tl;dr- fwiw, companies that kept their promise are: Farmers Insurance Airbnb Expedia Group Clorox Eversource Energy Holland & Hart LLP [law firm] Quarter Retail / QVC Group Lyft Whirlpool (in case you have a choice in your consumer purchases.) open.substack.com/pub/populari...

CA folks: If immigrant friends/family got a letter from the DMV telling them they must renew a Real ID, they should go into the DMV ASAP to get it sorted (you have to do in person). Note that the press release says "no fees" and "expedited processing". www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/news-...

Since there has been a lot of "what are Americans even doing" talk on the timeline today, my gentle reminder that none of you better be posting the exact details of what you are doing on bluesky dot com, it is more important to safely do the work than prove to strangers that you are doing something!

During Fiona Hill's testimony to Congress on Oct 14, 2019, she described how Trump and Putin discussed exchanging Ukraine for Venezuela. The quid pro quo was if Trump refuses to help Ukraine fight off a Russian invasion, Putin would not help Venezuela (a Russian ally) resist a US takeover.

Again:

Heads up to drivers heading to SF from the East Bay — this is what the right side of the freeway looks like after the toll plaza 😬 King tides are doing their thing!

PSA for cat people living in areas where coyotes have been sighted.

forget the long arc of history bending towards justice, I need the rube goldberg machine of inexorable consequence to endgame the kind of profoundly ironic yet blackly hilarious karmic downfall that would’ve had ancient greek theatergoers hollering at the chorus

The House Armed Services Committee also was not briefed, I've confirmed.

AZ folks, heads up. ICE plans to use Phoenix as a detention center for the region, because “5000 more beds” will “increase throughput” of the millions of people it plans to seize. Plus lots more ICE paramilitary in its streets. Time to up resistance. www.thebulwark.com/p/scoop-ice-...

I'd like to point out that publishing this photo is in breach of the Geneva Convention by Trump. Anyone counting?

Dear news media, Why not spend a few minutes today explaining how the process of going to war is supposed to work in a constitutional democracy? Because it ain't this.

just gonna drop some links to a few papers of mine about AI-CSAM and the law here, for no particular reason cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/news/ai-csam... (May 2025) partnershiponai.org/hai-research... (November 2024) www.lawfaremedia.org/article/addr... (February 2024)

Those if us who had LiveJournal accounts, it’s time to move ‘em out or lose them.

If only there were things we could do to reduce the rate of flu spread… 🤔

This statement belongs in every journalist’s office.

Not surprised Europe is first. Hoping Canada will follow: French authorities will investigate the proliferation of sexually explicit deepfakes generated by artificial intelligence platform Grok on X, the Paris prosecutor's office told Politico. www.politico.eu/article/fran...

Keep this handy when this administration claims (as of course they will) that healthcare insurance costs didn’t rise all that much when they killed the ACA. Tl;dr: yes, costs will go up obscenely for those who can afford *any* insurance coverage. Lots of folks with no coverage skew the average.

Worthwhile thread. Post is piggybacked on a critique of academics, particularly in [children’s] education. BUT - disdain for expertise is rife throughout all knowledge workers - not just academics or teachers, but also programmers, administrators, etc. White collar workers. More in replies …

uh holy SHIT?

These works honor Navaho weavers who built semiconductor circuits. There’s also Makiko Tada, who translated traditional Japanese braiding techniques into resilient, strong-but-light car frames & windmill blades. And so many more fiber artists re-working old, manual techniques for modern tasks.

Spot-on analysis of this tempest in a teapot trying to be character assassination. What it doesn’t mention, though, is Nate Silver’s implicit outrage that a woman historian has a broader audience to explain US politics. Not as a game of statistics, but as ideas. open.substack.com/pub/xplisset...

And please, PLEASE let us not forget that time in 2023 when Karen Smith was elected President of the school board in Bucks County, Pa and swore her oath on a stack of banned books. The most gangsta oath ever! Just brilliant. www.edweek.org/leadership/t...

Happy Public Domain Day! Jan 1 marks the date when eligible works pass into the public domain in the United States. Notable works entering the public domain this year include certain early Mickey Mouse cartoons, the novel As I Lay Dying, and the Gershwin composition Embraceable You. #copyright

Happy Public Domain Day!

Combine this post on Mamdani’s civic aesthetics with this piece on the Yiddish Socialist roots of his political ideology: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... It’s an inspiring nostalgia.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the foreign-born or immigrant population (legal and illegal) in March 2024 was 51.6 million. Thus, if the administration deported 100 million people, it would have to deport roughly 48.4 million U.S. citizens to hit that target. #holdfast #getsmart

Meet Aimee Bock, mastermind of Massive Minneapolis Minnesota fraud scheme. She lured Somalis into opening daycares & wellness centers promising millions in Fed Govt funding. Most never got paid, she kept $250M and they closed. Ain't no ICE issues. Somali's were the victims, whistleblowers.

