Torus Washington

7th Yr UCSD Nanoengineering PhD student who loves Jesus, people, family, videogames, and sports. #GTAlum #UCFAlum #OrlandoMagic #TampaBayBuccaneers

[Torus Washington @TorusW]

Here is my unsolicited top 10 list of favorite TV shows. What are some of yours?

1st. Black Mirror
2nd. Fringe
3rd. Stranger Things
4th. The Man in the High Castle
5th. True Detective
6th. Master of None
7th. The OA
8th. Ozark
9th. Mindhunter
10th. Everything Marvel

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

here is Mamdani's entire speech at the Knicks parade, which is easily the best speech I've ever heard at an event of this sort

[Reagan Gomez @ReaganGomez]

Michelle Ob*ma tried to get healthier food in school & the country told her to STFU.

[Ryan Phillips @RumorsandRants]

One of the craziest sports statistics I've ever seen:

The Spurs led for 72% of the NBA Finals. They lost in five games.

[KINGDOM HEARTS @KINGDOMHEARTS]

Presenting another look at the latest instalment in the Kingdom Hearts series.

Kingdom Hearts IV will launch simultaneously on Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, Epic Games Store and Steam!

Stay tuned for more updates.

[Torus Washington @TorusW]

NEED IT. #KH4

[DiscussingFilm @DiscussingFilm]

First look at ‘KINGDOM HEARTS 4’.

[ArtButMakeItSports @ArtButSports]

Hercules and Nessus, by Giambologna, 1599

[🐢✨America Is Musty✨🐢 @DragonflyJonez]

The MJ PR machine is impressive ngl.

His first 3 postseasons he got bounced first round. Swept twice with a 1-9 total record. Next 3 postseasons all got ended by DET. 6 straight postseasons of belt to ass before his 1st Finals trip and folks will be dead serious when they tell you that’s that’s more impressive than a Finals run in your very 1st postseason.

Like I said it’s reached the point where the PR machine around him is so unapologetically revisionist that it’s actually impressive now.

[Andrew Yeung @andruyeung]

Clubbing is dead and has been replaced by fitness & wellness.

Ppl used to party to socialize and date but now they do things like HYROX, bathhouses, and running raves.

The death of clubbing is something to be studied:
— US has lost 12% of its nightclubs in the last 24 months
— 25% of US adults didn’t drink at all last year
— Gen Z drinks 30% less than Millennials did at the same age

On the flip side:
— According to Strava, the number of running clubs recorded on the platform increased 3.5x in 2025
— 72% of Gen Z go to run clubs to meet new people
— Sauna and spa market: $11.8B → $22.4B by 2034

The post-alcohol economy is gonna be a massive category.

[J.R. Kineman 🇺🇦 I STAND WITH UKRAINE #HOLDFAST @Jkineman]

‼️ WTF? WHY? ‼️
The U.S. needs these sensors to accurately track locations of Russian SSBNs…

Removing the Irminger array in particular
— when Russian SSBN activity in the North Atlantic is at post-Cold War highs—
is sabotage of national security.

This is getting ZERO coverage.

[Rep. Joe Neguse @RepJoeNeguse]

Tax cuts for billionaires, while gutting assistance programs for hard-working Americans.

Unconscionable.

[Rachel Nichols @Rachel__Nichols]

Letting a Jalen Brunson team keep the score close in the fourth quarter is dangerous business. Real test for the Spurs here.

[Torus Washington @TorusW]

@georgeasy It's super impractical. Jarring actually. lol. Bernie will always be my guy, but this was not it.

A huge % of the GLOBAL value right now is AI. This impracticality makes it easy for people to write off the reasonable but progressive stuff we so desperately need.

[Torus Washington @TorusW]

I'm super liberal in most things, and Bernie has always been my fave; but I vehemently disagree with this route and strategy. Start with just getting things fair--Equitable taxation and budgeting for what Americans actually want. Not giving away conpanies we didn't build...

[Bernie Sanders @BernieSanders]

I will soon be introducing a bill to give the public a 50% ownership stake in the largest AI companies in America.

This would guarantee that the trillions created by AI are used to improve the lives of all of us — and block oligarch decisions that harm the American people.

[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.”

[iza @izamamaa]

“nobody coming to save you also implies

no one is coming to stop you”

[Ayanokoji @layeee09]

Le vieux du quartier m’a dit : « N’oublie pas que la boussole a été inventée avant l’horloge parce que la direction est plus importante que le temps. »

[Brian Allen @allenanalysis]

🚨 HOLY SHIT.

CNN just cited a New York Times estimate saying Trump has reportedly profited $1.4 BILLION from the presidency.

And the wildest part?

One panelist said Trump made MORE MONEY in the last year than in the rest of his life combined.

Think about that.

[Hassan Mafi ‏ @thatdayin1992]

Americans realizing they can go to jail for smoking weed but Trump gets a $200 fine for insider trading

[Robert Reich @RBReich]

Over 50 years later, this anti-Vietnam War PSA still rings true.

[Legion Hoops @LegionHoops]

BREAKING: NBA Finals prices are out of this world 🤯 (prices on @tickpick)

To get IN THE DOOR:
Game 1 at Spurs: $2,015
Game 2 at Spurs: $2,430
Game 3 at Knicks: $4,011
Game 4 at Knicks: $3,750
Game 5 at Spurs: $3,070
Game 6 at Knicks: $5,244 (😳)
Game 7 at Spurs: $3,995