New TikTok trend: “de-influencers” — users leveraging their platforms to tell people what NOT to buy! But alternatives offered as well. #deinfluencing apnews.com/article/technolog…

OED #WordOfTheDay: bodhran, n. A type of drum used in Irish folk music, typically held on the player's lap and hit either with the palm of the hand or with a wooden stick. View the entry: oxford.ly/4lS6oHC

From trendy slang to enduring terminology, discover the depth of the African American lexicon with Dr. Tracey Weldon. Find out more: oxford.ly/4cPAUxQ @lsa2025_uo

OED #WordOfTheDay: mic drop, n. An act of deliberately and demonstratively dropping a microphone at the end of a performance, speech, etc., to convey that one considers it to be definitive or particularly impressive… View the entry: oxford.ly/44hdMX0

Truth-telling shouldn’t come with threats, especially not to a college community. The fact that speaking hard truths in 2025 still evokes the same hate MLK faced in the 1960s is a stark reminder of how far we still have to go. Stand strong, Rep. Crockett. Courage always wins over fear.

No low is too low for MAGA… now explain to me why an institution would be receiving threats because of the commencement speech that I GAVE. This type of behavior is why I’m constantly having to be protected & I understand that truth telling in this country; sadly, is a dangerous business, but college students don’t deserve this. As a side note: you consistently prove me right & just as this was the only campus that MLK could speak at in Mississippi in the 1960s… it’s 2025, and this country is still stuck on hate… I’m proud to say Tougaloo is tough & so am I.

🧵1/ While America slept, House Republicans launched a sneak attack on our public lands—and veterans and military families should be outraged. Here’s what happened last night and why it matters: #KeepPublicLandsPublic

HAPPENING NOW: Judge Boasberg is pressing DOJ about Trump's comment that he could pick up the phone and have El Salvador send back Abrego Garcia. Doesn't that mean U.S. effectively has custody over deported migrants, he's asking? DOJ LAWYER ABISHEK KAMBLI: “That goes toward the president’s belief about the influence that he has.” "Influence does not equate to constructive custody."

This is what happens when you appoint a pundit instead of a professional. Two F/A-18s lost in a week and not a word from Hegseth.

This is what happens when Trump and his MAGA circus take the wheel—planes are literally falling out of the sky, and now jets are sliding off ships like it’s a bad comedy sketch! Two F/A-18s lost in a week from the USS Harry S. Truman, $60M down the drain each time, and where’s the accountability? Hegseth is too busy doing push-ups for the cameras while our military crumbles under this clown show. MAGA "leadership" is a disaster—our troops and taxpayers deserve better than this reckless mess!

Peace through incompetence.

WTF is going on? Where’s Hegseth?

How has this being normalised, how is this being accepted by Western leaders. Only today Ursula VDL brags of help the EU is sending to Israel to tackle the fires. Meanwhile silence for this barbarity, worse, support for the state inflicting it #Israel

.@amanpour: They say that no medicine is coming in [Gaza], no food, no water, what is the actual conditions, international aid agencies say they’re running out of everything? Dr. Attar: They’re rationing, they’re running out…they’re pretty much running on fumes

Dr. Attar was at Al Ahli hospital when Israel attacked it. “When I came downstairs there were about 40-50 patients, and a lot of them are little kids, they have amputations and broken bones…If the hospital was gonna get bombed, we decided we were gonna die with our patients, taking care of them, not running away from them. And then the hospital did get hit and portions of the ceiling collapsed on us, we thought we were gonna get buried alive.”

When a trauma surgeon says even horror movies can’t compare, you’re not talking about war, you’re talking about something far darker. And still, world leaders stall on ‘strongly worded concerns.’

As Israel continues its aid blockade and bombardment of Gaza, Dr. Samer Attar, an American surgeon who's just returned recounts what he witnessed: "I don't think a horror movie could fictionalize how these scenes are any more sick, twisted and disturbing."

People in Gaza are taking to the streets chanting, “We want to eat, we want to eat.”

If only you had some kind of leverage you could use to do more than “urge” Israel to stop starving people.

Right — to extend the metaphor, the wood isn’t nice at all it’s actually shitty clapboard, which is what makes the New Yorker article not simply inane and professionally treasonous but also embarrassing. x.com/CharlesCMann/status/19…