"Zaslav will receive $30 million in "Golden Parachute' compensation along with $537 million in equity for a total of $567 million in a transaction-associated pay." half a billion dollars for being terrible at your job

I recall that over a decade ago, @barackobama.bsky.social put out a vaguely favorable statement regarding net neutrality, and the Ajit Pai/Brendan Carr folks in the FCC absolutely lost their minds, screaming "WE'RE AN INDEPENDENT AGENCY, HOW DARE HE TRY TO INFLUENCE US."

insurance companies literally kill people

This has been the laziest, most half-assed run-up to a war I’ve ever seen.

New Data shows at least 3,800 children, including infants, have been put in detention since Trump took office. Many were held for long stretches. “There is no other way to describe it; it’s a jail for children," one parent said. www.themarshallproject.org/2025/12/17/c...

incredible that "chatgpt assured me this was an original idea" isn't the most depressing part of this

This also happened during Trump’s first term. That 2024 dip? That’s when Democrats went on the defensive, and let Trump and MAGA dictate the immigration narrative. Why, it’s almost as if political leadership (good and bad) can actually drive public opinion, instead of always following it.

The idea of "wag the dog" is everywhere. But Trump has been ramping this up for months. It's about Venezuela. You say that doesn't make sense? It doesn't have to. Trump has a bug up his butt about Venezuela. And that fits with Marco Rubio's desire to get Cuba. These are not smart guys.

The director of MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center was killed at his home Monday evening. Someone committed a mass shooting at Brown University's School of Engineering on Sunday. Probably only correlation, but still.

See if you can spot Liberation Day. @usapolling.bsky.social

Wow -- I missed that even UNICEF expressed concern about the Australian social media ban. UNICEF!! They said, correctly, "for many children, particularly those who are isolated or marginalised, social media is a lifeline[.]" H/t @mmasnick.bsky.social on CTRL-ALT-SPEECH podcast.

Ending 2025 with the grounded sense of hope I picked up in Chicago, as told here:

I had been searching earlier for a map of this sort. One cannot help but notice exactly none of these locations are particularly close to the continental United States, nor are most of them on any course that would ever become close. Just murder for murder's sake.

Corporate media sucks so much

When this bubble bursts, so many companies are going to ask for a bailout.

Learn how to turn LGBTQ+ data into reporting that is accurate, thoughtful and community-informed. Join us on Jan. 23 for Reporting the Rainbow: Covering and Serving the Queer Community: www.sunlightresearch.net/event-detail...

Ahmed al Ahmed, the man who tackled one of the Bondi killers, became an Australian citizen 3 years ago. His deed was "his way of conveying his gratitude for staying in Australia, for being granted citizenship." He took 5 bullets, and fears he'll lose his left arm. www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...

Disappearing dissidents for Xi

Last week, anti-union lawmakers in Utah were forced to repeal a law they had approved just months before that targeted collective bargaining rights for public service workers. That was thanks to the Protect Utah Workers coalition, which includes AFSCME. www.afscme.org/blog/afscme-...

Oh man

So this is entirely horrifying and I hope people absolutely flood it with nonsense reports so that it's useless, because i can see freaks stalking folks irl to send their shit in.

A few more thoughts:

The problem with all arguments of this sort is that they effectively rewrite the statute to exclude critical limitations. If a statute says "the president may do X on condition Y," but no court may second guess a presidential determination that Y obtains (even if it plainly does not)...

Our local news recently reported that a nonprofit is collecting toys for kids whose parents were deported. FB commenters were overwhelmingly negative. Many suggested ICE raid the toy drive and arrest the kids, too. I hate that I’m now aware of how much of our country craves this sort of cruelty.

Yes. I wrote about one of those cases of alleged "ISIS plots". Watching FBI interrogation footage (that is, fwiw, withheld from the public and press) was definitely an enlightening experience. www.esquire.com/news-politic...

Hey romancelandia and fandom peeps! If you live in the U.S. right now you should know that KOSA (along with a slew of censorship bills) are advancing through congress right now. If you care about spicy books and/or fanfiction you should contact your reps right now and tell them to vote NO on KOSA!