"The Human's world ends soon," said the cat. "Again?" said the dog. "They are fond of endings and beginnings. Even if nothing changes." The dog whined. "Same procedure as last year?" said the cat. "Please." The cat lay on the dog's head and purred, muffling the fireworks. #CrossRepost

"Kindness, kindness, kindness. I want to make a New Year's prayer, not a resolution. I'm praying for courage." - Susan Sontag Wishing you kindness, courage, enchanting stories, and abundant creativity as new year unfolds.

Today, Ukraine and Moldova officially join the EU Roaming area. What does this mean? People from 🇺🇦 & 🇲🇩 can now call, text and use their mobile data from their local phone numbers for communication to the 27 EU countries at no extra cost and vice versa.

About now is when Californians start to watch snowpack in the Sierras, which makes up ~ 30% of state water supply for the coming year. The wet holiday week means we’re currently at 71% of average; here’s hoping this week’s continuing rain improves that. water.ca.gov/News/News-Re...

So, the frog stopped the National Guard from coming to Portland, along with astute lawsuits by Oregon. Only part of what's happening, but hard to understate how fundamentally the Portland Frog changed perceptions and helped morale. Humor, imagination, courage, savvy.

Wow!!!

Absolutely true, all of this; the only way it counts as satire is by anthropomorphically voicing Wikipedia like Keegan-Michael Key as Obama’s Anger Translator. Now that LLMs & Chat GPT have “turned your [our] information environment into a hypercapitalist post-truth digital snuff film”.

At last, we've reached number one in our countdown of our most-read pieces of 2025. Here it is, written by the brilliant @gregmania.bsky.social, a hilarious defense from this year's most maligned punctuation mark. buff.ly/BQmeypF

Spot-on reply to that NPR puff piece on (gasp) not choosing partners who share your political values. Yeah, this is satire - which is well-known as the best kind of critical commentary.

There are going to be people who unironically praise this and say banning Doctors Without Borders and OxFam is necessary because they're Hamas. And worse, folks will nod and agree as though that's a legitimate position and not absolutely batshit. www.npr.org/2025/12/30/g...

Folks reading commentary like this, bemoaning the fall of former leading lights in their fields, should read the rest of Nathan Kalman-Lamb’s post it’s piggy-backed upon. The stated reasons for resignation are wearing a mask, & fewer white make students; + unstated complaints of sexual harassment.

Another reminder that the ghosts of politics past still haunt and torment us today.

“For as much as President Donald Trump put his stamp on 2025, it was also a year marked by high-profile acts of protest against his agenda. Here are this year’s standouts who took a stand.” www.ms.now/news/immigra...

This is absolutely insane, and for authors who spend years researching, editing and writing a book, to have them flagged as #AI because the infernal thing was trained on it is f--king infuriating. It SHOULD be illegal...but nothing stops amoral techlords from violating ethical and legal boundaries.

In Chad’s Prehistoric Wall Drawings, Lessons in Climate Upheaval undark.org/2025/12/31/e...

Ok team, we can bring these words back into usage! 💪 Overmorrow = the day after tomorrow Ereyesterday = the day before yesterday We ahould have been using such excellent words ereyesterday, but if we start now we’ll be glad overmorrow!

As it happens, I have experience with high-level government demands to stop an explosive, accurate story from running, and I also have experience with 60 Minutes spiking a story I was involved in, so I have thoughts about the travesty at CBS. If you want some journalism anecdotes, here are a lot:

“Deal with it, America.” The U.S. didn’t succeed in annexing Canadian provinces in the 18th CE, & it won’t now, either (Pierre Poilièvre & Danielle Steel notwithstanding). It’s up to USians to deal with this fascism & its quisling grifters. open.substack.com/pub/charliea...

Bonne année! Happy New Year! Here’s my topical French Canadian folklore print I made for #FolktaleWeek2025: La Chasse-galerie! The French Canadian folktale of the Chasse-galerie, or the Flying Canoe tells of some hardworking voyageurs in their timber camp, who miss their sweethearts back home, 🧵

They’re targeting gun nuts, paramilitary wannabes, & fast car fetishists, plus lowering the recruitment age to 18. No wonder these guys have no discernment, or cultivate hair-trigger reflexes to lash out.

For ex. “a user asking how much ibuprofen to take for a headache receiving a promoted ad for Advil in the chatbot’s response. Meanwhile, actual results on correct dosage may be … buried under a mountain of ad text”. Our information landscape will be nothing but ads. What could go wrong?

being asked to mask on top of being told he can't fuck his students, apparently