Tessera

Perry Bacon @perrybaconjr.bsky.social · last mo.

The NYT notes that the vile Plymouth County, Mass., district attorney who decided to try Lindsay Clancy for first-degree murder, not even ceding enough ground to allow for a bench trial, is running for reelection unopposed. A hardcore Republican in a Democratic state. www.nytimes.com/live/2026/09...

Lindsay Clancy Trial Live Updates: Judge Declares Mistrial in Triple-Murder Case

The decision, which resulted from a hung jury, means the prosecution can decide whether to try her again. The defense failed to secure a stay of the decision from a higher court.

nytimes.com

An absolutely essential @hamiltonnolan.bsky.social piece. I want to share almost every sentence on here. www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/you-can-ig...

You Can Ignore the Bad Pundits

One easy trick to make yourself smarter.

hamiltonnolan.com

Steve Koczela@skoczela.bsky.social · last mo.

I'm hoping this is yet another example of polls overstating support for DSA candidates. I myself will be voting enthusiastically for Christine Barber, an extraordinarily effective legislator – and if she weren't in the race, I would've voted confidently for Matt McLaughlin. #somervillema #mapoli

A huge number of primary voters have no idea who or what is happening down ballot tomorrow. Some will choose by texting a friend to ask or Google tomorrow. Others will apply some sort of rule of thumb like voting for or against incumbents, picking a woman, guessing, write ins or blanking.

Mike Connolly@mikeconnollyma.bsky.social · last mo.

Mike is the real deal. Super progressive, present and visible in the community, and very responsive to constituents.

My housing policy vision is clear: guaranteed Housing for All. I’ve sponsored and co-sponsored groundbreaking legislation to boost housing production, protect tenants, support homeowners, and expand affordable housing.

I'm so fed up with Google, even imposing this garbage renaming on Canadians. Just last week I discovered that Mapquest still exists and is pretty good for navigation, though it doesn't have layers like Google. Long ago ditched Chrome for Firefox, search for DuckDuckGo. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Lake America replaces Lake Ontario on multiple Canadian websites after Google Maps update | CBC News

Some Canadian websites, including for the federal government, displayed maps with Lake Ontario renamed as Lake America on Sunday, a day after Google Maps announced the change to align with an executiv...

cbc.ca

I find Klein super annoying a lot of the time, but @annielowrey.bsky.social is an excellent journalist, and this conversation is smart and infuriating and should move us all to demand change. There's no question that government benefits are MUCH easier for the rich. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/o...

Opinion | This Is Why People Hate the Government (Gift Article)

Annie Lowrey, the author of “The Time Tax,” explains how the government steals Americans’ time — on purpose.

nytimes.com

Jarrett Walker@humantransit.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I found the @thewaroncars.bsky.social conversation so useful and insightful: on the need to appreciate buses more and the blind spots of elites making decisions about transit.

Do you know people who want to learn about public transit but who learn better orally than by reading? All my recent podcast interviews and conference keynotes are now in one place: humantransit.org/jarretts-key... Please share!

I just had a 😵‍💫🤬😩😵‍💫🤬😩 experience with a major international org's tech support team in India that made me wonder if a US-based team + AI wouldn't actually be better. I hate AI support, but these overseas teams are consistently god-awful, long-winded, inefficient and useless. (1 of 2)

So... reading @neuvel.net's A History of What Comes Next in bed is a terrible idea. Kept me up too late, was definitely not calming. But it was so much fun! Backed by tons of research (but Julia only became a chef post-WWII!). Can't wait to read books 2 & 3. ##Booksky 📚 neuvel.net/books/a-hist...

A History of What Comes Next – Sylvain Neuvel

neuvel.net

The New Yorker@newyorker.com · 2mo ago

I'm very quickly developing a crush on El-Sayed, and this interview only reinforced it.

“I’m not afraid of a fight,” the Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed tells David Remnick. “But I also am not the kind of person who’s just coming to destroy anything. I’m coming to build things that people need and deserve.” newyorkermag.visitlink.me/AnWmP1

What a gorgeous piece by @yabraham.bsky.social! Makes me want to take this walk. It's so easy to forget, in the home of the Freedom Trail, that immigrants built this city, too. www.bostonglobe.com/2026/08/01/m...

‘Great people make a great city.’ Finding a measure of hope in a Boston neighborhood - The Boston Globe

I’d walked through Boston's streets hundreds of times through the decades. But it was shocking how little I’d actually seen.

bostonglobe.com

Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani@mayor.nyc.gov · 2mo ago

But what will the rats eat? What will scent the summer streets?

Now this is the kind of trash talk we can get behind. We’re containerizing neighborhoods by taking trash off our sidewalks and allowing mid-size buildings to trade in their wheelie bins for a bigger, better, cleaner alternative: Empire Bins. It’s time to put a lid on it, New York.

Mike Connolly@mikeconnollyma.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Awesome! Thank you and Sen. Jehlen for your support! Looking forward to @massgovernor.bsky.social signing this, proudly and enthusiastically, yes, Governor?

The PROTECT Act represents the biggest step forward for immigrant protections in Massachusetts in living memory and establishes our Commonwealth as a national leader on immigrant rights. It contains the key elements of the Safe Communities Act. Read my latest: www.repmikeconnolly.org/the_protect_...

Chris Dwan (he/him)@somershade.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I've mentioned in the past that I'm the chair of a city committee to review city committees. I would like to invite folks with direct experience serving on Somerville's committees to provide comment - either public or private. 1/?

