rahaeli
@rahaeli.bsky.social
Cofounder @dreamwidth.org / disabled queer cat lady / running social media since before it was "social media" and Trust & Safety since the dawn of time / do not cite the deep magic to me, I wrote it / no, I'm allergic to that, too
For a chance, this isn't Cyclospora cayetanensis! It's Listeria monocytogenes, just to keep things interesting
monkeyrotica@monkeyrotica.bsky.social · 6h agoBREAKING: Diarrhea Peaches to open for Diarrhea Lettuce, Diarrhea Planet, Dismemberment Band. www.thehealthy.com/news/peach-r...
One tiny bit of good news for the moment! Please don't stop pestering your senators, though!
Mike Stabile@mikestabile.bsky.social · 3h agoSCREEN failed to pass out of committee, despite a 15-13 vote (in favor). Not enough members voting, but looks like a party line vote. Good work everyone! Keep up the pressure for after recess and beyond!
Details on how to support the Young Center in the followup post in AJ's thread, because God knows they're gonna need it
Dear my knee: please take a number and get in line for your turn
Bay Area! Tiny orange babbies waiting for you!
derek guy@dieworkwear.bsky.social · 22h agoBay Area friends: would you consider opening your home to these two cuddly cats? A friend found them behind a gas station. Their sibling, a black cat, got adopted, but it appears no one likes orange cats. They are being kept in a bathroom for the time being and need a home.
Welcome to Flushes 2.0 The Internet's Bathroom. All-gender, always. 🏳️⚧️ Built on @atproto.com, Flushes is a silly app for sharing when you're flushing. You know what's not silly? Bathroom bills. They target & harm trans people. Try Flushes & join our fundraiser for @trevorproject.bsky.social:
Flushes
The Internet's Bathroom. Post your flushes, see who else is in there, and keep every record in your own AT Protocol repo.
flushes.app
The paperback of Invisible Rulers is out today! To celebrate I dropped audio of the Twitter Space where Mike Benz first groomed Matt Taibbi into believing there'd been "mass censorship" of "hundreds of millions of tweets"—something he'd then testify before Congress. open.substack.com/pub/agentsof...
When Matt Taibbi Met Mike Benz
How independent media turned an obscure political operative into a "whistleblower"—and his claims into government action.
open.substack.com
SCREEN does not YET have bipartisan support in the Senate, but Lee is actively courting D members to find that support — and some are wavering. Keep up the phone calls, keep your emails, keep sharing so that others do as well. www.defendonlineprivacy.com/screen/
Defend Online Privacy: Stop the SCREEN Act!
The Senate Commerce Committee will vote on the SCREEN Act on August 5. ACT NOW to stop it!
defendonlineprivacy.com
“Unlike KOSA and many of the other age verification laws that have spread across the country, the SCREEN Act does not have bipartisan support. It’s the latest in Lee’s repeated attempts to criminalize content he and his co-sponsors personally consider immoral.”
The SCREEN Act is a Christian Nationalist Nightmare
Mike Lee's SCREEN Act, which heads to Senate Commerce Committee for markup on Wednesday, would expand age verification requirements to a nearly limitless scope of websites, and is supported by the arc...
404media.co
as an actor, this tracks
Pixie Casey@pixiecasey.bsky.social · yesterdayin insane local news, the 26 year old director of a rocky horror production was arrested for sending threatening messages to himself in order to get the play shut down bc he didn’t want to deal with cast drama www.mynbc5.com/article/rock...
"Today is August 4, 2026" There Will Come Soft Rains By: Ray Bradbury
Ah yes, this week did only need a puncture wound that means I gotta get a TDaP booster tonight, mutter mutter
This story is amazing
Maine's Black Lawyer@lutherevers.bsky.social · 5d agoFor Rahaeli and @elsieyork.bsky.social, who both asked: My professor was working as an assistant county attorney very early in his career when he got assigned a nuisance abatement case. The owner of property in an unincorporated part of the county was keeping exotic animals without a permit.
