Idk if I count as middle-aged yet but I am getting my fifth tattoo (fifth through eighth tattoos? How do we count clusters of tiny tats?) Wednesday

Helena Fitzgerald@hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 13h ago

okay, besides everything else, if you can't find a better middle-aged lady with extensive tattoos to be horny about **on bluesky** that's the actual definition of a skill issue

I have a rule against ever subtweeting just one thing, so to be clear, this is about l’affaire Arday: You only get that kind of coverage of something when A LOT OF PEOPLE ARE CLICKING ON IT. Be an ethical consumer in the attention economy and encourage your peers to do the same.

It’s not my story to tell, really, but maybe someday @blanksslate.bsky.social will grace y’all with the story of the time I accidentally tried to starve him in Sweden.

Solomon@solomonrmissouri.com · 2d ago

You just know the person that dug into that ground and started eating beets was on the hardest time mankind has ever known

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is eliminating a key way that someone who _already qualifies for permanent legal status_ can actually "get legal":

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 4d ago

The post-purge Board of Immigration Appeals, in its effort to take a wrecking ball to every precedent that might allow an immigrant to receive a benefit, effectively ends "advance parole," a pathway for some DACA recipients and others to get green cards without risking a decade of banishment abroad.

GREAT DELEGALIZATION WATCH: The last big TPS grant standing is El Salvador. 170K people who've been here since 2001 (not a typo). Set to expire in Sept. DHS was legally supposed to announce whether they were terminating in July. They didn't. But they're now trying to scare employers about it. +

Nota bene: if you try them in this order the cat will happily destroy both your needlepoint and your tomato shoots, such that the only Italian you will learn will be “mamma mia, gatto, che stai facendo??”

Anjali Dayal@anjalikdayal.bsky.social · 4d ago

some people were annoying you on the internet? adopt a cat. take up needlepoint. grow your own tomatoes. learn how to speak Italian.

My latest dives into an under-covered issue: Mexican children deported alone by plane to southern Mexico. www.daylightsandiego.org/u-s-has-depo...

U.S. Has Deported Hundreds of Children to Cities in Southern Mexico

Human rights organizations said the minors lack the resources to go home safely and that some may have died trying. Written by Kate Morrissey, Capital & Main This article was produced by C...

daylightsandiego.org

The Rotten Tomatoes scale of presidential approval rating comparison is genius

Fred Smith@fredsmith.bsky.social · 6d ago

The sex purge movie is absolutely cooking the guy right now. Total approval is only *just* above the live action Moana line.

Not trying to dunk on the hed but my HSTNE experience is salient bc we’re one of the (few) neighborhoods with constant NG presence: no, hell no, I keep thinking my neighborhood is back and they keep threatening to intimidate it into submission, I just want it back www.nytimes.com/2026/08/10/u...

One Year Later, Trump’s ‘Takeover’ Has Changed D.C. Is It Better Off?

The deployment of National Guard troops and federal agents into the streets has been expensive. How effective it has been is debatable.

nytimes.com

🎶 we fled war in a cater cart / we fled war in a caaateerr carrt 🎶

Just give them the Pulitzer now. (They probably won’t because the Pulitzers systematically devalue beat reporting. And when they don’t, someone remind me to riot.)

Quinta Jurecic@qjurecic.bsky.social · last wk.

Insanely impressive reporting by politico on this story

We’re in this situation because, for 30 years, the unauthorized population has been more settled than ever — and “getting legal” harder. The exec branch filled the gap by issuing temporary protections. But that was a Band-Aid that got mistaken for something more. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

These Immigrants Lived in the U.S. Legally. Now Trump Is Changing Their Status.

More than a million immigrants are seeing protections that granted them safe lives in the U.S. suddenly swept away.

newyorker.com

What happens when people follow all the rules asked of them from an immigration system, and still have no way to make a permanent home in this country? @daralind.bsky.social new piece for @newyorker.com examines our ongoing “Great Delegalization”: www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

These Immigrants Lived in the U.S. Legally. Now Trump Is Changing Their Status.

More than a million immigrants are seeing protections that granted them safe lives in the U.S. suddenly swept away.

newyorker.com

understanding that this group of people is included within the tally of "unauthorized" immigrants was a bit of a blackpill moment for me www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

Dara Lind@daralind.bsky.social · last wk.

PS yes, in fact, people with TPS and other protections get counted as “unauthorized immigrants” in both official statistics and all the authoritative estimates we all rely on (Pew, MPI, AIC). Even though by the Biden admin MILLIONS of those people were in active compliance with the gov.

The estimable @daralind.bsky.social in @newyorker.com highlighting both the callousness of Trump II, but also the continued mischief sewn by Congress's long-running moral & political abdication in this area among others: www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

The original draft of this had a whole graf of me hemming and hawing over the term “delegalization” (which I resisted for about a year). These folks had legal STATUS but were not legal IMMIGRANTS — and had no way to become such. And that’s the whole problem. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

These Immigrants Lived in the U.S. Legally. Now Trump Is Changing Their Status.

