John Faig

Happiest when innovating and asking why? Tweeting things of interest.

[John Faig @johnfaig]

Can't think of too many areas where employment grows because of #AI.

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

What if AI is actually creating more jobs than it is replacing?

The latest JOLTs data showed that US job openings surged by a massive 731,000 jobs in April.

Markets were expecting no change, resulting in the largest beat in JOLTs history.

As a result, available employment hit 7.6 million for the month, the highest since May 2024.

And, job openings in the professional and business services sector surged by a massive 668,000.

The labor market's bull case from AI is underpriced.

[Governor Newsom Press Office @GovPressOffice]

The Trump administration is DISMANTLING the network of buoys that help California monitor for major tsunamis and earthquakes.

Cool.

[Karen Vaites @karenvaites]

“We are admitting a cohort that cannot read at a college level and are pretending otherwise.”

Another college professor adds to the chorus of concern about student capacity.

In @chronicle:

“Six weeks into the term, I assigned my rhetoric and writing students a 20-page article. It was the same length I had assigned for five years and the same length I had read without complaint as an undergraduate a decade ago. Not one student finished it.

When I asked why, a student answered honestly: It was too long, and she kept losing track of what the paper was about. This was not a remedial class: These were students who had cleared the admissions process and written essays good enough to get them here. Yet a routine academic reading assignment had defeated them.

Every generation of professors has complained that their students cannot read. The lament is usually overblown, but data have caught up to anecdote, and what I am seeing in my classroom is no longer a hunch. There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing, and the academy is responding to it with improvisation and exhaustion rather than the structural overhaul it requires.

In February 2024, Adam Kotsko, who teaches in the Shimer Great Books School at North Central College, wrote in Slate that students who once handled 30 pages of reading per class meeting now seem “intimidated by anything over 10 pages and seem to walk away from readings of as little as 20 pages with no real understanding.” Crucially, he added that this is “not a matter of laziness on the part of the students” but of underlying skills they were never given a chance to build.

The Chronicle of Higher Education’s 2024 investigation found the same pattern across institutions as different as the Stevens Institute of Technology and Wellesley College, where the average SAT exceeds 1400. Nicholaus Gutierrez, an assistant professor at Wellesley, told The Chronicle that the baseline for what students consider a reasonable amount of work has dropped so noticeably that he has cut his readings accordingly; a 750-word essay now strikes many students as long. At Stevens, the science and technology studies associate professor Theresa MacPhail described following the mantra of “meet your students where they are” for so long that she has begun to feel “like a cruise director organizing games of shuffleboard.”

Worse, the national data tell the same story in colder language. On the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) writing assessment, which is the most recent comprehensive writing benchmark, only 24 percent of 12th graders reached the Proficient level, and just 3 percent reached Advanced; another 21 percent scored below Basic. The reading side of the ledger is worse, and getting worse fast: The 2024 NAEP results released in September 2025 show 12th-grade reading scores at the lowest level recorded since the assessment began in 1992. Thirty-two percent of 12th graders now score below NAEP Basic in reading, meaning that, in the assessment’s own language, they likely “cannot draw general conclusions based on concepts presented explicitly in a text.” And yet more than half of these same seniors reported being accepted to a four-year college. That last sentence is the whole problem in one line: We are admitting a cohort that cannot read at a college level and are pretending otherwise.”

[Patrick De Haan @GasBuddyGuy]

The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is less than 10 days away from falling to its lowest level since August 1983- over 15,625 days ago- a level not seen since the SPR's initial fill-up that began in 1977.

[Amelia 🇺🇸 @amelia_tweetz]

Imagine if a woman president crashed the economy and started a war with no end in sight, and her biggest, seemingly ONLY concern was building a ballroom and redecorating the White House.

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

On every metric, American kids are so much dumber than they were 5 years ago and we are grade inflating away the reality.

[Chalkbeat Newark @ChalkbeatNWK]

More than half of the country’s 50 largest school districts are poised to or already have made cuts, or are facing a reported deficit. https://t.co/lz4KxOtjgu

[Ivo Daalder @IvoHDaalder]

The US has the most powerful military in human history.

It has not won a war in 30 years.

These two facts are not unrelated.

My new @POLITICOEurope column on the American Way of War — and why it keeps failing. https://t.co/2AoYslTSXp

[Leyla @LeylaKuni]

The most demoralizing chart you will see today

[Olena Rohoza @OlenaRohoza]

“AND YOU STILL DARE TO OPEN YOUR MOUTH…”

Sasha Legerman: This is too accurate not to share.

This Australian’s response to Trump’s rant that “NATO does nothing for America” is absolutely devastating:

“Mate. You run a country where 600,000 homeless people will sleep on the streets tonight.

A country where 40% of adults can’t cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money.

A country where insulin costs more than a car payment, and people ration it just to stay alive.

A country where medical debt is the number one cause of bankruptcy.

A country where women die in hospital parking lots because doctors are too afraid of abortion laws to treat miscarriages.

