Oh, absolutely not! Dolly Parton is a national treasure! Bigger than Elvis ever was. Her fandom crosses political parties, and is not based ideology, or even country music. She is a majestic, regal queen. A stalwart defender of the poor. A defender of books. She is wonderful.

Beautiful, heartwarming read.

One of the biggest moments of my career: USCIS canceled my client’s naturalization oath ceremony. We filed a lawsuit, went to trial, and the judge swore him in right there in the courtroom!

Some Dems have told themselves only ~1% of the population is trans so they can dip their toe in the anti-trans filth and come out clean. I don't have any trans family members—but it still makes me irate. I see it as a huge red flag, a sign you are unprincipled and untrustworthy. And I'm not alone.

he was a joke candidate till he went full racist in that rant and then suddenly he was the frontrunner

Gorgeous workmanship, just incredible.

The Pulitzer suit could be a very useful demonstrative bc the right wing (and propagandists like Jeff Gerth) have created a myth abt NYT and WaPo reporting on Russia which is largely makebelieve, as I laid out two years ago. www.emptywheel.net/2023/02/07/t...

Virginia Heffernan wrote this shortly after the 2016 election and it still holds true

www.npr.org/2025/12/13/n...? On a similar methodological note, I suggested to a grad student just this week that they keep track of popular media storylines about trad wives loving fascist men

I'm really late to this paper, but wow, what an enormous data + methods + theory lift

Woke up extremely tired with bags under my eyes but at least my "For You" machine learning algorithm feed by @spacecowboy17.bsky.social is running like magic. Super good stuff, funny to me, relevant to my niche interests, right at the top. Hits like a good cup of Ethiopian single processed, coffee.

"Tariffs are 'national security!'" "The ballroom is 'national security!'" "Suing the BBC is 'national security!'" "Slaughtering Venezuelan fishermen is 'national security!'" "Torturing day laborers is 'national security!'" NONE of this is "national security" but it is Naziism 101.

"To these detectives of digital inauthenticity, I say: Friend, welcome to a typical Tuesday in a Kenyan classroom, boardroom, or intra-office Teams chat. The very things you identify as the fingerprints of the machine are, in fact, the fossil records of our education."

This is just one example, but this story is the perfect example of why mediocre white guys are against DEI and this is the “American Dream” they’re trying to preserve. This is the “western culture” they want to protect, and anti-discrimination laws and policies destroy that.

sir the rats released another tell-all about the sinking ship

Lol "Trump has an alcoholics personality," is especially funny for someone who doesn't drink.

I have some bad news about the Pentagon.

HARD BOILED DETECTIVE: another cruel sunrise over the city of the damned. another corpse. another widow. another cup of black coffee to drag my sorry ass back to life- *sputtering* ME: do you like it? it's an ethiopian washed process single origin DETECTIVE: ME: are you getting apricot notes

Last year, there was a big debate on SM about using "delve" as an obvious AI tell. The postcolonials were miffed! The colonials just didn't understand why. As a postcolonial, even if English is your first language, it is a particular version of imposed English. Lose-lose. Again.

This is incredible news. Today, Virginia officials will unveil a statue of Barbara Johns at the Capitol to replace one of Confederate General Robert E. Lee that had stood for more than a century. www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...

Think about how you are in the shrinking bubble of people who know how to read and process the meanings of written words, and how a handful of billionaires are doing their damnedest to shrink it further. You're in a literacy bubble, and a handful of the wealthiest freaks in history are killing it.

That said…

Shut the law reviews down, this is the paper to end all papers

Pretty much the actual best thing you can do to "combat the right" is just keep not using Twitter. Reactionary ideology works by playing into people's emotions and biases. They use people's real fears to sell them on solutions which sound rational but don't work. 1/3

"Mr. Kast is the son of German immigrants. His brother Miguel was a former minister during Chile’s military dictatorship under Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Mr. Kast has expressed admiration for General Pinochet, who ruled the country for nearly two decades" www.nytimes.com/2025/12/14/w...

