Optimist: The cup is half full Pessimist: The cup is half empty Historian: The cup can teach you a lot of things that you do not want to know

John Scalzi@scalzi.com · 2y ago

Optimist: The cup is half full Pessimist: The cup is half empty Science Fiction Writer: The cup is a crystalline super computer and the liquid is hyperintelligent, they want to know why humanity should be allowed to exist, you have 30 minutes to respond and the answer must be danced by a cat

Woo-hoo!

Karen Attiah@karenattiah.bsky.social · yesterday

BREAKING: After the Washington Post fired me last year for speaking the truth in the wake of the Charlie Kirk killing, I fought back. And I'm happy to announce: I won my case against the Washington Post. They have been ordered to reinstate me immediately. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/24/b...

Maybe the Appropriations Chair should exercise Congressional control over taxation instead of writing notes to the President about it #mepolitics

Here's some good news to round out the week: progressive Aisha Wahab just won a special Congressional election in California, defeating a centrist backed by millions in AIPAC spending. More proof that organized people can beat organized money.

'Organized People Won': Aisha Wahab Defeats Millions in AIPAC Spending to Win US House Race | Common Dreams

"This victory belongs to the voters who made clear that our district cannot be bought," said Wahab, who will serve out t

commondreams.org

My kids have measles, I have explosive diarrhea, we're losing a war to Iran, and the country is being run by a senile octogenarian and his mentally unstable nurse/stalker. But at least now they're taking the Muslim prayer rooms out of the airports.

Someone I respect in many other regards said COVID was overblown. Ten people died in my family. Nine of acute COVID. One was due to the late and long lockdowns in England. Found dead at home. Since then

Will almost guarantee this was trained on the faith-based anti-sex work guidance. The hotels, the banks, the odd hour surveillance. Same flags used to systematically purge sex workers from the financial system. Would not be surprised if women traveling alone are their own surveillance prompt.

dell cameron@dell.bsky.social · 6d ago

NEW: Flock has said for years that its cameras "cannot track individuals." We found the code for its new AI tool. It's preloaded w/ prompts like "Find me witness" & "find relatives." One tracks visitors of multiple hotels, another if you visit banks after midnight. www.wired.com/story/flock-...

Democratic Socialism: Myth Vs. Fact https://theonion.com/democratic-socialism-myth-vs-fact/

How do I explain to small business owners that the menu on the left is one billion times more appealing than the one on the right

I wonder if any stuck-in-the-90s dems will dimly perceive how one obviously deliberate but casually presented line in a speech forced the media to start reporting a two year old story www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/u...

Natalie Harp, Trump’s Most Devoted Aide, Is Always by His Side. What Exactly Does She Do? (Gift Article)

President Trump’s White House aide Natalie Harp is always by his side. What, exactly, does she do?

nytimes.com

<Pitchbot voice> "We wanted to understand what academia can learn from Jason Arday's rise and fall. So we asked someone who hates academia, is no longer a professor, and has never worked in a research university to weigh the questions his story left behind"

NPR@npr.org · last wk.

What can academia learn from Jason Arday's rise and fall? Atlantic staff writer and former academic Tyler Austin Harper weighs the questions his story left behind. n.pr/4cgsvEP

none of the people calling ossoff sexist think women are biologically capable of flying planes

This isn't even word salad, it's word grass-clippings. Australia needs more data centres & billionaire concessions like it needs more droughts & a stick of cartoon dynamite down the chimbley.

The Conversation AUNZ@aunz.theconversation.com · last wk.

The assistant minister argues Australia needs to leverage its data centre advantage and translate that into benefits and growth for the broader economy.

“Secret Health Battle” with textbook Long COVID

Jonathan Howard@joho.bsky.social · last wk.

Started/going

On Aug 14, NIH held a webinar assuring researchers nothing was changing under the new funding strategy. Hours later, NIH proposed hiding peer review scores from program staff and investigators. My latest essay lays it out. formernih.substack.com/p/nih-direct...

NIH Directors Decide, Except When HHS Says No

A June 2026 Nature report revealed that mandatory reviews by top officials, checking for a list of 235 disfavored terms, have left hundreds of meritorious NIH applications in administrative limbo (Koz...

formernih.substack.com

A great description of what is happening to peer review at NIH. www.forbes.com/sites/brucel...

NIH Proposes Big Change In How Grant Applications Evaluated

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is proposing yet another significant change in its grant review process, moving away from numerical scores for applications.

forbes.com

🚨BREAKING 🦠 On Friday, the US CDC arbitrarily shifted higher COVlD levels into lower categories depicted with cooler colors. Much of what was Very High is now "High." What was High is now "Moderate" or "Low." Low is "Very Low." 1/

Thinkinge of askinge Chat GPT a questioun about your plannes? Trye a tarot deck. Cheaper, bettir for the environment, bettir resultes. Not so swyvinge evil.

I also want to add that every single time ICE has physically hurt me, they have grabbed me by my chest. Most of my femme friends have said the same. I will not be surprised if / when we find out about twisted sexual assaults conducted by ICE agents with these gloves.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · last wk.

Wow. Proponents of the ICE taser gloves are openly saying that one reason they love the gloves is that they doesn’t leave any marks or proof that they were used, making it harder for people to sue when they’re shocked excessively.

The guy who did such an incredible job with the Reflecting Pool, Ballroom, Kennedy Center, National Mall, and Great American Fair is going to redesign our warships. What could go wrong?

This is, bar none, the stupidest fuckung thing I’ve ever heard. And the idea that there’s nobody in the chain of command - civilian or military - with enough courage to say so is a disgrace.

Navy weighs major warship redesign to match Trump’s preferences

The president wants the new fleet of aircraft carriers to more resemble those from World War II. Such a change could cost billions.

wapo.st

tfw you are interrupted by your toddler while thinking aloud in a voice note

our entire global financial system is currently leveraged to the hilt on the premise that it was good and right for a small cadre of US companies to steal all of the intellectual work ever produced by humanity and sell its back to us without credit or remuneration to the authors (plagiarism)

Many years ago, when I first started writing for The Dark Side (Britain's oldest horror mag) we had a bit of a friendly pub quiz rivalry with Empire magazine for a while. We kept losing though. Until one week we discovered a secret weapon. /1

priscilla page@priscillapage.bsky.social · 2w ago

that's right, Bruce Campbell www.mensjournal.com/entertainmen...

After federal troops forced a fugitive slave named Anthony Burns back into slavery in the 1850s, one Bostonian wrote, “we went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad Abolitionists.” The abuse of power radicalizes people. We are seeing that now.

Anybody know who's behind this shady pro-data center org???

Karen Wants The Orcas In Charge@riceboilsover.bsky.social · 2w ago

The plot thickens. The website the ad sends you to hasn't apparently been updated since 2022, has zero information about who's behind it, and just has a street address in Madison. But they CLEARLY have money, running that ad during a Packer game. www.wisconsininfrastructure.com

The future we were promised: Flying cars The future we got: Pervert glasses with an app that can undress women in real time.

every time i see these posts i think its a psyop you cannot open threads and scroll 5 posts without suffering a brain injury. nobody online or irl you ever talk to uses it. they are tricking insta users into clicking on threads links and generating profiles for everyone, that's it

Christopher Mims@mims.bsky.social · 2w ago

So I guess either Bluesky becomes a nonprofit or we all start sharing our Threads handles on here…?

Holy shit. My NIH K award currently supports a clinical trial. This will no longer be allowed for future K awards.

Jack Iwashyna@iwashyna.bsky.social · 2w ago

When their definition of “gold standard RCT” is “no RCT at all” grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...