the best argument against democracy is 5 mins with the median voter, the best argument for democracy is remembering that without it, thats who gets what they want, not you

I've got to say that I'm really disappointed in the recent discourse surrounding the RCP8.5 scenario. The lack of context and understanding is something I expected from the usual suspects, but it's frustrating to see such bad takes from people and outlets who should know better.

This is where I started ruthlessly unsubscribing from campaign fundraising texts and emails.

1) DHS has in custody, for once, for real, an alleged violent criminal alien. 2) They manipulate a judge into releasing him so they can attack the judge for doing so.

A friend asks: “Has it occurred to anyone that the MAGAs think you have to show IDs at restaurants because they’ve been eating all their meals at strip clubs? This isn’t even an unreasonable theory”

Just saw an ad for samsung appliances touting "bespoke AI" integrations. So now not only is your IoT connected device spying on you, it's doing so in the service of an LLM enabled ecosystem of bullshit. Don't buy any new samsung shit is i guess what I'm saying.

I'll say it again, one of the worst things this rampant push to cram "generative AI" into everything has done is make people suspect bright kids of cheating when they're just nerdy or bookish or neurodivergent, sanding down their unique edges to fit into people's lowered, homogenized expectations.

"Turns out students aren't great at asking questions well." No fucking shit. Literally any educator could tell you that. 90% of my job as a high school librarian is trying to figure out what kids actually want versus what question they asked.

The Supreme Court did not strike down conversion therapy bans today. Not nationwide. Not in Colorado. Not anywhere. Here's what actually happened in Chiles v. Salazar—and why the coverage you're seeing serves the conservative legal movement more than it serves you.

Balcony #solar in the #USA! #EnergyTransition

Stephen Miller complaining about the UK finally eliminating heredity nobility from their legislature is a perfect encapsulation of how perverse it is to have these people in charge during the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.

Holy crap! Less than $1,700 away from raising $15,000!!!! 20hrs left! I watched this bundle raise over $1,000 yesterday. Let’s make the world just a bit better today! Buy awesome books! Help trans people! Hooray! AND VERY IMPORTANT TO ADJUST DONATION! DON’T BE LIKE ME AND MISS THAT PART!!!!

It’s too late for Micah, but for others let this be a warning - go buy a hot dog first.

The Trump administration made a conscious decision NOT to target the agriculture and hospitality industries because of pushback from capital interests.

chickenshits www.theverge.com/policy/85990...

The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) would force social media platforms to filter and suppress content that the Trump admin is willing to argue makes kids "depressed" or "anxious." Videos of ICE murdering people make me pretty depressed and anxious, and I'm a grown ass adult. See where this is going?

And when she was just on the cusp of understanding this, I said, now imagine they sold that information about you to anyone who wanted it, so that there would be people out there able to manipulate you whom you've never even met. And now you're not the trainer, you're the dog. Now she gets it.

Christ on a bike, this is brilliant. And disgustingly historically accurate. 10/10

and the winner of the "2025 best thing on Internet" has just arrived neal.fun/size-of-life/ @carlbergstrom.com

React Developers: I need you to upgrade right now. I don't ring the alarm bell often, but this time I am. It's similar to Log4j, but not yet exploited in the wild. This is quite serious, please upgrade now.

EVERY house we looked at in altadena had a high fire risk, so we looked and bought in Pasadena even though there was less inventory. EVERY house i looked at in Altadena burned in Eaton, four weeks after we closed. Eaton missed our house by five blocks. the risk rating worked. shame it’s gone.

This has been an extraordinary set of data to process: 1.3B unique passwords, 2B unique email addresses (including mine 😭) and almost 3M of our @haveibeenpwned.com subscribers in there. It’s been weeks of processing to get this loaded, and finally, it’s done www.troyhunt.com/2-billion-em...

In NYC watching as Liz Story is back in a recording studio for the first time in 15 or more years. It sounds glorious!

do folks have any idea how much cops cost?! it would be less expensive to just feed people.

there is NOTHING in the science to justify this. fuck this

I wanted to offer some thoughts on the Gates climate memo that has been circulating this week. While I can't directly speak for others, I can say that my own response is one of dismay & deep frustration (and that this view is shared by many climate/Earth scientists). [1/n]

Rich people don’t buy newsrooms because they care about journalism they do it so they can control the news.

I feel this should be obvious but we do understand the reason for the focus on gender affirming care for incarcerated people, right? The goal is to get people to admit that they think gender affirming care is *not medically necessary*.

Clocks go back in the UK tonight. They change in the US on November 2nd. Welcome to the Week When No One Knows What Time It Is 😆

WBEZ/Sun-Times are crowd-sourcing a map of ICE raids. Put aside what they’re doing and to whom and why. The fact that the people of an American city, including the mayor and governor, have to guess where Federal agents are operating, is itself insane. interactive.wbez.org/uploader/en/

It's kinda cool that Gary Larson is doing new cartoons because he picked up a digital tablet, taught himself how to use it, and it made him love drawing again. www.thefarside.com/new-stuff/

Proud papa moment: my son J published a letter in the @nytimes.com today (in print tomorrow) on the need to think our definitions of autism.

A list of laws, theories, principles and patterns that software developers might find useful, including the 1% Rule and “institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution”. [hacker-laws.com]

What also baffles me is that Democratic Party is ~30 points underwater in favorability & Zohran Mamdani is ~16 points above water in favorability. The Dem Party establishment, who is responsible for the abysmal rating, is too arrogant to support the guy ~50 points ahead of them. Incredible.

The alumni of this program are a who’s-who across silicon valley. Suspect there aren’t many law students following me here but if there is one in your life who is interested in tech law, they should apply.

Every single day of this administration, I have thought of my late professor Joe Nye and his work on soft power. Every single day of this administration, Trump finds a new way to hemorrhage soft power from a country that once had more to spare than any in the world.

Sunset over the Santa Cruz Mountains tonight

Looked at my data collections for state-backed activity. If the report were a picture:

I hate that the word "poaching" is commonly used to describe workers moving jobs to ensure they're getting paid the market rate for their services. It's corporate speak for "paying workers better than us," another garbage framing by Big Tech that we shouldn't accept. Worker mobility is a good thing.

Mandatory reading today from @rawsignal.ca: mailchi.mp/rawsignal/ho... It is offensive how good @johnathan.bsky.social and @shappy.bsky.social are at nailing the workplace issues around AI.

I want to talk about my friend. I met him at a summer camp for nerds when I was 12, pre-transition. We hit it off immediately, became SUPER close, and our parents would drive us back and forth for sleepovers for the next five years. He was the first trans person I met. He transitioned in the 90s.

2/ It was bad enough they cut all the tax incentives for wind and solar energy - they added a NEW TAX on these projects to make sure America never builds any new renewables. Remember, Trump promised the oil industry provisions like this in exchange for a $1B campaign donation.

4/ A new tax break for coal companies! So the tax incentives for wind and solar are GONE, and the coal industry is getting NEW tax incentives. It's official policy now to to not just deny global warming exists - but to actively make it WORSE.