Jonathan Forney (JB 🕵🏾)
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jb4nay.bsky.social
Jonathan Forney (JB 🕵🏾)
@jb4nay.bsky.social
430 followers 530 following 2.1K posts
Chemistry magazine editor 🧪 freelance journalist & grad student. 📚, puns, 🏀, supporting good journalism, art, and 🎮. I be posting links, yes ma'am. Trying to be a little less wack every day (he/they) | Texas ➡️ (D)MV | linktr.ee/jb4nay | Signal: j_forney.85
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jb4nay.bsky.social
We're really losing recipes, y'all www.theverge.com/column/81574...
Artists, especially new ones trying to break through, actually started changing how they composed to play better in the algorithmically driven streaming era. Songs got shorter, albums got longer, and intros went away. The hook got pushed to the front of the song to try to grab listeners’ attention immediately, and things like guitar solos all but disappeared from pop music. The palette of sounds artists pulled from got smaller, arrangements became more simplified, pop music flattened. In a world where most content is being served up to us algorithmically, whether that’s on Spotify, YouTube, or TikTok, music discovery has suffered. Market research firm MIDiA published an alarming study in September that said, “the more reliant users are on algorithms, the less music they hear.” It found that while new music discovery is traditionally associated with youth, “16-24-year-olds are less likely than 25-34-year-olds to have discovered an artist they love in the last year.” Gen Z might hear a song they like on TikTok, but they rarely investigate beyond that to listen to more music from the artist. More companies will probably start offering off-ramps as algorithm fatigue grows. But, eventually, companies will figure out how to create the illusion of serendipitous discovery. They will serve up algorithmic recommendations, but package them in a way that feels more natural. It’s not hard to imagine a future where ostensibly human-curated playlists are algorithmically tailored to exclude songs that don’t match your listening history exactly. Or one where algorithmic recommendations are placed subtly in easy-to-discover places, making you feel like you stumbled across a new record all on your own. You’ll still be manipulated by an algorithm; it will just be harder to spot.
November 13, 2025 at 4:50 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
🤨 www.nbcnews.com/politics/con...
Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, blasted the provision in a statement Tuesday. "The Senators may not like being treated like the rest of America, but these phone-record subpoenas and non-disclosure orders are routine in grand jury investigations at the state and federal level," he said. "No one has an absolute right to be notified that their call records have been subpoenaed, much less the right to a million bucks if it happens. This provision would not give any Americans other than U. S. Senators these rights."
November 13, 2025 at 1:35 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
😮‍💨
Finally, there’s the more immediate, enshittifying reality of AI’s actual effects on our daily lives, which bear so little resemblance to the tech-utopian tall tales that Big Tech has been spinning. We were promised cures for cancer. What we got instead was a technology that’s impoverishing millions of artists; undermining the economic foundations of journalism; filling the internet with unbearable slop; forcing itself into every nook and cranny of our digital landscape; damaging public trust in our elections; exacerbating the epidemic of loneliness and alienation among adolescents; inspiring genuine psychosis in users; undermining our critical thinking skills; exposing children to sexual content; and even, in far too many instances, egging on young people to kill themselves.
November 13, 2025 at 3:42 AM
jb4nay.bsky.social
On digital blackface in the AI era www.teenvogue.com/story/digita...
And an old story of America. Minstrelsy, after all, is as American as chattel slavery. It laid the foundation for American pop culture, standardizing the vaudeville format that later shaped musical theater and television. The more authentically Blackness can be mimicked or mocked, the more lucrative. And so it follows, rather inevitably, Black culture has often served as the testing ground in the tech realm for new products, platforms, and so-called innovations that very rarely benefit those who created the culture. "It's important to remember that Meta said they weren't doing this to increase people's trust in reality," she adds. "They weren't doing this because they wanted to educate people. Their term was engagement. And what does engagement mean? It means more money, more eyes on their platform. So if they can use Blackness to extract our attention, even if it's negative attention, they still win." And that is the crux of the situation, isn't it? What feels like an inevitability is, really, just marketing. While these companies urge us to believe that the rise of Al influencers, deepfakes, and digital blackface is an unstoppable tidal wave, a stage in our evolution (and eventual extinction), it's not. That is, perhaps, the most uncanny thing about this valley that we're in. Not the avatars themselves, but what they say about the imagination of those behind them. America is, perhaps, the uncanniest valley of all. Repeating the same mistakes, endlessly, turning away from the lessons of the past, and calling that innovation.
November 12, 2025 at 7:00 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
Being a barb year after year must be so exhausting www.them.us/story/nicki-...
When one of Minaj's LGBTQ+ fans quoted the rapper's post and criticized her for praising Trump, and thus alienating her queer fans, Minaj lashed out at them and seemed to blame her gay fans for not protecting her in a since-deleted post, per Out.
