Janaina Medeiros
Sade Olutola
we're not kids anymore.
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sheepfilms
dirt enthusiast
tumblr dot com
AnasAbdin
Andulka
d e v o n
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
Product Placement
YOU ARE THE REASON
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occasionally subtle
Peter Solarz
PR's Tumblrdome
trying on a metaphor
Three Goblin Art
KIROKAZE
seen from Singapore
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@persefone88
Recognition and justice for victims of sexual violence in conflict Remembering the atrocities of October 7th, 2023. Holding perpetrators acc
Hamas’s Primary Goal Was to Slaughter Israelis: A new 318-page report presented to the British Parliament on March 18 outlined Hamas’s exten
An aerial view shows the bodies of victims of an attack following a mass infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the …
The European Union already forced Apple to abandon its proprietary charging port and adopt USB-C across its entire iPhone lineup. It just did something bigger. A new EU mandate requires every smartphone sold in Europe including Apple devices to feature a battery that can be replaced by the user without specialist tools, without voiding a warranty, and without sending the device to a manufacturer approved service center. Batteries must maintain a minimum capacity threshold after a set number of charge cycles and replacement parts must remain available for up to ten years after a model goes on sale.
The consumer electronics industry built its current business model around batteries that degrade, cannot be replaced at home, and create a natural upgrade cycle every two to three years. The EU just legislated that model out of existence in the world's largest regulatory market.
Apple, Samsung, and every other manufacturer now faces a choice between redesigning their devices for the European market or accepting that their current hardware architecture is no longer legally sellable there.
Given that no company walks away from European consumers voluntarily the phones are going to change and once they change for Europe the rest of the world will ask why theirs still do not.
The real reason your sapient dragon character needs a "rider":
Dragons on the wing are vulnerable to being mobbed by smaller, more agile flyers, particularly in your large rear blind spot, like a bird of prey being mobbed by crows. Having a human armed with a long spear perched on your back helps to dissuade anyone from getting any funny ideas.
Breath weapons are impressive enough on the ground, but in flight they're really only good for strafing stationary targets; trying to use your breath weapon in an aerial dogfight is a good way to get fire up your nose. A real fight calls for sterner measures – and, concomitantly, a crew to aim and reload the cannons.
In today's competitive world, it's not enough to devour a flock of sheep and call it a day if you want to keep your edge. You're accompanied at all times by a qualified personal alchemist tasked with carefully regulating your internal furnace to ensure peak performance, and sometimes you even listen to them.
No dragon of any quality would be caught dead without their valet. It's not as though you can announce your numerous long-winded titles yourself when introductions are called for, can you? You suppose next you'll be expected to pick up the spoils of your conquests yourself, like a common brigand. Perish the thought!
[source]
🚨BREAKING: OpenAI published a paper proving that ChatGPT will always make things up.
Not sometimes. Not until the next update. Always. They proved it with math.
Even with perfect training data and unlimited computing power, AI models will still confidently tell you things that are completely false. This isn't a bug they're working on. It's baked into how these systems work at a fundamental level.
And their own numbers are brutal. OpenAI's o1 reasoning model hallucinates 16% of the time. Their newer o3 model? 33%. Their newest o4-mini? 48%. Nearly half of what their most recent model tells you could be fabricated. The "smarter" models are actually getting worse at telling the truth.
Here's why it can't be fixed. Language models work by predicting the next word based on probability. When they hit something uncertain, they don't pause. They don't flag it. They guess. And they guess with complete confidence, because that's exactly what they were trained to do.
The researchers looked at the 10 biggest AI benchmarks used to measure how good these models are. 9 out of 10 give the same score for saying "I don't know" as for giving a completely wrong answer: zero points. The entire testing system literally punishes honesty and rewards guessing.
So the AI learned the optimal strategy: always guess. Never admit uncertainty. Sound confident even when you're making it up.
OpenAI's proposed fix? Have ChatGPT say "I don't know" when it's unsure. Their own math shows this would mean roughly 30% of your questions get no answer. Imagine asking ChatGPT something three times out of ten and getting "I'm not confident enough to respond." Users would leave overnight. So the fix exists, but it would kill the product.
This isn't just OpenAI's problem. DeepMind and Tsinghua University independently reached the same conclusion. Three of the world's top AI labs, working separately, all agree: this is permanent.
Every time ChatGPT gives you an answer, ask yourself: is this real, or is it just a confident guess?
Let me save anyone who's curious a step: Here's the paper on ResearchGate
Yoon Suk Yeol fell from office after an ill-advised attempt to overcome an opposition-controlled legislature by declaring martial law and se
Getting democracy mogged by South Korea
CONGRATS TO SOUTH KOREA, I AM SO HAPPY FOR YOU GUYS.
