Jonathan Forney (JB 🕵🏾)
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jb4nay.bsky.social
Jonathan Forney (JB 🕵🏾)
@jb4nay.bsky.social
440 followers 540 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
Absolutely sensational lead. I haven’t been this sat in a while
www.vulture.com/article/im-b...
Last year at the Oscars, Paul Tazewell deservedly won Best Costume Design for Wicked, and he could very well do so again this year for the film's sequel, Wicked: For Good. If he manages this feat, it will be due to the gloriously detailed costumes of the Munchkins, Glinda the Good's slew of artisanal pink gowns, and the Tin Man's silver suit, which is simultaneously beautiful and eerie. It will also, technically, be for Elphaba Thropp's bulky, itchy-looking, ragged greige cardigan, which she puts on to make love. And that will be something that both Tazewell and I have to live with.
November 28, 2025 at 3:33 AM
jb4nay.bsky.social
When you can’t double or triple your initial investment and a $20K price cut isn’t enticing enough 😢 www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/11/...
Home prices are still 50% higher than they were just five years ago, but some sellers who bought in the last few years are facing potential losses. Roughly 15% of the homes that were delisted in September were at risk of selling at a loss, the highest share in five years, according to Redfin. "The frequency of delistings is keeping inventory tighter than it looks on paper," said Asad Khan, a senior economist at Redfin. "When tens of thousands of homeowners pull their homes off the market rather than accept a low offer, it effectively reduces the supply of homes that are actually available for buyers. That keeps sale prices elevated." Some sellers are lowering prices — even multiple times. The typical price cut is roughly $10,000, but multiple reductions are becoming more common as homes take longer to sell, according to Zillow. The typical listing saw $25,000 in cumulative price cuts in October, matching the largest discounts Zillow has ever recorded.
November 27, 2025 at 9:24 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
She lit this nigga up lmao
Keating - during a monologue where he questions his desire for validation from white men and admits he feels dehumanized - Keating tells him to think less. Instead of pushing back on this, the way he might with the other Black characters he interacts with like Bernard or Chloe, Wyeth is grateful for Keating's lack of curiosity. In a separate incident, Wyeth expresses to Keating that he isn't obsessed with the white gaze after his Black friend, Bernard, accuses him of acting white for referencing the French landscape painter Eugène Boudin. It's a clear moment of insecurity for Wyeth; he does not want to be viewed as considering whiteness in everything he does. Keating responds that he doesn't know what Wyeth is talking about; he's completely disinterested in Wyeth's bid for recognition and understanding. This doesn't create conflict but instead pushes Wyeth to criticize himself. It's telling of Wyeth's attitude toward whiteness throughout the novel - that its authority is so total that it can never be incorrect. Despite this, the novel treats the painting as if it is revolutionary. The two Black characters, Bernard and Chloe, are so moved by it they weep. Keating, his muse, finally feels seen in the work, as he appears to himself. But it does not require any intellectual energy for a white man to look at a literal image of himself looking pensive and think, Ah, there I go. It's a self-indulgent conclusion that does not reveal anything but Wyeth's psychological bind. Whiteness is what makes him feel dehumanized, but it is also what frees him. It is the nexus of his desire, and yet he is ashamed of it. The only concrete achievement here is that Keating feels understood, which for Wyeth is the greatest gift of all. To be fair, it's a romance, and Keating is the object of his affection, but the novel has spent so much time on shoring up the primacy and innocence of whiteness that the ending is comically flat. All this so his boyfriend could be less apathetic.
November 27, 2025 at 3:41 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
Felt www.esckey.co/the-death-of...
