observing, studying, noting it down,

Honestly, the best part of this might be that Andrew Tate, notorious toxic alpha male, was beat bloody by someone who came out to Mariah Carey singing about Christmas.

now seems like a good time to remind you all to support independent, worker run, billionaire free, and/or reader funded news how and where you can.

So it's all just catch & kill now?

The name "Popular Science" doesn't mean we shift our coverage depending on public opinion. It means we cover relevant subjects that are rigorously researched, reliable, and grounded in reality. And trans lives are grounded in reality. We see y'all. No matter what. www.popsci.com/science/tran...

Baby horf was not thrilled to have sandhill cranes in her pasture this morning

i posted about all my favorite games from this year. i hope you will fall in love with them too! One whole year of video game recommendations: www.nathalielawhead.com/candybox/one... "The international indiegame scene is full of undiscovered gems. They are waiting for you to find them." #IndieGames

“The agreement — called a memorandum of understanding, or MOU — would hand the federal government a major role in election administration, a responsibility that belongs to the states under the U.S. Constitution.” stateline.org/2025/12/18/t...

The US government hasn't clearly articulated that. Contrast it with, for example, George W. Bush publicly demanding that Saddam Hussein and his sons leave Iraq. And existential threats aren't really actionable demands. Something specific and doable, like "arrest and turn over bin Laden," would be.

US and Venezuela both reportedly jamming GPS signals in the Caribbean now. Escalating series of measures short of war can work only if there's a concrete, actionable demand. If you do X, we'll back off, stop doing Y, and won't start doing Z. But there's no concrete US demand on Venezuela. At all.

Every day I read the dumbest thing that I've ever read and it's always written as one-sentence paragraph founderslop.

As told by the late dancer and choreographer Agnes DeMille.

The great old comedy writer Larry Gelbart said that your style is formed by what you can’t do. I wish more people understood that. That and the Martha Graham quote about keeping the channel open.

An early Christmas present for those of us in the #KidLitUK community who've been waiting YEARS for the other shoe to finally drop. Harper Collins knew all about it. They paid off staff to keep their mouths shut. Shame on them, shame on him, and good riddance.

umm

this bill appears is like 1/3rd good, 1/3rd catastrophic madness that sounds like the end of civilization, and 1/3rd anodyne madness anyway it effectively repeals section 230, ends the first amendment, and gives bluesky its copyright absolutism. also creates new exceptions to antitrust law

This photo, file 468, from the Epstein files that includes Donald Trump has apparently now been removed from the DOJ release. AG Bondi, is this true? What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.

Free, open to all post about the "nuclear device" on a mountain in India the NYTimes has been so exercised about: www.patreon.com/posts/nuclea... It would be great to find it and it isn't keeping me awake at night. The risks involved are relatively low as I discuss.

Yelling "we have nothing to hide!" and then releasing *some* of the files *heavily* redacted and *yoinking* a few of them in ways people will immediately see is what peak performance looks like

What strikes me about these Epstein materials - there are really no surprises. The 1000+ victims have already named all these men. Even Bill Gates. His wife publicly said she divorced him because of his relationship with Epstein. We just don't believe women, systemically.

"In retrospect, the Court’s willingness a quarter-century later in Palmer v. Thompson to allow cities to shut down public swimming pools rather than allow Black people to use them makes a lot more sense." whew Lord

A recent modeling study in JAMA showed that if MMR vaccine rates drop 10% (easy to see happen with this), we’re back to 400,000-500,000 cases a year. Our current outbreak is 2,000. This turns the clock back to 1950 🚨🚨🚨

Can’t stop thinking about this. The Trump administration is essentially extorting hospitals into dropping gender-affirming care—without Medicare or Medicaid they’d go bankrupt. It’s akin to a backdoor ban even for people with private insurance, a proposal that wouldn’t pass Congress.

this is a good reminder of how things that are shitty but have been accepted as normal and inevitable can actually turn out to be abnormal and evitable with some science, time, education and political will

man.

the only truly safe data is the kind that is not collected

As long as rfk has a pulse, he will kill children, and go out of his way to specifically kill sick children.

Tonight's Showstopper is a $135M architectural statement house in LA. 8BR, 20BA, lots of custom cool. #FridayNightZillow www.zillow.com/homedetails/...

This would be a great haunted house. $750K. Bloomington, Indiana. #FridayNightZillow. www.zillow.com/homedetails/...

Apparently 9000 mentions was a very low estimate.

Gonna stop looking at the Epstein Files in a second because I'm frankly way too skeeved out to keep going but I will say this: the CSAM isn't blacked out nearly enough while the faces of guys in ties are obscured by vanta black rectangles the size of the sun.

Extremely obvious combing through this who is redacted and why. It's Epstein, Maxwell, a lot of Bill Clinton, maybe Michael Jackson (?) and basically nobody else. Everybody else's head is in a black rectangle. In practice, they didn't release shit.

The Epstein file is the only thing Trump has ever taken his name off of

'Sora cost $20 a month & subscribers can generate an unlimited number of AI videos... this costs (Sora owners) OpenAI "at least $5 per 10-second video"'. Journalists, please ask more questions about how this tech could ever in a million years make a profit?

Apparently this is not the onion: www.lee.senate.gov/2025/12/patr...

for those lacking context, this guy is apparently trying to build satellites to capture the sun and beam it down to earth (which just as a concept is fucking lol) bsky.app/profile/dbur...

“Hellooooo ladies, check out my pew-pew smexy laser dance yoooooo”

Oh shit, the Trump Hunger Games is real, lmao

its like the "dumbest tourists and smartest bears" convergence except its the FBI lobotimizing itself and loner killers improving tradecraft

This is precisely how fascism works, by grabbing at and taking away a little more freedom whenever events lend themselves to it. Bit by bit you lose your rights, until you turn around and realize the road you're on has been long, and democracy is well behind you over the horizon.

Funny animal videos no longer being trustworthy just fucking sucks all around. I love the wonder of animal behavior and what it says about the experience of being alive. It's because it happened in reality that it's so fun. It's not fun if it was just made up. There's no wonder there.

Hamamatsu Flower Park, Shizuoka, JP #Japan #Nippon

In this special issue, Hammer & Hope commissioned the photojournalist Ashley Gilbertson to show us the Trump administration's arrest and deportation campaign. hammerandhope.org/article/ice-...

This is another reason for universal basic income. This is another reason for universal basic income. This is another reason for universal basic income.

Not thrilled to find that “Grokipedia” has added a ton of articles since launch… including one on me that ironically goes way deeper on trans liberation topics but also hallucinates details of games, my year of birth, and includes an explanation of why my parents got divorced?!? Gee thanks, LLM

George Nader in his third entry for MST3K, Robot Monster, The Human Duplicators, and now The Million Eyes of Sumuru.

Red Deer by Franz Marc, 1913 https://botfrens.com/collections/212/contents/137801