If you are old enough, you will remember the War on Terror version of this

doubling down on the war crimes is a choice

Former FBI official Chris O'Leary explains that part of why it will be difficult for the FBI to recover from the damage of the Trump era is that the experienced agents are leaving and "what's going to be left is loyalists to this administration." Replacing the seasoned professionals will be tough.

Gotta be honest: I don’t believe in the afterlife but I kinda want to if only to imagine Rob Reiner looking on, to see that his death caused Marjorie Taylor Greene to stick up for him against the President It would make him smile

Proposal to have CIA director (Gabberd) in charge of traditional FBI obj (FBI is mosy domestic) In an era where military is murdering ppl and violating international law, worth asking if voters care if National Security apparatus is a voting issue, w/ violations of civil, state, & constitutional

I hate this timeline. This is sick. I'm tired of how disgusting everything is.

Just to be clear: if 'no one was ready' a lot of people fucked up, bc those of us who work on this laid out what was going to happen 8yrs ago. The twofold issue that 1)it's not just a tech problem, and 2) Big Tech allowed itself to be ref-worked into spinelessness. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/t...

This influencer asked people if they would mad were she to gift them protein balls instead of Christmas cookies. Yes, %#!?, everybody would be mad! Are you a sociopath?!

What a lede: "A heinous act of violence. A faceless killer on the loose. A desperate manhunt. An F.B.I. director with a finger poised over the “post” button on his social media account."

This report (1) articulates our motivation and rationale for this "researchers as sensemakers" approach, and (2) describes some of the sociotechnical infrastructure required to make this kind of "rapid research" work. A short summary of the report: uwcip.substack.com/p/cip-publis...

At the UW Center for an Informed Public, will continue this research — to help identify, analyze, and communicate about rumors related to election integrity — during the 2026 midterms. But we also hope that our work can be a starting point for other research groups to play similar sensemaking roles.

This model emerged from a much longer research trajectory, beginning with “action” research (with colleagues and mentors at the University of Colorado) that supported digital volunteerism during crisis events like the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the 2011 Joplin tornados, and fires in Colorado in 2012.

In this action research, we apply established research methods and contextual expertise (e.g. about elections and crisis events) towards the challenge of real-time sensemaking, helping journalists and the broader public understand emergent events and the information flows around them.

Since 2020, our team has iterated on a model for “rapid research” to help surface, analyze, & resolve rumors about election administration. This work demonstrates an innovative role for researchers to support public sensemaking during rapidly unfolding events. uw.pressbooks.pub/rapidresearc...

In the USA even the very wealthy old men must perform as gladiators until death in inhospitable outposts like Indianapolis in order to provide their children with medical care.

candle flames dancing living room transforms to cave ancient sigils' glow between flickering lights grows inspiration from shadows #tanka #inspiration #photography #digitalart #poetry

#SenseWrds prompt 158 (sleeping, wispy, persimmon)

Lord of Winter #poetry #writing #fiction

#RetroArtPrompt | #qaggiq #shortstory #postapocalypse #prose #freeverse #amwriting

@onlypoemsmag.bsky.social - I steal mine!

Got my Dawn comics, a day earlier than ETA! Stoked! Elated! Happy Birthday to meeeeeeeee ❤️❤️🥰🥰 I see it's labeled "Gothic Fantasy." Perfect!

One time I took a class called the Politics of Terrorism (or something like that) and years later I googled him to see what he was up too. Good class! Anyways after the 2016 election, he hung the American flag (on his private property) upside down and someone called the cops on him. Too on the nose

No. Too on the nose.

Also could be the absolute classic; the FBI convinced a bunch of losers to do a terror attack, including informants pushing them to make plans, telling them where to buy weapons and making "connections" with "arms dealers," and helping pick the target list.