ok now that I've gotten public buy-in on the Taco Bell Principle, let's find out if we can apply it in real time

Sarah Taber@sarahtaber.bsky.social · yesterday

I would like to propose the Taco Bell Principle When a person/institution Did A Problem, & IMMEDIATELY fesses up & takes proactive steps to solve it That's exactly what we want them to do? So how bout we let them live ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Democrat voters bent their backs electing Biden. Establishment dems didn’t protect abortion or hold Trump accountable for the Jan 6 riots. They didn’t push back on McConnell stealing a Supreme Court seat. They brought the CHIPS act to a gunfight. So yeah, folks are getting excited about DSA.

My dude, we don't need to know your "heart and mind," we just have to look at your prior actions. You've already turned CBS News into a ham-handed partisan laughingstock in land speed-record time, so we have an excellent idea what you will do with CNN.

Mark Harris@markharris.bsky.social · yesterday

"Unfortunately, I can't give anyone a view into my heart and mind." Why? Are you unfamiliar with them? Ellison's whole "I'm not allowed to express my specific political opinions here, but trust me" approach is transparent nonsense. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/o...

Ours is a life fashioned from books and feathers. Coming up on 24 married years and 40 of hanging out together. Marry your friends, folks. It works better. www.kob.com/new-mexico/p...

Pay it 4ward: Pigeon Pals

For some they may be a nuisance, but for one Albuquerque woman, she sees sick and injured pigeons as creatures in need of care.

kob.com

I simply love the writing style of James S.A. Corey. So damn smart! We got another hit on our hands with The Captive's War series. I shall tag part of the dynamic duo @abraham.bsky.social www.goodreads.com/book/show/23...

The Faith of Beasts (The Captive's War, #2)

James S. A. Corey's Expanse series has sold more than 1…

goodreads.com

Hey, fellow burqueños. If you’re looking to expand your personal library and support our public libraries at the same time, the event is almost upon us.

Hey! The Shattering Peace is a Dragon Award finalist this year in Science Fiction Novel, along with work from @mattdinniman.bsky.social, @annleckie.com, @peterclines.com, James SA Corey (@abraham.bsky.social is one half) and Claire North. What great company! awards.dragoncon.org/2026-ballot/

Counterpoint: We live in a society.

USA TODAY Opinion@usatodayopinion.usatoday.com · 2d ago

Opinion: Mamdani's idea may sound appealing, but it's NYC taxpayers who will take the hit, subsidizing discounts they may never even use.

Because the liars are out lying again— I wrote this from Paterson NJ in April 2020

‘Anybody who says they’re not scared during this is lying to you.’ A day in the life of paramedics in a pandemic | CNN

The man lay unconscious in the back of the ambulance, parked in front of the nursing home on the Passaic River. Another life slipping away before the paramedics of Paterson, N.J. For these health care...

cnn.com

Underneath solar panels, plants grew much more and used less water, "Chiltepin pepper plants produced three times as much fruit as those grown in full sun. Jalapenos matched their usual harvest while using 65 percent less water. Tomatoes grown under the array came in at twice the normal yield."

hoergen@hoergen.bsky.social · 3d ago

*American farmers slid solar panels over 62,000 acres of farmland, and the biggest payoff had almost nothing to do with electricity* #Erneuerbare #Renewable #Solar #Photovoltaik energiesmedia.com/solar-panels…

Historian of abolition here 💯Garrison always called it the slaveholders rebellion, that’s the correct term. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/02/o...

Opinion | The ‘Civil War’ Is a Lie. Let’s Call It the ‘Slaveholders’ Rebellion’ Again. (Gift Article)

To face our own history, we must be honest about it.

nytimes.com

Laurel agrees: ‘The Dragon’s Path’ by @abraham.bsky.social is exactly what we wanted to read 😼

Agreed and it is also crazy to me that we’re not constantly talking about how Covid death rates were significantly higher in red states than in blue states

For red and blue America, a glaring divide in COVID-19 death rates persists 2 years later

Cumulative death rates in red states were 38% higher than in blue states, post-vaccination availability, data shows.

