When I played Alysa Liu's short program earlier, this guy immediately ran over to the TV and watched intently the whole time. I can only guess he thought she was a wonderful golden bird. 😻

🚨 Baltimore: Out of an abundance of caution, we’re advising neighbors to be prepared for a potential increase in ICE activity in the coming days. Based on observed logistics shifts — vehicles and expanded operating space — alongside the recent 287(g) ban, a federal ramp-up appears likely.

Just when I thought Bored of Peace was the best pun of the day...

I got a tip that all over the world, people are using a dead-simple hack to manipulate AI behavior. It turns out changing what AI tells other people can be as easy as writing a blog post *on your own website* I didn’t believe it, so I decided to test it myself www.bbc.com/future/artic...

I regularly see people wondering how it's possible that there are so many musicians and writers and film makers and artists from a tiny nation like Iceland. And the answer is really simple: State funding for art education and artists. I literally get a salary from the government to write books.

NEW: Five steps lawmakers could take now to tackle West Virginians' pressing issues mountainstatespotlight.org/2026/02/18/5...

Baltimore County Council approves emergency ban on immigration detention centers

Instead of "the left isn't paying enough attention to these machine gods" they're claiming to build, perhaps we should write an article about how effective altruists brand themselves "left", ask who is writing these articles, and trace their cults and sources of funding.

When you see all the people labelled rude, essentially shadowbanning them under the default settings, remember that literally *every single* rude label has been manually applied by a mod. All of them. It's not a filter grepping on cusses, it's someone physically clicking a button.

Bruenig says her measles story belongs "somewhere on the creative nonfiction spectrum."

I don't think it is only our job to teach students how to read long novels; it may also be our jobs to teach them how to live without an online surveillance state. To learn without intrusive apps. To swap notes. To write in a book's margins. To exist in their communities in slow, clunky, human ways.

Wonder why it's suddenly harder to get a passport... 🤔 www.pbs.org/newshour/pol...

Much of my youth revolved around the website ZineLibrary. It went down around Occupy in a massive loss for a movement whose ideas and knowledge mostly doesn't circulate online but in person. Anyway I've put it back online with a *thousand* anarchist zines: zinelibrary.org

I don't know about you, but reading so many smart people's posts with typos in them makes me feel good, like we're all here being humans, communicating imperfectly together.

#DouglassDay is here! Looking forward to celebrating and transcribing with everyone this afternoon. libguides.su.edu/crowdsourcin...

Don't spread that Cusack post; it's misinformation. www.snopes.com/fact-check/m...

Over on threads someone just use ai;dr and we all need to adopt that right quick

stressbuster time www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNeP...

I would like to go further. There are really only two types of people: 1) those who work for money and 2) those whose money work for them. And if you have to work to provide and pay bills, you’re in group one and should ALWAYS stand in solidarity with the working class.

Communities in OK, MS, VA, and MN have stopped warehouse sales to ICE. You can, too: ✅ Go to city council meetings & SPEAK UP during open comment ✅ Call your state delegates — local + state pressure is our best bet. The Fed Gov won’t save us. ✅ Register to vote now. The 2026 midterms are coming.

“That’s it, clear the room,” John F. Barr, the commission president, said immediately after the vote. “Off air, off air.”

You deserve access to abortion care if you are pregnant and do not want to be. Full stop. Your reasons are your reasons and they are good enough. Abortion is healthcare and everyone deserves healthcare access.

When I got the contract to write a history of concentration camps in 2014, I hoped to keep the US from ending up here. That didn't work out! But now it's critical to understand how much is already in process and the enormity of what's coming. The sooner we act to stop it, the more people we'll save.

If you're interested, I've been making a mod list that you can sub to that currently has over 5600 LLM slop accounts to mute or block. Came across your post going through the hashtags over my morning coffee to add more.

Stream @thelibrariansfilm.bsky.social starting TODAY on Independent Lens on PBS. Watch the full documentary here: https://bit.ly/4rdp8nm

🫠 West Virginia could get nothing in taxes from data centers for a decade under proposed bill mountainstatespotlight.org/2026/02/09/d...

- So, what do you do? - I'm a supervillain. - What's your name? - Autocorrector. - HAHAHA! Are you Sirius? What's your super powder? Wait a minion... what the help is happy ninja to me? PLEATS MAKE IT DUCKING STOP!

I really hope people advocating to ban kids from SM read this. Some kids are isolated by disabilities or circumstances. Furthermore, some kids grow up in abusive households. “Ideally, a child’s exposure to online worlds should be moderated by their parents” isn’t a reassuring sentiment for everyone

Bandcamp Friday means new music for my ears. youtu.be/GKhkbr-f1xU

"‘The Librarians’ To Premiere on PBS on February 9" @slj.com @pbs.org www.slj.com/story/The-Li...

Ptilotus senarius hadn’t been seen since the 1960s. People thought it was extinct — until nature-enthusiast and horticulturist Aaron Bean came across it and shared an observation to iNaturalist. There, community members helped confirm what once seemed impossible: this species had survived.

Just last week I heard Cory Doctorow cite Fobazi Ettarh and thought about how the ripples cast by her work are still expanding. 💔

"There’s religion but there’s no God of theirs.... Religion is just a controlling tool they employ and adhere to when convenient." - Percival Everett, James: A Novel

In case anyone else wonders every time this clipping makes the rounds: Washington Post, Nov. 27, 2016

"Me at the Museum, You in the Wintergardens" (Tiny Ruins) youtu.be/KOQL4P1acNU

too late.

We banned direct to consumer ads for pharmaceuticals before and we can do it again.

People in the Arts Use Public Domain Materials for Something Other Than "Thing That Was Cute -- now it's SCARY!" Challenge

My dad disappeared from his Baltimore trucking company when I was a kid. 20 years later, I went looking for answers. I did it to survive. In telling this story, I hope in some way to help others do the same. “Whatever Happened to Eddy Crane?” is out in April 2026. This is the cover…

AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH

However poor an effort this, how laughably illegal: this is an attempt to criminalize journalism. That Black journalists were targeted to be painted as “criminals” is obvious.

When I resigned as co-chair of the National Association of Black Journalists convention after their decision to platform Trump, I took a lot of heat for it. I was told “Black journalists are going to expose his racism and save America” Today, the Trump regime is arresting Black journalists.

A sprawling new immigration detention facility is planned for Western Maryland, and Washington County officials say there is nothing they can do to block it. buff.ly/OBV85Qp

Believe it or not, this is not the first time that I never had an account on the platform that everyone is abandoning.

How? How do you double-check the accuracy, if you're not already an expert? Ask a different GenAI? Or do you, you know... Have to go and do the research you would have done anyway, pre-AI? Because I'm buggered if I can think of how you do that in a way where the GenAI saved you time.

Unfriendly reminder, AI is being used to destroy trust. Do not normalize the use of AI. AI can not reliably enhance videos or low-quality images. This is the quiet replacement of reality. Do not let this be normalized.

Can confirm. When W announced the creation of the "Department of Homeland Security" the general reaction from even moderate Democrats could be summarized as "did you *really* mean to call out the Third Reich so overtly?"

Yeah the thing that immediately pissed me off about this is how IT basics are taught in libraries and are essential to modern living and have huge - like years long - queues but where’s the funding for that?

This is what I tell friends and family who are worried about us. Also, I couldn’t look my children in the eye if I didn’t try to do something.

While independent bookstores are giving out free whistles, hosting protest sign making events, and donating proceeds to mutual aid, Amazon is *checks notes* providing technology that assists ICE in their terrorizing of communities. Independent bookstores deserve your support. Amazon does not.