My electrician is a green card holder who's been here since he was a kid. He got married to a citizen, applied for citizenship, went to court for the papers and when he got there ICE kidnapped him and he's been locked up for a month.

They've done it again, they've cut more rail projects. The most criminal one for me is cancelling the reopening of the Waterford-Wexford/Rosslare line. On the left is the All-island Rail Review published by the last government and on the right is the plan published today.

sorta wish i knew what i did lol

Donald Trump has instructed the entire FBI to prioritize finding ways to bring charges against anti-fascists and other activists. Any FBI agent who wants to advance his career now has an incentive to set up naïve kids for an entrapment case. Please read about entrapment and how to protect yourself.

note to self: invent self-unwrapping, frustration-free candy canes.

Exactly the sort of tyrannical behavior that the Constitution was written to prevent. See the Fourth Amendment in particular.

To give you a sense of how big a departure this year, the government doesn't do this for wanted criminals.

Oh. Cool. Just as the President is using every power he can to suppress dissent and stifle speech, @whitehouse.senate.gov and the @judiciarydems.senate.gov are trying to hand Trump a new tool to suppress speech online. What a joke.

If I wasn’t already an anarchist this would make me an anarchist

It's remarkable how perfectly this awful story is similar to The Dreyfuss Affair, from the banishment to a cruel tropical prison to the world's worst and stupidest people refusing to let it go even for decades after he was freed.

The complete destruction of Gaza, in considerable part paid for by US tax-dollars, was a joint project of Benjamin Netanyahu, Joe Biden and Donald Trump. It prepares the way for Trump's casino and resort project.

We’re getting an object lesson in this on the immigration front: “We ought to ensure that only legal immigrants reside here” sounds like common sense to Joe Barstool until it turns out that if you’re really serious about it, you need a brutal police state. “Who wills the end wills the means.”

A vital point here, first driven home to me by Cory Doctorow in the context of copyright policy, is that many forms of tech regulation that strike lots of folks as appealing and commonsensical would in practice require a fairly massive surveillance apparatus to meaningfully enforce.

I’ve heard from immigration attorneys that clients say ICE guards lay out the WRAP device (essentially a full-body straitjacket) on the tarmac as a threat — “do what we say or you’re getting the WRAP on the whole flight.” And here’s proof, from Seattle livestream today via @lalabote.bsky.social.

i think they should keep making it clear that they will not govern in a democratic manner and that deals with them cannot be struck

This whole thing should simply be a commercial. Frankly, if the Democrats have any sense at all, they will take this clip and pay to air it, unedited, across 90 seconds of Superbowl airtime

Crazy as it sounds, it appears the GOP believes the shutdown was good for them and they're going to do it again in January. Will the Democrats have the guts to hold out, or will they cave as usual? The GOP depends on Democrats always, caving. Goodbye economy.

This summer when my doctor said that the antibiotics I’d been taking weren’t doing the trick and I would need inpatient treatment, my first thought was, “Well gee, first let me do a little comparison-shopping. I wanna find a good bargain.“

there’s a lot of irony around how writing a genuinely good prompt for LLMs requires the exact kind of clarity and precision in communication that is taught by good (human) writing instructors - who have now almost all been laid off by college admins

I've said before that I'm not in a position to make demands of whatever post-Trump blue coalition emerges and I'm not. But if I were, 'robustly fund the humanities' would be really high on the list. Make it a cultural priority, making knowing actual non-racist history a cultural status marker.

The annoying thing is that as a Roman Army Guy, I am the kind of 'western civilization' historian they think they want and also fuck these people and their contempt for my discipline.

The US government is now a mafia organization.

#Iceland becomes the fifth European country to decline participation in #Eurovision because of the Israeli genocide in Gaza and their participation in the contest. I am relieved and thankful.

@warren.senate.gov just co-sponsored KOSA again 🤦🏽‍♀️ You CANNOT claim to be an ally to the LGTBQ community and support this awful bill. Your office blatantly ignored our Boston coalitions pleas, so let’s see how you feel about those phones being melted. CALL HER!