Matt Pearce
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mattdpearce.com
Matt Pearce
@mattdpearce.com
55K followers 1.2K following 1.8K posts
May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house. Opinions are my own (but they are correct)

https://mattdpearce.substack.com
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Reposted by Matt Pearce
aedwardslevy.bsky.social
congratulations to this large, damp state
January 9, 2026 at 4:43 PM
Reposted by Matt Pearce
benjicardoso.bsky.social
In conclusion, the news is a land of contrasts
January 9, 2026 at 4:19 PM
mattdpearce.com
gotta hear both sides with respect to shooting poets in the head
ronfilipkowski.bsky.social Ron Filipkowski @ronfilipkowski.bsky.social · 18h
New CBS News anchor Tony Dokoupil closing the broadcast from MN last night.
January 9, 2026 at 4:12 PM
Reposted by Matt Pearce
daveweigel.bsky.social
Think about the mindset, and the expectation of immunity, of someone who texts this to friends.
January 9, 2026 at 1:31 PM
Reposted by Matt Pearce
ericvb.bsky.social
May we all walk in this world with the moral courage of Jafar Panahi
variety.com/2026/film/gl...
What is your reaction to Donald Trump saying, “I pray and hope that 2026 will be the year that we make Iran great again” and his pledge to strike Iran if protesters are killed, which they have been? Do you fear U.S. intervention in Iran? This regime has fallen already. And, as I have said before, the people who are carrying out the protests in the streets, they want to make that happen. Of course, international support can make a difference. But until people themselves decide to do something or not, nothing is going to happen. Nothing is going to make any difference. It has to come within, from within the country, by the will of people. So you do not feel the need for U.S. intervention in Iran. Correct? You do not seem to understand. Let me say it again: Until people have the will to change something from within, nothing will be able to make that change. It has to be by the will of the people from within. You have repeatedly stated your desire and resolution to return to Iran as soon as your activities related to the promotion of this film allow you to do that. But given the escalating violence against protesters and dissidents in your country, and also given the fact that you have been given a prison sentence, are you having second thoughts? These developments make absolutely no difference in my decision. As I also said during my interviews in Cannes, it doesn’t matter what will happen to me as a result of this film: I have to go back to Iran. And I did go back to Iran [after Cannes]. I am the kind of person who needs to be in his country. I need to breathe there and work there. And even if they want to go ahead with that prison sentence, they can go ahead. Nothing will change my mind about going back. The real question is: why wouldn’t we want to stay in Iran? Why should it be us, the people, leaving?Whereas it is the regime and its representatives that seem entitled to stay there. We are entitled to our own country. It’s the regime that has to leave and go. Because it has fallen.
January 9, 2026 at 3:42 PM
Reposted by Matt Pearce
reichlinmelnick.bsky.social
NEW: Data released by ICE shows that virtually the entire growth of detention in the last few months has been among people with no criminal record at all - no prior convictions (no matter how minor) and no pending criminal charges.
Chart showing "Detention Population, Among Those Arrested in the interior, by Criminal Record, May 2019 through January 27, 2026. There are three lines on the graph: prior conviction, pending criminal charges, and no criminal record. from 2019 through January 2025, "prior conviction" is by far the highest, followed by pending charges much lower down and "no criminal record" the lowest. During the Biden admin, very few people arrested by ICE in the interior and detained had no criminal record. Beginning in January 2025, all three lines jump, but the highest spike is among those with no criminal records. By September, that has become the single largest. Since that point, there are now thousands more people in detention with no criminal record than people with prior convictions.
January 9, 2026 at 12:55 AM
mattdpearce.com
Ah oops.

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
The White House excluded Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard from months of planning to oust Nicolas Maduro because her previous opposition to military action in Venezuela cast doubt on her willingness to support the operation, people familiar with the matter said. The move to cut Gabbard out of the meetings was so well-known that some White House aides joked that the acronym of her title, DNI, stood for "Do Not Invite," according to three of the people. They asked not to be identified discussing private conversations. A White House official denied there was any such joke. As a Democratic congresswoman in 2019, Gabbard said the US needs to "stay out" of Venezuela, and as recently as last month she railed against "warmongers" pushing the US into conflict.
January 8, 2026 at 9:19 PM
mattdpearce.com
I love when my productivity increases 5% while my pay goes down slightly.

