😻 Caribbean Reef Octopus 🐙 Hand sculpted from clay and lovingly painted 🎨 #ArtAdventCalendar #ArtYear #Art #ArtGallery #Sculpture #Octopus #MarineLife #CoralReef #ArtSale #BSNM #Invertebrates 🦑🐡

French publishing house Harlequin decided to use AI translation instead of human translations. All their freelance translators (some of whom had been working with Harlequin for +30y!!!) were told they would no longer receive work from Harlequin

Herod's men, ready to deport the Holy Family into Egypt.

Central Park's Belvedere Castle with today's snow. ❄️

[“The purpose is clear. They have said, basically, we’re imposing these sanctions because of decisions you’ve taken in your role as a judge. So effectively, they are interfering directly with the independence of a judge,” Prost said. 1/

#artAdventCalendar continues with a hand-painted turkey feather. Acrylic gouache is my friend 😅 It's very small, only about 2 inches wide of painting space. #painting #feathers #miniature

There isn't a single problem "solved" by edtech that couldn't be fixed with smaller classes led by well-paid teachers given real academic freedom

It would be nice if links from social media to an article told you how much you would have to pay to read the whole article.

Oohhh. Reporters should ask RFK Jr about Trump’s health and what he recommends to improve Trump’s sleepiness and forgetfulness. 😈

Note: "Deportation Judges," not immigration judges. No need to apply if you don't get the agenda.

My rabbi has recommended giving up a source of pleasure for the 11 months of mourning. I am considering giving up reading fiction; less restrictively, giving up reading fiction by writers I do not know personally.

Tom Baker, MBE Nov. 10, 2025

Our original sin is that our families and tribes are known good, and that anyone else is a stranger or enemy. Anyone with an ordinarily complicated family knows that this division is impractical, e.g., when a family member is one's enemy. But it stirs up enough trouble to kill us all.

When the USA brings vast force against a much smaller and weaker nation, that will bring global esteem. There are no models for this in our recent history, eh? The U.N. will create a formal body to collect global lunch money. "A shame if something bad were to happen to your little country."

Chiuck Schumer: attempted a strategic play, which failed miserably OR couldn’t unify democratic senators for one of the most consequential votes of our time. Either scenario warrants Chuck Schumer’s replacement as Senate minority leader.

NYT once again spuriously reframes claims for justice as a battle between young Democrats and old. No, this is a battle between justice and injustice. What parts of "starving Americans" and "Americans without healthcare" are incomprehensible to the old? Ask Bernie Sanders.

no quote about the US political system has ever gone harder than this one

why is this mayoral election different than all other mayoral elections? in all other mayoral elections, we get to see andrew cuomo lose but once. but in this mayoral elections, we get to see him lose *twice*.

"Since that which is bruited about, albeit falsely, is how many infanticides each had already tasted, how many acts of incest he had shrouded in darkness." (Tertullian, Apologeticum). Nearly all religions claim that all others practice barbarity and must be destroyed. (See Vance @ Ole Miss speech.)

Best version to cross my feed so far…

After a luxury building in East New York flopped, the city is taking advantage of a new program to fill it with formerly homeless families who have hard-to-use housing vouchers. via @patrickspauster.com: citylimits.org/this-buildin...

Waiting impatiently for Hackett's Complete Works of Aristotle to resume sales. (They ran out of inventory, and claim there will be more today.) I hope that a Joe Sachs Aristotle omnibus is on the horizon.

Let me get this straight: Trump found tens of billions of dollars to give to Argentina for a bailout during our government shutdown, but he couldn't find funding to keep SNAP program benefits going for 42 million hungry Americans past this Friday?

The reform party nativity scene. No unmarried mothers. No Middle Eastern people. No refugees. No people seeking emergency accommodation. And not a wise fvcking man in sight…

If Emily sells prints and I don't get one for Hanukkah I will be extremely sad.

All the niceties are gone. The players are not even pretending at governance. All is done by fiat and force. Why not occupy the House, gather the Democratic Representatives, declare a quorum, and start passing laws? Of course, this escalates into chaos, but is there more chaos than there was before?

CA: Voting on Prop. 50 starts today. Your vote is likely your best means of holding back tyranny in your lifetime. Mark your ballot (this is a one-issue election, so it will take about sixty seconds to mark, seal, and sign/date. Mail, drop off, or take to a Vote Center to scan, and you're golden!

Congratulations to @neuromelody.bsky.social and all the honorees!

Judd Legum (popular.info/p/ice-boosts...) says that ICE is stockpiling chemical weapons. Are these lethal chemical weapons like sarin and VX, or are they non-lethal like tear gas or pepper spray? If the former, we are fish in a barrel. If the latter, more of the same.

ICE is stockpiling arms, including chemical weapons, guided missile warheads and explosive components. The spending dwarfs anything we've ever seen in the agency - a 700% increase. The President is building an army to attack his own country.

I worked (as a part-time contractor) for IRG, which, among other things wrote reports for IES's "What Works Clearinghouse." My full-time colleagues, the investigators, were brilliant, classy, and professional. The work they did was impeccable and helped U.S. K-12 education tremendously. No more.

People are way more optimistic than me www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

🇺🇸 🔥 That. Was. Impressive. We are watching America reassert itself and its values from the grassroots up. The world saw you and we have huge hope invested in you.

TROUBLESHOOTING: 1. My democracy is throwing errors. There is a tiny hole in the bottom into which you can stick an unbent paper clip. Factory reset, followed by bootstrapping the Constitution. To tell you how the progress is going, each of the fifty stars on the American flag lights up, one by one.

Darned if these politicians think Western classical civilizations are "safe" and unthreatening to entrenched power. Quite the opposite! Our waning hegemony is prefigured by theirs. Hybris->atis->nemesis->tisis.

This is of niche industry interest, but here goes: The digital catalog platform most independent bookstores use to peruse and order new books for their stores (called Edelweiss) has jacked up their prices on publishers to catalog new titles 200-300%. Why does this matter?

Never Trust AI. I was trying to create a Discogs tracklist for a recording of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. It's picky work, and I thought it might be easier to tell Claude how to do it. He was subtly and completely wrong. He left out all the tracks in minor keys! Facepalm.

Administrators of the @uofcalifornia.bsky.social can let the Trump administration pick off campuses one by one. Or they can stand together, resist this abomination, and win the gratitude and support of their state and their >2 million living alumni. CC: @governor.ca.gov

May our repentance, prayer, and righteousness avert G-d's severe decree. Given events of the past year, G-d may be serving us justice; hopefully, we will merit a little more mercy this year. An easy fast, honest reflection, and a good outcome for all of us!

"The anthropologist Marshall Sahlins has said that every culture is a 'gamble played with nature' in the sense that it depends on the continued availability of environmental resources, and on challenges that it can continue to negotiate." —Jonathan Lear, "Radical Hope."

Belated news: Peter Gelb announced that, due to the unavailability of any billionaire donors, he has made a deal with the Saudis involving Met performances there. There's only one catch: the dramaturgs will be Sunni clerics who will "snip, snip, snip" the librettos. What will the operas look like?

I grew up with a Mom who'd taken elocution lessons and a Dad from Brooklyn. Still, my accent was announcer-neutral until college: a Texan roommate and an Irish adviser left their marks. Some U.S. kids adopt British accents by listening to or watching the BBC.

One reason sign-up-in-advance organizations want your information is, wondrous to relate, so that they can ask you for money now and down the road. I think that's definitely part of what they mean by "moving [attendees] up the ladder of activism." Ever signed a change.org petition? Same deal.

Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/u...

"This is the road to totalitarianism, and it does not end with one man losing his television show." - Adam Serwer www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

*9/17/2025 noncooperation thread* Not everyone can choose to walk away. But some of us can and do. 8/

Every major talent that works for ABC and Disney should refuse to show up for work until Jimmy Kimmel is reinstated. Marvel movies need to shutdown. Ditto the sitcoms. Collective boycott. Corporations love money more than anything,& this will harm them and force them to do the right thing.