Love and strength and solidarity to everyone whose humanity is under daily attack right now. There's no panacea. But we have each other, and the work.

Golden rules about conspiracies: A bunch of people can't keep a secret. They certainly can't keep a secret for years. Groups of people, especially in the Trump administration, are not sophisticated at faking things. And what purpose would a fake letter like this serve? Logically, it's probably real.

I also think it's probably a good thing that people are exercising caution around whether the letter is real, but I definitely lean toward real. Its existence was previously reported, it tracks with everything we know about Epstein, and I tend to distrust conspiracies about fake letters and suicides

I'll think I'm used to seeing men wield sexual violence as a tool to reinforce their power, but it still manages to take my breath away. That's how I felt reading Epstein's letter to Larry Nassar about Trump. It's so transparent. So sick and twisted. And it's tolerated by far too many.

TikTok is removing clips of the leaked 60 Minutes segment. The Ellison family (which acquired Paramount — CBS’s parent company — and The Free Press, making Bari Weiss Editor-in-Chief of CBS) is set to co-own TikTok through a Trump-backed deal.

literally fuck anyone who doesn’t see at this point that it’s an organized nationwide effort to make trans people unemployable. every trans person they push out of public life is a win for them & a whole hell of a lot of cis people need to start stepping up and saying fuck off to freaks like this.

I don’t mean to sound extreme, but I don’t think we should have torture camps for people with criminal records either.

Bari’s complaint was “there’s nothing new here” and while that’s untrue it’s also irrelevant “we intentionally sent people to be tortured in a hellhole and bragged about it and The Hague is too good for everyone involved” is a story that simply cannot be told enough

[first day as a shepherd] boss: where are you going? me: [pointing] star boss: what? why me: [shrugging] baby

Thinking of trans rights in the UK specifically - we joke and say 'TERF Island', but think what it would have been like if we'd have slunk away into the shadows to die the way that they wanted - want - us to. It's not THE victory, but it's A victory. And the victories build on each other.

Thinking a lot today about the ways in which it's hard - in a shitty situation - to realise how much worse it would have been without all the exhausting work done to hold the line. There isn't a victory to celebrate - there's still so much to be done. But it would have been so, so much worse.

a slightly different angle but I found out that a few archives around LA had old books bound in human skin so I did a story about unusually bound books and of course I had to go look at and touch them all. My favorite was a copy of "Moby Dick" in whale dick skin

Thinking a lot today about the ways in which it's hard - in a shitty situation - to realise how much worse it would have been without all the exhausting work done to hold the line. There isn't a victory to celebrate - there's still so much to be done. But it would have been so, so much worse.

It's down thread but I'm stealing "the process of searching is the process of learning" as one of the aphorisms I annoy my students by overusing, second only to "writing is thinking".

AI advocates: you really need to learn to stop coming off to subject matter experts in other fields as if you’re Kool-Aid manning into the room and going “you’re dumb not to use these tools for your trivially easy jobs” you may think this is an unfair read on your intentions, but life is unfair.

This is what Bari Weiss et al think "censorship" actually is; when subordinates criticize their superiors. That has been the bedrock of the entire "cancel culture" discourse in elite media; rage at the idea that students, women, journalists, interns, etc might be able to speak against the boss.

especially in the dark hours we need to remember that we are going to win

No 'feminist' who claims to be in agreement with Trump should ever be taken seriously ever again, on anything.

The absolute fucking GRIFT of professional transphobes is exhausting to behold. Beyond the transphobia, I don't want to live in a society that encourages and rewards running the laziest con imaginable. Bullshit, all the way down.

When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.

do you want fast, undercooked e coli flavored chicken, or do you want chicken that won't give you salmonella? 😂

a big part of the issue surrounding the use of chatgpt/LLMs in academic research comes down to process vs. product. a lot of us know that the process of doing research matters because that's where intellectual work is done; but some "academics" and lots of techies only care about a fast product

I think this post nails the actual problem, for researchers at least—AI hallucinations would simply not be a problem in academic work if we’d not normalized citation-as-signaling rather than actual engagement—you can only cite a fake paper if you’re not in the habit of reading the papers you cite

Please share this widely. There have been 13 peer-reviewed critiques of the Cass Review, to the extent that academia regards it as pseudoscience, but so far all have been subject to organised censorship by mainstream media. This is the first time one has broken through. Oz Guardian only still.

Worked hard to get this into Guardian Oz & big props to @fiercemum.bsky.social for setting it up & Melissa Davey for publishing it. She will doubtless get loads of hassle from transphobes for it, but it needs to be out there. Puberty Blocker bans harm trans kids, no-one should pretend they don’t.

BREAKING: At least 16 files from the Epstein release disappeared from DOJ's webpage, including a photo of Trump, with no explanation.

Chicago is having none of this administration's BS.

The name "Popular Science" doesn't mean we shift our coverage depending on public opinion. It means we cover relevant subjects that are rigorously researched, reliable, and grounded in reality. And trans lives are grounded in reality. We see y'all. No matter what. www.popsci.com/science/tran...

Maria has been accused over the years of fabricating her story that she had gone to the FBI. After finding the document in the trove, I called her. She broke down in tears. “I’ve waited 30 years. I can’t believe it. They can’t call me a liar anymore.” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/u...

HUGE NEWS from the new Epstein files: Records show that Maria Farmer, who worked for Epstein, filed a "child pornography" report to the FBI in 1996. The FBI has never before acknowledged that complaint. The case went nowhere, and mass abuse followed. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/u...

WATCH-- Former AG Eric Holder says Congress should consider impeachment for the DOJ officials responsible for holding back the Epstein files: “That's a nuclear option that Congress has.”

There's really interesting social science on how white people significantly overestimate the number of people of color in a room or in a picture. A room with, like, 20% POC will be perceived as majority POC.

White men are 30% of the US and if they look around the room and see it’s less than 90% white men they think it’s affirmative action.

The single most important scientific advancement for the future of our species and planet. #ClimateCrisis

As soon as we find a way out of our basement we're coming for libraries next

slow day in the office so figured we'd start some beef with museums

The BMA has come out swinging for the rights of all trans people in healthcare settings and beyond - both patients and healthcare providers. Genuinely brilliant news amongst the bad - please read it and share, and remember that we are NOT alone. Not by a long stretch.

All in the name of "protecting kids" 24 hours before we learn exactly how close Donald Trump was with Jeffrey Epstein

this is the unspoken but absolutely clear argument at hand.

The BMA has come out swinging for the rights of all trans people in healthcare settings and beyond - both patients and healthcare providers. Genuinely brilliant news amongst the bad - please read it and share, and remember that we are NOT alone. Not by a long stretch.

'At a time of increasing marginalisation as transgender and disabled people, we have a choice – retreat from the world or push forward and create.' Vital words from my dear friend and colleague Jamie Hale of @cripticarts.bsky.social www.thestage.co.uk/opinion/let-...

'At a time of increasing marginalisation as transgender and disabled people, we have a choice – retreat from the world or push forward and create.' Vital words from my dear friend and colleague Jamie Hale of @cripticarts.bsky.social www.thestage.co.uk/opinion/let-...

They booked a bunch of 14 year old models to come to a Mar A Lago party, told them to dress sexy and tried to ply them with alcohol.

Btw if you are a cis ally and you respond to transphobia by making a distinction between gender and sex, I'm sure you're doing it with with the best of intentions and I appreciate you, really, but we need you to stop doing this. It's not good for us at all.

Just to add some clarity of my own: the fact is that in English "male" and "man" are, in most corners of our society, synonymous when used to refer to humans. You cannot call a trans woman a "male" without effectively calling her a man.

Coming around to the idea that we should bring back 'sex change' as a term. I've loved changing my sex. I love that I'm still changing it. The still unknown capacity for the human body to change and grow is a miracle.

why does he look like a scared apparatchik of a failing soviet republic

Genuinely think it's a fight between everyone who believes in a free and equal future for the human species...and those who don't. It gets more complicated, but that's where it starts.

The eight Palestine Action hunger strikers have now been held without trial for months, and three have been hospitalised. Here's a toolkit with 11 proposed actions you can take to support them.