I used to handle interlibrary loans for a public library. ILL is a magnificent expression of the idea that readers deserve books, and books deserve readers. It’s libraries everywhere pooling their resources for the benefit of everyone. Killing IMLS could have killed ILL. This is great news. 📚

Can’t believe the whole country has to suffer through the return of Dickensian childhood diseases because the worst, most ignorant attention-demanders decided other people’s expertise makes them feel bad

Between the Equal Justice Initiative and other sponsors (but mostly the EJI) there has to be at least 100 historical markers at the site of racially motivated lynchings of Black Americans between 1865 and 1950. Alas, there’s 6,000 or so markers to go.

Today is Trans Day of Remembrance. Since 31st October 2024, at least 340 trans people have lost their lives to anti-trans violence, or suicide. Transphobia kills. Please be an ally every day. tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports?from...

Please understand that "reward people for being healthy", in health insurance, also translates to "punish people for being disabled." The people who are most vulnerable, most in need, will be asked to bear higher costs, in many cases, pricing them out of accessing health care, into early graves.

Abortion is supported by 3 out of 4 Mainers, but a popular network of clinics that provides it alongside primary care has been shut out of Medicaid by the Trump administration, which also targeted Planned Parenthood. n.pr/48jMkt4

From this minister's op-ed: "People wanting to experience God are more likely to meet the Divine trying to shut down the Broadview, Illinois, ICE facility than we ever were in church...God does not live in our houses of worship, but...with those who are bearing the brunt of cruelty in this moment."

My takeaway from every new Epstein revelation is that some powerful people victimized many powerless young women, many more knew, some actively enabled it--and we're still being told that MeToo and accountability for sexual violence have gone too far

The idea that sexual abuse is part of “private” life instead of a public crisis has done incalculable damage. Anti-rape activists have to fight to even make it possible to expose sexual abuse as a wrongdoing in public without being silenced and undermined. That fight is far from won

Today is a good day to remember, and to say, that the #MeToo movement was right, and was righteous, and has been vindicated over and over again. There was no overreach. There was no excess. There was no they-went-too-far. So much work remains to be done.

excuse me I have been actively soliciting Edmund Fitzgerald memes for years

we didn't immediately get a single all-time folk rock ballad out of the big boat getting stuck, huge L for millennials and zoomers

50 years ago today the Edmund Fitzgerald sank

this is frankly reason alone to say "no deal" to anything for the next three years. but this isn't viewed as a worthy cause for the same reason anti-ice activities isn't viewed as a worthy cause for the same reason that there were no actions taken against gillibrand calling mamdani a "jihadist".

I received this email about Democrats caving to end the shutdown from one of the SNAP recipients I spoke to:

Not a political consultant but I’m not sure “standing up to trump doesn’t work” is the best midterm message, even if if accurately represents senate dems position. Not much point in putting you in power then bsky.app/profile/atru...

Ed Ruscha, OOF, 1962-63 www.moma.org/collection/w...

Every single person in Little Village fighting ICE/BP this week, each one of those people had more courage than the entire party leadership put together. Every single person in the street resisting in LA, Portland, Chicago, they're ALL showing more backbone than useless top tiers of Dem apparatus

Senators on the brink of retirement who lived full, wealthy lives and never feared the loss of their own healthcare voting for their constituents to die from their inability to afford the same is treasonous

I just have to think the senators knew how much hot water this was going to be because we all had, what, an hour? to figure out what they were up to and call in, if we weren’t online on a Sunday evening we would have missed the whole thing

this sort of thing doesn’t end until a couple centrist senators go down in flames in a primary time to get some guys without nazi tattoos and get on that

“A promise of a vote on healthcare” is nothing

UPDATE: Reached out to the Rev. Hannah Kardon, a United Methodist minister who was there that day and has been active in religious demonstrations at Broadview. “They are making it clear that they are scared of prayer … it speaks the truth that what they are doing in that building is evil.”

new: at least 26 unhoused chicagoans have been abducted since the start of "operation midway blitz." the full scope of people disappeared is likely much larger but is obscured by heavy criminalization, social stigma, and fewer eyes and phones around to bear witness. via @katieprout.bsky.social

COMMON SENSE GUN LAWS

Referendum in Maine that would have made absentee voting nearly impossible has failed. Yay!

i'll tell you what, i'm enjoying this night of making my haters my waiters at the table of success

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

and we don't have to settle for shitty candidates a year out from the midterms. we can hold out for better. we can always hold out for better

I do not regret to inform you that we are going to win

the first muslim woman being elected to statewide office (in any state!) the day dick cheney died is beautiful

ICE/CBP is active in Lincoln Park right now, has been spotted near Damen/Clybourn at Costco + Jewel (this is in addition to a morning abduction reported at Costco earlier). People believe grocery delivery drivers are being targeted and are asking folks to alert other vulnerable workers as well.

their plainly stated goal is to starve forty million people until they get what they want, which is to rip health care away from millions more that this is too monstrous for most news organizations to tell the truth about does not change the facts

A partial list of what Bovino does not have to tell a federal judge happened today: *An agent pushed a City Council member in Albany Park *Agents deployed pepper spray in Albany Park & Evanston *Agents were involved in a car crash in Evanston *An agent pointed a gun at a woman in Evanston

Covering this as a national ban is absolutely correct, and is the only framing that it needs to be. Its horrifying. There's no reason to think they'd stop at kids too.

lotta people saying to donate to food banks which is great, but if that’s not available to you, often they are desperate for volunteers! shifts can be short, a few hours when you’re free, doing stuff like sorting boxes, making sandwiches, or delivering meals, depending on the org

Indoor trick-or-treat events. Candy dropoffs. Neighbors patrolling with whistles. This is how Chicagoans are helping kids have a safe and ICE-free Halloween this year: blockclubchi.co/47qJSzi.

no one has ever been more relatable answering a question about AI

43 years ago today, readers the world over opened their newspapers and gazed upon cow tools for the first time. happy birthday cow tools. you look great.

Just incredibly, unnecessarily cruel. And I’d be shocked if there wasn’t wanton corruption going on here, too.

I saved this @tressiemcphd.bsky.social quote so it can haunt me. Now you can also soak in it. You're welcome.

Tlingit artist Nicholas Galanin, “Architecture of return, escape (The British Museum)”, a deerskin map a floor plan of the British Museum and possible escape routes for various Indigenous cultural belongings held there.

for everyone very concerned about Maine elections, there's a ballot measure this November, funded by Leonard Leo, to make voting a lot harder in the state. Could have big impact in 2026 if it passes @burness.bsky.social did a deep dive at @boltsmag.org boltsmag.org/maine-questi...

41 million people (including 20 million kids) will lose access to food in a few days while a new 90,000 square foot ballroom is being added to the White House. This political moment is profoundly disgusting.

You're also not a sucker for believing in people. I get the sense that this needs to be stated from time to time.

the president has destroyed the east wing of the white house without so much as a word of input from anyone else to build a royal ballroom paid for with bribes

have i been huffing glue or something since when is ‘cannot actively have any nazi tattoos’ an impossible standard

Idc, "4 people disguised as construction workers heisted the Napoleon family jewels from the Louvre in 7 minutes by rolling up to the second-storey window on a basket lift" is an objectively hilarious event

folks can complain about the effectiveness of scheduled orderly mass protest but to think about it another way its the closest thing we have to the opening scene of A Muppet Christmas Carol where all the muppets sing "there goes Mr. Dipshit, there goes Mr. Ass" to Scrooge and it clearly bothered him