I Just Got Into Harvard. My MAGA Grandparents’ 6-Word Reaction To My Acceptance Devastated Me. (huffpost.com)

Adults of America, you need to wake up. Allowing your political biases to create a future where children are treated with hostility while pursuing higher education is dangerous, no matter what political party you belong to. This is not just about Harvard. Or about me. It’s about the country we are building — one where young people are punished for thinking, dreaming and believing differently than the generation before them.

We are not your culture war – we are your kids. We are the future.

I really feel the emotion of this article, to an extent. My son is a Harvard alum, and his grandparents, on both sides, are Trump Republicans. My wife and our two sons are definitely the liberal wing of the family. So, we understand the feeling that arises when Republican family members ask about Harvard, although we’ve never been asked something as direct as “Harvard? Isn’t that a liberal school?”.

I’m proud of my family, though, because, unlike the author’s family, they have never abandoned what they understand about Harvard – it’s reputation for academic excellence. Every member of our family, including the Trumpers, has been outwardly proud of my son for his Harvard education. Many of them even travelled to Cambridge to attend his graduation last year (battling a torrential downpour in the process!).

I hope that pride continues to hold as the university battles Trump’s attacks on higher education. My dream is that their pride in my son actually grows into an understanding of academia and the importance of its continued independence. He’s in graduate school at M.I.T. now and has committed to a career in academia, so it doesn’t seem like an unreasonable ask. We’ll see.

The New Chair Arrives (scalzi.com)

There are not many physical things I actively covet in this world, but for a while now I’ve wanted a classic Eames chair.

I’ve wanted a Eames lounge chair ever since I first sat in one as a kid. We stayed in a condo owned by a friend of my dad. There was an Eames in the family room, and I think I ended up sleeping in it more than one night. I can still feel that chair decades (4+) later. Yeah, I want one but won’t be getting one anytime soon.

The Future of SCOTUSblog (scotusblog.com)

SCOTUSblog is delighted to announce that it has been acquired by Dispatch Media, Inc., and will round out The Dispatch’s coverage of the Supreme Court and the rule of law.

Back when I first starting blogging in 2001-ish, with my ill-fated Promote the Progress patent law blog, SCOTUSblog quickly became a model for legal blogging. The site has a long track record of consistently delivering current, high quality content. It’s weird to see this announcement that SCOTUSblog has been acquired by Dispatch Media, which has the following description in the title its main site, The Dispatch: Unbiased News & Informed Conservative Analysis. SCOTUSblog certainly has every right to choose its own future, but I hate to think of SCOTUSblog content as either conservative or liberal. The Founding Manifesto for The Dispatch does a nice job explaining that its focus is more on conservatism and not on the Republican Party, which helps but I’ll still be reading new SCOTUSblog content through a new lens.

OpenAI Adds Shopping to ChatGPT in a Challenge to Google (wired.com)

There is one major difference between shopping through ChatGPT versus Google, for now: The results you see in OpenAI searches are not paid placements, but organic results. “They are not ads,” says Fry. “They are not sponsored.”

ChatGPT is slowly eating Google Search, the way a bird slowly, then suddenly, eats an alligator.