Launching Pooja Saxena's INDIA STREET LETTERING at Champaca in Bangalore on January 17! Register below! champaca.in/blogs/events... Pre-order here! www.blaft.com/products/ind...

🤔 thecritic.co.uk/bring-back-d...

If it's not regime change, and it's certainly not "law enforcement," let's just call it a nuclear-armed oil heist.

Call me naive, but I genuinely don't understand why they require this kind of money. I'm certain it's possible to lead a very luxurious and whimsical life with even a few million. The need to hoard this kind of money has to be some kind of sickness, surely.

'There seems to be little interest in uncovering who was actually responsible for the riots that killed 53 people—the vast majority of them Muslim—and far more eagerness to pin the blame on Muslim activists'

This video, viewed millions of times on TikTok, Facebook and X, claims to show Venezuelans taking to the street to thank the US for detaining Maduro. But the video is a combination of four AI-generated clips and was first posted on TikTok by a user who frequently shares AI videos. It's not real.

A robber is robbing his victim, renewed focus on the victim's wallet.

“Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate." ― Edward Said

Much of the defence of #gigwork rests on language of freedom & choice: workers “choose” to log in, “prefer” platform work, & can “exit” at will. scroll.in/article/1089... When survival depends on logging in for 12 hours in heat, rain, freedom becomes a burden rather than a right. ✍️Gaurav Mittal

It's about the oil, stupid! Venezuela has ~1/5 of the world’s proven crude reserves, or an estimated 303 billion barrels. Most other major deposits are concentrated in the Middle East. OPEC’s figures exclude Canada’s oil sands, which if included, would place Canada fourth globally in 2024.

Incredible. The Trump-Vance admin just posted a video promoting their bombing of Venezuela. …And it is set to the song “Fortunate Son” — which is explicitly about the rich and powerful starting wars under the flag of hollow patriotism, and then making the rest of America pay the consequences.

I can't believe the winner of the FIFA Peace Prize would do this.

Japanese artist Kumi Yamashita winds a single black thread around a grid of nails on a wooden board to create intricate portraits #WomensArt

this too is slop

The world's 500 richest people added a record $2.2 trillion to their collective fortunes in 2025, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which found just eight billionaires accounted for about a quarter of those gains.

Samira fifteen, Bourj el-Barajneh refugee camp, Beirut, Lebanon, 2011. Shot by Rania Matar.

Due to feedback from our testers, we have decided to patch "Happy New Year" to "Acceptable New Year" to avoid disappointment and better match the realities of the market.

Happy Public Domain Day! At the start of each year, a new set of works is freed from copyright — ready to be shared, reused, and reimagined. See our highlights — Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein, Langston Hughes, William Faulkner, and many more. #publicdomain

just so it's clear: this is the exact core function of genAI Fascist government and climate deniers love it because it can produce the aesthetics of knowledge without any actual tendency towards truth. It is automated denialism. Shame on every climate scientist promoting its use (there are lots)

The Shichifukujin journey in the Takarabune (宝船 'Treasure Ship') to the human realm for the first three days of New Year. Placing an image of the Takarabune beneath your pillow on January 2nd is said to encourage dreams. If you dream of the boat, the year will be a lucky one. #Japan #NewYear #宝船

The hill I die on (as I battle the stupid AI robots of the near-future) will be constructed entirely of em-dashes.

My thoughts on the current discussions in the SF/F genre over writers using generative AI (LLMs). In particular, I love the essays shared by @chuckwendig.bsky.social and @fozmeadows.bsky.social. 1/ www.patreon.com/posts/147102...

I watched @tippettstudio.bsky.social's MAD GOD yesterday, and it turned my brain upside down. What an extraordinary creative achievement! (AI could never!) I can't wait to rewatch it with the commentary track on. So much to unpack here. Highly, highly recommended. Five glorious stars.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO HORSES! IT IS HORSE BIRTHDAY! HORSE!!!!!

Last year was a thoroughly shit year, in which a tragic accident befell a loved one, setting off a chain of crises that mushroomed out like a world-ender; my freelance career plateaued, then tumbled over the edge and floated off into space; and my physical and mental innards rebelled in all ways.

Hello, what's changed? (I haven't been here for several months.) Nothing? Okay, then.

thoughts

OpenAI is an evil company and ChatGPT is an evil product. Excise it from your lives and yell at any institution that tries to make you use it.

Current mood.

What we sound like djinnandmiskatonic.bandcamp.com/album/paleo-ep

Bangalore folks! My band Djinn And Miskatonic is playing on Saturday at the Bira Taproom, along with a lot of other excellent bands in a variety of heavy genres. Please consider attending. www.skillboxes.com/events/vehem...

these owls are astoundingly sexy. just fyi.

Oh well. I am making my claim and every author should.

Ahem

Heinous, heartbreaking, and made a hundred times worse by the fact that the US have the power to end this senseless slaughter any instant but they won't.

Reporters killed in Vietnam: 63 Reporters killed in WW II: 69 Reporters killed in Gaza: 186+ And counting.

Palestinians like Rima's brother have to risk their lives to get flour from 'aid' points set up in Israeli-US operated killing fields as Israel starves them to death in their genocide. Please help by sharing & donating if you can, Rima's brother needs urgent treatment for his injuries:

🚨!! This is my family final call for🚨 help !! Donations to my campaign are very low😭😭 We are in desperate need of support My family is dying of hunger and no one I'm counting on you cares Please don't ignore me!! ✅Verified by @mommunism.bsky.social chuffed.org/project/1400...

The other journalists killed: reporter Mohammed Qreiqeh, videographers Moamen Aliwa and Ibrahim Zaher and operator Mohammed Noufal. The Israeli murder of Palestinian journalists is always intentional, always met with silence. And that's why it keeps happening. don't look away

A reminder that the Israeli government does not allow any international journalist into Gaza. That’s how they have killed more journalists than most conflicts combined since WWII while claiming that all the journalists they’ve killed were actually enemy combatants.

BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen has confirmed that the entire Al Jazeera team in Gaza City has been killed.

I’m sharing a Palestinian account every day and today is Wafaa. Wafaa and her husband owned a grocery. She recently lost her son Tariq in a bombing, he was only five (she told me he would have turned six 10 days ago). She has four other children, Mohammed, 12, Rahaf, 11, Waseem, 9 and Tulin, 6.

Abdul Mati Klarwein (1932-2002)

I don't know how a box of cheese or a little sugar can make us so happy in Gaza. How did this happen? I think we just have reached the edge of the abyss.

This gave me chills. Because among the things that bother me about the universalization and over use of gAI has always been how it will strip/has stripped us of originality, resistance and will. And watching my students become so dependent on this is horrifying.

Palestinian families like Waseem's are being starved to death in Israel's genocidal famine & siege, & risking their lives to get flour from 'aid points' in US-Israeli operated killing fields. Bluesky couldn't care less & deletes them. Please help by sharing & donating if you've anything to spare:

Watch out, strange cat people.

This looks amazing.