NEW @crisesnotes.bsky.social piece: So much of the joint United States-Japanese currency intervention last Friday makes sense, even considering Bessent's silly theatrics. Yet some strange choices "under the hood" portend danger for the global financial system www.crisesnotes.com/a-hidden-geo...

A Hidden Geopolitical Threat to the Global Financial System? Oddities in the U.S.-Japanese Yen Intervention

This is a Premium Piece of Notes on the Crises. If Notes on the Crises gets enough paid subscriptions or tips associated with this piece, it will be unlocked. Given that I’ve committed to ma...

crisesnotes.com

NEW: Meta has run dozens of paid ads that include explicit, AI-generated child sexual abuse material in recent months. Some as recently as this week. "These are ads that were reviewed, approved, and allowed to run by Meta, never encountering interference while the company collected the ad dollars."

Meta Ran Ads That Contained AI-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Imagery

More than 50 offending image and video ads were published across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, or Threads, according to Meta’s ad library data. Some ran as recently as this week.

wired.com

No wonder he and Trump are buddies. Same gangster Mentality.

Nathan Kalman-Lamb@nkalamb.bsky.social · 6h ago

This is incredibly shameless. The bribery and blackmail are all on center stage now.

Taking my time to really listen and learn from the very valid concerns of the MAHA movement:

Memento (artemis) Morty 🌙@mementomorty.bsky.social · 8h ago

we should hear MAHA out about this they might be onto something

I don't think I can remember a US politician with better messaging than this man. Ever. And that includes Mamdani. Run him for President.

Literally indistinguishable from The Onion.

I know we are chalking the success of some leftist candidates almost entirely to the DSA. However, it seems like the more common theme is that these are candidates with organizing experience?

if someone had said a year ago "next year a leftist muslim will beat a sitting congressperson backed by her state's sitting governor and 30 million dollars of AIPAC spending—but the race will be close" people would have thought that sounded pretty gd good. gotta keep perspective!

Spencer Ackerman@attackerman.bsky.social · 10h ago

@abdulelsayed.bsky.social triumphing over something like $60 million, $32-ish million of it AIPAC money, is not a "narrow" victory, it's a people's earthquake. This kind of spending is oligarchy in action, to smother democracy through its formal channels, and is getting normalized. Still he won.

I'm in Halberstadt where I have been sent by the lovely folk over at Orbital Studies to witness and write about the 17th chord change of John Cage's "As Slow as possible" which has been playing on an organ here since 2001 and is projected to keep playing until the 2600s.

Emily Herring@emilyherring.bsky.social · 2d ago

I'm in Germany for mysterious reasons

In Rome in 2024, I wondered what contemporary art under far right government appointees would look like and I found out: midjourney slop created through Dante’s inferno prompts. www.maxxi.art/en/events/ar...

Artificial Hell. L'Inferno di Dante visto dall'Intelligenza Artificiale | MAXXI

La cantica dell’Inferno narrata integralmente attraverso un percorso visivo e multimediale.

maxxi.art

Sonja Drimmer@sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 5d ago

<<cough>> H/t to @ebwood.bsky.social for the NYT story here

way closer than expected, but an Arab leftist besting 70 million in outside spending is an Arab leftist besting 70 million in outside spending: a political earthquake and a new dawn 25 years after 9/11

I just realized all the fancy horse riding in Taylor Sheridan’s shows is like figure skating for men.

Another community burned to the ground. But yes let’s build another pipeline.

Times Colonist@timescolonist.bsky.social · 18h ago

Today, August 4, 2026, is the setting of Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” about a fully automated house continuing on after the family who lived there and the world around it died in a nuclear blast.

Q: Any comment on Rep. Max Miller? TRUMP: I hope he's able to work it out. I feel badly for him.

I finally read "The Interracial Cuck Porn Theory of Everything." For years, I have been calling the psychosexual dynamics of American politics vastly understudied. I believe some version of this porn hypothesis. But the data presented here really didn't help the argument.