November 12, 2025 at 6:20 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
Student researchers and postdocs feel the effects of missing SNAP payments cendigitalmagazine.acs.org/2025/11/10/s...
Chemical engineer Ahmed Harhara says he saw during his studies how food aid had an impact on his science and engineering peers in graduate school at Texas A&M. "Cutting or reducing SNAP doesn't just affect nutrition; it slows down innovation. Many of the best ideas and breakthroughs come from students who are already stretched thin financially. Removing that safety net means fewer people can afford to stay in STEM long enough to contribute," he wrote in an email to C&EN. According to self-reported data from PhDStipends.com, the median stipend for chemistry and chemical engineering graduate students is around $29,000 per year. The site is an ongoing project by Emily Roberts, a personal finance adviser focused on academics. "The real best practice is to pay graduate students enough that they would not qualify" for SNAP, she says.
November 11, 2025 at 3:32 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-new...
This wave of bigotry comes as mainstream corporate media, already in the grips of a harsh rightward shift, has explicitly targeted queer journalists in new cutbacks and eliminated the rare platforms that covered queer people with sufficient knowledge, context and framing. "Fewer and fewer national news outlets have teams dedicated to LGBTQ+ rights coverage, but anti-trans legislative activity is at its highest peak in 200 years," said Kae Petrin, president of the nonprofit Trans Journalists Association, citing legislative research from Stanford. "Each contraction of resources for journalists covering these topics is a huge loss for public information and a huge loss for journalism, especially since these outlets have wide reach and longstanding public trust at a time that trust for national news is dwindling." "It's important to speak to trans people not just as victims of policies that target us but as experts who can shape public understanding of the consequences and broader import of government actions, or even just as individuals with lived experience who see policies as they affect us. Those perspectives shouldn't just be sources or quotes, but can also serve as scaffolding as you decide how to frame your journalism,' " TJA's Petrin said in an interview with Assigned Media. "If we do not quote the people who will live with the consequences of Trump's rhetoric and actions," the TJA report said, "journalism is failing to inform the public."
November 11, 2025 at 3:21 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
Capitalism done did it again www.vox.com/today-explai...
In fact, in the run-up to the 2018 Supreme Court decision that led to the explosion of legalization, these leagues were actually against it. They didn’t want this to happen. But once the door was opened, it was either join or forgo billions of dollars.
November 11, 2025 at 12:47 AM
jb4nay.bsky.social
ChatNPC goes crazy, I'm afraid www.thecut.com/article/woul...
It’s one thing to use ChatGPT to cheat at things you’d rather not do: homework, work-work. Or when it involves a reward like a good grade or a cash prize. But to cheat your way through leisure activities, especially ones you pay to do? As one TikTok user puts it, “It’s like going into a corn maze and just wanting a straight line to the end.” Just as the word clanker now serves as a slur for chatbots and agentic AI, a new lexicon — including secondhand thinkers, ChatNPC, sloppers, and botlickers — is being workshopped by people online to describe the kind of ChatGPT user who seems hopelessly dependent on the mediocre platform. Online, people aren’t mincing words when it comes to expressing their disdain for and irritation with “those types of people,” as Betty describes them. Escape-room employees have crowded around several viral tweets and TikToks to share stories of ChatGPT’s invasion. “So many groups of teens try to sneakily pull out their phones and ask ChatGPT how to grasp the concept of puzzles, then get mad when I tell them to use their brains and the actual person who can help them,” reads one comment. On X, same energy: “Using ChatGPT to aid you through an escape room is bonkers bozo loser killjoy dumdum shitass insanity.”
November 10, 2025 at 1:39 AM
jb4nay.bsky.social
Nice to see a obituary that doesn’t whitewash the problematic aspects of historical figures www.bbc.com/news/article...
He was a skinny teenager told to go to buy milkshakes to "fatten him up". He was socially awkward and expelled from school for poor grades - his work badly affected by a bout of scarlet fever. "None of my classmates thought I would amount to much," he recalled. He did not think of himself as a precocious intellect but he took up a scholarship at the University of Chicago at the tender age of 15. He put it down to "my mother knowing the dean of admissions" • When he first suggested that black people are less intelligent, London's Science Museum cancelled a planned lecture - insisting Watson's views went "beyond the point of acceptable debate" He suggested "when you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you're not going to hire them". And he wondered aloud if beauty not only could - but should - be genetically encouraged. Watson was heavily criticised for saying that women should have the right to abort her unborn child if tests proved it would be homosexual. Rosalind Franklin Wilkins corresponded with the Cambridge pair, sometimes exchanging his thoughts and insights. But Franklin was different. She was the most experienced chemist and an expert in diffraction. She, alongside her student Raymond Gosling, would take photographs of the patterns made by X-rays as they bounced off DNA molecules. Watson and Crick found Franklin "hostile" and thought she jealously guarded her research and worked in isolation. They were dismissive and sniped about her appearance, but Watson wasn't above taking a look at her work when Wilkins offered.