Is it even physically possible to watch Spaceballs without quoting half the movie?
tfw you've been dreaming of sleep all day but as soon as you try to achieve some you are wide awake
I fucking hate Elon Musk and it fucking galls me to say that X's argument is legally correct, but X's argument is legally correct and this law cannot pass even intermediate scrutiny, much less the strict scrutiny that is the correct standard of review
Taylor Lorenz@taylorlorenz.bsky.social · 5d ago33k people are cancelling me on Threads and I’ve been trending for 2 days straight bc I said that Minnesota’s AI nudification law is bad and has serious first amendment concerns, meaning xAI is actually right to try to get it overturned: www.bedrockprinciple.com/p/minnesotas...
This looks like a really great resource for Trust & Safety professionals facing potential layoffs: tnsresilience.com
There is always a path forward.
A field guide for navigating layoffs, restructures, and transitions in Trust & Safety — for agents, specialists, and executives alike. Built on evidence, community, and one next action at a time.
tnsresilience.com
This is hilarious. The report exaggerates exceptionally tiny changes in the number of under-16s using age-restricted social media, downplays the number of under-16s moving to unmonitored private chats and sketchy sites, stomps its feet a lot about sites failing to accomplish the impossible,
Pete Etchells@peteetchells.bsky.social · 5d agoThe data report from the first three months of the Australian social media ban has now been released: www.esafety.gov.au/research/soc... Some thoughts:
RE: 1 BILLION https://alecmuffett.com/article/163369 #ElonMusk #MarkZuckerberg #billionaires
RE: 1 BILLION
It is interesting from a sociological perspective that some people will go to great lengths to explain how big 1+ billion is in the context of Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg having too much money, ye…
alecmuffett.com
Dear everyone freaking out about this: a) viral DNA sequences != infectious virus that can be transmitted to another person; b) we still have the smallpox vaccine; it's the same as the mpox vaccine; c) smallpox samples turn up all the time, people get vaccinated and nothing happens
Reuters@reuters.com · 6d agoSmallpox DNA is recovered from Spanish conquest-era Chilean mummies reut.rs/4w4Yejb
This story about a college bio lab fuckup is fucking wild from start to finish arstechnica.com/health/2026/...
College lab class ends with 32 people on antibiotics for deadly germ exposure
Lab students were supposed to ID a mild germ. They all identified a deadly pathogen.
arstechnica.com
"Sopranos, you are already flat" has slain me
Three queer hyperfixations in a trench coat@aniente.bsky.social · 6d ago*standing up on the plane* And another thing - can somebody hand me the tuning fork, thank you. Troparion, Tone 4: "Thy nativity, O Theotokos" and I'm gonna preemptively tell the tenors to cool it - sopranos, you are already flat
This is a really good dissection of why MN's anti-nudifying-app law is a great policy goal but a very poorly written actual law
Techdirt@techdirt.com · 6d agoThe Worst Person You Know Just Filed A Good First Amendment Lawsuit Against A Very Badly Drafted Nudify App Ban There's been a bunch of news this... https://www.techdirt.com/2026/07/30/the-worst-person-you-know-just-filed-a-good-first-amendment-lawsuit-against-a-very-badly-drafted-nudify-app-ban/
Not enough discussion of the performative cruelty of the bar exam mentions its racist and classist history, and it's always good to see an article that does!
Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie@audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app · 6d agoI wrote about the hotass mess that hundreds of recent law grads in Washington are going through for no good reason! ballsandstrikes.org/legal-cultur...
I've only just started reading this, but it already surpasses even the extremely high bar the average Admiral Cloudberg dissection sets for thoroughness, attention to detail, and readability. If you're at all interested in aviation and you don't already read her, you absolutely should be!
Kyra Dempsey - Admiral Cloudberg@kyracloudy.bsky.social · 7d agoIT'S TIME. admiralcloudberg.medium.com/reaping-the-...
