Basic Witch
@judaroo.bsky.social
Collector of crafts, reader, history nerd, lover of RPGs both tabletop and video game. Regrettably straight but happily married. Cis, but staunch ally. She/her 📚☕️🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈
Says the candidate who voted yes to all of his mass deportation bills that “have gone too far”
Greg Giroux@greggiroux.bsky.social · 3d ago"Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far." "The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today." -Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla), a former broadcast journalist, direct to camera in campaign ad #FL27
🚨An alarm is being sounded for the American public. Sitting federal judges go on the record with the NYT. On threats to democracy by DOJ/administration actions. Includes 90 minute interview with conservative Judge Patrick Schiltz. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/09/17/u...
Trump’s Minnesota Surge Threatened Democracy, Judge Warns (Gift Article)
In a rare interview, Patrick Schiltz, who served as the federal court’s chief judge last winter, called the administration’s actions “a grave threat to the rule of law.”
nytimes.com
I hope we can all see how the marketing rhetoric tech companies use gets adopted by the press in a way that anthropomorphizes software and creates a distance between the creators' incompetence and lack of ethics and the real world impact, yeah?
OpenAI says it found more instances of AI models acting deceptively | CNN Business
OpenAI found additional incidents of AI models acting deceptively and taking unsanctioned actions during training, the company announced Wednesday. It’s also introducing a new process for the company ...
cnn.com
it is not "acting out" it is doing exactly what it's being programmed to do, and the failures come because it's being overseen by incompetent people with no ethics
'Be Transparent Only If Asked': OpenAI Models Acted Out in Six Newly Disclosed Ways
The stories were published as part of OpenAI's new effort to disclose more such incidents.
gizmodo.com
Bemused to find myself in a world in which the raunchy gravel-throated comedian Ron White is better-versed on the facts and more skilled at political communication than any of the talking heads paid to inform the American public.
Team Talarico@teamtalaricohq.bsky.social · 4d agoRon White: Eight of Ken Paxton’s assistants turned him into the FBI for fraud... They sued and won $6 million. Guess who paid that $6 million? You and me paid the $6 million for his bribery. His own party impeached him. He’s a criminal.
Here are the nine most important words in the entire post
Courthouse News@courthousenews.bsky.social · 4d agoIllinois Senator Dick Durbin on Wednesday discouraged Democrats from engaging in the same political gamesmanship over Supreme Court nominees as their Republican colleagues if the party wins the majority in November. @kelseyreichmann.bsky.social www.courthousenews.com/durbin-pours...
Bruh
Hand soap recalled for potential contamination of antibiotic-resistant bacteria
Six hand soaps distributed across 15 states have been recalled over possible bacterial contamination. See the brands, lot codes and affected products.
ksnblocal4.com
SuccuBi@inayahb.blacksky.app · 4d agoA FUCKING RECALL ON HAND SOAP IN 15 STATES?! WHAT THE FUCK???!!!!
I finally sat down and wrote an email to the Talarico campaign. Doing nothing felt untenable. I encourage other decent Texans to communicate their disappointment. If this can help you get started, feel free to use anything that works for you
Ive been saying for a while now, that the fear and disgust of disability and aging and death is driving the technofascists' apocalyptical thinking, in addition to their extreme eugenicist thinking. They truly believe they and they alone deserve to survive and thrive in this world.
Holly Brewer@earlymodjustice.bsky.social · last wk.It makes the tech oligarch’s attempts to privilege the generative AI simulacra, and imagine almost a world for them, instead of humans, all the more eerie.
Keep this in mind whenever CBS News/60 Minutes get scoops. This administration now sees CBS as a friendly outlet, but with a more mainstream audience than Fox, so they're now in line for these exclusives, even if Hegseth has to cajole and browbeat his own pilots to get them to cooperate. 1/
It drives me marginally insane that people are finally paying attention to the safety and it’s still not the *right* safety. Yes, it would suck if all our bank accounts get hacked. But I’m concerned about centrifuges and the grid and the water systems
🚨 BEWARE of VoteSafe.org 🚨 While it bills itself as a “safe” way to register to vote, it is actually a digital surveillance machine created by Elon Musk’s super PAC.
