BlueSky, September 2026 Part 2

The second half of September 2026: not surprisingly, there was a lot about the upcoming election, which will only intensify in October. There was the huge AI freakout, which I did my best to ignore. 

Trump's illegal actions included banning several major media from covering him, continuing to assault the Kennedy Center, and running political ads with taxpayer dollars. The Supreme Court continued to make terrible decisions about ICE and DHS. 

As the month ended, my social media was full of outrage about the Cornell 7 and the dozens of other men who didn't stop the fraternity gang rape that happened at that Ivy League university in 2024. 

Everything below the line is from the attributed account and is in reverse chronological order, except some of the images, which I move up or down for better visual balance.
___

I feel like most of the news I read is 
a) Federal Judge rules against Trump administration choice to do Nazi thing
b) Supreme Court rules in favor of Trump Administration to keep doing Nazi things.
Rev. Angela Denker

Twin Cities, united in fruitlessly hoping their mayor resigns
David Brauer

Pretty clear to me there’s a very good case against Pete Hegseth for mass murder, and I’m saying that in as measured a fashion as I can. He’s order the killing of 234 people under no plausible war or legal justification. I am skeptical he will ever face legal accountability for til his but he should.
Chris Hayes

For the most part, driving is super inefficient but at least it's really expensive and also quite dangerous.
Peter Flax @pflax1.bsky.social

Stop saying “not all men” and instead get to the quiet work of not being that kind of man. If you have things to say, say them to the men who are that kind of man.
Jeremy @floregonian.com

Imagine what the numbers would have looked like without hosting the World Cup:


TW @twesq.bsky.social

I guess I just don't feel that there has ever been any situation in human history that has called for four exclamation points 
Sam Bergman @violanorth.bsky.social

Hegseth: "The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in, with testosterone testing on top."
The Bulwark

If you think my trans daughter wanting to stay connected to the camaraderie and benefits of team sports is a greater threat to your daughter than 50 young men in a group chat doing NOTHING while she’s gang-raped then you’re a fucking idiot.
A Republic If You Can Keep It

There were about 16,000 heat-related deaths in Germany last summer, about double the mortality during the first Covid wave in early 2020. Extreme heat needs to be treated as an ongoing public health emergency.
Bob Berwyn

worse mortality than the first Covid wave, and we’re not even at 1.5C yet
Dr. Genevieve Guenther @doctorvive.bsky.social

“People always say, ‘Girls are so much harder to raise than boys.’ And I do not believe this. But I think many do because parents can imagine their daughters being victims, while no one imagines their sons as the villains. But there are so many sons who are villains.” –Lyz Lenz
@pattho.bsky.social

When you make the point. Holy shit:


@coloneloolong.bsky.social

every professor personally examining every student for 45 minutes is a scalable solution to ai because arizona state can just hire the population of vermont to help
Jen Jennings

It’s really clear to me this week that the people telling us that AI will transform work…haven’t seen a lot of jobs where people work. 
Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social

The Air Force is ordering service members to update their religious affiliation using Pete Hegseth’s shortened, Christian-heavy list. If they refuse, their records will be "automatically realigned" by the military.
Hemant Mehta @friendlyatheist.com

In an alternate timeline, an evangelical like Mike Johnson would be warning that AI is the mark of the beast.
Sarah Posner

The moment Jack Smith realized Eric Schmitt was talking about the wrong game:


Ron Filipkowski

when i think back to working at the children's bookstore and people (adults) were looking for book gifts for boys you could not get them to get ones with female protagonists
@nora.zone

Teach your son to wait. Teach him that other people are as important as he is. Teach him to apologize and go back to the end of the line if he made an entitled decision. Teach him that girls and women deserve respect in *all* scenarios—not just during sex.
Nicole Bedera

I was describing to my (professional fine artist) mom this visual journal idea I have where I am quickly drawing ideas I have to look back at and develop our more later and she said "you're talking about a sketchbook, hon" in the nicest possible way and this is why you don't blow off art lessons
Brooke @brooklynmarie.bsky.social

Amazon promised its Mississippi data centers would generate millions in taxes for schools and local services. Now it’s fighting the county’s valuation of those data centers. If Amazon wins, the community will lose $5–6 million in tax revenue next year. Amazon is arguing that each of its five buildings is worth just $69 million — less than one-quarter of the county assessor’s $292 million valuation. 
Stacy Mitchell

"Motorized vehicles create remoteness which they alone can shrink. They create distances for all, and shrink them for only a few":


@taras-grescoe.com

The Heritage Foundation laid out how they were going to rescind Title IX, the law that prohibits sex discrimination in education, by first targeting trans people's participation in sport. Capitulating on the human rights of transgender people is catastrophically falling at the first hurdle. 
Casey Explosion

a lot of people act like there's a trade being offered where we give up trans athletes in sports and in exchange fascism is defeated forever
Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social

They're coming for womens' place in public life and trans rights are a stalking horse.
Zeroisanumber

i hope that men notice how whenever a rape story gets widespread coverage, women use it as an opportunity to vent about how fucking disgusting we think many of you are and how many have made our lives measurably worse, and take a few moments to deeply process that. 
Marisa Kabas

I don’t wanna hear SHIT about woke run amok when protesting genocide gets you banned from campus and sexual assault gets you an apology letter.
Jake Wright @bcnjake.bsky.social

80 factory workers will lose their job when the Pearson candy factory closes in St. Paul today, that's about 40 more than a data center would employ.
Steven with a V and an N. @minneapple.bsky.social

and behold a pale horse. and the name that sat on him was death. and hell followed with him:


Sleestak

50,000 South Dakotans have health care coverage because voters expanded Medicaid in 2022. The initiative passed with 56% of the vote. So this year the GOP has put 2 measures on ballot:
—one to roll back Medicaid expansion
—another to require future initiatives like this get 60 percent.
Taniel

Haven't thought this out all the way through, but now would be a good time for an aggressive humanitarian movement to combat the death cults, the rise of AI, and otherwise anti-life impulses coursing through our politics and society.
Karen Attiah

as someone who does humanitarian work, i've been thinking a lot about how we overcomplicate it. when, basically, the premise is just that if you're alive now, you deserve to live freely until natural causes take you. we claim neutrality, but that simple perspective is in fact political. 
Jason Terry @jttnncdcmd.bsky.social

Every traditional expression of masculinity – sprezzatura, stoicism, noblesse oblige, self-sacrifice – is maladapted for social media algorithms. To be a manfluencer type it to by definition be terrible at masculinity.
flabberjabber.bsky.social

Women who have been in abusive relationships understand the kind of man Trump is better than any journalist and if we had a better media system we would have heard from those women more from the beginning. Journalists often *sound* like people trapped in those relationships! Same rationalizations! 5/5
David Roberts @volts.wtf

Actual headline in today's Washington Post:


James Fallows

They are so proud of themselves for breaking the law with impunity.
Patrick Chovanec

“It’s not ALL men.” None of the 50+ men the Cornell rapists invited to come join them in raping a woman they’d drugged went to the authorities or tried to stop it. Not all men would rape an unconscious woman, but where are the men who’d try to stop it, or EVEN FUCKING OBJECT? 
Jessica Price @delafina777.bsky.social

The offer to sell weapons to China needs to be seen in the context of Trump’s delay in delivering weapons to Taiwan.
Patrick Chovanec

The part of Trump's brain that still functions at peak efficiency is the part that calculates what crimes he can get away with. He's banning CNN and getting away with it. He's running tax-funded campaign ads and getting away with it. His ability to exploit institutions' weak spots is undiminished.
Steve M. @stevemnomoremister.bsky.social

Autumn Bear, Michelle Beauregard, c. 2025:


Canadian Paintings

With regard to the overt and jaw-dropping use of public money to manufacture and broadcast Trump politicals ads, I'm just spitballing here, but maybe, perhaps, if the U.S. Supreme Court didn't give the president blanket immunity from prosecution for crimes he wouldn't feel so comfortable criming.
David Simon @audacityofdespair.bsky.social

Newest batteries [from China] charge to 70% in 4 minutes. Soon they will charge faster than it takes to pump gas. This is no longer an argument.
Paul @paul.bsky.social

Meta can ban: 
- Adverts for a Virginia Woolf play because of “feminism” 
- Ads for a documentary about Elon Musk. 
Meta seemingly cannot ban: 
- Generative AI Child Abuse and Child Sexual Abuse Material, adverts and content. 
Aidan O’Brien

It's just after 1pm on another picture perfect fall day in Chicago. So far today, masked federal agents have taken people from Brighton Park and suburban Aurora. ~1 year after the "Blitz" began, the alerts haven't subsided. ICE is still breaking windows and destroying worlds.
unraveled @unraveledpress.com

"Farmer" comes from Latin firmus, signature or contract. As in "tax farmer" or "farming out a task." That's the actual meaning of farmer; it 100% means wealthy landlords, not the people who do the work. Historically, agriculture in Europe was done by farming it out to poor people. So "farming" became a synonym for agriculture. Kinda like how "contractor" has become a synonym for construction crew.
Sarah Taber

The desecration, commercialization, and sell-off of the nation's precious environmental jewels is a Republican party platform.
Peter Gleick

BREAKING: 94-year-old Jewish human rights barrister Margaret Owen arrested under the Terrorism Act outside Andy Burnham’s Labour Party conference. UK taxpayers are funding these arrests while masked men terrorise the streets in coastal towns. Lift The ban on Palestine Action:


Defend Our Juries

Remember, they prosecuted Aaron Swartz and drove him to suicide for hacking one system with the goal of making academic articles freely available to the public. Sam Altman hacked 1000s of sites with the goal of being a trillionaire.
Dean Baker

Hyper-fast acceleration is dangerous as well as pointless. As I wrote in 2024, the 0-to-60 metric is outdated and needs to die. No driver on a public road needs to go from 0 to 60 mph in under 8 seconds. Even the slowest car on the market is more than quick enough.
David Zipper

Cringe Nazi pervert nerds really should not have this much political power 
Gwen Snyder

In 10 years I’ve never encountered a defense of Donald Trump that was based in reality. Never. 
Grudgie the Whale

Yeah, it doesn’t seem like the New York Times has given any coverage to the frat gang rape scandal at Cornell. Not as important as Oberlin’s banh mi or Harvard’s eating clubs I guess
Kevin M. Kruse

And certainly not nearly as consequential for women’s safety and education than trans girls and women getting to play sports 
Laprofmme

Just to put things in perspective, the US has a significantly higher pedestrian death rate from traffic accidents than most OECD countries have from homicides (most OECD countries are around 1/100,000 for homicide):


Evan Roberts @evanrobertsnz.bsky.social

The psychology of doomerism is that the Doomer is the smartest boy in class because he can see the Real Problem, which obviously negates the primacy of Other Problems. For totally mysterious reasons, the Real Problem is never poverty or discrimination. 
Aaron Huertas

It is no coincidence that rationalists and EAs tend to be straight white guys from well-off families, because for everybody else, the world usually conspires to knock some sense into you about your inherent god-emperor genius by the time you’re old enough to drink. 
Faine Greenwood

The more I learn about traffic engineering the more concerned I become about automated vehicles
Reece Martin @rmtransit.bsky.social

Its insane how much housing isnt getting financing right now because lenders just dont want to fund it over other shiny object initatives. Truly bizarro world:


Idothethinking

3 political positions in America today:
1) I like the fascism
2) I'll acquiesce to the fascism (reasons for this one vary: money, cowardice, access, denial, Fox News, etc)
3) I oppose the fascism
The rest is details. If you are in group 3, join us to Stand Up for Democracy!
Stuart O. Smith, Jr. @sosassociates.com

The biggest perpetrators of Medicare fraud and just fraud in general are insurance companies. Every last thing that’s wrong with healthcare comes back to them and private equity. We won’t get anywhere until both are abolished from healthcare.
Medic Kim

The Pope is leaving Paris for Lourdes and one of the Air France pilots is a woman. Funny, women can fly planes, but can't become priests...
Prof. Anthea Butler

“They’re too young to ride." Nope. They’re ready to ride, it’s our cities that aren’t ready:


Tom Flood

ICE activity in the Twin Cities increasing. More abductions, including grab and go kidnappings of people going about their lives. Be alert! 38 days before the midterms. Interesting timing
Searingly Aaron

