Note: I realise that, taken at face value, this cartoon might appear to encourage readers to use these prompts to generate an actual AI cartoon. I would prefer that the described cartoon was generated with your imagination. And if you do make an AI version, please do not share it with me.
As we welcome Woke 2.0 or 3.0 or whatever it is, a fun thing to remember is that there's no need to pull rhetorical punches on right wingers ever again in our lives. In 18 months they validated every negative thing that's ever been said about them and more
It breaks my heart to hear/see educated people (academics! journalists!) say “according to ChatGPT…”. You guys are supposed to know about citing your sources. What are you doing citing an unreliable aggregator as opposed to AT LEAST clicking through to find the source and citing it properly?
No one deserves a "homeland." "Homeland" is another word for "ethnostate." It's a deeply destructive idea. Israel today is the inevitable outcome of pursuing that idea to its conclusion. Every land is a homeland to the people who live there NOW. Every person should be protected in every state.
I never thought I'd write this story. After sweeping Democratic victories in Texas, the state's anti-trans restrictions appear set to fall. Texas' bans on gender marker changes, GAC for minors, trans bathroom use, and more are all on the chopping block. Today is a new dawn for trans Texans.
A New Dawn For Trans Texans: Most Texas Anti-Trans Laws Poised to Fall After Shock Democratic Victories
With Democrats flipping the governor’s mansion, AG office, four state Supreme Court seats, and the Court of Appeals, the days an anti-trans Texas have finally come to an end.
transiticsnews.com
Still giddy about this. Come January there will be zero Republican governors anointing themselves imperator wardens of the holy southern border. No national guard stunts, no meme bussing, no Prigozhin-esque rants about asylum seekers in front of a platoon of state troopers.
New from me: The argument for impeachments, plural. "If we don’t make it clear that this administration’s violence, racism, corruption, and crime are aberrant and intolerable, we’ll instead make clear that they’re neither. And we’ll make it easier for the next Trump, the next time around."
Make bad things bad again
Holding the Trump administration accountable isn’t about retribution. It’s the only way we survive.
radleybalko.substack.com
In underappreciated political news
The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 2d agoIf passed by enough states, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would effectively nullify the Electoral College and, with it, the possibility of a candidate being elected president without winning the popular vote. https://mrf.lu/2_qGC
This is interesting. DeSoto County, MS is 57% white. It went for Colom. It experienced a 26-point swing to the Democrats from 2024. 26!! Musk is building a massive data center complex there.
I support Somali-Americans@adamrothman.bsky.social · 3d agoI'm curious about whether and how much opposition to data centers boosted Colom in Mississippi.
Democratic candidates won big on Tuesday night. True to form, immediately before and after this sweeping victory centrist Democratic consultants and the corporate press were out in force, warning voters to curb their enthusiasm and stay in the moderate lane. fair.org/home/corpora...
Corporate Media Warn Democrats of the Perils of Winning
Immediately before and after the sweeping victory, the corporate press was out in force, warning voters to curb their enthusiasm and stay in the moderate lane.
fair.org
Here’s the reality about Schumer: He sponsored Alex Vindman, Haley Stevens and Janet Mills. White candidates who BADLY underperformed. He ignored and rejected Angie Nixon, Jamie Davis, Scott Colom and Everett Ness, all of whom GREATLY OVER PERFORMED and got within a hair’s breadth of winning with
It's really telling how reflexively we recoil from even considering proportionate justice for elite misdeeds. Well you can't possibly do to these guys the things they've done to thousands of others. That would be wrong
Indivisible is pushing for the Senate to end the Filibuster in January.
Whiteboard in the library at UMass asks if the library should have an “AI Makerspace” and the students’ “NO” answers are off the charts. They hate this so very much. I’ve never seen a whiteboard in the library this fired up.
Senator Van Hollen is one of @standupforscience.net’s biggest advocates. He’s been around since the start and has been in lock step with us since March 2025. I cannot begin to tell you how unbelievably happy I would be to see him lead the Senate.
Dr. Jack Brown@drjackbrown.bsky.social · 3d agoAbdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s newly elected Democratic senator, reupped his calls Thursday morning for Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) to become Senate majority leader over current Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) Along with the vast majority of Democrats, I second this.
I want us to end the electoral college I want us to investigate each and every one of these fascists I want us to vote them all out in 2028 and then I want to reform SCOTUS I want to reform the executive branch I want a stronger bill of rights
They elected a Democrat who got sick in September and suspended his campaign In Iowa
turns out you can be not a rapist or a nazi and still win a senate seat in maine, weird that certain people insisted this wasn’t possible
How many millions have to keep dying thanks to German idealism?
not only was this the first truly decisive election in 15 years, not only was it the first real repudiation the MAGA Republican Party has experienced, but it is an earthquake in the South. with investment — and with laws protecting the right to vote — the whole region could be blue.
You can literally run a trans woman in a red district in a deep South red state and win 22% more voters than the cis Democrat in the previous election. Every Democrat who has been lying about trans rights being bad electorally needs to be removed from politics forever!
mady castigan✨ 🏳️⚧️@mady.cat · 5d agoA trans woman just won a Alabama house seat that a right wing news paper described as a "long shot" while repeatedly misgendering her in the article, lmao. The Republican candidate spent the whole campaign attacking her for being trans and lost his very Republican leaning seat, eat fucking shit!
yeah it turns out if you keep shooting people in the street and kidnapping children and making it impossible to get food or healthcare or education and then gloat about it, everybody hates you
ok, so how about he *doesn't* become house speaker? how about that?
MS NOW@ms.now · 5d ago"The American people don't want us to get even; they want us to get things done on their behalf." House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is now poised to become the next House Speaker, says that Democrats will focus on affordability concerns and not retribution after their midterm wins.
I thought I had a good grasp on how big this win would be but I underestimated. My Big Lie prediction was wrong, it's not going to happen. The loss is too big, Trump is too much of a narcissist to push a steal narrative for anyone not himself, and GOP factions are already blaming each other
I’ve now experienced AI fucking up TWO medical things for me in the past month. 1. Sent me the wrong summary of a bad blood test result via patient portal that scared the shit out of me 2. An AI agent (who I did not know was an AI agent) called me today to schedule a test my doctor did not order
the feeling that you can bend reality in this way—it was your dog with you at the beach, not some muscly dude; you can take your ex out of that wedding photo—is not only a bummer but it's really fuckin' bad for you and society at large!
I'd heard of the Cent nouvelles nouvelles for years but never read this collection of short stories, most of them very bawdy, in English translation. One even has the punchline, "Haven't you people ever heard of closing the goddamn door?"
Grand Dukes of the West Podcast@valoisburgundy.bsky.social · 9mo agoIf you didn't get enough about illicit affairs in there, check out Supplemental 13: Stories from the Burgundian Court where we'll be reading some of the tales from the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles. granddukesofthewest.com/2026/02/02/s...
I'm gonna come out and say it: Christian Zionism is anti-semitic and Christians who espouse it should be asked why they hate Jews