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
The productivity report showed output in the third quarter increased an annualized 5.4% after advancing at a 5.2% rate in the prior three months. Hours worked rose 0.5% in the third quarter, while hourly compensation, unadjusted for inflation, increased an annualized 2.9%. After adjusting for inflation, worker compensation declined at a 0.2% pace.
January 8, 2026 at 4:43 PM
Reposted by Matt Pearce
jcollins.bsky.social
The state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension says they've been informed by the FBI that US DOJ has said FBI will solely lead the investigation into Renee Nicole Good's killing by a federal officer. State investigators no longer have access to "case materials, scene evidence/investigative interviews"
January 8, 2026 at 4:03 PM
Reposted by Matt Pearce
jamellebouie.net
kind of darkly funny that "gender studies" is the stereotypical "useless degree" because gender studies will help you understand a large and important chunk of the current psychosis in american life
January 6, 2026 at 2:00 AM
Reposted by Matt Pearce
pjmaciak.bsky.social
The newspaper of record of my entire childhood would literally rather die than pay its unionized workers the wages and benefits that the actual Supreme Court of the United States of America decided were owed to them.
producertory.bsky.social Tory Wegerski @producertory.bsky.social · 2d
NEW: Publishers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announce they are shutting down the newspaper on May 3, 2026.

Hours ago, the Supreme Court of the US declined to extend a stay on a court order for the paper to pay its journalists following the end of a 3-year strike.
Wednesday, January 7, 2026 Post-Gazette to Publish Final Edition and Cease Operations May 3, 2026 Block Communications, Inc. and the Block family are saddened to announce that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette plans to publish its final edition and cease operations on May 3, 2026. Over the past 20 years, Block Communications has lost more than $350 million in cash operating the Post-Gazette. Despite those efforts, the realities facing local journalism make continued cash losses at this scale no longer sustainable. Recent court decisions would require the Post-Gazette to operate under a 2014 labor contract that imposes on the Post-Gazette outdated and inflexible operational practices unsuited for today’s local journalism. We deeply regret the impact this decision will have on Pittsburgh and the surrounding region. The Block family is proud of the service the Post-Gazette has provided to Pittsburgh for nearly a century and will exit with their dignity intact. ###
January 7, 2026 at 7:21 PM
mattdpearce.com
Virginia Woolf did, in fact, have a room of one’s own — and her own pack of delicious Lucky Strikes.
quoproquid.bsky.social QuoProQuid @quoproquid.bsky.social · 3d
reading moby-dick and getting brainwashed by Big Spermaceti
"I like reading because there are no ads in books" Oh, my sweet summer child. There's plenty of ads in them. Brands pay good money to popular authors for product placement.
January 7, 2026 at 4:39 PM
Reposted by Matt Pearce
quoproquid.bsky.social
reading moby-dick and getting brainwashed by Big Spermaceti
"I like reading because there are no ads in books" Oh, my sweet summer child. There's plenty of ads in them. Brands pay good money to popular authors for product placement.
January 7, 2026 at 12:55 AM
mattdpearce.com
At long last, we are purging chauvinist Sparta propaganda from our beautiful agoras.
tamu-aaup.bsky.social AAUP Texas A&M-College Station Chapter @tamu-aaup.bsky.social · 3d
From an email to one of our faculty members....

Not even Plato can escape censorship at Texas A&M!
January 6, 2026 at 11:58 PM
Reposted by Matt Pearce
jbenmenachem.com
I assume not understanding what this is about is a sign that I’m using this site the appropriate amount
sarahjeong.bsky.social sarah jeong @sarahjeong.bsky.social · 3d
that's a lot of power users gone because of dogpiling. christ
January 6, 2026 at 5:02 PM
Reposted by Matt Pearce
internethippo.bsky.social
The phone is for making posts like "the ass is the father of the legs" whereas the computer is for posts that include words like "inexorably"
January 6, 2026 at 5:02 PM
Reposted by Matt Pearce
colombiadocs.bsky.social
We are looking at uncharted territory here where the acting Archivist of the United States is poised to become the acting head of a foreign government.
January 5, 2026 at 6:27 PM
mattdpearce.com
The Verso store books write themselves at this point.
atrupar.com Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 4d
Stephen Miller: "What the president said is true. The United States of America is running Venezuela ... by definition we are in charge because we have the US military stationed outside the country. We set the terms and conditions ... for them to do commerce, they need our permission."
January 6, 2026 at 1:13 AM
Reposted by Matt Pearce
joshgerstein.bsky.social
DOUBLE CHECKED THIS ONE: Trump DOJ sides with journalists' union & against @pittsburghPG in #SCOTUS fight over health care benefits. Doc: www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...
PG Publishing opp
www.documentcloud.org
January 5, 2026 at 10:13 PM
mattdpearce.com
I wrote about a budding idea to replace meetings with AI.