Rahm Emanuel, who has about a good a chance of being president as I do, has been profiled like 9 times in the last couple months in major newspapers. It really shows you how profoundly out of touch the people are that drive much of our national political discourse. 
W.E.D.em Boyz @leftistwonk.bsky.social

They warned us Mamdani would impose Sharia law. Instead, he unleashed the real threat: line dancing in Bryant Park.
Hoodlum @nothoodlum.bsky.social

A truncated quote from today's New York Times that requires no context. "Life in the United States in 2026 — a time of masked federal agents in the streets, presidential pardons for sale and gulag-style detention camps for immigrants" 
Erin O'Brien @erincle.bsky.social

what should we pay teachers? please submit your proposed hourly rate for extracting this child from the chair:


Jen Jennings

A simple way to improve AI safety is to enforce the law. If Sam Altman knows that he will be treated like a drunk driver after an accident if his AI causes serious damage, he will be much more careful 
Dean Baker

It’s really stunning how the USA has so swiftly shifted from being one of the most techno-optimistic and tech-industry-loving countries on earth, to a country where most people seem to assume – not incorrectly, at least in many cases – that tech is out to get them.
Faine Greenwood

Silicon Valley did that.
Adam Miller @ajm6792.bsky.social

Amnesty International calls for ICE to be abolished
Le Monde in English @english.lemonde.fr

Raskin made a holy shit observation on MS Now this afternoon: Since taking office, Trump has made a million dollars per hour for himself. Every hour, he has made more than twice the president’s annual salary.
Radley Balko

This is the Stolen Neighbors Quilt. Each of the 11,000 squares represents a person taken by ICE in Minnesota:


Breeze @cool-summer-breeze.bsky.social

About 29% of our daily cognitive load could be eliminated if we lived in an opt-in only culture.
Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social

Saw someone in the wild call Cheryl Hines “The Marvelous Mrs Measels” and I was like “very good”
Jesse Hawken

Heidi Overton, Trump's nominee to head the FDA, just started her opening statement at her confirmation hearing by thanking her lord and savior Jesus Christ 
Garnet Henderson

I’m so bored with all the discussion around AI. Can we talk about some useful technology, like heat pumps? Or e-bikes! Or solar! Or batteries! Or … anything actually useful or interesting 2/2
Dr. Jonathan Foley @globalecoguy.bsky.social

Here are some nice mushrooms:


lukelukeluke

No president has ever gone into a midterm election as unpopular as Trump is today. Not even George W. Bush in 2006. Trump's net approval is twice as low as it was at this point in 2018.
G Elliott Morris

US has deported more than 25,000 people under secretive agreements with 35 countries to take migrants with no ties to those nations, according to an investigation published Monday
AFP News Agency @en.afp.com

to be clear, the admin is alleged to have deported AT LEAST 25,447 individuals TO COUNTRIES THAT ARE NOT THEIR OWN with, evidently, ZERO PROTECTIONS. this is a scandal and crime of historic proportions. 
David Kaye

Centrists are essentially dormant fascists. Obstructionists when liberals have power, compliant when authoritarians do.
LunchCounterPunch @theultrasecret.bsky.social

Deaths now outnumber births in reliably Republican counties for the first time since at least 1982. We explain how this may already be affecting voting patterns in America:


The Economist

Driverless cars are not a climate solution, especially not in cities.
Doug Gordon

Calling robotaxis the “missing middle” skips the part where they still occupy road space. If they pull riders from buses and trains instead of private cars, they can add traffic while weakening the network cities actually need.
Headline Vibe

Driverless cars would be great for seniors in rural communities, for example. But tech companies aren't going to make a lot of money catering to those people. The money is only going to be made in cities and by catering to wealthy people. That will most certainly come at the expense of transit. I took a Waymo in San Francisco just to check it out. Very short route and it cost ~$9. Easily affordable for me, but certainly not something that's going to work for a low-income person who needs fast and frequent bus service. Taking people like me off the bus is just going to starve transit. 
Doug Gordon @brooklynspoke.bsky.social

Every person running for president needs to have a serious and implementable plan for de-Nazifying the federal government
Soraya Nadia McDonald

Really something that the U.S. not only permitted LeRoy Walker to go free after ordering the attack on Fort Sumter that started the Civil War, but allowed him to rewrite the Alabama State Constitution in 1875 to limit the influence of Black and working-class white voters. That something is racism:


Dr. William Horne @wihorne.bsky.social

Silence on queer and trans folks from parents serves the same purpose as withholding information from kids always serves: control and manipulation. If you're lucky, your kids will be sheltered, naïve, and oblivious. If you're less lucky, you'll find you held space for bigotry to take root. 
This last point obviously applies across a lot of topics. Race, gender, religion, class, etc. When you don't talk to your kids about things—especially "tough" things—don't be surprised when someone else uses that opportunity to provide them with biased or bigoted information. 
Nissa Mitchell

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is supposed to add dozens of tests in the next decade, but they keep doing the most basic testing rather than actually pushing safety forward. One reason - the budget for this program is about 1/3rd of the cost of the failed reflecting pool fix
Ken McLeod

Certain kinda tv writer has a habit of being like "imagine if the cops/army weren't held back by politics and bureaucracy wouldn't that be great!" And I just think they are so fundamentally confused about what kind of world that would be for arts majors like themselves.
lastpositivist.bsky.social

I feel you, Daniel L:


Radley Balko

The real distinguishing feature of Grant and Sherman was that they fought the Confederacy to fuck them up, not to placate them. That’s the exact energy Democrats need to have with the ideological heirs of the Confederacy in the GOP.
Kaitlin Is Just Getting Started @gothamgirlblue.com

For likely the first time in modern history, the Supreme Court decided more cases in fast-tracked, secretive proceedings than in open court. [This] once-rare emergency process became the norm.
ProPublica

Journalists at CNN, MS NOW and Politico failed to maintain “standards of professionalism,” according to lawyers working for President Trump, who recently told a female reporter, “Quiet, piggy.”
Bill Grueskin

The New Yorker magazine, September 25, 1954. Art by Abe Birnbaum:


