Just published on FOSS Force: At 45-Years-Old, C-Kermit Gets Its First New Release in 15 Years fossforce.com/2026/08/at-4...

This Day in Labor History: August 5, 1993. The Family and Medical Leave Act went into effect. This was an important, if not world-changing, piece of legislation that demonstrates the historical difficulties of groundbreaking expansions of the welfare state in the U.S.

if you want some spicy *authentic* ODYSSEY discourse, the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library has a translation of the incredibly bitter East Roman freelancer John Tzetzes's ALLEGORIES OF THE ODYSSEY, which is the cutting edge of 12th-century Homeric criticism. folks, it's *bonkers*.

So, I am writing a post about "why Bending Spoons picking up Airtable is everything bad in tech right now" — which questions do you want to make sure I answer in the piece?

I had to code and pronounce a time of death on a respiratory therapist colleague. There's a memorial plaque for her outside the emergency department to this day. I wrote and re-wrote my will. I will never forgive these ghouls trying to rewrite history and deny our experience.

Gabriel Bosslet@gbosslet.bsky.social · 3d ago

RFK Jr said these words today on national television "There were ICUs that were empty all over the country including in New York at the height (of the pandemic)" hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha You are a fucking idiot hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha <sobs silently>

But emails like this just confirm that it's my LinkedIn data being scraped and fed into spam mailers. Being goofy on there when entering my business info means I get solicitations like "TIRED OF THE LIMITATIONS CHIEF DUMPSTER WITCH? AN MBA IS THE ANSWER!"

More space debris is raining down on Earth than ever before — one effect of the frenetic race among governments and companies like SpaceX to reign over the skies. Last year, the U.S. Space Force issued alerts for nearly 820 objects entering the Earth’s atmosphere. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/w...

A Ton of Space Junk Tumbles Unpredictably to Earth Every Week

Flaming chunks of metal crash into homes, farms and parking lots. Who’s to blame? And who pays for the damage?

nytimes.com

I'm posting this again for the morning people: Romancelandia authors/writers/etc., you do not have to use Substack, and in fact you should absolutely leave Substack. This platform monetizes white supremacists, so why do you want to hang out with a bunch of Nazis?

Sean Killeen@seankilleen.com · 6mo ago

That's 100% why I created leavesubstack.com -- got tired of re-hashing the points; wanted to make a simple 1-pager.

The Mariners gave away Kendall Graveman and probably cost themselves a playoff spot because he was starting an anti-vax cult in the bullpen and it clearly didn't help anything

Razzball@razzball.bsky.social · 2d ago

The whole Mariners' pen believes Babe Ruth didn't exist. Kinda want all MLB players to believe this and make the owners agree to it in next CBA

just woke up to the Jays are buying at the deadline and Pete Crow-Armstrong thinks Babe Ruth was made-up

What if instead of starting substacks in twenty-fucking-twenty-six people learned to give one iota of a fuck about whether they want to associate themselves with nazis.

If you got an unprompted text message from someone offering you a huge financial return but you have to send them a $150 iTunes gift card first you’d probably clock it as a scam right off the bat, but when it’s a major sporting league and with extra zeroes we have to pretend that it’s legitimate

Chicago Tribune@chicagotribune.com · 2d ago

While NASCAR is hoping to get the Chicago Street Race back to Grant Park next summer, it may have hit a speed bump in negotiations for a state grant to help defray costs for the event.

this is not true. there was no conspiracy. it didn't matter whether the streetcars were publicly owned (seattle, detroit) or private (los angeles, atlanta). a thread (because i wrote a whole-ass book on this): 1/?

David Ho@davidho.bsky.social · 3d ago

Is everyone aware of the General Motors streetcar conspiracy? In the mid-20th century, auto and oil interests bought up electric streetcar systems across the US and systematically replaced them with bus routes and paved roads, funneling commuters toward private cars.

This was her March 2025. Complete and utter flip…zero integrity. What a c***

Time to add another formerly respected institution to the garbage pile, this time @aau.edu, which just worked with the Trump admin to endorse resegregation in high education, embedding MAGA fraudsters as faculty, and banning student expression. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Obviously I do think you should bring me to your campus. But also you could buy: bsky.app/profile/loll...

David M. Perry@lollardfish.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Hello Bluesky #BookSky! The Public Scholar is out today from @hopkinspress.bsky.social. You can buy it everywhere books are sold. Bookshop: tinyurl.com/2uj47sa7 Order from @moonpalacebooks.bsky.social and I'll sign it - moonpalacebooks.com/item/I12x_a-... You can read an excerpt here. (1)

Alexi Giannoulias says: one thousand more Chicago cops, and bring back ShotSpotter www.reddit.com/r/chicago/co...

From the chicago community on Reddit: Key points from Alexi Giannoulias' interview on NBC Chicago

Explore this post and more from the chicago community

reddit.com

This Johnston bigot writes for “The Federalist,” named after a 1788 publication John Jay contributed to. In 1785 Jay said he looked forward to the time “when all our inhabitants of every color and denomination shall be free and equal partakers of our political liberty.”

Alexander Clarkson@aphclarkson.bsky.social · 4d ago

Another datapoint for the fascist radicalisation of institutional pillars of much of the American Right

"Immigrants helped end one of the most evil regimes in human history," this guy says with the hardest r he can muster

Nied@nied.bsky.social · 4d ago

That's right!

I used to do some work on the ethical use of satellite and drone imagery for aid and disaster response, and it is genuinely hard to express in words what a dangerous, stupid thing Google is doing by making it easy to use GenAI to create faked satellite imagery:

How to plant a nuclear plant in Iran

The question is: what on earth is Google doing?

digitaldigging.org

Jeanne Gibson, one of the last surviving Rosie the Riveters, died on July 29, 2026. She was 100 Years old. Born in Minneapolis in 1926, she was only 18 when she moved to Seattle to weld U.S. Navy destroyers at Todd Pacific Shipyards. Rest in peace, Jeanne

I work at a public library. People who want to use AI seem to have no trouble doing so. People who don't want to use AI have a harder time. I crowdsourced and then finalized this document "How to disable or avoid intrusive AI" and then gave it a short URL: notoai.org Please pass along if it's useful

New Wikipedia List, for anyone who feels like starting a new project!

Helen Kennedy@helenkennedy.com · 5d ago

Has someone made a list of all the cases Pirro has screwed up?

A+ 🔥 No notes

Everything is a conspiracy when you don't know how anything works.

Regular reminder that Katherine Eban wrote this lab-leak piece, which has multiple substantive errors www.propublica.org/article/sena...

COVID-19 Origins: Investigating a “Complex and Grave Situation” Inside a Wuhan Lab

The Wuhan lab at the center of suspicions about the pandemic’s onset was far more troubled than known, documents unearthed by a Senate team reveal. Tracing the evidence, Vanity Fair and ProPublica giv...

propublica.org

Michael Hobbes@michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 6d ago

And here is the same Alex Jones bullshit appearing in Rolling Stone. Unbelievably embarrassing to publish this.

So, Josiah Lippincott is a Hillsdale College PhD (why does a college have a PhD program? To mint bullshit credentials for culture warriors, of course) whose scholarship argues that the USA should have stayed neutral in WWII and let the Axis murder everyone. That's who they're hiring.

Joe Stieb@joestieb.bsky.social · 6d ago

Congrats to WVU for hiring a literal fascist!

Days after Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke publicly supported the idea that pensioners and the poor should lose their right to vote — and the wealthy should have extra votes — Elon Musk called him a "national treasure." But that's not all. Lutke also has the ear of Canada's prime minister. Here's proof: