“For the second time in as many days, Meta has been found liable in court for negligence. On Wednesday, a jury in Los Angeles decided that Meta and YouTube, owned by Google, did not warn users of harms related to constant use of their platforms. That followed a jury verdict on Tuesday in New Mexico, fining Meta $375 million for failing to protect adolescent users from predatory adults on its social media platforms Facebook and Instagram. You can look at these rulings a couple of ways. Meta made $60 billion in revenue just last quarter: $375 million is about half a day. Extrapolating that fine to the entire U.S. population, it’s an entire quarter of revenue, which is significant, but that would take a long time and this federal government, which just appointed Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to a council on AI policy, isn’t about to make that happen.” (03/26/26)
“The state’s legislature, echoing Trump, could oust a judge not for misconduct such as accepting a bribe, but for her opinions from the bench.” (03/26/26)
“We may have power-hungry artificial intelligence operations to thank for the fact that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a permit for the ‘first commercial reactor’ that it has approved for construction ‘in nearly a decade. It’s also ‘the first approval for a non-light water reactor in more than 40 years.’ … TerraPower subsidiary US SFR Owner has one more regulatory hurdle. (SFR: sodium-cooled fast reactor.) It must apply separately for an operating license before the projected 345-megawatt electric plant, once built, can begin operating. After that, the way will have been paved for more such plants.” (03/26/26)
“I think one of the key challenges of living in an era of internet alienation and rising authoritarianism is finding the will to be sincere, to embrace a certain unvarnished and earnest form of expression in a world where affect and posturing predominate. This means foregoing an aura of coolness or detachment in favor of emotionalism and vulnerability. It means resisting the impulse to cruelty and snark and instead opting for restraint and compassion. And it means being unembarrassed and authentic.” (03/26/26)
“Far from cementing Israel’s regional and global standing, the war has accelerated its isolation. According to a June 2025 Pew Research Center survey, majorities in most of the 24 countries surveyed held unfavorable views of Israel, while confidence in Netanyahu remained low across nearly all regions. This shift is not limited to the Global South. It reflects a broader erosion of Israel’s legitimacy, even among traditional allies. In response, Israeli political discourse has returned – almost instinctively – to the language of existential war. Even when Netanyahu attempts to revive earlier narratives about shaping a ‘new Middle East,’ the rhetoric repeatedly collapses back into warnings of annihilation. This reveals a deeper truth: within Israeli political thinking, the alternative to dominance is not coexistence, but destruction.” (03/26/26)
“I hate these people, I really do. When was the last time you actually thought a Democrat politician had your back on something? I mean, really had your best interest in mind, even if only in words and not deeds? I’ll wait. I can’t think of one. Maybe on 9/11, from the moment of the attack, through the spontaneous singing of God Bless America on the steps of the US Capitol, and for about a week after that. Then the wheels came off and they started to return to, well, themselves. They asked: ‘What did we do to deserve this attack?’ And it was off to the races ever since. How a party that actively roots against the best interests of the people who elect them, and enacts policies to harm them, manages to win elections is a mystery (I know people are into masochism, I just didn’t realize there were that many people into it).” (03/26/26)
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Ari Cohn
“An Instagram post isn’t a cigarette. A YouTube short isn’t a shot of whiskey. Social media platforms and the information, ideas, and entertainment they connect people to aren’t tangible items that inherently and invariably have physical impacts on the human body. No matter how you feel about social media, the minute we start treating speech as if it were just another physical product is the minute we hand the government the power to decide what we can read, watch, and say. That’s dangerous — and the First Amendment forbids it.” (03/25/26)