Cool Bike Art

Just to remind everyone, since many reporters and politicians seem to have forgotten, Iran was not close to having a nuclear weapon. And it was negotiating when Trump and Israel attacked it back in February. The nuclear weapon story is just a Trumpian lie.
Dean Baker

One of my favorite cases of someone being Wrong on the Internet was a very earnest, very confused vegan who was telling people how cruel honey is; and it eventually turned out they thought honey was made by putting bees in a centrifuge and spinning them around until they threw up. 
Jay Edidin

World’s richest use up their fair share of 2025 carbon budget in 10 days. Emissions caused by wealthiest 1% so far this year would take someone from poorest 50% three years to create
Climate Watcher @pmagn.bsky.social


steve3797.bsky.social

Something shocking is that Mexico as a whole has a lower fertility rate than literally any US state (although DC and Puerto Rico are even lower), which btw are all also below replacement level (of territories, only Guam and American Samoa are at or above replacement) 
Stephen Jacob Smith

The cost of RFK Jr.’s security is $45,574 per day. That’s insane. Find a cheaper Secretary.
Allen’s Sister

Oh by the way, from Vox: “The cost of diesel quietly raises the price of many other goods and services … researchers at Brown University estimate that the extra cost paid for diesel between the start of the Iran War and the time I’m drafting this newsletter works out to roughly $374 per US household.” 
Murshed Zaheed

The turn-of-the-century text styles can be great.  This is very cool, on a slightly unhappy building:


Darren McLean

Got notice last week that the construction company building the new condos across the street (yay!) will be tearing up the road all week between the hours of 9pm and 5am. Why, you ask, would they jackhammer all night near thousands of people trying to sleep? So they don’t inconvenience drivers! Rather than have cars detour for a few blocks, they are going to make it so the thousands of people in my building and the one next to us can’t sleep for a week or more. This is literally insane.
 @wrenispinkle.bsky.social

So ICE agents are getting fired before their probationary periods are up and are having to repay the $50,000 signing bonus. I love this for them.
John in Western New York @johnwalczak.bsky.social

I know we're all used to Trump embarrassing us on the world stage. But we are truly a rogue nation. A rogue *superpower*, and need to be sanctioned and defeated by the international community.
ElieNYC

Sending people back to a junta-led country [Myanmar] where we have had to send diplomats to secure the release of detained Americans.
Aubrey Gilleran


omgisme

Did you know if you build fewer/smaller highways you have to spend less on maintenance? Crazy I know. I will never understand why we pour billions into the most space and cost inefficient transportation option, saddling us with massive future maintenance debt, while public transit gets crumbs.
OpaqueReptile @possumpat.io

Staggering levels of repudiation, rejection, and decay:


Simon Rosenberg @simonwdc.bsky.social

They were cool with the racism, sexism, bigotry, corruption, dismantling of social services and common decency, burning every ally, shooting American citizens in the face in the street, the insurrection, Trump being besties with Epstein etc etc. But once the price of gas got too high it was over.
Molly Knight

Treat enemies like enemies. Crypto is an enemy.
David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social

Panic is a psy-op. Stay furious. Stay serious. Organize.
Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social

It's not a crackdown on the free press! It's a justified assault on the lügenpresse!
Kevin M. Kruse

Here is a nice mushroom:


lukelukeluke

It is so funny to me that the fossil fuel industry's big lie is denying an apocalypse that science confirmed as a real risk, while the tech industry's big lie is insisting on the threat of an apocalypse for which there's no scientific evidence for at all
Ketan Joshi

ICE agents may have to pay back their $50,000 signing bonus because they're being fired before fulfilling their service contract. This could lead to federal collection measures such as wage garnishment at future employment.
The War Monitor

Trump has now refunded $128 billion dollars from his tariffs to corporations. Tariffs he created, made Americans pay for, and then returned right back to his donors. We paid, and his friends cashed in.
Rep. Lauren Underwood

My invention, the Pedestrian Crossing Flail-Mace, is an improvement over flag-based systems:


Qagggy!

I never understood this fully until Covid: actual circumstances that doomsday preppers should have embraced...and they just couldn't. They'd spent years in maladaptive daydreams about hunting other humans and couldn't come to grips with the fact that they just needed to mask up and stay home.
BestGoShoeless

The part I never get is why he considers something an honor when he bestows it on himself. Try to imagine Lincoln building the Lincoln Memorial 
Bill McKibben

Not really the point, but I'd suggest that if you own 20 "family farms," they probably aren't "family farms."
Radley Balko

If you're still on the fence about whether AI is good or bad for society, consider this: The fascists desperately want it
Will Bunch

Battle cry of every bike lane opponent ever: "we're not against bike lanes"
Wedge LIVE!™

'we're not against [bike lanes, bus lanes, affordable housing, 4-plexes, safe streets for kids, climate action] we just think it doesn't belong here.'
Mike Eliason @holz-bau.bsky.social

"Excuse me, sir. Did you happen to see where that fish went?"


Chelton's Bird and Wildlife Photography @bird-photography.bsky.social

Gas is too cheap as long as people still:
- insist on flooring it and then slamming on the brakes between every intersection
- drive single occupancy monster trucks in perfect weather for trips less than 2 miles
- block crosswalks and bike lanes in idling vehicles
OB Cycler

Gas is indeed still too cheap… but it would have to go waaay up before people consider getting out of their personal tanks in exchange for some other more sensible and economical mode of transportation. It’s a mindset and high gas prices won’t change that.
Heather Talbot @htalbot-art.bsky.social

How could anyone look around and decide to reward Republicans with two more years?
Jess Piper @piperformissouri.bsky.social

Bike lanes are the "foreign aid" of local news. It's the relatively small thing that stupid people believe is busting budgets and wrecking our way of life. 
Wedge LIVE!™


Bodega Cats

The most dangerous type of man is one with above-average but not genius intelligence who was told growing up that he was a very special boy. Many such cases. Girls are socialized to engage in self-doubt. Boys generally do not benefit from that containment mechanism for ignorant over-confidence. Once you see the dynamic, you cannot unsee it. 
Leah McElrath

I am just going to assume that any person who says the words “men in women’s bathrooms” is a craven, immoral fool, and it kills me that this applies to so many Democrats.
LunchCounterPunch @theultrasecret.bsky.social

It’s not “third-country deportation,” it’s an extraordinary rendition, complete with torture and enforced silence by the “host” country’s thugs. And it’s a direct consequence of never imposing punishment on the CIA for doing this during the War on Terror.
Spencer Ackerman @attackerman.bsky.social

Regular reminder that at least 5 sitting GOP Senators could be ejected *right now* per reasonable read of "Inhabits" in Article 1,  §3 of the Constitution:
- Marshall (KS, lives in FL)
- Tuberville (AL, lives in FL)
- McCormick (PA, lives in CT)
- Sheehy (MT, lives in MN)
- Hawley (MO, lives in VA) 
Potëmkin Spice @themontgomery.bsky.social

There are a lot of things about this winter that I still find hard to believe or process, but one of them is that the federal government singled out a state and city, more or less at random, upon which to intentionally inflict massive economic damage.