November 8, 2025 at 2:18 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
😮‍💨 nymag.com/intelligence...
Millennials and Generation Z make up more of the adult population than baby-boomers, but they still hold fewer seats in Congress. "That imbalance reflects not just generational inertia," said political consultant Sean Curran, "but a structural resistance to turnover." "A lot of them go past the point where they have anything to stop for," said one former House member. "There's a moment when they've stayed so long that their grandchildren have already gone off to college and often the spouse dies. Then, literally, their staff is taking care of them." The results are as macabre as they are deflating. Wild recalled one committee chairman whose staff said he was regularly confused. She once watched this man "fall flat on his face coming up the marble steps, not because he tripped but because he had a very difficult time getting around." "We have had members on the floor carrying their oxygen," said the former member of Congress. "We've had members go through cancer treatment who don't show up to vote for months at a time, even when it's so close. It's always the sickest ones who are running again and then, sure enough, six months later, we'll be going to their funeral."
November 7, 2025 at 1:08 AM
jb4nay.bsky.social
Sensational 🫡 www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...
The straitlaced court proceedings seemed to crack at times as lawyers played video of Dunn bobbing up and down, hurling expletives at a group of law enforcement officers patrolling a popular nightlife area at 14th and U Streets NW, as a bystander chuckled at the scene and offered running commentary. ("No, Superman!") Jurors also saw video of the sandwich being thrown, the short-lived foot chase that followed and Dunn's statements after the arrest: "I did it. I threw a sandwich. I did it to draw them away from where they were. I succeeded." The meatiest factual dispute concerned whether the salami sub had "exploded" on the CBP agent's uniform. The agent, Gregory Lairmore, testified that he mostly tried to ignore Dunn's late-night tirade outside a Subway restaurant, until he felt the impact of the sandwich through his bulletproof vest. Dunn's attorneys said Lairmore was "very heavily armed" and with a group of law enforcement officers, in addition to wearing the bulletproof vest. "If that vest ... is going to keep you safe from military rifle fire, it is certainly going to keep you safe from a sandwich," Shroff said.
November 6, 2025 at 10:20 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
www.texastribune.org/2025/11/05/t...
As of Wednesday, Texans still haven’t seen any November SNAP benefits, which could take days to roll out. “It’s not just numbers,” Wark said. “It’s actual people with lives, people with mouths… it’s people who have jobs…who have children, and I think that really gets lost on politicians.”
November 6, 2025 at 8:57 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
What an insane thing to say on the record lmao www.wired.com/story/tinder...
November 4, 2025 at 8:27 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
Listening to my yearning playlist and feeling like open.spotify.com/playlist/1YK...
Headline: Woman says 'I love this song' after every song on her own playlist. Below is a smiling woman with headphones on.
October 31, 2025 at 11:33 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
A few interesting wrinkles in this piece: a) at what point has a woman posted her man too much? b) what is the purpose of posting a partner if not for the external validation of strangers? www.vogue.com/article/is-h...
It’s not just in these women’s imaginations—audiences are icked out by seeing too much boyfriend content, myself included, it seems (as indicated by my liberal use of the mute button). When author and British Vogue contributor Stephanie Yeboah hard-launched her boyfriend on social media, she lost hundreds of followers. “Even if we were still together, I wouldn’t post them here. There is something cringey and embarrassing about constantly posting your partner these days,” she tells me, adding that, “there is part of me that would also feel guilty for sharing my partner constantly—especially when we know the dating landscape is really bad at the moment. I wouldn’t want to be boastful.”
October 30, 2025 at 6:15 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
We keep us safe 🫡
But Grambo — bearded, bespectacled and often wearing a cap that displays his veteran status — is undaunted. He believes that ICE's increased enforcement measures are illegal and immoral. He feels a responsibility to protect the significant percentage of Latino immigrants who reside in Southeast Baltimore. "The 10 minutes I can sit there and soak up their [ICE agents'] time is 10 minutes that they're not snatching my neighbor," he said. "I'm not obstructing justice. I'm alerting the community to organize a spot protest." One key source is a woman who spends her days strolling through the neighborhood — a professional dog walker. "We can't be complacent anymore," said Allie Lieske, who owns Bmore Best Buds pet care company. "We're using our white privilege to protect others. Doing something simple like just standing there makes a difference."
October 29, 2025 at 7:23 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
Shameful. 30,000 people who will need to find a free way to make ends meet while their employer makes billions www.cnbc.com/2025/10/27/a...
