thunderstorm! at midnight

Lots of new campaign filings coming out in California with tech billionaires spending big. One new filing I hadn't seen reported on yet was Google's Eric Schmidt donating more than $1M to a committee combating the proposed billionaire tax www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

what the fuck time is it aaaaarrrhghhgh why do we do this

This is RFK, Jr.'s MAHA Institute's recent meeting in D.C. Slide presentation titles: “The Polio Fraud” and “The flu shot has given 1,900,000 Americans Alzheimer’s,” and “VACCINES ARE GREATEST SCAM IN MEDICAL HISTORY.” (capitals, theirs) www.notus.org/health-scien...

being a classical musician is expensive as shit, this isn't really a huge number until you look at what they bought

they could have spent half as much on the greatest piano design in the history of Steinway www.hulmepiano.com/pianos-for-s...

Handcarved & Engraved Gilt Shell Sewing Kit. Paris, 1815-1820 #sewing #jewelry #antiques #oldtimes

My name is used as "expert" reviewer on Grammarly, so I uploaded an unpublished paper and asked "myself" for feedback. I got generic writing advice. The feedback from their fake version of @katestarbird.bsky.social and *colleagues* also gave generic advice about using examples. I'm insulted.

wp article (archived):

Remember the mystery a few weeks ago, about how and why xAI was spitting out people's government names, even people who have only *ever* used a pseudonym professionally?

I loved “The Midcentury Kitchen.” Found it on a lark via a tweet and it was totally worth it

“Now, Grammarly has finally addressed the backlash — but not by apologizing, and not by walking the feature back. For now, it will graciously give us the chance to opt-out of something we didn’t know it was doing to begin with.”

Meta has one platform full of robots talking to each other… and now they also have Moltbook! www.axios.com/2026/03/10/m...

I know there are *so* many of you evolution and ecology fiends out there who'd be perfect!! "The Pokémon Company is specifically looking for those with research experience in animal and plant ecology, with Japanese and English language skills on top." (IGN) nordic.ign.com/pokemon-poko... #SciComm 🧪

There are pieces of writing that stand on their own without any external information, but there's a reason when we read poetry, for example, we want to know when it was written and by whom? Where was it written? What were the circumstances of their life at time? And their country or city?

Food and wine descriptions in "The Annual Banquet of the" Gravediggers’ Guild" by Mathias Énard are epic. And it's a marvelous book. Enard uses reincarnation and surrealism to write a novel that spans centuries. It's about history, love, food, and climate change in a small region of France. #Lit📚

3. We've heard so much about the way DOGE operated, but rarely have we gotten to actually see it up close. This clip reveals the entitlement Trump's USIP president and the DOGE team felt heading into the privately-owned building on the day of the raid:

Here's a thread featuring clips of key moments from the DC Metropolitan Police body camera footage of the March 17, 2025 DOGE raid on the US Institute of Peace that I obtained as a result of my FOIA lawsuit:

A book club has been trying all week to make a poster for my upcoming visit, but the app their using will not stop remaking our book cover from scratch with AI. It's adding random anime characters, giving existing characters vampire teeth and Thanos chins, converting Korean text into gibberish...

They kept sending me posters and saying "is this the right cover?" until I just made my own. Whatever Adobe app they're using is generatively rebuilding the image to fit in the given space (as opposed to cropping or letterboxing) while training itself off of our book cover without being asked to.

mejiro with plums

This represents wasting an astronomical (no pun intended) amount of work. IIRC Dragonfly’s CSR was almost 1000 pages and represented years of work from many people.

this squirrel stole a ball from somewhere, brought it to my yard, and flips around playing with it ??? like wraps itself around the ball and performs somersaults

This is absolutely hilarious and deserves a Veep-style TV adaptation.

Here's the first-ever Linkedin message from this company, which seems to be a small company run by two millennials with some background in migrant shelters. Four months ago they suggest they won a contract to run a "mass care site" in Lexington, KY, but this is their first-ever federal contract.

