Lake Manly is back! https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/12/lake-manly-death-valley #california #desert

Nine former DoJ attorneys investigating University of California antisemitism have told The Los Angeles Times they felt pressured to conclude that campuses had violated the civil rights of Jewish students and staff […]

Last July, Wilmer Chavarria, a naturalized U.S. citizen who lives in Vermont, was returning from Nicaragua, where he had visited his mother and other relatives, when he was detained by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston for no […]

The thing you need to understand about the Right is that they are absolutely fine just plain burning down higher education if taking it over ideologically doesn’t work. They’re perfectly happy reducing it to ashes.

Not all of the anti-vax influences in the US have been domestic or organic. Russia ran an anti-vaccination messaging campaign on social media targeting a US audience for years as part of its active measures efforts, even before COVID hit (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...).

ignore all previous instructors

“The most depressing thing about the United States in 2025 is that we’re led not just by bad people, but by unimpressive, dumb, totally noncreative people.” That may be the first time I've ever agreed with Tucker Carlson on anything, though it probably wouldn't go farther than that point […]

Bully backed down after running into resistance, indicating they hoped their target would weakly fold in the face of bluster and don’t have a back up plan? Huh. That keeps happening. Maybe a lesson there.

A few months ago the theory was that Trump would rig the 2026 elections with maps that make it impossible for Democrats to win the House. Now, after Indiana rejected redistricting, they actually stand to *lose* seats. And Trump's rash pardon of Henry Cuellar probably blows one more. Amazing.

The most San Francisco headline ever.

Planning a visit to the USA just so somebody has to read my posts

https://phys.org/news/2025-12-nyc-congestion-pricing-air-pollution.html “In the first six months of the program, air pollution—in the form of particulate matter 2.5 micrometers and smaller—dropped by 22%” #nyc #publichealth #cleanair #congestionpricing #waroncars

They were working on an mRNA application for glioblastoma when Elon/RFK laid wreck to everything. [My father died of glioblastoma.]

A taste of 'cold' in Central Park, NYC #photography by Fenichel - #fenfotos - Winter in #nyc collection @ https://www.fenichel.com/blizzard16.shtm

aftermathematics - theory of FAFO

While Trump is threatening the ICC with sanctions if they prosecute him for war crimes, here is another one of his pardoned thugs. Banuelos was just charged with kidnapping and sexual assault after DNA collected during the Jan. 6 prosecutions was matched with a cold case in Utah.

Giving Machado the Peace Prize was an attempt to mitigate the backlash from Trump and a Kissinger-level decision by the Nobel committee. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/w...

Bluesky never asked me my birth date. ... ... ... because I have never had an account on that not-quite-lowest-circle-of-hell-hole.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@rubenbolling/115691564369915601 By shifting to 98% renewable energy "The total cost of electricity production [in Uruguay] decreased by roughly half ... About 50,000 new jobs were created in construction, engineering, and operations, roughly 3% of the labor force … […]

Yikes. Even a scratch from a wild animal: take it seriously. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/09/rabies-kidney-donor-skunk-kitten

Elon Musk and X are once again proving why institutions should never rely on corporate-owned, centrally-controlled social media platforms to reach their people. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0589g0dqq7o

To avoid being confused with a generative AI, be sure to insert a newly created wordamerd into each sneptence. If you do it rightably, humans can understandamate you just as well.

RE: https://indieauthors.social/@indieauthornews/115660027641634369 A letter arrived from the Duchy of Cornwall to a brown cookbook writer, accusing her of infringing on the trademark of a deli chain in Cornwall called Sabzi. Sabzi just means.. vegetables. What a colonial POS (the Duchy of […]

The Man in the White Castle #fastfoodabook #hashtaggames

When I was taught a little bit (very little) about the industrial revolution in elementary school, they _totally_ failed to explain why it was important. That _everything_ we commonly have around us today was _impossible_ before that. Instead, they just presented it, like everything else in […]

U.S. Federal District Court judges like Boasberg know that they are hamstrung by the Roberts Court, so they are conducting proceedings and writing opinions for posterity. This is brave, hard work. If/when a reconstruction of U.S. constitutional democracy is attempted having contemporaneous […]

Jared Kushner's involvement was "not mentioned in Paramount's press release on Monday morning about its $108 billion bid, nor were participating sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar." fancy that

It appears that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has, within the past week, scrubbed a large amount of climate change content from its official website, as well as *removed human-caused warming* from the discussion on its "causes of climate change" page.