mattdpearce.substack.com/p/what-if-ev...
What if everybody argued at the same time?
AI's flawed experiment in deliberative democracy.
mattdpearce.substack.com
January 5, 2026 at 10:06 PM
mattdpearce.com
I don’t understand the appeal of making prediction market wagers. Is it my goal in life to transfer part of my wealth to inside traders?
January 5, 2026 at 9:58 PM
Reposted by Matt Pearce
cenguild.bsky.social
We are proud to announce the formation of the Chemical & Engineering News Guild. We represent staffers across the editorial and operations teams at C&EN. 1/6
Image with a red, spiked circle and white chemistry flask with a red ampersand in the middle above text that reads, “Chemical & Engineering News is forming a union,” in all caps
January 5, 2026 at 5:16 PM
Reposted by Matt Pearce
jwherrman.bsky.social
Wrote about an obvious and yet profoundly underappreciated aspect of the AI boom: its total narrative capture by Elon Musk's X nymag.com/intelligence...
The reality of the AI industry is far larger than a subculture on X with hundreds of billions of dollars flowing into physical infrastructure, reshaping jobs, and deploying into products used by billions of people. But that makes X's capture of the AI conversation all the more notable. Much as Twitter long ago captured, amplified, and distorted elite conversation in media, in sports, in parts of finance, in left politics, and more recently in right politics, the world's understanding of what's going on in Silicon Valley right now - the hype and the doom and the bubble and the progress - is first processed through the strange culture and incentives of X, which is now owned by estranged OpenAI co-founder, Google antagonist, and xAI founder Elon Musk. It has been merged into xAI, where the in-house chatbot occasionally confuses itself with Hitler. When the history of this period in tech is eventually written, it will be composed of, among other things, a whole lot of threads and replies from blue checks on X. Then, of course, there's the Musk factor. The fact of his ownership creates obvious risks for all of his competitors, who rely on his platform to supply the vibes they need to help keep their companies, and the AI boom in general, going. It's worth remembering that, back before he decided to purchase it and let it drive him nuts, Twitter was, to Musk, a platform with clear functional utility, a social network that helped make him wildly famous and use that fame to convince thousands of retail traders to buy into Tesla, the company that made him the richest man in the world. Even if we assume, against all reason, that Musk won't leverage this unusual sort of power over all the competitors gathered on his platform, X's influence over them and how they're seen by the rest of the world is undeniable. Along with "AI Twitter," some of the other communities thriving on Musk era X include MAGA guys and crypto guys, meaning that the background vibe of the primary gathering place for the industry that's trying to remake the world is quite a bit more conservative and mercenary than it otherwise might have been, and while the primary factor in the public's deep skepticism of where Al is going is clearly fear about labor, association with polarizing Muskian politics probably doesn't help assuage ambient fears about job loss and surveillance. (One important consequence of having the AI elite gathered on X is that their media diets are now substantially made up of one another's posts, effusive and dismissive responses to their oren posts, and standard "For You" page Musk-era algo-slop. It's hard to overstate how thoroughly their information diets are influenced by their timelines, and you can get a pretty good idea of what those look like by jacking into AI Twitter yourself.)
January 5, 2026 at 2:56 PM
Reposted by Matt Pearce
mobydickatsea.bsky.social
spiritually feasting upon some unearthly reminiscence
January 5, 2026 at 5:47 AM
mattdpearce.com
In the words of George W. Bush, that was some weird shit.
January 3, 2026 at 5:53 PM