The mark of a free society is that there is the right to protest & to free speech. Greta Thunberg has been arrested in London for holding a pro-Palestine poster; tens of thousands of far right rioted at the Cenotaph pro-Israel, causing public disorder & violence. Only 25 of them were arrested!

It’s been snowing somewhere

Check out this incredible Christmas carol from Billy Bragg. Reminding us what the true story is - a refugee family escaping state violence and promising the gift of peace. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJas...

Taking off from Chicago O’Hare on our Contour CRJ200 jet down to MWA! It was a gorgeous evening taking off and seeing downtown Chicago lit up like a Christmas Tree passing under our wing. Those aren’t stars in the night sky…those are all airplanes lined up approaching the Airport! 😮 Stunning!

It's very resistlib of me but my god it is just absolutely impossible to get me to care about fucking James Cameron Avatar discourse while the state is dragging people from their homes in the middle of the night and shipping them of to torture camps Moreover, ICE must be destroyed

Ah, I feel like I'm in China again. Sweet familiarity...

Mitt Romney: Tax the Rich!

I highly recommend watching this segment, not just because the CBS News execs and the White House didn’t want you to, but because these men were tortured and they deserved to have their voices heard.

Did you all see this drag queen completely own Pete Hegseth? We watched it back recently on Cancel Me, Daddy. www.youtube.com/shorts/VfKyM...

Casual reminder that the myth of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” is a cruel hoax designed to convince poor people from all walks of life that the injustices they face are a result of their own actions, rather than an oppressive system rigged against them.

“The Free Press” www.wsj.com/business/med...

support independent media. idk what else to say right now.

A good latke year, by some miracle?? Writing down all the parameters in hopes of duplicating this feat...!

Nollaig Shona Duit! Remember people who tell you they have, or who expect, a perfect Christmas are either on a very high Xanax titration, or are passively aggressive towards humanity!

There’s much mumbo-jumbo about the Solstice & ersatz ‘Celtic’ religious practise about this feast. It can be quite painful hearing self-appointed foreign ‘believers’ combine everything from the Tuatha Dé Dannan, to Nazi mythology, in their ignorant claims. So here’s some factual info on Grianstad!

Someone made the mistake of saying Western culture was in danger last night. I read them the riot act, pointed out that although Ireland is part of the West, it has a separate culture & that that culture is central to our lives every day. When they tried arguing, I switched to Irish & they shut up.

i made some comically large pancakes for breakfast this morning

One day something will happen — a wedding, a graduation, a job promotion, Jake Paul getting knocked out, Andrew Tate getting knocked out the next day — and you’ll want the right outfit to celebrate. Buy that special outfit now, so you’re ready when that next unexpected moment arrives.

Here’s a wonderful recording of a humpback picked up on the @orcasound Orcasound Lab hydrophone yesterday, Dec 19, just before 5am. 🐋🩵 #salishseahumpbacks #psws #wssjis live.orcasound.net/reports/cand...

ICYMI, I've been reliably informed that this makes for an excellent news break. Come learn about how amazing Joan of Arc, Giordano Bruno, and Jan Hus are. And why Galileo is a bit of a dick.

Internet Archive 💯 Undefeated World Heavyweight Champion

get ready to learn about some of the coolest motherfuckers who ever lived: Olaudah Equiano, Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson

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...

Nebuchadnezzar, by William Blake, 1795-1805 (flipped) #NetflixPartner

The wikipedia editors are on fire tonight.

Don’t be worried about ringing or about bothering any of these services. They’d rather you called, emailed or texted. The do their work out of genuine humanity. Everyone needs support at some stage. ❤️

Here’s the US helpline & ways to engage with them: 988lifeline.org

The holidays can bring things up. There is always someone to listen. In Ireland, & the UK, call the Samaritans on 116123. In the US call 988. Listening; even in silence, being there. Everyone goes thru something. If you are in a different country, feel free to share my example with your helpline.

Yes. Because they're all rationalists and the rationalists have been broiling their brains on less wrong for decades

your regular PSA that California grows most of the produce that humans actually eat, not the Midwest www.cdfa.ca.gov/statistics/

me using my humanities education to analyze the background when christopher anderson asks me to pose against this wall

this shouldn't be surprising to anyone: specialization is for insects fairly certain i qualify as a high performance adult by these standards and i wasn't good at anything as a kid besides reading a shitload of random books www.wsj.com/science/elit...

That night when Toad went to bed he thought the biggest thoughts that he could think. Toad thought about giant sunflowers. He thought about tall oak trees. He thought about high mountains covered with snow.

That's totally unethical for science. Ok, grammar correction is fine. But "improving clarity", this means your writing was incomplete in the first place and you're completing it with text written by others. Shame on publishers who encourage this.

The belief that an LLM can help you write science reveals such magical thinking about language (and LLMs). If your writing is unclear, an LLM won't find its meaning hidden in the words. Only you can explain what you mean; the LLM does not read your mind. It completes with what *others* have written.

Imagine the Y2K-level effort that will be desloppifying the Internet after the bubble pops. And how all that effort will be time and resources not available for fixing the imminent Y2038 problem

This was just a pun on "My Sweet Lord" song, but I take it back, AI overviews are great.

My sense is that the “male loneliness crisis” is not really about addressing men’s emotional needs but rather the relatively newfound absence of having someone to perform domestic labor for you quietly in the background now that there is a longer gap between your mother and your wife doing it

Lord, please never let me be hated by someone as skilled as that Vanity Fair photographer. Let all my haters be incompetent.

Fuck the three Democrats who were the difference on this passing and especially fuck the Democratic leaders who made no effort to whip them into line and who will do nothing to punish them after the fact. I will never support a party who cannot pass the most basic tests of human decency.

The Border Patrol’s “commander at large” himself, Greg Bovino, steps between me and an Indian immigrant who was detained in the O’Hare rideshare lot today and was telling me his story. Bovino then told his agents, “Keep him away.” Photo by the peerless @ashleerezin.bsky.social

The combination of a supernova and a kilonova may have produced a rare space explosion that astronomers have never seen before

The Vanity Fair photographer knew what he was doing. (I doubt I’m the first to notice this but it hasn’t graced my TL)

Nuremberg 2 Moreover, ICE must be destroyed

Now, in the age of algorithmic suggestion, people can forget the social part of social media. Or never learn it in the first place.