More than a million immigrants are seeing protections that granted them safe lives in the U.S. suddenly swept away.

newyorker.com

"People with Temporary Protected Status were never, precisely, safe...TPS status provides no legal mechanism to apply for a green card, or any other immigration status. Instead, people have had to spend time & money just to remain in place." A million people following the rules are now deportable.

Dara Lind@daralind.bsky.social · last wk.

NEW FROM ME: The Great Delegalization. There are now (almost certainly far more than) 1M immigrants who were protected from deportation on Jan 20, 2025, and no longer are. It’s the result of a problem that’s been building for 30 years—& now only Congress can fix. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

. @daralind.bsky.social makes her debut in @newyorker.com explaining how Trump is stripping legal status from hardworking immigrants who have nowhere safe to go. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

NEW FROM ME: The Great Delegalization. There are now (almost certainly far more than) 1M immigrants who were protected from deportation on Jan 20, 2025, and no longer are. It’s the result of a problem that’s been building for 30 years—& now only Congress can fix. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

These Immigrants Lived in the U.S. Legally. Now Trump Is Changing Their Status.

More than a million immigrants are seeing protections that granted them safe lives in the U.S. suddenly swept away.

newyorker.com

Apropos of very little I don’t think @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social gets enough credit for being a good poster

The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce, the third time as farce, the fourth time as tragedy.

Walter Olson@walterolson.bsky.social · 2w ago

Michael Munger revisits "The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte". The French masses united around "law & order, nationalism, statecraft as a mere excuse for pageantry, an old familiar name that everyone from the lowest classes can instantly recognize—stop me if this sounds familiar." [@liberalism.org]

PEOPLE DON’T DISAPPEAR IRL WHEN THEY DISAPPEAR FROM THE NEWS. And while I know I’ve lost the fight on not calling an ICE arrest/detention a “disappearance,” I think people should seriously think about the implicit permission “disappearance” gives to stop thinking about how someone is doing.

Gillian Brockell@gillianbrockell.com · 2w ago

5) IF they did it, they wouldn’t leave survivors. People don’t “disappear” on these flights, even if they disappear from the news. 6) There’s no need to dump them in the ocean when it’s easier to just dump them in other countries. You think ICE isn’t gonna be cruel in the laziest way possible?

7) What is actually happening on ICE flights is already so bad! When you make shit up or “just ask questions,” you: a) Take the focus off real people who are SCREAMING for help about real abuses, b) Ignore actions YOU could be taking TODAY to try to relieve their suffering.

I am so so sick of people paying less attention to what is going on than they are to the things they imagine might be happening

Gillian Brockell@gillianbrockell.com · 2w ago

Please for the love of God, stop telling me about Pinochet’s death flights and suggesting ICE is doing them. 1) The doors on the charter jets ICE uses cannot be opened midflight. It is physically impossible. 2) Even if depressurized, the door would fly off and/or bodies get sucked into engines

Chat is it decadent to be working out to feel better in my body as opposed to working out to get better at fighting people and carrying heavy things Like I feel great these days but I’m no better for an apocalypse compound than I was six weeks ago (useless)

We don’t talk enough about Ray Bradbury beyond Fahrenheit 451 so consider this a Ray Bradbury Appreciation Day post

Adam Rawnsley@arawnsley.bsky.social · 2w ago

Today, August 4, 2026, is the setting of Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” about a fully automated house continuing on after the family who lived there and the world around it died in a nuclear blast.

This is what I mean when quote post stuff w/ “belief: still today’s issue.” The vast majority of true things you are going to know about reality you are going to know by believing the testimony of someone else. Consequently, “critical thinking” almost always means “evaluating credibility.”

Julian Sanchez@normative.bsky.social · 2w ago

Millions of people have an absolutely insane concept of “critical thinking” that means “making a fully independent judgment on complex questions you are, if you’re at all honest with yourself, comically incompetent to evaluate & demand years of specialized training.”

On Friday I literally had to flee my own apartment in order to finish a draft. I got 75 minutes in the library and then had to schlep a handful of blocks to a bookstore that was holding a poetry reading. Still FAR superior working environment to Kitten Zone.

Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist@nameshiv.bsky.social · 2w ago

in my next contract I am going to have them put a clause that I cannot deliver on deadlines unless they agree to board this !@#$ cat who is literally standing on my keyboard deleting my sentences because he wants attention and not book progress

I’m shutting down replies AND QTs on this bc a gajillion people telling me I’m wrong is NOT going to make me reconsider; I will hear out a sustained case from someone I trust, but those people know how to reach me: Dylan. Feh. I love Guthrie. I love Springsteen. That’s a direct genealogical line.

lil miss big boy@lighter.bsky.social · 2w ago

Post your hottest music take. Mine is New Order is better than Joy Division.