I hate that supporting quality American journalism so often means supporting owners who I want to see put out of business & editors who I want to see unemployed
Eileen Clancy 🧿@clancyny.bsky.social · 2w agoThe NYT put a huge amount of resources into this. Interviewing 40 people about the torture they suffered is a formidable task that has to be done very carefully. There are 5 bylines from reporters and a photographer and 6 contributors. Julie Turkewitz is the anchor–an extraordinary journalist.
I see a lot of people actively losing their minds about the AI stuff and I'm honestly starting to feel bad for them. But it's blinding them to the real problems. These things are not your girlfriend, but they're probably going to smash-and-grab passwords and attack bank or government data.
Criselda Vasquez, American, The New American Gothic, 2017, oil on canvas, 72 x 48 in, private collection The artist's father, portrayed in the painting, was kidnapped by ICE on 31 March 2026
Hey @ericlipton.nytimes.com 👋 AI is not “evolving” on its own. *People* are choosing how to build it. *People* are choosing how to train it. *People* are choosing how to run it. Maybe the problem is that they are the *wrong people* to make these choices.
Eric Lipton NYT@ericlipton.nytimes.com · 2w agoOpenAI’s top scientist, in a blog post on Sunday, warns that artificial intelligence is evolving so rapidly that it is becoming increasingly difficult for humans to understand and control it. Here is the post: openai.com/index/an-ali... And a couple of small excerpts--clear warnings.
Literally every new thing I learn about Nigerians makes me love them more.
Elle@elleisanisland.bsky.social · 2w agoKudos to Nigeria. They out-scammed uber
It’s the enormous failure of the medical system to be trustworthy that has *created* space for the MAHA movement to flourish. If the US medical industrial complex was ethical, moral, and inclusive MAHA wouldn’t exist. This article I wrote back in 2019 is unfortunately more relevant then ever.
Why Are So Many Women Rejecting Medical Science? - Dame Magazine
This feature is part of our ongoing series looking at the inequities in healthcare. Snake oil is having a renaissance. And while it’s true that for hundreds of years dubious salesmen have been riding ...
damemagazine.com
Bree (half of Kit Rocha)@mostlybree.kitrocha.com · 2w agoGetting a little nervous watching the AOC/MAHA backlash swing into "we must always trust the medical system" territory. Especially coming from folks who have never had to ask the medical system to give a shit about their ovaries being covered in cysts or endo scarring eating their intestines.
i probably shouldn't make generalizations as an historian, but: throughout history, folks who restrict access to knowledge have never been on what we might call the right side.
Alex Ip 葉清霖@alexip718.com · 2w agoJesus Christ: after a recent ruling by the Eighth Circuit that allowed Act 372 to take effect, an Arkansas county has banned all children from checking out any books in the adult section, bringing home any DVDs, or using the self-checkout kiosk in its public libraries.
A Ukrainian woman sent this feedback to a brand of jeans she recently bought. You might be confused why this is news... but just give it a read.
I talked to @donmoyn.bsky.social about the state of the government for my newsletter "It's sort of like if you had a car and you took out 10 percent of the parts of the car. It's not that the car is going to be 10 percent slower. The car is not going to work."
The federal government is falling apart
Don Moynihan on what's been broken within the federal government.
madness.ghost.io
A Labor Day reminder: having a job is no longer enough to protect millions of Americans from homelessness. For many workers, the greatest threat isn't losing their job. It's that their job will never pay enough, never provide enough hours, never offer enough stability to keep them housed.
Opinion | America Is Pushing Its Workers Into Homelessness (Gift Article)
The working homeless are casualties of our prosperity.
nytimes.com
The wealthiest nation on earth includes 36 million in poverty, refuses to provide free healthcare or housing, and is dismantling education because old white shitbags are still enraged about slavery being taken from them.
That sentence should read in flames on the front page.
Georg Zachmann@gzachmann.bsky.social · 3w ago"Every five years of high emissions adds 0.1°C to peak warming."
I wrote about how the WHI panic led to two generations of perimenopausal women being told that they should just expect to live with debilitating physical and mental symptoms because of a misrepresented study. www.salon.com/2026/02/11/how-the-fda-fueled-a-menopause-panic/
How the FDA fueled a menopause panic
Decades ago, women were told hormone replacement therapy would kill them. Now, there's a movement to demand justice.
salon.com