Alex Schieferdecker

Nobody is going to want to hear this, but a real risk we face, no matter who is president next, is that they will see no need to restore the rights lost or the executive power stolen in the last 10 years. And if that happens, I think the Republic is over. Either this was an illegitimate presidency where everything must be undone, or it was a legitimate one with a guy democrats don’t like, and if it’s the second, if No Rules Fascism is now standard operating procedure,  we’re done. 
Jessica Ellis @baddestmamajama.bsky.social

I just honestly can't get over that Save Women Sports, an anti-trans group, could only find five trans athletes competing K through 12. Five. The NCAA president testified a year and a half ago or so that there were less than 10 college level trans athletes. What the fuck are we doing, people 
Imani Gandy @angryblacklady.blacksky.app

You want a real compromise from trans people? Promise to restore all the rights we had in 2014 that we don't today. That's it. Just bring us back to where we were. That's the bare fucking minimum. You know what I don't see any libs offering us? The rights that have been taken from us restored.
@nuvy-iel.northsky.social

I wish the people actually cared about the safety of children playing sports because I don't think children can consent to playing tackle football and it should be illegal to have it in public schools.
Angela Collier @acollierastro.bsky.social

so macklemore saying “free palestine” is violence, but ed sheeran saying the situation in gaza is “catastrophic and unjustifiable” is totally fine? this whole thing is so fucking stupid. 
Marisa Kabas

Given the outrageous, dangerous, and outright false statements made about how the polio (and other) vaccine was a "fraud" (at the Children's Health Defense conference), here's a reminder of what a massive success it was. RFK Jr. and his minions must be stopped from destroying the US healthcare system:


Peter Gleick

So this week we've learned:
1) The AI goons CONFESSED they were committing the biggest theft in history.
2) The data centers really are sucking up all the energy during an energy shock.
3) AI almost caused a World War.
emptywheel

I wish the “we used to be a country” people would realize we were “a country” because of extensive post-war infrastructure, living wage and in some cities, accessible public transit and republicans will do everything in their power to take this things away and then gain more power to take more away
Sean Aitchison @sean8urson.bsky.social

When someone claims that a mistake just happens in the system, and it's always the same kind of mistake, and it always benefits the person who set up the system... It's not a mistake. It's happening on purpose. 
Courtney Milan

Every now and then I see myself referred to as an "AI Denier" and I want to be clear I acknowledge "AI" exists, it's just I think it's a massive energy drain, created from theft, implemented poorly for inappropriate tasks by loathsome tech executives who get hard at the idea of the rest of us dying 
John Scalzi

I know there’s a savvy take that being attached to the east wing or the kennedy center is a sort of west wing lame-o attachment to the symbols of power and on the other hand. he fucking bulldozed our collective property
@hellabarnes.bsky.social

Symbols matter. White House isn't a palace. Kennedy Center is for the general public to enjoy. We don't have a triumphal arch in DC because that's imperial. We don't put the president's face on money because it's monarchical. It's about tearing down everything that says we're a democratic republic. 
Andy Craig

"Reason for campus unrest: communism..." Don Wright on the far right's answer for everything, March 1969:


Randall Stephens

Plenty of women want to punish their peers, but the fact that men are on social media suggesting that a not-guilty verdict [in the Lindsay Clancy trial] means the 19th Amendment should be repealed — when men are more often family annihilators —is just too much
Susan Rinkunas

To be specific, family annihilations are committed by men more than 90% of the time and are committed roughly every five days in the US. 
Puff the Magic Hater @mskellymhayes.bsky.social

Alex Karp of Palantir says the AI industry must be nationalized to protect it from lawsuits if it accidentally destroys the world. More likely, he sees the bubble about to burst and he wants to be bought out with our tax dollars before that happens. 
Lindsay Beyerstein

incredible: just two states that haven't reached the $6/gal mark for diesel, but they'll likely join today, making it all 50 states that have diesel prices >$6 per gallon. Texas and Oklahoma clinging (for now) at $5.98 and $5.99, respectively. come on in, the water's boiling!
Patrick De Haan @gasbuddyguy.bsky.social

US officials say over-reliance on Palantir's Maven AI system was among the factors that contributed to a February missile strike in Iran that killed 123 children (Bloomberg)
Techmeme

If my company killed 123 children, the U.S. government would shut us down and send me to jail 1/2
Brandon Friedman

I was part of that 93.1%. Who else was? Anyone still use one of these bad boys?


The Mouthy Renegade Writer

just saw someone say "i don't think it's about gender. it's about control." and boy do i have shocking news for you about gender 
themboy insomniac @riotliturgist.bsky.social

guys what if a boy was actually a girl. lets commit civilizational suicide
@stel.energy

ok but first let me turn everything into a rent-seeking casino
sabrina, uncluttered @unwisewoman.bsky.social

We’re in an era where the fight against fascism and authoritarianism is on almost every ballot. Voting has always been important, but never more than now. Vote like your rights, your future, your vote itself, and even your life, are all on the line. Because there’s a very good chance they are.
Brent Toderian

Trump's super PAC is sinking money into three Texas districts that he carried *by double digits,* as I reported below. That's really something. Let's also recall how 2024 was treated as a clear sign that MAGA male supremacy was culturally ascendant. Might soon be time to reconsider that.
Greg Sargent

On This Day in 1945: Joyce Leversee and Doris Haaven stop to read and take pictures on the Franklin Avenue bridge under a sign forbidding these activities. Warnings like this were posted at key infrastructure when World War II began, and had not yet been removed after the war ended:


Vince Mpls

It's so funny that Mamdani is doing *exactly* what the abundance types are calling for -- competent government in service of constituents' quality of life -- but they can't embrace him because their billionaire donors hate Muslims.
David Roberts @volts.wtf

“Your gas is going to cost too much and you can’t eat hamburgers any more, but … vote for us again.” What a beautiful bumper sticker for a car you have stopped driving.
Chris Geidner

The courts ruled that Trump had to stop fucking with wind power and he's just ... ignoring the courts. What exactly is a democracy supposed to do in this situation?
David Roberts @volts.wtf

Personally speaking, I wouldn't have split the word like that...


Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social

My 95-year-old grandma cried when she heard people weren't vaccinating their kids against polio.
A Jean Stevenson @amandajean.bsky.social

It was confirmed yesterday that the centre left coalition won the election in Sweden. As predicted, with the far right performing poorly, coverage has almost entirely vanished from international media 
Aurelien Mondon

As Terry Pratchett regularly highlighted, "privilege" means "private law." One rule for me and another for you.
Rob @robosullivan.bsky.social

i feel like a message that is missing in the midterms is that….republicans control everything? it feels like a basic thing we should really be saying over and over. this is all their choice. unhappy? look who is in the drivers seat.
ashley fairbanks @ziibiing.com

Imagine if stress could actually accomplish anything.
David Roberts @volts.wtf

The fact that Musk himself is sponsoring so many of the anti-trans ads this cycle presents a pretty golden opportunity for Dems to point out that of course the guy who literally wants to build a gas-powered data center in your backyard wants this election to be about trans people.
Gillian Branstetter

What is the point of living in the nicest place to be outside all the time if you are forced to be in a car all the time? LA is so weird
Wes Burdine

Never seen a fried egg bollard? YOU HAVE NOW.


World Bollard Association™️

Attorneys for Charlie Kirk's family say his death resulted from a string of "reckless decisions" by Utah Valley University officials that left him exposed to a rooftop sniper in a wrongful death notice that signals a possible lawsuit. 
CNN

The only reasonable thing in that case is to never allow another TPUSA speaker on campus. Liability is too high
Matt Gabriele @profgabriele.com

Resign

I think the mayor of Saint Paul should resign. 

One reason is that her resignation would possibly save the residents of this broke city some money as she would then be defending herself as a private citizen against the police chief's lawsuit, in which he claims she sexually harassed him. 

The other reason is that we just don't need this. We really don't need this. Get out of the way so things can get back on track. 

What is wrong with you?

Where the Rural Is

This morning I saw a list of the most and least rural states in the U.S. It highlighted both the states with the most rural people overall and the highest percentage of rural people.

The numbers are based on the 2020 Census. An urban area, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, at that time, had a population of at least 2,500 in a contiguous area. 

So that means rural, as an opposite term, would be municipalities whose population is below 2,500.

Overall, a bit over 66 million people lived in rural areas at the time. Not surprisingly, the state with the most rural residents is Texas (4.7 million, 16.3% of the state's population). The one with the highest percentage is Vermont (almost 65% of its population). 

The 10 states with the lowest percentage of rural residents were:

1. California 5.8%
2. Nevada 5.9%
3. New Jersey 6.2%
4. Florida 8.5% 
5. Massachusetts 8.7%
6. Rhode Island 8.9%
7. Utah 10.2%
8. Arizona 10.7%
9. New York 12.6%
10. Illinois 13.1%

Despite being on the top-10 low-percentage list, two states still came out on the top-10 list of rural residents by population: New York is number 7, with about 2.5 million, and California is number 9, with about 2.3 million.
 
The other top 10 states by population, after Texas at number 1, are:

2 North Carolina
3 Pennsylvania 
4 Ohio
5 Georgia
6 Michigan
8 Tennessee
10 Alabama

For the next Census, the definition of urban will be: 

a densely settled core of census blocks that meet minimum housing unit density and/or population density requirements. This includes adjacent territory containing non-residential urban land uses. To qualify as an urban area, the territory identified according to criteria must encompass at least 2,000 housing units or have a population of at least 5,000.

Changing the definition of urban from 2,500 to 5,000 people will make historical comparisons difficult, to say the least. 

As a person who's originally from an area that I definitely consider rural, I wonder a bit about the definitional change from 2,500 to 5,000. I'm not a demographer but places with 4,500 people seem significantly different from ones under 2,500. (Even 2,500 is a lot of people compared to where I'm from!) 

Here's an AP story from the time when the change was announced. As the story says, the change has implications for how money is awarded that affects peoples' lives, including significant ways related to hospitals.

Social Media Is an Attack Surface

The pseudonymous writer WBF posted a piece called Social Media Has Not Brought Liberation on Liberal Currents today. 

The premise is that social media has "been a boon to autocratic regimes and their allied movements in democracies."

A few quotes from the piece, all of which is worth reading:

It’s fair to ask what makes social media such a uniquely vulnerable attack surface* for authoritarians. After all, foreign countries have always been able to print newspapers or operate radio stations in other nations, and frequently have. But the difference in the ease of social media as an attack vector means that a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind.

The example given is that the Soviets spent $3 billion per year on propaganda in the 1980s to little effect, vs. just $1.25 million per month for the Internet Research Agency in more recent years, where they reached over a hundred million Americans on Facebook alone. That's bang for your rubles. 

The Soviets weren't short on resources or ambition. They were short for not yet having an information environment where placement is free, laundering is instant, and distribution is handled, at scale and for pennies, by the target country's own most widely used consumer products....

Cold War information control was control over discrete activities: the paper you read in the morning, the broadcast you watched at night, the pamphlet someone pressed into your hand. You consumed media, and then you stopped consuming it and went about your day. But social media is not an activity—it is the substrate of daily life. It is where people find jobs, sell furniture, meet spouses, argue with their uncles, and store their baby photos....

The reason that none of the promised liberatory effects of social media have materialized is simple: it actually is not that difficult for competent authoritarian states, unbound by any kind of commitment to rule of law or free expression, to control the medium....