Amazon is expected to begin informing employees of the layoffs via email Tuesday morning, the person said. The company plans to lay off as many as 30,000 staffers across its corporate workforce, according to Reuters, which first reported the news. Amazon declined to comment. Amazon is the nation's second-largest private employer, with more than 1.54 million staffers globally as of the end of the second quarter. That figure is primarily made up of its warehouse workforce. It has roughly 350,000 corporate employees.
October 28, 2025 at 12:46 AM
jb4nay.bsky.social
Raising required scores to graduate without supporting schools is so foolish wapo.st/47ETGqG
Diane Cooper-Gould, vice president of strategy for the Fairfax County Special Education PTA, said the higher cut scores will affect every family in Virginia public schools. It feels like the new changes are "designed for the system to fail," she said, because the state isn't giving schools money for more staffing or materials to help get students on track to improve their scores on the exams. "When you implement a massive change like this but you do not give school systems any notice or any support or any funding to support that change, it is inevitable that the students and the system will fall on its face," she said.
October 27, 2025 at 12:12 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
The hypocrisy is so blatant
The TEA is reviewing more than 350 complaints against teachers accused of making inappropriate comments online about Kirk. "While all educators are held to a high standard of professionalism, there is a difference between comments made in poor taste and those that call for and incite further violence - the latter of which is clearly unacceptable," Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath said in a statement to The Texas Tribune. Each time Cain posted about Brookreson, she said it returned a flood of hateful rhetoric to her inbox. "I have gotten everything from [death] threats in my Facebook Messenger all the way to I should not be allowed to teach children," she said. "There are almost no words to describe how I feel. I was gutted." Screenshots shared with Houston Public Media show messages from strangers threatening to show up to her school and calling her a "worthless waste of air." Brookreson admitted she is scared.
October 26, 2025 at 6:52 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
Sensational
You often describe Stavoy's World as an "anti-incel" podcast. What does that mean to you? There's a weird mean-spiritedness amongst young male losers that is harming them. I only say that because I was a young male loser. It took me until pretty late in life, well into college, to even have a little confidence and start dating. I think about what would've happened to me at 17 if there was somebody being like, "If you're mean to girls and you're racist, they'll have to fuck." I would've been like, "Nice. I guess I'm racist now. That seems so much easier than believing in myself and becoming a good person."
October 25, 2025 at 6:23 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
So.Gay: You talked online about someone who said no, an executive who didn’t get your artistry. How do you keep going even in the face of adversity? Madison Rose: I think rejection in this industry and rejection in general, in life, is important. We’re gonna take it as little, mini pockets of grief. I ask, how do you process grief? First steps, denial plus anger, it’s like “okay, well go f**k yourself executive” or “I’m right, you’re wrong.” Then the bargaining is actually a bargain with yourself of “am I what that person told me I was?” Figuring out if they’re wrong, but maybe there’s something right in that because hey, this person’s farther along in their career. Some of that self-bargaining can actually be helpful because sometimes you do receive criticism that is constructive, but it’s also knowing yourself well enough to know when it is and when it’s just pointless. If you’re meeting someone who has no idea what they’re looking at, what are you to do?
October 25, 2025 at 1:44 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
Amazing lol. Sue these people off the face of the earth arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...
Scrapers shocked by Reddit lawsuit Reddit accused three companies of conspiring with Perplexity—”a Lithuanian data scraper” called Oxylabs UAB, “a former Russian botnet” known as AWMProxy, and SerpApi, a Texas company that sells services for scraping search engines. Oxylabs “is explicit that its scraping service is meant to circumvent Google’s technological measures,” Reddit alleged, pointing to an Oxylabs’ website called “How to Scrape Google Search Results.” “We strongly disagree with Reddit’s allegations and intend to vigorously defend ourselves in court,” SerpApi’s spokesperson said. “In the eight years we’ve been in business, SerpApi has always operated on the right side of the law. As stated on our website, ‘The crawling and parsing of public data is protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. We value freedom of speech tremendously.’”
October 25, 2025 at 1:16 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
Absolutely insane
Baltimore County Public Schools has a three-year, $2.6 million contract with Omnilert that ends in 2027. The technology searches image frames from 7,000 school cameras for people and the objects surrounding them. If it detects a gun, it alerts principals and safety assistants inside the building, as well as security staff in the school system's central office. School system officials and an Omnilert spokesperson said the technology worked as intended.
October 23, 2025 at 9:35 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
Incredible
The White House account has drawn only around 12,000 followers. More than 100,000 users have the account blocked, according to Bluesky block-tracking site Clearsky, making the White House the second most blocked Bluesky user. Vice president JD Vance, who registered in June, still holds the title of the most blocked account, with more than 166,000 users blocking him. The White House did not respond to a request for comment from WIRED, but the White House official brushed off the criticism. “That’s fine. Nobody can ever say we’re not attempting to be transparent or attempting to communicate to as many people as possible. That’s the name of the game.”
October 22, 2025 at 9:28 AM