If there's one empirical insight I'd want everyone to understand about American politics, it's this: America's problems are solved problems. Just not here. What would change if the US simply matched the average of 31 peer democracies? Not Denmark or Norway. Just the middle of the pack. 🧵

The Miccosukee Tribe is being punished 4 fighting Alligator Alcatraz. Congress passed a bipartisan bill 2 expand the Tribe’s land base & Trump vetoed the bill saying the tribe undermined his immigration agenda. The House refused 2 override his veto. ictnews.org/news/house-r...

I’ve got t-shirts older than ICE

semi-regular reminder that ICE was only created in 2003 when you are asked to imagine a world without ICE, you're basically being asked to remember where you were when Lilo & Stitch came out

we talk about Woke 2 a lot but the reason this stuff all came about is that people fucking hated living in a yellow soup that gave them coughing fits, and most people today don't know what that was like, and if it comes back EPA 2 Electric Boogaloo is going to be a doozy

This bobtail squid burrowing into the sand is already adorable, but please watch till the very end! It sticks out its little arms and earnestly sprinkles sand over itself 🦑𓂃◌𓈒𓐍

“A Maryland man is navigating two devastating blows to his family after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested his wife just days before their 15-year-old son’s death from cancer.” www.kkco11news.com/2026/01/12/t...

Are you a fanfiction author? Have you been wanting to break into publishing your original fiction? We're looking for contributors to BEYOND THE GALACTIC TIDE, our next anthology. What's it about? TL:DR... ACE IN SPACE! For the long version, visit our website: duckprintspress.com/beyond-the-g... 🌈📚

people will say the framers never could have predicted this, but that's not true at all, they absolutely *did* expect someone like trump, they thought congress would *stop* him, and they thought they made that clear

I would like to trade in my health insurance plan for going to the wood and bringing back the cow as white as milk, the cape as red as blood, the hair as yellow as corn, and the slipper as pure as gold

I fished out this excellent thread on the “but AI for medical uses is great” topic, highly recommend you read it

Silverio Villegas Gonzalez was shot & killed by ICE on Sept 12 ICE chased Jaime Alanis off the roof of a greenhouse; he broke his neck & died on July 12 ICE chased Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez into traffic where he was hit & killed on Aug 14 Josué Castro Rivera was killed the same way on Oct 23

I just finished Hammajang Luck. I closed the book and said, "I wish there were more." Lo and BEHOLD, @makana-yama.bsky.social's next book will be published in a little more than a month ... which is plenty of time to read Hammajang Luck. I devoured it in two days. Go on. Get reading. #booksky

Abolish and prosecute ICE. They did a murder in broad daylight today. Imagine what they're doing in the closed facilities we're somehow not even allowed to see.

Of the three books I’ve read so far in 2026, two are from the 1900s (opposite ends of it, no less). I will never have this high a ratio of pre-2000 to post-2000 books again.

“I want a progressive movement that is aggressively pro raising wages at the bottom and aggressively pro immigration. These are completely coherent goals.” Great piece by @polphilpod.bsky.social www.liberalcurrents.com/we-need-to-g...

!!!!!!

Talia Hibbert is coming out with an adult Beauty and the Beast retelling this year?!! There IS still good news in the world

#Booksky Now we are 9! We’re celebrating our 9th birthday as a small press this week! Shop direct from us and use code BIRTHDAY at checkout to get a discount and we’ll enter you in the prize drawing! Help us kickoff a great birthday year! Details here: queenofswordspress.com/happy-birthd...

IT’S SO GOOD. My favorite read of 2025.

No path to recovery avails itself without our first recognizing reality: we do not, at the moment, have constitutional governance. We instead have an anti-constitutional insurgency seated in the White House, and a high court twisting the law beyond recognition to justify Trump’s depredations.