It may be difficult to track down a single dissenting voice if it belongs to someone with the determination and technical competency to post anonymously. But it’s trivially easy to drown them out.

I first saw reference to the article this morning from Will Stancil on BlueSky. He gave the example of the Soviets' spending reduction, and then said:

I’ve been convinced for some time that that social media is the taproot of the madness that has slowly consumed our politics. Traditional media was full of gates – some editorial, some practical, some economic – that prevented ideas from spreading freely. Social media has few, close to none. 

Traditional media’s gates reinforced each other. It was expensive to produce a newspaper so lots of effort went into planning the content; it was the product of great intentionality. There was limited broadcast spectrum available so access was regulated and placed under competent institutions. 

By reducing the cost and technical difficulty of worldwide publishing to almost nothing, the internet has also destroyed any pressure to maintain standards governing which information circulates. Instead of institutions structuring the public’s collective mind, you get this roiling ocean of ideas. 

There are two problems here, one eternal and one novel.

The eternal problem is humanity’s preference for self-validation. Left to our own devices we seek out ideas that flatter our biases and resentments, reinforce our own notions of how the world works. Crowds develop manias, they hallucinate. 

The novel problem is the falling cost of publishing - first through the internet, and then again through social media. That means publishers have endless competition. Vast institutions like the New York Times are jostling with random teenagers for audience eyeballs. 

With so much competition, publishers - the institutions and the randos alike - are dragged back towards audience validation as a strategy for keeping eyeballs on them. If anyone demurs they’re simply outcompeted by a publisher who did not. 

So the long-observed tendency of groups of people to collapse into hysterias and manias, to swing wildly between feverish ideas, has reemerged — but at a massive scale, a scale previously almost impossible because the spread of ideas required structures that could filter out the madness.

One related comment in response to Stancil:

I get why gatekeeping in its negative sense is bad but also it feels an awful lot like gatekeeping in the positive sense was a load bearing pillar of society. 
The Fig Economy @figgityfigs.bsky.social

As a person who spent almost 10 years within a journalism school before these changes happened, working with people who studied the history, political economy, and sociology of news-making, and before that worked with organizations in Washington as the Reagan administration was deregulating broadcasting, I know that 20th century U.S. media were not perfect. 

We had many ideas about how to make things better, how to create "a more perfect union" in news. More voices, different voices was part of that and in some ways was finally starting to happen just as the bottom began to drop out of the economic model of "traditional" media. 

Mediation by humans with values based at least partly in ethics is what has been lost in media. Is that irony? That there's no mediation in media? It's all direct transmission through an algorithm, programmed from economic interest. 

But even if the algorithms are done away with or made financially liable for their promotions, as the Liberal Currents article calls for at the end, is that enough? It may be better, but I wonder.

A few more comments:

it's not that social media produces fascists, but that it produces antisocial behaviour broadly, where even good acts of protest can quickly devolve online into just another method for expressing antisocial impulses in a way that feels "safe" to do
Corey Atad

yeah, I think that's right. and relatedly I think it cannibalizes in-person social institutions by substituting a worse but omnipresent version of human interactions
ryan cooper

Enough writing online for today. Time to go do something in the real world.

__

* I learned this term from reading Cory Doctorow. Social media is an attack surface.

Fridays for a Few Weeks

Here's what I plan to be doing on Friday afternoons in rush hour for the next few weeks: standing on a corner in Saint Paul with this sign or another related one:

That's in addition to the morning rush hour already spent over one of our local highways.

And No Kings is happening once again on Saturday, October 17, focused on the election and early voting.

We all need to get everyone to turn out so they can't try to mess with a close election.

Their Personal Dignity Is So Important

Always read Ari Berman on voting rights. 

His latest work in Mother Jones is on redistricting and the Supreme Court's Louisiana v. Callais decision. Louisiana, with a population that is one-third Black, has in recent years had two of its six Congressional districts with majority-Black populations.

Until the Callais decision. 

Once again, [Rep. Fields'] district was immediately challenged, this time by the “non-African American” voters led by Bert Callais, an election denier who attended the “Save America” rally that preceded the January 6 Capitol attack. Some of the insurrectionists carried Confederate flags that day—a striking symbol of their mission to overturn not just the 2020 election, but multiracial democracy writ large. Under Chief Justice Roberts, the high court used the Callais plaintiffs to accomplish this goal.

They claimed that the creation of a second majority-Black district was an affront to their “personal dignity”—an absurd argument, Fields says: “Literally, Louisiana elects more white members of Congress in one year than [Black members] we’ve elected in my whole lifetime.”

In a 6–3 decision, the court held that a majority-Black district that gave equal representation to Black people actually violated the rights of white voters under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

It's important to understand how the most recent voting rights repression fits into the long history that came before. 

__

John Roberts Playing the Long Game (March, 2021) 

Ari Berman's Give Us the Ballot (August, 2016) 

Strong Man, Weak Man

Trump's illegal ousting of three major news outlets from the White House this week has gotten a lot of attention and finally some solidarity from the rest of the press corps, which suspended coverage by the press pool. Loss of the pool meant a decrease in visual coverage of his state visit with President Xi of China.

I think the timing of his attempt to ban the three was partly to show how strong he is to Xi, as was the timing of the ads the regime ran this week on Fox News and Newsmax that are essentially Trump campaign ads, but which end with the line "paid for by the U.S. government."

The ads have no content that could legitimately carry that endorsement. It's almost absurd to describe them. Their words say "America will never be a communist country" and boast about "the largest tax cuts in history" — both Republican talking points — and intersperse footage of Donald Trump with a chorus of voices singing the words "Love me." 

Anyone who made that ad, or accepted it to run, knows that it is in violation of U.S. law. Such a violation I wouldn't have even thought this regime would try it.

But it's a show of power, the same as Trump's ejection of the journalists, and it comes at the same time he has been praising the Chinese puppet media accompanying Xi. 

The ad has not gotten as much coverage as his action against CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, but it's of a piece. He's showing he's a strong man who can get away with anything. 

Meanwhile, the White House doctored a photo of Trump with Xi and others taken during the unprecedented ceremonial reception for Xi at Andrews Air Force Base, another show of his disregard for the existence of truth. 

He's a weak, weak man enabled by people who never tell him no. When will this end?