There are so many examples for what success might look like in this new age, and that can be overwhelming. You don’t have to figure it all out right now. In fact, it’s better if you “build in public,” as sometimes insufferable product designers like to say. But it’s true. Keep an open mind. Experiment. Iterate. Write a lot. Take an entrepreneurial business class. Study up on the new media models. Follow people who are killing it in different ways. Learn from the best. I need you — we need you — to try and prove there’s a way forward. Because we need your voices. It won’t be easy. It will be even harder if you, too, grew up working class and with intersecting marginalized identities. You’re going to work harder than your peers, whose privileges the world will mistake for merit, as has long been the case. I wish I could change that. I can’t. But I also know if anyone can do it, young writer, it is you. I need you to believe that, too. I’ll be cheering you on.
November 26, 2025 at 3:27 AM
jb4nay.bsky.social
Until Republicans use their position to check him, Trump will keep trying to weaponize government agencies against people he disagrees with wapo.st/4oVyTW1
'This is what dictators do," Schumer wrote in a social media post. Experts on military law said the inquiry was almost unprecedented. The Pentagon has recalled retired service members after discovering they committed illegal conduct while still on active duty. But that is far different than investigating someone for expressing an opinion after retirement, said Geoffrey Corn, a former Army judge advocate general who now teaches at Texas Tech University. "We've never dealt with this," Corn said. This is really chilling."
November 25, 2025 at 4:42 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
A Signal chat was accessed by the FBI for alleged criminal activity they can't name using a method they won't disclose. Absolutely insane stuff www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
“Observing immigration court hearings is a legal and non-violent act, unlike the ICE abductions we have witnessed regularly for months outside of the courtrooms,” Lander said. “The mission of courtwatch is to provide transparency and ensure people are not disappeared without due process – surveillance and intimidation by Trump’s corrupted Justice Department won’t stop us from showing up to protect our neighbors and the rule of law.” “Basic civic participation is not a terrorist threat,” added Dr Ryan Shapiro, executive director of Property of the People, in a statement. “The FBI treating it like one is yet another example of the Trump regime’s profound contempt for even the most rudimentary of democratic freedoms.” Discussions in the chat included “instructions on where to go and what to say in order to gain access to federal courtrooms”, with the FBI noting that members of the group were told which floors to visit and to tell officials they were there to observe, with statements like: “I’m due at a 9:30 hearing.” The FBI added: “‘Courtwatch’ is a private/invite only, encrypted Signal application group chat created by the identified [individual]. In private encrypted online chats, the identified [individual] is known to instruct protest participants to use violence against [law enforcement].” The FBI declined to comment in response to a detailed list of questions. The DHS also declined to comment, referring questions to the FBI. ICE did not respond to requests for comment. The memo did not provide any further details about the individual or their alleged past calls for violence and offered no specifics or evidence to explain why the FBI characterized them as “anarchist violent extremists”. The courtwatch efforts have been non-violent, and the FBI did not respond to an inquiry seeking specific examples of violence and did not answer questions about whether law enforcement had ongoing access to the private group.
November 22, 2025 at 9:53 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
Nice recap of the National Book Awards www.usatoday.com/story/entert...
If we are to do this work of language, we have an obligation to stand in opposition to any force, including those enacted by our own governments, that if left unchecked would happily decimate every principle of free expression and connection that we've come here to celebrate," El Akkad said.
November 21, 2025 at 1:38 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
truthout.org/articles/the...
Philanthropy must reckon with the fact that we need to invest in movement and community-based journalism, not just in the short term, but as a long-term project, with a willingness to trust those of us doing the work. It hasn’t been enough to fund narrative shift for a year or two and then switch to another strategy. By needing to seek funding month after month and year after year, newsroom leaders must shift precious resources and energy away from creative visioning, supporting our staff, and serving our communities. Rigorous, principled, independent nonprofit and community-based news is an essential part of progressive movement building. Information and accessible, non-pay-walled reporting that covers authoritarianism while also uplifting the solutions and multiracial coalitions resisting fascists are a critical part of the work. What many philanthropic organizations call “narrative change,” we call survival, justice, and power. Since — unlike our mainstream counterparts — we’re not funded by billionaires, corporate sponsors, or big-business ads, we need social justice-focused philanthropy to play a role in allowing these essential functions to continue and grow. Supporting these efforts is a critical component of supporting resistance to fascism. While we rigorously engage in grassroots fundraising and will always continue to do so, commitments from larger funders are often what makes long-term planning possible. Progressive foundations have an opportunity to recognize their unique responsibility here: They hold a special ability to resource media in a sustained way, allowing us to sculpt strategies that help fuel movement futures.