You imprison more of your own citizens than any country on Earth.
More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea.

In the land of the free, 2 million people sit in cages, and a quarter of them haven’t even been convicted of anything.
They’re simply too poor to afford bail.

Your life expectancy is declining. You’re the only developed nation where that’s happening.

Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba’s.

Your children practice active shooter drills between math and English classes while you sell defense stocks to your friends.

Your minimum wage hasn’t changed in 15 years.

Your teachers work two jobs, your veterans sleep under bridges, and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that never attacked you.

And now a convicted criminal — found liable for sexual abuse, defending a pedophile, sleeping with a porn star, and running the biggest dumpster-fire campaign since the Taliban — is thanking you for yet another disaster.

And you call Greenland badly governed?

Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world.
Nobody there goes bankrupt because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because insurance refused treatment.

‘NATO wasn’t there when we needed them.’

When exactly was that, champ?
September 11?

Because NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in history FOR YOU.

Soldiers from dozens of countries deployed, fought, bled, and died in Afghanistan FOR YOU.

Australia wasn’t even in NATO, and we still showed up. For twenty years.

And then you left at 2 a.m. without telling anyone and left everybody else to clean up the mess.

You don’t care that a great nation is being terrorized by your friend, and you haven’t shown it a single ounce of sympathy.

So maybe before calling other countries badly governed, take a look at your own backyard, you aluminum siding salesman with a spray tan.

The only thing badly managed in this picture is your damn mouth.

And you still dare to lecture the rest of the world?”

[John Faig @johnfaig]

@Dale_Chu @ariel_kalil @DerekRury ...and teachers don't want to be frank with students for fear of reprisals.

[John Faig @johnfaig]

@rpondiscio How does this compare with other countries? I thought helicopter parents were a global phenomenon?

[John Faig @johnfaig]

@FinCane13 @rpondiscio I grew up being told to fear the creepy van following you home from school. Had missing kids on milk cartons. I recall seeing a few articles that said kidnappings are extremely low and are usually done by someone who knows the kid

[John Faig @johnfaig]

Wow. Lower than the Great Financial Crisis

[Hal Singer @HalSinger]

Gentle reminder that the wealthiest 10% of American households own approximately 87% to 93% of all U.S. stock market wealth. Hence the booming stock market juxtaposed against plummeting consumer confidence. Riddle solved.

[Wall Street Apes @WallStreetApes]

Erin Brockovich has launched a website and has begun tracking all data centers in America and logging resident complaints

In just 1 week it’s already logged 1,690 resident complaints

For this who don’t remember

Erin Brockovich was the paralegal responsible for winning out a case against PG&E, Hinckley in California, because their wastewater runoff was seeping into rural areas and creating a lot of health issues for, for the surrounding neighborhoods

That case brought in a $333 million settlement that went to the families affected by the situation because a lot of them either had staggering medical bills due to their tap water was no longer safe

So why is this important, well residents all over America are reporting their tap water and river water is being heavily polluted by data centers

Her map of data centers is new, she just launched it

The website features an interactive US map showing operational, under-construction, and proposed AI data centers, overlaid with community-reported complaints

Residents can submit reports with details, photos, and locations. Within days of launch, it received a surge of submissions over 1,600 in the first week, and reports of 1,800+ from 47 states shortly after

Common Resident Complaints Being Logged

- Water usage
- Raising utility bills for residents
- Noise pollution: Constant 24/7 humming from fans, generators, and cooling systems disrupting sleep, daily life, and wildlife.
- E-waste from frequent hardware upgrades, pollution including PFAS concerns

[John Faig @johnfaig]

BTW, your app can't handle special offers and normal menu items going to the same location in the same order. Select location A and add a special offer to bag. Select "Add item" and those items go to location B

[John Faig @johnfaig]

@McDonalds Sad that the highlight of my meal today from the location at 15801 Frederick Rd, Derwood, MD was the soda. Crappy McNuggets and a burger that should have been thrown away.

[Rep. Mike Levin @RepMikeLevin]

Not enough people are talking about this.

A Florida airport was renamed after Donald Trump. He walked away with the trademark, the licensing rights, and a deal that lets him profit off every piece of merchandise sold there.

But the story of how he got it is even worse.

County staff told commissioners that rejecting the name change would put state transportation funding at risk. DeSantis has already removed state attorneys and school board members who dared to cross him. That is the reality the Democratic commissioner who cast the deciding vote was living in when she made her choice: hand Donald Trump control of a public airport or watch Florida Republicans strip funding from the very people she was elected to represent.

That is absolutely insane.

Florida Republicans handed Trump a money machine and called it a naming rights deal, and the people of Palm Beach County never got a say in any of it.
https://t.co/M2nm9qFXc8

[Robert Pondiscio @rpondiscio]

Arguably the most significant cultural shift in American life in the past half century.

[RG | BEATS @DR_BEATS_KICK]

Can you rt this? Maybe we can make a difference