abcnews.com

mtsw@mtsw.bsky.social · 3d ago

It's absolutely insane we've somehow let the Covid recriminations debate become like "why didn't we reopen in person schools before there was a vaccine" and not "why did none of the trump guys go to jail for stealing PPE from New York hospitals in March 2020"

I finished re-reading Daniel Abraham's (@abraham.bsky.social) Long Price quartet and I loved it even more than 10 years ago. It's superb: the politics, the feelings, the subtleties, the culture, the physical language of poses, the magic concept... wow! Everyone should (re)discover this series 📚💙🪐

With at least 7 states experiencing disruptions to water utilities, @istorg.bsky.social and @JoshCorman.bsky.social were featured on DC’s local WJLA to outline the danger of increasing attacks on our critical infrastructure systems and share #CyberCivilDefense solutions. wjla.com/news/local/m...

Minnesota probes cyberattacks on water plants; Iran suspected, FBI warns utilities

A new FBI warning is raising concerns about the vulnerability of water infrastructure to cyberattacks, as authorities in Minnesota investigate what they say is

wjla.com

I feel like industry has been ignoring the Check Engine light most of my lifetime, and that weird knocking noise is getting louder than the radio. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Contributor: Wildfires will only get worse until the U.S. stops ignoring the climate crisis

The smoke drifting south may come from Canadian forests, but the political winds making it worse are blowing in from Washington.

latimes.com

The democracies of the world must treat deranged individuals who live outside the constraints of the law, who are acting like hostile rival political powers, as the threat they are.

🗽LOLGOP🗽@thefarce.org · 3d ago

So why oh, why oh, why oh, why oh, why oh are we so in denial?

I’m astonished by the ability of my fellow humans to forget the events we all just lived through. Folks remember the masks and the remote school. The million US dead are rarely mentioned. Folks, we lived through a plague.

I don’t have a refutation on this.

The New Yorker@newyorker.com · 4d ago

“I think we could do a single-payer system better than any country in the world,” Abdul El-Sayed tells David Remnick. “Do you know why? We already spend 19 per cent of our whole G.D.P. on health care.” newyorkermag.visitlink.me/7r8iUP

I am anti-(murderous asshole). Wish that narrowed things down more.

AI is a lazy, bad, mediocrity-at-speed tool for writing. It is a *significantly* worse tool for getting published.

John Scalzi@scalzi.com · 5d ago

1. Newer writers, just don't fucking use "AI" for anything, ever 2. How odd that being an established writer with a firm "no 'AI'" stance and ample pre-"AI" IP will become a definite competitive advantage over "new, hot, and possibly copyright compromised" deadline.com/2026/07/ai-q...

One weird trick!!

Tim Melody Pratt@timpratt.org · 6d ago

One of my writing teachers told me she used to be in a writing group where everyone else was a better writer than she was, and none of them had careers, and she did, because they stopped, and she didn’t. It’s like one of the only parts we can control!

I mean man it is hard to convey how scorned furries were on the early Internet. Bottom rung socially. And yet they kept on yiffing, until at last they will soon be the only representatives of humanity capable of speaking the language of God, while we stare in the window as rain pours over us. Woof.

The most interesting thing about automated theorem provers using machine learning is that whenever I'm trying to read a thread and realize it's gotten way too technical for me, I notice all the avatars are furries.

Using AI in the "creation process" is a hilarious diminishment of the ideas of both creation and process. "I will not apologize for my use of ordering Burger King in my hamburger creation process. I am just as much a chef as anyone." What an absolute spoon.

For any Daniel Abraham fans out there: this is the first near-accurate rendering ever made of the 13 races of his The Dagger and the Coin series—which is, for my money, the best Game of Thrones replacement for anyone waiting in vain for the next ASOIAF book by George R.R. Martin.

Articles of non-religious faith: 1) There is an objectively real, measurable thing called "the economy."

For me, AI’s appropriate role model in education is best understood by this question: Does AI promote critical thinking? It doesn’t. We should keep it the hell away from the classroom.

Every time I open the page proofs in Acrobat and it offers to save me time by summarizing the document, I smile and think "Fuck immediately and permanently off."