If I have to repost this piece a dozen times to get people to subscribe to Scratch, I will. We are an entirely reader-supported, worker-owned co-op that is aggressively anti-AI, not on Substack, and whose focus is publishing/media. We’re betting everything on our ethics & our work. talkscratch.com

the levels of elite impunity we are seeing now and the levels of war crimes we are seeing now are two aspects of the same path of historical development. right now they see war as our problem (and their investment opportunity). it is world historically important that we make war their problem again

If a member of your family were accused of lying, hustling and robbing people in your community, would you: A. Acknowledge that your loved one has a problem, or B. Defend your family member and pretend everyone else is lying

Arundhati Roy empties the clip!

I finally lost my shit about so-called AIs, LLMs, enshittification & everything fucking evil that @officialgrammarly.bsky.social is doing. I'm fucking furious, and not just about what 1 company has done. An open letter to Grammarly & the rest of the LLM hype machine www.moryan.com/an-open-lett...

THREAD: I got laid off from NYMag/Vulture after 14 years. The family lost 75% of income + medical. Now mzs.press bookstore, once a side project. is do-or-die for Judith & I. I feel weird telling you this because others are doing much worse. But if you could like or share this, we'd be so grateful!

Hey! The stupidest, most malevolent people ever to be in charge of the U.S. are creating geopolitical havoc right now and killing people all over the place Stop pretending that this is anything else, or that there is an equivalent "other side," there is not, this is a world-historical calamity

I don’t know who needs to hear Jesse Jackson leading the kids on Sesame Street in this beautiful call-and-response reminding them that every child is somebody, but here it is

I hope he’s winging his way to join Shelly Duvall (and, of course, Ruth Gordon) in the great hereafter.

“Researchers from Johns Hopkins, Georgetown and Yale universities recently found that 60 FDA-authorized medical devices using AI were linked to 182 product recalls, according to a research letter published in the JAMA Health Forum in August.”

People have worn out "performative." We often perform things that are real, you know. Posting is a kind of performance of one's politics. Performative doesn't actually mean "fake" or "empty," it just gets deployed that way. We actually need performance. Case in point: last night's performance.

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again. #Pinks #ProudBlue

BTW when I say abolish ICE, I mean abolish it entirely and replace it with exactly nothing. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. That's it.

Hi everyone -- there is a general strike in Minnesota tomorrow to protest what the Trump administration and DHS are doing to our community. In solidarity with the action, I am going to donate my revenue from tmrw's newsletter to People over Papers, the Midway-Hamline Diaper Bank, & Every Meal. (1/2)

If you know anyone who still supports this one or doesn't think it's that bad in MN, please send them this. People need to know.

Today’s “MLK to Renee” rally/march across the Brooklyn Bridge was spirited and mighty in spite of frigid temps. Great speakers included Kirstin John Foy, Jumaane Williams, leaders of the nurses’ union, Carlene Pinto, and more. From MN to NYC, ICE out now! m.youtube.com/shorts/xEKbF...

This pal of Bari Weiss posted made-up ChatGPT baloney and attributed it to Francis Bacon, under his own byline!!! A wildly irresponsible person www.thenation.com/article/cult...

Rally tomorrow 9am in Foley Square, with march to WTC, where Noem is holding a press conference.

NO WAR ON VENEZUELA!!!

Watching Bari Weiss Murder Investigative Journalism at CBS Notes from someone who's withstood White House demands to stop an explosive story—and who once even had a 60 Minutes piece spiked www.forever-wars.com/watching-bar...

Hey, speaking as a parent who also teaches art in my kid’s school: 1) I don’t want genAI involved in my child’s learning bc the AI short-circuits the effort & repetition needed to help him cement skills. 2) GenAI art teaches my tiny artists no skills & reinforces what they perceive as inadequacy>

Read Carlos Valladares’s review of A. S. Hamrah’s “Algorithm of the Night” and “Last Week in End Times Cinema” here, in the Brooklyn Rail — excellent insight, and congratulations again to Mr. Hamrah on his NBCC nomination! brooklynrail.org/2025/12/film...

Hooray for A.S. Hamrah, nominated for the Nat‘l Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism! Get his latest, “Algorithm of the Night“ and “Last Week in End Times Cinema“ [n+1, Semiotext(e)]. His work is brilliant, often hilarious, and always rooted in the sociopolitical moment. bsky.app/profile/hamr...

