Trump thought he could steal the midterms by making MAGA minions rig the House maps.
They thought blue states would sit back and do nothing.
We proved them wrong. Thank you to VA Indivisibles and organizers across the commonwealth for this huge win and your commitment to protecting our democracy.
amandasmildtakes • Peter Thiel's PAC dumped MILLIONS into defeating redistricting in Virginia - toss this into the pile with the Wisconsin Supreme Court seat Elon tried and failed to buy.
The billionaires can be beaten.
Thirteen U.S. troops died trying to get these people to safety — Afghan interpreters, soldiers, and the families of our service members. Veterans spent sleepless nights during the chaotic withdrawal fighting to keep them alive. Now our own government is going to abandon them.
Republicans have always believed it's cheating for Democrats to fight back in any capacity, not least because so many Democrats agree
“Britain aims to raise a “smoke-free generation” by permanently banning the sale or supply of tobacco and vape products to anyone born in 2009 or after, with a bill that was approved by Parliament on Tuesday… in practice, the measure means the age of sale for tobacco products will rise over time”
Kash Patel as Lego with big weird eyes and lots of beers
I know we’re not supposed to like the Iranian social media teen meme army seeing us for what we’ve told them we are on the Internet but I like to think this kind of thing is really just them reaching out and saying we don’t like this either and know you’ll appreciate the hilarity
Worse is what we've experienced, for those of us fortunate to not yet get hit with layoffs. You may be lucky enough for your numerical income to increase, but literally everything around you not only increases in cost but increases faster than your compensation. So you feel like you're slipping
Similarly in real life if your lifestyle (challenges) increases to match your increasing income, it feels like you haven't actually made any progress. You feel it if you never change your habits despite your compensation changes.
One of the problems with stories where characters' power is measured in "levels" is that their challenges always scale w/ their level, so any progress they made that doesn't result in a distinct new skill or ability doesn't feel different. Leveled characters need an absolute comparison.
Media needs to stop with "critics say" and just quote the actual language of the bill.
HB 249 creates a new category of "seminudity" which can be used to arrest women who aren't nude, but are wearing clothing — leggings, t-shirts without bras — that religious groups feel is too provocative.
If only the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was some kind of a lesson we could draw on, where the very name told us something about its impact on military readiness. Oh well!
Meta will begin keystroke logging US employees at work -- complete with mouse movements and periodic screenshots -- to train better AI agents.
This comes after Boz posted about a future in which AI will "primarily do the work" at meta.
It's a new era for tech labor. www.reuters.com/sustainabili...
(the Great Games Recommendation Thread, part 2):
101) Mad Max. An absolute 7/10 game, a prequel to Fury World that nobody's going to remember as a classic but is plenty of fun, mixing driving combat with third-person action when you raid bases and such, and some neat weird NPCs.
*what does it mean to raise a child well while you reconcile with your own demons and violent history?
The God of War franchise has always been about mature themes, though exactly what those are has changed.
In 2005, it meant “TITS!”.
In 2018, it meant “what does it mean to raise a child well?”
tbf in 2005 it was more like"what if you could punch your dad and his friends"
Area sheep decides the sheep dogs limiting its free movement are too oppressive; sides with wolves instead
This comes, notably, after Meta's announcement that it will lay off 8,000 workers next month.
Tucker Carlson: “I’ll be tormented for a long time by the fact that I played a role in getting Donald Trump elected. And I want to say that I’m sorry for misleading people.”
fun fact: law profs don‘t actually have to write blog posts. That is not something we have to do.
Wild to keep hearing anti-AI sentiment described as an "echo chamber" by people who pretend there's never been a coercive dogshit marketing campaign actively pissing people off about it for two years or any no-opt-out half-baked shovelware making everyone's PCs and phones worse
share a GIF from a western you love
Like, congrats on figuring out balance and weight shifts that come with running I guess. But it'd have the same effect for a robot to do it on a treadmill in a lab and have a paper written about it.
Marathon running is impressive bc a human whose body ages, degrades, & deteriorates over time has managed through discipline and effort to train that body to exceed its normal limitations, overcome pain and fatigue, and complete an amazing physical challenge. There's no meaning in a robot doing it.
Trump pressured Republican states to rig their electoral maps, because he saw a midterm disaster coming for his party. He knows they will lose big without rigged districts. Virginia can level the playing field and stop his newest scam tomorrow by voting YES for fair election maps. #VoteYesVirginia
Feels longer than 3 years cause same brand of tech bro was telling me the blockchain would put me out of a job while making them ungodly wealthy since at least 2020.
As the Director of @dirac-institute.bsky.social, I worry a lot about how to keep track of and support the many projects/ideas/people. This year I started a 1-on-1 "Director Coffee", and it seriously is the best part of the job!! On average I have 1-2 coffee chats with folks
At a time when mass surveillance and autonomous weapons companies like Palantir are openly announcing their plans for violent world domination, it is crucial that our attempts at “big tech reform” don’t actually give them more power—ie via government mandated age verification/identity software
And the big cultural push around “big tech reform” is the idea that we’re protecting children from the harms of big tech, when we’re actually giving big tech the very power they seek to destroy the world for all children. And that is no longer hyperbolic when Palantir is announcing it via manifesto
I said it before and I'll say it again:
Giving a pack of Epstein associates a comprehensive list of all children in the country with home address and school listed, sortable by various traits that indicate vulnerability to exploitation, is the literal diametric opposite of keeping kids safe.