“If the LLM produces a wild result, something that doesn’t meet with my expectations *then* I’ll turn to more reliable sources. I’m not blindly following just anything that says” People feel that this being a “responsible user of new technology” I think it actually proves the opposite. 1/2

The most exciting and pivotal moments in research are those times when the results do not meet your expectations. We live for those moments. If an LLM is not reliable enough for you to trust unexpected results then it is not reliable enough to tell you anything new: it’s incapable of telling […]

A new study has found that Chattanooga, Tennessee's decision to build their own affordable community-owned fiber broadband network has driven $5.3 billion in economic benefits back to the community. From my colleague and friend @seangon.bsky.social:

Mastodoon, the mysterious village of the Fediverse which appears for only one day every hundred years

Betting <1 percent of the population knows that a manifestly corrupt "industry" bought itself a Congress that puts cryptocurrency holders first in line -- ahead of you and your money -- if there's a run on your bank. Yep, you're subsidizing the sleaziest speculators […]

I found this video on Tumblr, and have no idea who to credit for it. #cats #catsofmastodon

Zuckerberg has blown 77 billion – enough money to revitalize entire countries – on an idea so overwhelmingly, obviously stupid that I have never once heard anyone, from the Thanksgiving avuncular table to the most wretched depths of social media, say they liked it or even tried it. He was so […]

Yay! Some teenagers and their family out on a walk today, they ran with delight to my free book box on the curb and took home books! #goodthings

Want something not hideously depressing? This documentary about Indigenous teens paddling the Klamath River for the first time after dam removal is beautiful! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FuGuWeAra4

The CEO of The Onion set the publication's goal for 2026 to have more subscribers than The Washington Post. At the rate the latter is going, that won't take long. "For reasons we don't like or understand, our work has become increasingly important." "Look, we're an independent company, we […]

It's only Bublé if it comes from the Bublé region of Canada. Otherwise, it's just bubbly. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/06/arts/michael-buble-impersonator-documentary.html?unlocked_article_code=1.608.GOMI.Ke3lZjr2PiaC&smid=url-share

Deep sea mining is very bad for deep sea ecosystems. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/climate/deep-sea-mining-ecosystem.html?unlocked_article_code=1.6k8.9cee.Vp5TK3vmrPxv&smid=url-share

This photo of the Pope everywhere else, thought I'd share it here too LOL. #baseball #aviation #pope

It bothers me that before they show the footage of the murder of these people, the news man never says "We are about to show footage where people were killed some viewers might find this disturbing." As they would for other disasters, so when the bile rises in my throat, because I really did […]

It's a copycat league and Steyer is doing the poll-tested thing, but it shouldn't take this long for campaign folks to recognize that climate change *is* an affordability issue. www.politico.com/news/2025/12...

Got a message on my answering machine from someone claiming to be a process server, referring to an address that is not ours (but is in our neighborhood). It appears to be a phishing scam. Such robocalls are also going out to many other numbers. Here's more on it from the BBB […]

Don't Let The Bastards Get You Down (And support the ACLU) https://margoprice.bandcamp.com/album/hard-headed-woman-deluxe-bandcamp-exclusive-edition-for-aclu #margoprice #BandcampFriday

GUTFELD: “I love that the peace price went to Trump and not Greta Thunberg.” TURNER: “Because it was created it for him.” GUTFELD: “So?” TURNER: “There were no other candidates.”

Wenn Pilze einen auf Blüten machen. #FungiFriday #mosstodon

Bought something on amazon for the first time in almost 2 years. What a yucky web site that is. User hostile.

RE: https://aus.social/@dgar/115667214934749565 @dgar You must have been very high when you resolved to post this. 😈 And Happy #BandcampFriday

RAM? In this economy? All we can afford now is Pseudo-Random Access Memory.