Very nice review by @pkeough1.bsky.social in The Arts Fuse of my book, Algorithm of the Night. artsfuse.org/321302/book-...

For World AIDS Day, which is Dec. 1 and which is being ignored by the Trump administration because they dislike the World Health Organization, other countries, science, and queer people, I'm reposting a piece I wrote earlier this year. (They also hate history.) www.vulture.com/article/hiv-...

Since our fucking government isn’t observing World AIDS Day, I will. In 1990, I started taking care of people in the last stages of AIDS in their homes. I did this for nearly two years. The home care company I worked for had meetings for those of us who solely (or nearly solely) took care of PWAs.

Editors have a really hard job, and the good ones can make something unreadable readable, and the great ones can make something unreadable into something good. But they're basically invisible, until someone tries to write without one.

Celebrating Ann Reinking on her birthday with this astonishing Jack Mitchell photo. Annie was elegant, intelligent, hilarious, bawdy, ferocious, silly, empathetic, and deep as the ocean. 💔💜

Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer. He is a computer safety researcher. And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine. In under 1600 words. aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...

My publisher’s been very patient. I’m not doing everything I said I’d do to promote this book (out in a few weeks) because I’m an organizer in a city under federal attack. My days are full and emotionally exhausting. Any help getting the word out means a lot. It's a book people need right now.

Someone looking at all this with a cold eye might say that Miller and Hegseth are seeking control over the power ministries before a Vance ally invokes the 25th Amendment.

🚨🚨 My dear friend and fellow academic, the Palestinian American sociologist @emanabdelhadi.bsky.social has been taken by the Cook County Sheriff near Chicago. They have not mirandized her. Please signal boost. All eyes on Broadview for Eman and the community she was defending 🚨🚨

This is exactly what was horrific about Ezra Klein saying Charlie Kirk did politics "in the right way." Read the whole @nytimes.com essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/m...

a new mRNA therapy apparently can cut the rate of Huntington's disease progression by ~75%. yet more miracle shit www.bbc.com/news/article...

More than 1800 detainees are missing after the closure of Alligator Alcatraz. Their families and lawyers can’t find them and they’ve vanished from the ICE database. Feels like this should be a much bigger story www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

This is a great piece by @unbiasedscipod.bsky.social with helpful tips for addressing COVID misinformation. As a science communicator, my experience is that the best way to win people over is with empathetic real world conversations and it's work we all need to do if we want to turn things around.

The AMA has issued multiple (upward of a dozen) statements opposing RFK's actions, expressing grave concerns about his impact, calling for reversals of decisions such as his dismissal of all the members of ACIP (vaccine panel). To my knowledge, AMA has not yet outright demanded his removal.

Gramsci on my block:

The below piece is in MedPage Today, re: AI models and responses to suicidal risk. (The NYT article on Adam Raine quotes a coauthor of the study but does not expand.) That these bots are being used, unregulated, as a therapeutic stand-in is terrifying. Study: psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/...

We need a mass mobilization to stop Trump's military occupation of DC--or else he's going to militarily occupy other cities.

James Dobson dedicated his life to evil and the world is worse because he made it so on purpose. defector.com/james-dobson...

New developments in the AI-ificaiton of the US government. In my view these are further steps toward building an evil computer that auto-funnels your tax dollars directly to the broligarchy. You be the judge. Here's the evidence 🧵

ICYMI: writer @alexismwright.bsky.social wrote about the white woman scammer industrial complex--and what it reveals about who is believed in our society. theflytrap.beehiiv.com/p/racialized...

www.forbes.com/sites/judyst... Another look at Defend Public Health's common-sense report, Improving the Health of Americans Together (IHAT), released today. #IHATnotMAHA

Don’t let this die. Keep elevating this.

"One of the reasons the epidemic of violence against women is so unacknowledged is because cases like these are talked about individually, and often treated as though they are shocking aberrations rather than part of a pervasive pattern that operates at all levels of society."

Babies Burned to Death & Pregnant Women Bombed in Tents: What a Dallas ER Doctor Saw in Gaza thebarbedwire.com/2025/07/22/c...

A while back I mentioned I helped to build a government AI tool. DOGE "deleted" (fired) my whole org (@alt18f.bsky.social) and took the tool to become their "AI-first strategy." But what is the strategy? What are they actually planning to do? I’m trying to piece it together. Here’s what I think 🧵