A visual representation of life in America these days
I dont know about you, but this story has haunted me since I read it as a child. It’s still one reason I am a near-Luddite when I design houses for people (surveillance and hack-ability aspects aside).
Gilly@gillyarcht.bsky.social · yesterday‘In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh and ejected from its warm interior eight pieces of perfectly browned toast, eight eggs sunny side up, sixteen slices of bacon, two coffees, and two cool glasses of milk. "Today is August 4, 2026," said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling’
Starship Troopers (1997): Arachnid Warrior Bug, animatronics testing by Amalgamated Dynamics
Lotte Reiniger's silhouette animation in THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED (1926), the earliest surviving full-length animated feature. Her attention to detail was stunning, note the wobble of the chess piece.
Very interesting thread. Do read it.
Dan Kaszeta FRHistS@dankaszeta.bsky.social · 2d agoPenicillin was not, in fact, the first antibiotic.
The picture on the front of Reform's policy is of HMS Ocean on the River Thames in 2012. It was sold by to the Brazilian navy in 2018. Turns out you can judge a book by its cover.
The so-called ‘Block’ is made up of 88 objects threaded together, wrapped in fabric, and buried. Amongst them are spearheads, horse harnesses, wagon parts, and more, which over time have fused together due to iron corrosion
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.
General Motors streetcar conspiracy - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Woho, a delivery robot that drives of a pier and make a nice splash!
Lauren McKenzie@themckenziest.gay · 3d agoHopecore
NEW: A large trove of Claude-generated documents have been exposed to the web and indexed by Google. We reviewed what appear to be real medical records, the full names and phone numbers of school-aged children, and company documents marked for internal use only. futurism.com/artificial-i...
A Whole Bunch of People's Claude Chats Are Publicly Accessible Online, and There's Some Wildly Private Stuff in There
A trove of documents generated by Anthropic's Claude were indexed by Google. They included medical records and student information.
futurism.com
Remember the famous “I Love Lucy” episode where Lucy and Ethel are at a chocolate factory, wrapping bonbons on a conveyor belt? As the belt accelerates, Lucy and Ethel have to work at superhuman speed. @doctorow.pluralistic.net has a name for them: reverse centaurs. lnk.to/onthemedia/b...
On the Media
The Peabody Award-winning On the Media podcast is your guide to examining how the media sausage is made. Hosts Brooke Gladstone and Micah Loewinger examine threats to free speech and government transparency, cast a skeptical eye on media coverage of the week’s big stories and unravel hidden political narratives in everything we read, watch and hear.
lnk.to
I actually wrote about this! (This chapter is an excerpt from my book.)
How a Lawyer, a Businessman, and the Mafia Destroyed Public Transit in the Twin Cities
There is a common folk theory that the North American streetcar disappeared because of a conspiracy. Allegedly, industrialists connected with the auto and motor bus industries bought up North Ameri…
lithub.com
Avocadoplex@avocadoplex.bike · 3d agoIn the twin cities, the mafia was involved, too!
my neighborhood 7-11 closed a couple years ago and tried to reopen but couldn’t get the permit approved because there’s a preschool next door and 7-11s sell alcohol (the previous permit was grandfathered in). i saw a fence going up around the lot recently and looked up what was moving in: a gun shop
It’s like whoever ordered this thinks that the concept of people walking and biking in NYC is reserved for special events, as if you can’t find crowds of people walking or biking on sidewalks and in crosswalks and bike lanes around the city, unprotected by bollards and menacingly parked cop cars
Streetsblog NYC@nyc.streetsblog.org · 3d agoOne lieutenant manning a chokepoint at a nearly entirely blocked intersection uptown told Streetsblog that the “blocker cars” were a direct order from Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and were “obviously overkill.” buff.ly/Wh1OaNr
"the teenage hitmen are recruited on social media, and are given their instructions in a 'gamified" way', imitating how computer games work." Frustratingly, we're living in a @cstross.bsky.social novel
Foxtrot Network: The shadowy gang recruiting teen killers across Europe
The Foxtrot Network is thought to be responsible for about 35 murders in Europe, and uses violence-as-a-service tactics.
bbc.co.uk
Hoisted by their own historical petard. ‘Amid unwanted chatter about the significance of 1644, the film’s positioning of Qing conquerors as heroes of national unity has been problematized by a countervailing narrative casting those same conquerors as illegitimate outsiders’.
Taiwan Conquest Film Shelved
A Chinese blockbuster dramatizing the 17th-century Qing conquest of Taiwan has been abruptly postponed. Why are China’s authorities so uneasy about a film that was meant to celebrate “unification”?
open.substack.com
spacedaily.com/t-olympus-mo...
Olympus Mons stands nearly three times the height of Everest, yet standing at its base you would not see a mountain at all, because its slopes rise so gently across roughly 600 kilometres that the sum...
Mars's largest volcano reveals a brutal secret: its slopes are so gradual you'd never know you were climbing it—unless you hit the cliff.
spacedaily.com
just finished the summer book by finnish writer tove jansson (of moomins fame). this quirky book (reported to be her favorite novel intended for adults) tells the engrossing story of a woman and her granddaughter living out the summer on a mostly uninhabited island in the gulf of finland
Important history lesson: Fascism rose partly as a result of the 1918 pandemic.
Just a reminder that in this country, the process is punishment. 24 hours in jail to process your arrest, money for bail, money for a lawyer, missed work for your court appearances...it all adds up. We do this to poor people every single day in this country. Many never really recover.
CNN@cnn.com · 5d agoThe Justice Department is admitting that a $14 million renovation on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, DC, was flawed, and is dropping the criminal case against a former Olympian that accused him of damaging the pool, according to a new court filing. https://cnn.it/3RJJnwj
Albin Ahrenberg var från Ålebo, utanför Påryd i Kalmar län, en trakt så fattig att folk fortfarande bodde i kulor i skogen. Varje gång Ahrenberg flög över sitt föräldrahem släppte han en bukett blommor. Mon podcast gjorde ett avsnitt om honom för några år sen. open.spotify.com/episode/5WtI...
Avsnitt 52 - FLYGARESSET FRÅN ÅLEBO - (Sveriges mest berömde flygare)
Röster från Sydost · Episode
open.spotify.com
Jonas Vils@vils.bsky.social · 4d agoThis plane was bought by AB Aerotransport to rescue Augustine Courtald from the British Artctic Air Route Expedition in 1931. www.nytimes.com/1931/04/27/a...
Trump’s Fixation on Arctic Ships Led to Billions in No-Bid Contracts www.nytimes.com/2026/08/01/c...
Trump’s Fixation on Arctic Ships Led to Billions in No-Bid Contracts (Gift Article)
The president decided to buy 11 polar icebreakers after a game of golf with Finland’s president. Experts say it’s far from clear the United States needs so many.
nytimes.com