I read French's "Born in Blackness" earlier this year, the guy knows what he is talking about here. Yes, lots of cultures indulged in slavery. But it was the union of slavery with industrial production, new with Europeans, that made things even worse.

The problem with this sort of book, representative of a sturdy genre, is the inescapable subtext, which is to say blatantly or between the lines, the West's record of enslavement isn't so bad after all. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/b...

Corruption Driven Development: 10x the cost for half the quality.

Usually the way "we need to filter the water better" gets acted on in government is that it would go to the procurement department, who would 100% interpret that as "buy water filters." Those are *not* the people who buy land. This required a level of collaboration that is rare and impressive.

Here's why I love this: the usual solution in government is to solve the immediate problem before us by giving a huge amount of money to vendors, in this case on filtration systems. In this case, New York is solving their water filtration need by acquiring more land, so that filtration isn't needed.

I love this.

“What gets lost is that trans people, particularly trans women of color, are more impacted by the criminal legal system,” says the director of legal services for the Transformative Justice Law Project of Illinois.

One thing I'm thinking about is what happens after a peaceful transfer of power in January 2029. What happens when ICE is largely demobilized, and all the militia members go back to their home groups?

I have absolutely climbed these crusty bastards.

I fancast Bubbles from Questionable Content when I'm reading Murderbot.

Trump has ordered a naval blockade of Venezuela, which is an act of war. Literally will go to war to protect pedophiles.

We didn't go with that one, so he stayed with us (yay). When we got our new paperwork, I looked up the lifetime benefit max. It was something like $2 million ($1.12M in today's dollars). One heart transplant ate the whole thing.

There are two under-appreciated things in the ACA that people tend to forget: prohibiting the denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions, and lifetime benefit maximums. Plenty of folk have talked about pre-existing conditions, but I wanna talk about lifetime benefit maximums

I genuinely don't know if this is a "Minnesotan" thing or an "old guy of a certain age" thing but in case it's Minnesotan and people need an anger translator: this guy is so angry he could just about set something on fire with his mind.

What a great ornament! I love this and also it’s terrifying.

Reminder: women's hockey ☺️

Given what we're seeing about ICE in the Twin Cities metro versus what we saw in Chicagoland, the role of municipal and landlord cooperation is coming clear. ICE is much more effective at their harassment when they have collaboration to a higher degree than they're getting in the Twin Cities.

U.S. Seizes A Shadow Fleet Super Tanker off Venezuela | The Skipper Has Been Arrested! Video: youtu.be/VX6be5lGfps

consent is alway contextual

Hoskins told me he could still decide on whether the referendum is lawful in late July. If he says it isn't, I'm almost certain there will be a lawsuit ... and legal experts don't expect him to prevail. Overall, the last 24 hours have been not great for Trump and backers of the new MO map:

The congressmen in the district i grew up in proposed something similar in the 80s when 40x was the line. No takers.

Looks like discord forced me to put a phone number in today.

you probably know your social feeds aren't random. but why you're suddenly getting cat memes isn’t always obvious. often, it's due to it's recommender systems. in our new MEAP, hidden influences, @lucab.phd shares his take from working with 'em at Twitter. get it half off: hubs.la/Q03XnNbz0

hedonic adaptation has done so much harm to vaccine adoption

Look at how much more detail you can make out in the light. Also, due to how my astigmatism works, the white-on-black letters smear far easier than black-on-white.

Expanding the Supreme Court should be a core part of an anti-corruption platform for Democrats in 2026 and 2028. And when I say “an anti-corruption platform,” I mean that should be *the* platform. Tie everything back to corruption.

Old argument for EU tech sovereignty: fascism is bad New argument for EU sovereignty: we might not have a choice if the US hard bricks its tech stack in two years like they appear to be on track to do? … which is an argument I never thought I’d be making

I don't know, ALBook is different and interesting.

Evil Hat is celebrating with a 20th Anniversary Sale, Save 20% or more on Everything! This sale runs from November 26th to December 12th evilhat.com/?ref=tableto...

Network State at work

All I know about Lord Byron is that Mary Shelly got stuck in a cabin with the guy for a winter and it was traumatic, and he had an epic profile.

Source and reference. Always learning.

Mmmmm. Cookies.

Jesus Christ. JESUS Christ. Jesus CHRIST. Yes, this person is correct, remigration is a white supremacy term for ethnic cleansing, basically. And the Department of Homeland Security, WHICH SHOULDN'T EVEN EXIST, just used the term. An official government account. That is...that is beyond fucked.

The University of Minnesota’s Superior Fruit Innovations program, famous for creating the Honeycrisp apple, has launched six new varieties of apples and grapes that it’s licensing to growers.

This was my Pandemic Book, which makes it a touch antiquated in the modern software telemetry market. But if you're still DIYing, or working for someone other than a SaaS provider, I got you. www.manning.com/books/softwa...

Wow. This is like the holy grail of clothes recycling. New solvent completely recycles polycotton textiles share.google/qrM7caF2CHyf...

This is what the Network State is: an engine for coups, to bring countries to their knees to foreign venture capitalists and the puppet states they control. The Network State means global election interference ushering in a new age of global tech fascism.

In a disgusting escalation of election interference in Latin America, Trump is backing a Honduran politician from the party of former President Juan Orlando Hernandez- who pushed ZEDE legislation allowing Prospera to plant a literal Network State *COLONY* there. www.reuters.com/world/americ...

brb making this

Modern software development.

Why are there so few pigeons in St. Louis? New research from Washington University attributes it to urban design.

I was strictly a C student in higher math, which is a firm rule-out for the physics track I was considering. My backup, CompSci, ended up carrying me.

Mamdani rolls for Persuasion: "Natural 20! ...My total is... 41. Let's goooooo!" DM looking over the rims of their glasses, like their soul has left their body: "...Fucking Bards, I swear."

Nat 20 from a high charisma paladin. You love to see it.

As a reminder, companies like nvidia book revenue in advance of delivery. This stock will not be the bellweather of the crash. Their crash happens after booked orders get canceled due to sudden lack of (expected) demand.