NO NO NO YOU DON’T GUYS LET ME PLEASE SPREAD THE GOSPEL OF FREE TAX USA federal is free, state is $16, handles even my chaotic freelancer taxes just fine, same step-by-step “designed for normies” kind of interface as TurboTax but NOT EVIL tell everyone you know www.freetaxusa.com

“Anovaeon, based at a residential address in San Antonio, was added in October 2025 to WEXMAC TITUS, a DoD contracting vehicle…originally created to allow rapid contractor deployment in response to international disasters, bypassing the traditional federal bidding process.”

And if you read the @mollytaft.com fertilizer story, there could be some serious knock on effects there too. Urea and ammonia need water, and oil/soot getting into a reservoir can’t be good. (Or in the transporting of pellets in open air) www.wired.com/story/trumps...

1/It was not possibly unlawful; it was unlawful; and it continues to be unlawful. In addition, NEH canceled statutorily required grants to state humanities councils many of which have had to close, harming state arts communities. And guess what: “Western Civilization” is not in the statute.

Yeah, I guess people aren’t hearing about The fact that a bunch of fascists were having a rally and threw a number of devices at the mayor’s house www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

New York Attorney General Letitia James is investigating the death of Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a Blind Rohingya refugee who died in the cold streets of Buffalo days after Border Patrol dumped him without coordinating with his family or lawyers.

(1/11) If you live in NY, you’ve probably started seeing a new warning: “THIS PRICE WAS SET BY AN ALGORITHM USING YOUR PERSONAL DATA.” This mandatory disclosure went into effect late last year, and it’s the first attempt by a US state to grapple with a new generation of surveillance pricing.

Very young Border Collie instinct to herd 😃

I think we should loudly, publicly start planning the trials for Trump et al for When This Is All Over. Some NGO should pay lawyers to start tracking crimes, preparing legal theories, crafting enabling legislation, etc. It should be the legal equivalent of constructing a gallows in the town square.

Today! Yo La Tengo plays cover song requests in exchange for pledges live on Todd-o-Phonic Todd's show (3–6 p.m. ET), w/co-host Gaylord! Pledge $100 and have your request ready! Or use this link to submit your request in advance. (Write your request in the comments.) pledge.wfmu.org/donate?progr...

Harper to the judge: "Your driver's license doesn't list your height and weight at birth. It doesn't list where you used to live. It identifies who you are now."

Grammarly is using our identities without permission

Make it stick.

A court record reviewed by 404 Media shows privacy-focused email provider Proton Mail handed over payment data related to a Stop Cop City email account to the Swiss government, which handed it to the FBI. www.404media.co/proton-mail-...

SCOOP — Body camera footage obtained as a result of my lawsuit against the DC Metropolitan PD confirms DOGE and the Trump administration openly admitted they were entering private property when they raided the building on March 17, 2025. That didn't stop MPD from breaking down the doors. My report:

Get 👏 those 👏 coins 👏

NEW: A panel of upstate appellate judges ruled that New York law banning source-of-income discrimination (rejecting apartment applicants because they have Section 8) actually violates the constitutional rights of landlords @wnyc.org @gothamist.com gothamist.com/news/new-yor...

Hacking internet-connected civilian security cameras for recon has become a standard operating procedure of modern warfare. First for Russia and Ukraine, now for Israel and Iran. Your insecure internet-of-things surveillance system is now their targeting system. www.wired.com/story/from-u...

I’ve gone an entire month without paying bills and things are getting worse for me. $1300 STILL NEEDED. NOW OVERDUE FROM FEB. $430 TO PAY OFF PHONE AND INTERNET Donate: linktr.ee/jskylerinc #TransCrowdFund #DisabilityCrowdFund #BeAPatron #BIPOCMA #HelpSky #BlackSky #LGBT 💸💕🏳️‍⚧️

“some noted they had lost fans and donors. There are some people who like Irish music but think ICE is just here to enforce the law. But Natalie O’Shea, executive director at Celtic Junction, told me, “To believe in laws over belief in people is to be colonized.””