Can't help but feel like this is one of the reasons why the Constitution says If a dude in office does an insurrection, don't let that motherfucker hold office again Bc clearly they cannot be trusted with power & control over the levers of government, & they do not care about democratic constraints

My reading goal this year, like last year, is to average reading one book per week that I already own. This is the same as last year (I managed 33). But there’s an unexpected side effect. Suddenly, all of the books I got last year count towards my reading goal. It feels like a bonus Christmas.

And that’s a wrap on books read in 2025. Closing out strong with Tasha Suri’s The Isle in the Silver Sea. If nothing else, at least 2025 gave us some great books.

Saw a fun book prompt on @raenbowpunk.bsky.social‘s blog: 26 books you want to read in 2026. For extra fun, I’ll be doing it just from my bookshelves and from pre-2025 books. 1. Saint Death’s Daughter, C. S. E. Cooney 2. The Water Dancer, Ta-Nahesi Coates 3. Wheel of the Infinite, Martha Wells

This is true and I was the only one on set excited about it (and playing the song on my phone to blank stares)

Me: I just realized we never did a special birthday dinner. Duel of the Fates: Koraaaaah! Mataaaaah! My husband: You had one with your parents. Duel of the Fates: Koraaaah! Rahtamaaaah! I think our casual conversation got assigned argument by my playlist. Time to pull out the lightsabers.

Remember: When Tylenol was poisoned *by an outsider* and killed people, the company recalled all their products & redesigned them. When Intel’s Pentium had a bug so obscure it affected 1 in _9 billion_ long division calculations, they recalled their chips. ChatGPT was made deadly *by its team*.

I cannot possibly make my Best Reads of 2025 list until December 31st. What if I finish another amazing book in the next two days? Heck, it’s THREE whole days counting today!

The people who need to make us feel like their useless tools are inevitable are doing EVERYTHING THEY POSSIBLY CAN to conflate themselves with the actually useful (and generally ethical) uses that have been around for a while. This confusion is 100% on them.

My husband claims that because I start playing Christmas carols right after Christmas, I can’t also pull “technically the 12 days of Christmas start on Christmas, so the carols will continue until January 6.”

this book is so good, do not sleep on this deal.

we, in the United States, through Trump’s mass deportation scheme, have engaged in abductions and torture for the past year, none of it in secret, much of it attested to in legal documents. there is nothing to expose, only to face.

Had to clamber over a barbed wire fence, rip my coat and trespass to get a photo of this folkloric monster pretending half-successfully to be a tree. I have no regrets.

Spending my lazy Sunday morning finishing some middling library books to clear my plate for my personal Winter Book Flood

Rare footage of St Paul’s Cathedral testing its giant flamethrower

In case anyone ever fears you’re not supporting the author by reading from a library, you absolutely are! And the more people request a book the more copies they buy!

Here’s the obituary + recap of the event www.tiktok.com/t/ZTrn94WM4/

Pope Leo: “Creation is crying. But many powerful people do not hear this cry: the wealth of the earth is in the hands of a few, very few, increasingly concentrated – unjustly – in the hands of those who often do not want to hear the groaning of the earth and the poor.” www.vatican.va/content/leo-...

Important to understand this as part of a multi-pronged attack on birthright citizenship. For this administration, white people are the only "real" citizens. Everyone else is a target.

still think usaid is the biggest story of the year

My response to anything over the next two weeks

I’ve got an N64 and Ocarina of Time just waiting to be played

You lot need Dick Van Dyke singing Let's Go Fly a Kite on his 100th birthday more than you know.

The technology was forged in a delusional space where copyright isn’t an issue. No business before has been allowed to do something like that. Except maybe colonialism. “What if we revalued humans and resources at a purchase cost of £0? Would that get us a big pay day?” And we made that illegal.

This is a god tier thread on a god tier film by a god tier director

Next week, on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I’ll be among 40 vendors with our wares laid out on the Concourse at Empire State Plaza! This is a great chance to shop local this December and do some lunch-time browsing. I hope to see you there! empirestateplaza.ny.gov/2025-holiday...