Finding Yourself After College

The Star Tribune carried this advice column letter yesterday, and for some reason it really bugged me:

Dear Eric: After college, I moved to Chicago even though my parents wanted me to move back home. They live in a suburb outside of Indianapolis. It’s fine for them but I wanted better career prospects and a social life that was different from what I had growing up.

I’m really happy here. It’s been five years and I don’t see any reason to move back.

Recently, I joined my parents on vacation at the lake, and they had what felt like an intervention for me. They and my aunt and uncle basically ambushed me at dinner and pointed out all these things that had changed about me. Each one of these things was an indication I was “losing myself.” Some of them were so silly, like I was letting my facial hair grow out and I once talked about a friend of mine and used “they” to refer to them (because they are non-binary).

They ended the meal by saying I had a lot to think about. I don’t really know what to do with this.

– Changed for the Better

The columnist responded with a reasonable answer, I'm happy to report: It's not you, it's them, he said, but try to hear what may be underlying their dis-ease. Maybe they're asking for more connection with you. 

That's not bad advice. At the same time, there's clearly something wrong here.

My first reaction: Why aren't his parents happy that he's launched successfully, instead of moving home to live in their basement? What a couple of weirdos. The writer is now (probably) at least 27 years old. He's an adult!

My second reaction: He's been in Chicago for five years. If his parents were worried about his safety in "the big city," I would think they'd have gotten over it by now. 

The two examples he gave of their worries are not about safety: they're coded or not-so-coded culture war points.

I wondered — is he an only child? It seems like it. I asked Daughter Number Three-Point-One what she thought about this letter, and she said it might be an example of "when parents don't interact much with their adult kids, and they see their kids as an extension of themselves and then it has changed." She said she has other friends who've had things like this happen. 

My own two-generations-old experience in similar circumstances was very different. After a year post-college working near where I grew up in central New York, I moved to Washington, D.C. This was 1983, when the crime rate was a lot higher than it is now. 

There were no cell phones or other devices then, of course. I had no car and took public transit everywhere. The only thing my parents did was give me a small, battery-operated screech alarm that I could press in case of a mugging or other attack. (I soon forgot I had it and stopped carrying it.) And my political views continued to change over the next three years, as they had during college, and no one ran an intervention on me. 

I was one of four kids instead of an only, and times were not the same in terms of parenting in general, so I'm sure that made a difference. And I admit my mother may have tried to question two of my sisters as they drifted to the Right in later years. 

But I don't think she ever told them they "had a lot to think about" or pressured them to move home to be under her thumb. 

António Guterres

There was a speech worth listening to at the United Nations 81st General Assembly yesterday, but it wasn't given by Donald Trump, who only knows how to self-aggrandize and threaten.

This speech was by outgoing UN Secretary-General António Guterres. In my limited, American way, I've been admiring his commitment to climate advocacy throughout his 10 years in office. I will miss him and I hope his successor continues on that path.

In his final opening speech, he talked about power in four ways. In one part, he said:

...we are witnessing an extraordinary transfer of power away from governments to a handful of private corporations and individuals [whose] reach now extends across politics, economies, information flows, technological development, and the civic space on which societies depend.

At the very moment when humanity faces an unprecedented convergence of threats, our mechanisms for collective action are under growing strain.

Will we fall into “transactionalism,” “rising tensions and deepening mistrust,” “fractured markets and weakened institutions,” “shrinking cooperation and zero-sum calculations,” or will we instead follow the path the UN was created for: 

[a] networked multipolarity, [a] world built on interdependence — and sustained by a dense web of economic, political, social, and technological connections. A world in which multiple centres of influence coexist within a common framework of international law and shared rules....

Will we act to ensure that power is governed by law or by force? By cooperation or coercion?

He also talked about power and equality among men and women, and came to this:

... institutions are more effective when power is shared equally. Equality is not a dream. It is a decision.

Excellencies, the test before us is whether power will be exercised with the law — or beyond it.

In the face of a global catastrophe more than 80 years ago, the United Nations was created as an act of defiance. The defiance of people who refuse to surrender the future to fear. The defiance against the self-defeating notion that might makes right. The defiance of countries that know our futures are bound together. The defiance of hope.

The whole transcript is here. 

__

Thanks to Heather Cox Richardson's for highlighting this speech in her daily post. It was not covered in the Star Tribune this morning, though it was in the Pioneer Press. 

How to Insult Your Friends... in Gold

My opinion on the Kennedy Center is that people should be encircling it 24 hours a day, just to make sure the regime doesn't show up with heavy equipment to start dismantling it at some odd-ball time. I'm glad there were thousands of people there last Friday evening, but it's going to take more than that.

Someone said his actions are like desecrating a grave, and I agree with that.  

But in the mean time, can we all please make fun of these?

Trump — with his fist raised — is probably recognizable, but that's supposed to be RFK Jr. at lower left and Reagan at right.

Those blobs at right are supposed to be Rocky Balboa, to go with the quote.

That's a demented Elon Musk, in case you couldn't tell. 

I hadn't heard who the "artist" is until I read this story, which attributes them to Trump donor, billionaire ex-wife, and Scientologist Patricia Duggan, who clearly exudes gold leaf, if not talent:

Duggan, who lives in Florida, gave $7 million to pro-Trump groups in 2024 and $9 million in 2020, according to the Tampa Bay Times. In 2019, the same paper reported that Duggan and her ex-husband, billionaire biotech entrepreneur Bob Duggan, had given over $360 million to the Church of Scientology, making them the church’s biggest donors.

The regime has been busy removing all of the real artwork from the Kennedy Center, much of which was sent by governments from around the world. It has been replaced with this stuff. 

Not that anyone is going in the building, since it's closed because of the regime's sham bankrupting. I'm not sure why or how a reporter got access to take photos of these framed objects. 

Well, at Least It's Only 38%

Do you ever want to ask a Republican how it feels to be led around by the nose?

I do.
 

Yay for Rain!

Did I mention it finally rained here? (Yes, I think I did.)

Over the past five days or so, we've gotten about 2.5" and there's a good chance it will rain on a few more days in the coming week. 

Crossing my fingers that the drought of 2026 is broken, and our trees will be saved.