The Interracial Cuck Porn Theory of Everything

Everything is gender, but to understand gender you must understand sex.

liberalcurrents.com

Ooof. Get siri to read this to you. Today is August 4, 2026.

Helen Kennedy@helenkennedy.com · yesterday

Read it here if you haven't yet. Today is the very best day of all days to read it for the first time. short-stories.co/@raybradbury...

you shouldn't know who won an election for at least two weeks. this need for immediacy is toxic to your soul.

Well, actually, kinda, yeah, close to what happened. It's not for nothing that Jack Dorsey, who started the place and was on its board, basically ran away when the trans folks and furries scared off all the crypto bros he assumed would be the natural demographic here (they went to Nostr instead).

jack@jackalltogether.bsky.social · 2d ago

Bluesky often seems like a project run by tech people who place great value on its architectural differences from Twitter, which nobody cares about, while not understanding how they walked ass-backwards into having a userbase (whomst they fear and despise)

i cannot get over how funny the moderation tag on this is

USSR Pictures@ussrpictures.bsky.social · 2d ago

"Prudery is the enemy of art" - Soviet poster, 1980s

The kind of Swerve we need

Dr. Katja Thieme (she/they)@katjathieme.bsky.social · yesterday

A humble academic proposal: let's not have stars. Everyone hired as an academic at a university is there to teach younger generations, to make new knowledge, to have that knowledge critically evaluated by others, and to act on collective insights. We do not need to designate some people as stars.

A 60 Minutes probe into Epstein's banking, with Wyden already interviewed, vanished right after Sharyn Alfonsi got pushed out under Bari Weiss. Same editor who stalled the CECOT migrant story until Stephen Miller got a say. CBS keeps calling it timing. Sure looks like a pattern.

60 Minutes Epstein Banking Story Vanished After CBS Ousted Sharyn Alfonsi, Dem Senator Reveals

Wyden revealed he was interviewed for the show in a Senate report alleging the country's largest banks turned “a blind eye” to Epstein's financial activity

mediaite.com

It would be rad if we didn’t have minute-to-minute coverage of elections and just reported results when they were finished. This exasperated, hyperventilating theater is good for ratings but also just bullshit.

Man, if Putin had told Trump exactly what he wanted the US to do to help Iran and Russia and hurt Ukraine, it would have been exactly what Trump did in his war. This is a Russian strategic dream we are watching.

I was NOT expecting where this thread went. Scroll down.🤯

Steven T. Dennis@steventdennis.bsky.social · 24h ago

Fun fact: The last time a Cabinet pick failed on the Senate floor was 1989. John Tower. No Cabinet pick has been defeated on the Senate floor in Susan Collins’ nearly 30 years as a senator.

Sen. Thune is counting votes & knows exactly how many “hall passes” he can hand out to vulnerable Republicans & still carry the vote. This is not principled opposition from Susan Collins. It’s political theater. OTOH, Trump is so thin skinned that he will probably do something stupid and attack her.

D. Earl Stephens@dearlstephens.bsky.social · yesterday

📌Susan Collins is voting "no" on the repulsive Blanche because she has been given political cover by Thune. Her vote doesn't matter. This isn't a heroic decision, it is pure politics, and whether anybody wants to admit it or not it's how she has survived like a parasite in that chamber for 30 years.

i don't like to police genre, but it's not dark academia unless somebody gets squished in one of these bad boys

Grant would genuinely be proud

Zebulon Vitruvius Pike@vitruviuspike.bsky.social · yesterday

honestly, the fact that we have made it through the atomic age *without* another use of nuclear weapons since 1945 is a miracle we don't fully appreciate

Rebecca R Helm@rebeccarhelm.bsky.social · yesterday

Today is the day the story There Will Come Soft Rain is set. An amazing and heartbreaking work of fiction for our modern age. Read it here: