of the quality of a paper AI can produce about, for instance, the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne for an Intro to US Lit class.

If I’m teaching a Harlem Renaissance class, and I’m going to deal with a poet like Marcus Christian, whose poems are obscure but who influenced everybody in a hidden way, the student I’m working with will have to do some work and produce a paper that A.I. cannot write.
Another example: if A.I. can begin to translate the Lenape language, or Miwok, we can know a lot more about stuff that we don’t currently know. I think that is all to the good. Obscure social science will go away, and edge knowledge that is pushing the frontiers of things that we don’t yet know will be in, pushed by A.I.-specialist faculty members. I think that’s the future.

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

You can't move to the edge of any subject if you don't understand the basics. If you don't know the basics, you don't even know where the edge is. This is what the first two years of college are for, and you can't replace it with asking ChatGPT questions.

So, in my ideal vision of the academy, you’re going to be in class with a mentor who isn’t going to have to teach you Chemistry 101 but will want to quickly move to where the edges are, to do something new. Maybe they would decide together to 3-D-print some new material that has never been printed before, or what have you. Whatever they decide together will not be something every university is going to be able to do. It will be what’s particular at this place.

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

1) Students already look for this specialization...in grad school. 2) AI can generate false information about African American sonnet tradition as easily as it can about US history or college-level Algebra. If we are equating reading a summary with knowledge, your specialization offers nothing.

In a Substack post from last year, you suggested that sixty to seventy per cent of faculty will ultimately lose their jobs once generative A.I. starts to hit the classroom, and that those who survive will need to explain why they’re still needed. How do you think they should be proving their worthiness?
Higher education and professors can differentiate themselves from all this sameness by teaching at the edges of knowledge. My expertise, for example, is in the African American sonnet tradition. There are probably three people on the entire planet who know as much as I do about this tiny little thing, and so I’ve spent a lot of my time experimenting with these large language models to just see what they know about my field, and where the edges are. Specialists are going to be key to selling education as something the A.I. can’t do. When your daughter is going to go to school, in eight years, you are not going to want, for any money, to have her learn standard educational product that A.I. knows—and A.I. will know so much, right?

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

This argument, that AI might as well be teaching college classes, is rooted in the unfound assumption that the quality of university teaching has gone down. On what basis are we making this argument, outside of "kids these days" and "everything was better in the past"?

If it doesn’t matter who’s teaching your course—especially at public universities where the quality of teaching has gone way, way, way down over the past twenty years—then we have created an environment where many classes might as well be taught by A.I., and many of the students know it.

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Historically, universities have always had a core curriculum that ensured a "classical liberal arts education", and that core curriculum is generally taught in the first 2 years before students begin to specialize in their majors. This has been true of Western universities for centuries.

The first two years of a college education are now more or less the same, regardless of where you go to school. Courses now need to be equivalent to one another, so that a student at one school will be learning something similar to a student at a different school. What that has done over time is created a system where it doesn’t really matter who is teaching the classes. We tell the student, “You’re special,” and we tell the faculty, “You’re not special.” This is the tension and the problem that is plaguing higher education and what’s made it so vulnerable to A.I. Everything else—whether Trump, the enrollment cliff, or whatever—is secondary to this tension.

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Putting aside the notion that a brief summary from AI that is as likely to be riddled with made up information and sources as it is to be accurate is the equivalent to a college education, people attend college to learn to analyze data and think critically, not rub elbows with intellectual greats.

In a widely discussed Substack post from last year, titled “It’s Later Than You Think,” Robbins argued that artificial general intelligence would require a culling of sixty to seventy per cent of the country’s professors, and that every professor who wanted to keep their job should write a memo answering the question “What specific knowledge do I possess that AGI does not?” Faculty members who could not produce a compelling memo “with concrete defensible answers,” she wrote, “have no place in the institution.” The university in the age of A.I. will be leaner, odder, and more differentiated from its peers, she maintains, because “students cannot be expected to continue paying for information transfer that AGI provides freely.” Instead, they will “pay to learn from faculty whose expertise surpasses AI, offering mentorship, inspiration, and meaningful access to AGI-era careers and networks.” Any institution that does not adapt will die. “This isn’t a mere transformation but a brutal winnowing,” Robbins writes. “Most institutions will fail, and those that remain will be unrecognizable by today’s standards.”

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

This article is making a lot of assumptions that I don't think are actually true in order to justify a vision for the future that is inherently dystopic. The pool of students at Brown and Georgia Tech are not interchangeable, and the students themselves could tell you the differentiators.

What can academics do about this? College, Robbins believes, should be more bespoke; schools should cultivate their own character based on the charisma of professors, the novelty of their inquiries, and the quality of their instruction. Today, thanks in part to the Common Application and to the always increasing pressure for students to go simply to the most prestigious college they can, even élite schools are becoming interchangeable. Brown and the University of Chicago have roughly the same pool of students as, say, Vanderbilt, or Georgia Tech. And, once the unique essence of a school has been lost, and the curricula have been standardized for maximum friendliness to students, who are treated as customer kings, A.I. may come to seem like a plausible alternative. In this view, rampant A.I.-assisted cheating, rapidly declining faith in the value of a college education, and general agita on the part of the nation’s faculty are all symptoms of a larger sickness: an academy that has been stripped of everything that once made it special.

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

Democrats' ongoing commitment to running for office as Republicans is telling.

Graham Platner for Senate tweeted:

I sat down with a Republican who voted for Trump three times.

We had a lot more in common than you would think.

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

I think this topic is interesting, because my husband and I are both the "they'll be fine" kids in our families. We are also very financially stable at this point in our lives, while our younger siblings are less so.

Reddit Screenshot:
AITA for giving one daughter more inheritance?
Decision: Asshole
Post: My husband and I have 2 daughters, let’s call them Emma(32F) and Sam(29F). My husband died of a stroke 2 years ago and he left everything to me. I’m rewriting my will as well in case something happens to me. Originally everything was split 50/50 between the girls but now I’m splitting about 80/20 in favor of Emma.

Emma has ADHD and isn’t doing great in life. In those days everyone just assumed she was lazy and she didn’t get the help children today get until she was in her teens. She just managed to finished high school and is working at a retail store as a stocker. It’s backbreaking and she doesn’t have much in the way of savings or anything. Her car was her father’s when he passed.

Sam is works in tech as a project manager and her husband is a doctor. They live in a million dollar house and has 2 kids. I’m not worried about Sam she’s always been very capable and excelled at everything. She was always the overachiever and I don’t think she needs help financially. Her and her husband probably take home $500k after taxes a year.

continued:

I want Emma to inherit the house and car when I pass. I think it will be good for her because she can live in it or sell it and buy another one. Sam will be fine and her and her husband have several houses and a summer home. But Sam is angry with me because I’ve made it clear that Emma gets most of our belongings. The bank savings and stocks will go to Sam but if I live to 80s she won’t have too much probably 20-30% of what the house is worth. But I think it’s fair because she is doing much better.

Sam called me to yell at me saying I’m favoring Emma. I reminded her of how much worse off Emma is than her but she said since they were both my daughters she should get things 50/50 or it’s favouritism. She reminded me that growing up we always spent more on Emma than her. But that’s because she was at the top of her class while Emma was failing. I put Emma in extra tutoring and the like because she needed it more. She said I should will half of the inheritance to her children for college funds but I reminded her she makes more and can save for them. I told her it’s not about me favoring Emma over her but Emma is worse off and she will be fine which resulted in her hanging up and refusing to come over for Christmas.

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

You've got to be fucking kidding me.

Trump Threatens Iran—Again—Amid Claim He Wants Iran To Think He’s ‘Unstable’
ByZachary Folk, Forbes Staff. I cover breaking news.

Published Apr 19, 2026, 11:01am EDT, Updated Apr 19, 2026, 04:58pm EDT

TOPLINE:
President Donald Trump returned to threatening Iran’s power plants and bridges in a Truth Social post Sunday morning on the eve of what he called new peace talks and following a report that suggested Trump’s wild social media warnings are part of a negotiating tactic. (Update: Trump said the U.S. attacked and took over an Iranian cargo ship.)

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Every time Third Way publishes anything with their advice on winning elections, I remember that this guy, who thought Dukakis getting in the tank was a good idea, is an executive there. 40 years of non-existent judgment.

Screenshot form the Third Way Website:

Third Way

Executive Vice President for Public Affairs
Matt Bennett
Twitter handle: ThirdWayMattB

As a 23-year-old campaign staffer, Matt Bennett helped stage the infamous “Dukakis in a tank" photo-op that helped sink Michael Dukakis' 1988 presidential campaign. Matt would never again put a candidate in a tank (other than a think tank), but now he's a long-serving veteran of many political wars.

His pursuit of center-left politics has taken Matt from the campaign trail to the White House, and from the pages of The New York Times to appearances on Meet the Press and 60 Minutes. He worked on both of the presidential campaigns of Bill Clinton, his political hero. He served as Deputy Assistant

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Because we don't want to vote for someone who sexually assaults women. Tough concept for the NYT, I know!

The New York Times

California Democrats Rushed to Back Eric Swalwell - and Quickly Abandoned Him

11 hours ago

[Photo of Swalwell speaking]

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

This might be my favorite mistranslation of all time. I will definitely be saying "woe to him who commanded, woe only to him" next time they're out of what I want at the grocery store.

The Spanish original text:

Hola
See translation • Received 6 minutes ago

Sobre el pollo
See translation • Received 6 minutes ago

No ay del que ordenó solo ay de es
See translation • Received 6 minutes ago

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

I got a very strange message from the DoorDasher who is getting my groceries tonight.

Screenshot from my doordash grocery delivery chat:

Hello
See original (Spanish) • Received 5 minutes ago

About the chicken
See original (Spanish) • Received 5 minutes ago

Woe to him who commanded, woe only to him.
See original (Spanish) • Received 4 minutes ago

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

One of these people was deemed to be so dangerous to the United States, they were forced to drop out of the presidential race by the press, major donors, and their own party's leaders in 2024.

Joe Biden tweeted:
To all those gathering in churches and homes around the world today: Happy Easter.

May God bless and keep you.

7:45 AM · Mar 31, 2024

Donald J. Trump posted on Truth Social:

Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP

April 5, 2026, 5:03 AM

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

Of course this is the Corecivic weasel defending the concentration camp he works for.

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Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

I'm old enough to remember when publicly stating you wanted your private business to directly influence elections and empower men over women in society would get you ousted from your company because it was embarrassing and a legal liability. www.businessinsider.com/alex-karp-ai...

"If you are going to disrupt the economic and, therefore, political power significantly of one party's base, highly educated, often female voters who vote mostly Democrat, and military and working class people who do not feel supported, and you feel like that's, you believe that that's going to work out politically — you're in an insane asylum," Karp told CNBC on Thursday on the sidelines of AIPCon 9 in Maryland.

"This technology disrupts humanites trained, largely Democratic voters, and makes their economic power less, and increases the power, economic power, vocationally trained, working class, often male voters, and, and, and so, these disruptions are going to disrupt every aspect of our society," he said.

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