November 20, 2025 at 2:18 AM
jb4nay.bsky.social
Bookshop dot org mention
After navigating through six pop-up windows, you, too, can browse the new Shein books section, where you can (reminder: “can,” not “should”) buy a used copy of The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz, for $10, The Let Them Theory, by Mel Robbins, for $22, and Snoop Dogg’s cookbook From Crook to Cook for $10. Rounding out the array of titles are Twilight, 1984, Colleen Hoover’s Verity, and various editions of the Bible. I am heartened to hear that literature is booming in the U.S., but for the newly biblio-curious, I’d personally recommend shopping for books at a store with fewer labor-law violations. I understand that a $5.63 copy of Where’s Bluey is tempting, but maybe try Bookshop first?
November 19, 2025 at 10:37 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
I don't want to normalize violence or threats of it, but this is who conservatives are throwing their entire careers behind to defend lmao www.nbcnews.com/politics/con...
Asked Sunday evening about Greene’s claim that his comments are putting her life in danger, Trump told reporters: “I don’t think her life is in danger. I don’t think, frankly, I don’t think anybody cares about her." She also said Saturday that she was receiving threats after Trump criticized her on social media and said he was withdrawing his endorsement from her. Greene said private security firms were contacting her with warnings about her safety “as a hot bed of threats against me are being fueled and egged on by the most powerful man in the world.” Greene has been on the other side of similar accusations in the past. In 2021, then-Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., received death threats after he supported the bipartisan infrastructure bill. He told The Detroit News that the threats came after Greene shared the names and phone numbers of Upton and a dozen other House Republicans who supported the legislation.
November 18, 2025 at 3:39 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
I think a lot of this discourse showed me just how few people completely read/engage with work before commenting or making videos on it www.vogue.co.uk/article/the-...
Another common response to my article was an immediate rush to add caveats to the main question. People insisted that having a boyfriend had the potential to be embarrassing only when a man doesn’t meet certain criteria, or isn’t good to you. Whether that’s true or not is irrelevant. The need to identify exceptions is one way of evading conversation about meaningful change within heterosexual dynamics, and the mess of modern dating. But it can’t be all men, and somehow not your man – that is delusional. Dating fatigue is real, and to me at least, reflects a wider issue of misogyny in the dating space. We should be focused on pushing for better – that’s a shared fight, not a private one. What’s funny in all of this is how much I’ve been accused of demonising people for seeking love. That couldn’t be further from the truth. So many of us, myself included, yearn for companionship. I am not completely hopeless; part of me wants to believe things can get better. I wonder whether the original piece touched such a nerve because our obsession with straight coupledom – what it means, the ways in which it’s for so long been positioned as aspirational – conceals a lot of the unsavoury things we’d rather not address, mostly because they’re too sticky and complicated to fix all at once.
November 18, 2025 at 3:21 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
Incredible
The Austin American-Statesman staff directory page. A single entry is shown: Austin Sanders, public safety reporter
November 18, 2025 at 2:28 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
Incredible quote attribution lol. If I'm not quoted like this, I'll send it back
“It’s an incredible technological advance,” said Orley Taylor, a professor emeritus at the University of Kansas who goes by Chip and has spent more time studying the migration than any other living researcher.
November 17, 2025 at 4:22 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
An important part that often gets left out of affordable housing conversations www.arlnow.com/2025/11/10/r...
During a discussion accompanying the Nov. 6 presentation, Housing Commission member Bryan Coleman circled back on those earning 60% to 80% of median income, who typically are ineligible for some government financial help than those at 60% or less receive. “We’re not really having a larger conversation around general affordability for individuals that are living over than 60% AMI threshold, who would not qualify for a lot of the great programs we have,” Coleman said. County officials and others need to “identify where to target and try to think of more creative tools” to “make a dent in this,” Coleman said.
