It was great committing [specific crimes] with you! Attached is the selfie we took while committing the crime. Remember how [witnesses] were there and observed it? Good times. Hope to commit many more premeditated crimes with you soon. Best, [full name] [address] [SSN]

Very excited to read the book version of one of my favorite, incredibly niche memes.

TL;DR: maybe this is not the best moment in history to be saying law enforcement should have greater access to people's data.

We are living in dangerous times and the US is using surveillance to conduct atrocities effectively unchecked by the courts or Congress. Forbidding law enforcement and LE-adjacent users--who have ignored the ToS in the past--from accessing Ancestry protects user privacy with actual teeth. #genealogy

look I know being an engaged citizen IS the work of democracy but it is also the work of elected officials not to create situations where everyone has to be mobilized all the time to prevent them from allowing some kind of Dickensian horror on a Sunday night while you're in between loads of laundry

This is not a drill. Call your senators NOW. (Email only if you can't get through.) Democrats just had an incredible election night and a protest attended by millions. There is no reason to cave on something as popular and essential as healthcare. No shutdown vote without ACA funding!

Normally I try to keep Negative Book Takes to a minimum, but if anyone wants to wallow in disappointment over The Rose Field (aka the last book in the Book of Dust/His Dark Materials series) I am all ears. Rants welcome.

my Japanese maple woke up this morning and decided to flex

The thing about all of these sociopaths, narcissists and abusive personality types and powerful millionaires and billionaires etc, they are frequently the thinnest skinned, most deluded, tiresome people in the world, & nobody owes them a single iota of their time or energy! They hate this! Too bad!!

Today and tomorrow! www.eventbrite.com/e/book-sale-...

Wife: What’s Shiv Roy’s poor husband’s name? Me: Fitzwilliam Darcy. Miserable he may be, but poor he most certainly is not. 10,000 pounds a year and he owns half of Derbyshire. Wife: Babe. Please. It’s for work. Me: Ugh blah fine, Tom Wambsgans.

This is really interesting because #genealogy had been overwhelmingly pro-AI (despite its inherent conflicts with genealogy standards, but that's another story). Curious to see if any LDS genealogy orgs will start to pull back at all.

This is really interesting because #genealogy had been overwhelmingly pro-AI (despite its inherent conflicts with genealogy standards, but that's another story). Curious to see if any LDS genealogy orgs will start to pull back at all.

candle in the wind

Ellis: Federal agents described a number of protestors as "professional agitators" based on their use of whistles, in part. "Describing neighborhood moms and rapid response groups as professional agitators shows just how out of touch these agents are and how incredible their statements are."

Ellis: "The government would have people believe, instead, that the Chicagoland area is in a vice hold of violence, ransacked by rioters and attacked by agitators. That simply is untrue. And the government's own evidence in this case belies that assertion."

If you are in the mood to cry before noon (complimentary) read this thread of Judge Ellis's ruling (scroll up for the poetry).

I am writing this using voice-to-text because my eyes have fully rolled all the way back into my skull.

My "I have arrested many people of all skin colors" shirt is raising a lot of questions already answered by my shirt.

Congrats to NYC on starting down the road to a unified streets map. Took only 125+ yrs after consolidation 😉 Scanning each borough’s paper maps will be (mostly) easy, actually digitizing all the metadata would be really really hard. Here’s a close-up of what one of these paper maps looks like.

ushering in an era of bold socialist leaders who support trans rights and make really great font choices

Hot girl summer is over, it’s aloof wife autumn

Watching Mamdani's victory speech, I'm struck by his—and his campaign's—unabashed vision of the US as an immigrant society, a culture built from the ground up from diversity. It is a complete rejection and reversal of the search for a white-washed homogeneity that the political right projects.

SCREAMING

i can’t believe a good thing happened we should do this more often

Okay now that he’s conceded, it’s time for Curtis Sliwa to hang upside down by his feet like a bat for three years or whatever he does between elections.

Looks like the Dems will pick up 12 seats in the VA House of Delegates, which will go from 51-49 to 63-37 D-R. That's an honestly shocking result.

These adorable little toasted marshmallow-looking Snow Buntings made my day! They’ve arrived along the lakeshore, bringing a touch of Arctic charm to Wisconsin during fall migration. 📷👐🏾🫶🏾🪶

Clown mayors gotta clown

I gotta give it up to the writers tho. If NYC elects a Muslim mayor on the day Dick Cheney died, that is one hell of a slow played story arc. Every time you want to fire 2025's writers room they give you a little narrative resolution as a treat.

On the one hand, getting to read a new Philip Pullman/His Dark Materials book is VERY EXCITING for my inner teenager. On the other hand, if he introduces another named character that I have to remember on top of the 457 or so other named characters from the series, I am going to lose my mind. 📚💙

this is very cool: Kodak quietly relisted Kodak Gold and Ultramax on its website and confirmed to me it is selling the films directly to photography stores again. this is a big deal because for the last decade, Kodak has not controlled distribution of its own film www.404media.co/kodak-quietl...

It's not in this article but the government asserts that the sandwich was thrown at "point blank range", which implies subway sandwiches have defined effective weapon ranges of varying lethality, and I would like to see the government's chart of these ranges.

I would read a dissertation about the evolution of wheatpaste art from a tool for artists and activists to communicate with the masses to its appropriation by global brands and now its use by (mainstream, corporate-owned!) media to overcome suppression by a fascist government.

Zohran is stone cold man. Putting out an ad in Arabic after all the Islamophobic shit that’s been thrown his way? Pure swag. Dems don’t need to copy his politics or even necessarily his campaign strategy, they need to learn how to grow a fucking spine.

What crime have I done in this life that the YouTube algorithm is now serving me up random people's gender reveal videos

The CBA fight can't come fast enough.

DEMORALIZED DODGERS ARE MY FAVORITE DODGERS

wishing all self-employed people a less-enraging start to open-enrollment season than we are all imagining

Lovely piece by @annamerlan.bsky.social. Fun fact: The Evergreens Cemetery on the Kings/Queens county border told me a few years ago that there's more demand for graves on the Brooklyn side of the cemetery than Queens. #genealogy (Paywalled but you can read the beginning for free)

It's Halloween on the suBOO!way 👻

Print edition @theonion.com ads don’t miss

A cheerful building for a gray day

This story is developing nicely.

These terrifying bats are looking forward to #Halloween 🦇🦇🦇😱 Bodl. Library MS. Ashmole 304; 13th century; England, St. Albans; f.47v @bodleian.ox.ac.uk

I am out of practice, but I know there are some #genealogy people on here who can read German Kurrent!