James Downie@jamescdownie.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Your daiñy reminder that gas stores leak poison inside your home.

"Unlike many others forced to halt their research [due to Trump cuts], Sehgal and his co-authors released their study anyway...with a fraction of the intended sample size. Still, removing the gas stoves relieved the participants’ asthma so much that the results were clear even with only 85 of them."

jonlink @jonlink.bsky.social · 2mo ago

If you’ve got a Somerville yard that is paved, you can make your home cooler by depaving. There’s a group that will help you do it too

DePAVE the WAY! | Green & Open Somerville

greenopensomerville.org

GLOBE Ireland@globeireland.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Not all surfaces were created equal when it comes to heat absorption! A snapshot of #SurfaceTemperatures around #Dublin during the recent hot spell. Another point in favour of more urban greenspaces! @epaireland.bsky.social @antaisce.bsky.social #GreenUp #UrbanGreenspaces #HeatWave

MassBike @massbike.bsky.social · 2mo ago

TOMORROW is the deadline for contacting your State Senator about supporting two #roadsafety amendments: Amendment 215 on #trafficsafety speed cameras in designated municipality "safety zones". Amendment 160 on incentivizing #trucksafety measures. malegislature.gov/Search/FindM... #bikesafety

Holy cow. Manhole covers opening and shutting in the rain and wind in Union Square, sounding like church bells. Seems a bit risky tbh? @311somerville.bsky.social

Meg Elison@megelison.bsky.social · 2mo ago

“If students are using it to compose, which is the biggest tragedy of all, they’ll never learn to write. And their voice is stolen from them. They’ll never have the ability to say their truth and tell their own story. And that’s silencing an entire generation or two.”

Would have paid good money to be in this room.

The Federal Highway Administration quietly stripped bike lanes and other safety recommendations from a key list of best practices. Critics say those measures are proven to cut crashes and save lives. n.pr/4yoz3dD

The cartoon megavillain approach to government – with reckless disregard for human life.

NPR@npr.org · 3mo ago

WIRED @wired.com · 3mo ago

As part of Meta’s Muse Image model rollout, Instagram users with public accounts need to opt out to block AI generations of their content. www.wired.com/story/meta-n...

Meta Now Lets Anyone Use Your Instagram Photos in AI Images—Unless You Opt Out

As part of Meta’s Muse Image model rollout, Instagram users with public accounts need to opt out to block AI generations of their content.

wired.com

It's just awful. But also, remember the Dream & Promise Act? Congress could've solved this years ago. But it wasn't a priority. Too many self-described moderates didn't care enough. mobileapp.bostonglobe.com/ULHV43HUFFG7...

The Supreme Court just made millions more vulnerable, including the MAGA types who are cheering

“You don’t have to care about the human aspect of this to see it is an economic disaster,” said the CEO of a health care organization.

mobileapp.bostonglobe.com

At Connexion to learn about SCC's "Casa East" project in the long-vacant Patsy's on East Broadway. They flyered in the neighborhood and there are about a dozen residents here. I live very close myself. Bonnie Bastien, Community Building Manager, leading the meeting.

JFC what a terrible, terrible day. Hug your kids and open your wallet if you can.

Elliott Mason@2ells2tees.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Great article. Its focus is American imperialism and both parties' support for violence, cruelty and discrimination abroad, but I'd also point to those things at home. The point is not "ideological purity," but just basic decency. It shouldn't be radical to reject dehumanization -- of *anyone*.

A sample from the middle of a great article by Ta-Nehisi Coates about reasons Kamala lost a lot of Democratic votes, with useful thoughts for 2028. This is the same tangle of issues often glossed over and dismissed as "calls for ideological purity". Unpaywalled link: archive.md/SSLbJ

[Pull quote from Ta-Nehisi Coates article published 15 Jun 2026 in Vanity Fair]

Perhaps it is naive to expect Harris, a candidate for the American presidency, to speak in the same register as Hamer, who was its antagonist. But it was that very antagonist whom Harris and her party claimed as a champion. The dynamic is familiar-Barack Obama's claim of Martin Luther King Jr. was similarly incongruent. That is because a black presidency is a contradiction-it owes its power to a movement against racist state violence at home but seeks an office which has always practiced racist state violence abroad.

But what was known in 1964 was largely abandoned in 2024, and what was offered instead was a questionable survivalist theory of democracy-one that proposed to erect a shield over one group while providing weaponry to destroy another. For reasons moral, pragmatic, and perhaps mostly ancestral, the next black presidency will have to think bigger. To its list of adversaries-which include a renewed white supremacy, a rapacious billionaire class, an energetic Christian nationalism-it must add another, perhaps more formidable than them all: empire.

The portrait of America as an imperial power cuts against its self-image as a righteous cradle of democracy. But from its inception, the country has been aggressive and expansionist, seizing land from its Indigenous population, paying off some European powers while menacing others.

Chris Dwan (he/him)@somershade.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I personally don't care much what they call it, and I definitely see RSJ playing a key role in making City operations more just, equitable and inclusive, but this is a betrayal of Somerville's values. @mayorjakewilson.bsky.social must do better.

Councilor @wilfredmbah.bsky.social fears that Equity and Belonging will wind up perverted - enabling departments like DPW to find ways to perpetuate injustice rather than working actively towards justice. He moves that the administration restore RSJ and continue its mission. 22/?