November 17, 2025 at 3:09 AM
jb4nay.bsky.social
#booksky www.vogue.in/content/in-d...
Sometimes, my unread books stare at me from the shelves accusingly. Like many readers, I, too, feel the pressure of an imbalanced purchasing-to-reading ratio. It can feel wrong not to finish the books we already have before buying more. When I discuss these complicated feelings with psychologist Ruchi Ruuh, she tells me, “The unread pile of books shouldn’t be guilt-inducing but reassuring; proof that we have access to thoughts and stories we might love. Bookshelves have always reflected our inner world. They show what subjects spark our curiosity and what ideas we identify with. Owning a book can be as emotionally satisfying as reading it.”
November 17, 2025 at 2:50 AM
jb4nay.bsky.social
What an insane way to spin "AI showing our content in a way that we can't monetize" digiday.com/media/forbes...
Forbes subscription prices vary by plan: $9.99 for monthly digital access to its magazine and digital newsletters; $74.99 for yearly access. Annual access to both digital and magazine is $94.99 for the first year, according to Forbes. Subscriptions are moving to the center of more traditionally free-to-access publisher revenue strategies as they look to reduce future reliance on open-web digital advertising, as zero-click search eats into programmatic revenue. But converting readers isn’t easy when willingness to pay for digital subscriptions has stagnated, per the Reuters Institute’s 2025 Digital News Report.
November 14, 2025 at 8:23 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
Incredible variety.com/2025/digital...
"A lot of these guys are very thin-skinned, and I think the gravest mistake of my career was when I had [Musk's ex- partner] Grimes on my show and she talked about how buff I was, and then I talked about how Tesla was shit," Piker says. "That man has never lived it down." Grimes wasn't exaggerating. Piker is hard to miss with his muscular 6-foot-4 frame. He works out one to two hours a day, a resimen that includes naving hackethall But as election night swung Mamdanis way, Piker wasn't keeping a low profile but toasting the millennial mayor-elect with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the Brooklyn Paramount victory party. There he offered no mercy for Cuomo. "What happened? I thought the 'Hasan loves 9/11' was a successful campaign strategy?" he said in a video that ran on his YouTube channel. "Andrew Cuomo, fuck you. Suck my dick. . »
November 14, 2025 at 5:44 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
I'm sorry. She did what now????
Hannah Hildalgo's box score for Notre Dame vs Akron: 44 pts (16-25 FG), 9 rebounds, 4 assists, and 16 steals
November 14, 2025 at 4:46 PM
jb4nay.bsky.social
All of these students and faculty came to argue against this and the absurdly vaguely worded changes were still unanimously approved by the board
www.texastribune.org/2025/11/13/t...
Texas A&M University System regents unanimously voted Thursday to approve a new policy that will require each campus president to sign off on any course that could be seen as advocating for "race and gender ideology or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity." The policy defines race ideology as "attempts to shame a particular race or ethnicity" or anything that "promotes activism on issues related to race or ethnicity rather than academic instruction. Gender ideology is defined as "a concept of self-assessed gender identity replacing, and disconnected from, the biological category of sex."
November 14, 2025 at 11:58 AM
jb4nay.bsky.social
National school bus driver shortage persists, despite recent gains www.newsfromthestates.com/article/nati...
During and after the pandemic, many bus drivers retired, left the workforce or in some cases, died. Districts across the country have had to scramble to find someone to take the wheel — be it substitute teachers, administrators or even parents. The number of bus drivers decreased by 15% between September 2019 and September 2023, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Private school bus contractors now account for 38% of the nation’s pupil transportation services, according to the National School Transportation Association. Other school transportation options, such as ride-hailing services, have helped fill the gap in some places. But roughly half of all U.S. K–12 students rely on a school bus to get to school.
November 14, 2025 at 3:52 AM
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