Local politicians work with this group because they don't want their fingerprints all over a policy of endless sweeps. Instead, they are outsourcing public policy to some very shady people who are clearly MAGA-coded. Time for this to stop

the sky of 2025.

We got Meta’s “general global playbook” for defeating advertiser verification regulations, which the company knows would reduce scams. It includes making scam ads “not findable” for regulators searching Meta’s ad library through targeted scrubbing. www.reuters.com/investigatio...

I love this account which posts nothing but photographs of post offices across the 50 states of the USA & other places where there are U.S. post offices. This photo👇 is the most artsy one I've yet seen. Anyway, I like this feed almost as much as I like the one that rates dogs (all dogs rated 10/10).

John, I bet you already read this, but I really like this (regarding "LLM house styles"): marcusolang.substack.com/p/im-kenyan-... It trully brings a perspective a lot of people don't consider when discussing this -- colonialism.

47th and 50th. And governor Ferguson wants to raid half a billion dollars from the carbon tax and use it to balance the budget.

This is true and I was the only one on set excited about it (and playing the song on my phone to blank stares)

A free, open-access library of high-quality organism illustrations for science communication

This is a photo of the surface of an asteroid It was taken from the *surface*I of that asteroid By a *bouncing rover* the size of a lunchbox (1/2)

Reminder that years ago it was found out that the FBI straight up made up a whole bunch of fake forensic sciences, plural. People have gone to jail and been executed due to literally pseudoscience. Hair forensics, for instance, is totally nonsense. They admitted it. slate.com/news-and-pol...

Heralding something new 🍂🔔 #illustration #watercolor #gouache #forestart

So, if I'm reading this correctly, recent USPS reforms are making it logistically impossible for the agency to postmark all letters on the date received, and services that rely on postmarks to prove deadline adherence shouldn't do so anymore.

For your holiday ambiance, I've made a hypnotic yule log fireplace with ultra slow motion macro footage of flames stretching & warping like liquid as fire reacts with calcium chloride & barium. This is real fire I filmed, not CGI or AI. 10hrs, 4K, crackling sounds, no music, no ads. Happy holidays!

New post! There was a lot of innovation in medicine and biomedical research this year, and I've tried to summarize the biggest ones in this blogpost. Medical breakthroughs in 2025. Plus a serious note at the end. www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/medical-br...

A pair of happy hammerhead sharks (ca. 1735 Edo period Japan)

Read Jim's whole thread! I also want to add some historical context. During the 1918 pandemic, there was so much confusion because many scientists still thought that a bacteria, not a virus caused the flu (because, as Jim notes, we couldn't even see viruses under a microscope yet).

One more pelican before I put my phone down down for the night. Taken this morning. 🪶

The city can’t renovate this pool because landmarks got wind of the plan and quickly designated this unremarkable building so now they are plowing over the kids playground to build a new pool building

I found a Screaming Tree Frog in the garden tonight.

In 2019, the rate of fatal police shootings in the US was 3.1 per million residents. By contrast, the rate in France was 0.14 per million, and in Germany, it was lower. In Germany, police officers discharged a total of 85 bullets at people in the entire year of 2011.

Mods are asleep, post blobby Qing dynasty cats

Previewing prefiled bills in #waleg before the 2026 session—here are some of the bills I found interesting: the new AI regulation bill HB 2157 app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary/... which looks stronger than previous proposals, but I need to look more closely;

Physicists explore the formation and behavior of “sandballs”—the peanuts, doughnuts, and orbs of sand and water that form when raindrops hit a sandy slope. Sandballs have implications for bioengineering, pharmaceuticals, and snow physics. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/aitg50XOW8U

Laughing at my own joke like

What a thread

Great thread. Also, in my ever so humble opinion, WWD2’s Albertosaurus is the most compelling and beautifully depicted tyrannosaurid in all of palaeomedia.

What an incredible development! Agreed, TA was jarring and 他 wasn't quite right either. Happy to see X也 getting a space for itself. I know it'll get used immediately by many.

Each Friday, we’re sharing highlights from our Top of the Charts, a look back at our most popular charts, articles, & more in 2025. Today we give you our top 5 most-read topic pages this year. 🧵 1. CO₂ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions → ourworldindata.org/co2-and-gree...

Finally, someone called out my favorite obsession on TikTok. The White River should go north. King and Pierce Counties had a 100-year agreement to manage it. You will not be surprised that King never fulfilled their contractual obligations. 1/4 www.tiktok.com/t/ZTr3vNrEk/

Hello new followers! If you're bored and like free webcomics, here's mine! It's a complete short story about a ruined world full of alternative energy...and magic doom eels. (Includes detailed transcripts on every page) amphiox.hmcgill.art/comic/amphio... #webcomics #amphiox #comics #indie

OSHA has a nice "Woodworking eTool" for anyone interested in woodworking safety

This story is absolutely wild. Did you know that avocados change sex over the course of a day? And that it's controlled by a single ancient balanced polymorphism? This is flat our crazy

It’s wild so many people are willing to go to bat for prisons as a reserve for rural jobs when universities are better in every aspect for such a role.

the least shocking thing in the epstein files that wont get enough attention. police regularly arrest and charge victims to coerce them into participating, often jailing them in conditions that are worse.

six months ago Reader’s Digest asked if they could purchase the publishing rights for this elaborate shitpost I wrote a year ago now wherein I pretended to be the elf equivalent of David Brooks at the North Pole. Thought it was maybe a phishing scam but it’s real LMAOO

Had a dream I was writing a script for an animated police procedural, except it was Anubis as a coroner-priest solving crimes in ancient Egypt. Anyway, call me, Hollywood, we’ll talk.

teenage lesbian necromancers in space be like

Good morning! 🪶

Everyone sat around talking about how these people were incredibly stupid and then they managed to successfully implement large swathes of the plan that they all told us they were going to execute and you really have to wonder who is the stupid in this equation

This how they did in my team in Jan. They kept them long enough to train bots, then fired them. I'm currently surviving doing work of 4 people, at breakneck pace. If you wonder why I have clear eyed view of where we are with LLMs, this is why. I was ground 0 www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/i-was-forc...

man I love avocados but I really wish they weren't so hard to cut

"What this means in practice is that if you are not white, you cannot go certain places without the risk of being kidnapped by federal agents. That is not 'common sense'; it is the nullification of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal rights under the law."

American conservatives and other types of fascist have no desire to return to the days of skillful liars. A person living by a lie told skillfully may have been fooled by the skill. But to force a person to live according to an obvious lie means you have dominated them.

another example of AI as tracer dye, exposing an already existing problem (and, of course, significantly worsening it)

Platecarpus & Hoploscaphites

Because it’s not just Bari Weiss’ CBS asking this question—in the last few months, I’ve been approached by half a dozen different shows looking to ‘debate’ the same topic. I even got a request from NPR-distributed “Open to Debate” to see if I’d weigh in on “Has Feminism Hurt Women?” NPR!

It’s the “season of love and giving”…but this year, doesn’t it seem more like a “season of fear and taking”? Like many of you, I’ve been saddened by the human impact of draconian government budget cuts and how angry many housed Americans are at unhoused Americans. 🧵 1 of 9

"Has feminism failed women brought to you by bank of america" is my MKULTRA sleeper agent activation phrase