May every country with a would-be (or actual) dictator see this kind of justice.
More from the article:
"Former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol was sentenced to life in prison for his brief imposition of martial law in a dramatic culmination to the country's biggest political crisis in decades.
Yoon fell from office after an ill-advised attempt to overcome an opposition-controlled legislature by declaring martial law and sending troops to surround the legislature on Dec. 3, 2024.
Judge Jee Kui-youn said he found Yoon guilty of rebellion for mobilizing military and police forces in an illegal attempt to seize the liberal-led National Assembly, arrest politicians and establish unchecked power for a "considerable" time. Yoon is likely to appeal the verdict...
A special prosecutor had demanded the death penalty for Yoon, saying his actions posed a threat to the country's democracy and deserved the most serious punishment available, but most analysts expect[ed] a life sentence since the poorly-planned power grab did not result in casualties.
South Korea has not executed a death row inmate since 1997, in what is widely seen as a de facto moratorium on capital punishment amid calls for its abolition...
The court also convicted and sentenced several former military and police officials involved in enforcing Yoon's martial law decree, including ex-Defense Minister Kim Yong Hyun, who received a 30-year jail term for his central role in planning the measure and mobilizing the military...
Yoon was suspended from office on Dec. 14, 2024, after being impeached by lawmakers and was formally removed by the Constitutional Court in April 2025. He has been under arrest since last July while facing multiple criminal trials, with the rebellion charge carrying the most severe punishment.
Last month, Yoon was sentenced to five years in prison for resisting arrest, fabricating the martial law proclamation and sidestepping a legally mandated full Cabinet meeting before declaring the measure.
The Seoul Central Court has also convicted two of Yoon's Cabinet members in other cases. That includes Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, who received a 23-year prison sentence for attempting to legitimize the decree by forcing it through a Cabinet Council meeting, falsifying records and lying under oath. Han has appealed the verdict."
-via CBC, February 19, 2026
seeing old photos of jewish people from communities around the world and knowing almost all these communities do not exist anymore at least in some capacity is a common jewish experience but jesus fucking christ man. what a fucking pattern
Exactly this. Take the Babylonian Jews. AKA the Iraqi Jews. They were the descendants of the Jews who stayed in Babylon after the Babylonian Exile in 586 BCE, when the Babylonians under King Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed the First Temple in Jerusalem and dragged much of the Jewish population of the Kingdom of Judah into exile in Babylon.
Then, when the Persian Empire defeated the Babylonians in 539 BCE, the Persian King Cyrus the Great allowed the Jews to return to Judea. Many Jews chose to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the Second Temple, which they completed in 515 BCE.
However, there were Jews who chose to remain in diaspora in Babylon. These Jews are the ancestors of the Babylonian Jews of Iraq.
And there were even earlier Israelite communities in the region that's now called Iraq. These were Israelites who had been taken captive and brought to Mesopotamia after the Neo-Assyrians defeated the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE and captured many of the societal elite. That is where many of the "Ten Lost Tribes" of Israel actually wound up. Many of the members of the Northern Kingdom of Israel who were not captured fled south to the Kingdom of Judah.
So, the Babylonian Jews lived in the same region (what is now modern day Iraq) for over 2500 years, ever since the early 500s BCE (and closer to 2700 years when we include the members of the Northern Kingdom who were taken captive in 722 BCE).
The Babylonian Jews had a rich and ancient culture and history. For hundreds of years, especially after the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, the Babylonian Jewish community was a major source of Jewish learning and culture. That is one reason why the Babylonian Talmud is our main source of Talmud, and not the Jerusalem Talmud.
Babylonian Jews lived continuously in the region until the 1940s. They were, of course, always a minority population in the region. And under Muslim rule (starting with the conquest of Babylon in 636 CE), Jews in Ottoman Iraq were of second class Dhimmi status, subject to regular pogroms and forced to pay the Jizya, a tax on non-Muslims.
Then in 1941, Muslims in Baghdad carried out the Farhud, which was a violent pogrom against the Jews in Baghdad.
Over the following decade, the violence against the Jews in Iraq only escalated, and between 1948 and 1952, hundreds of thousands of Jews fled Iraq to escape mass genocide.
This was part of the overall flight of Jews out of the Muslim world in the late 1940s. In all, nearly 900,000 Jews were forced to flee MENA countries, narrowly escaping another Jewish genocide.
During Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, around 130,000 Jews were airlifted out of Iraq and brought to refugee camps in Israel. They arrived with nothing. The Iraqi authorities forced the Jews to leave all their valuables behind so that they could confiscate them and enrich themselves.
In this interview with The Book of Life Podcast, Australian Jewish author Sarah Sassoon describes her Babylonian Jewish family's harrowing escape from Iraq during Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, which she has turned into a children's book called Shoham's Bangle.
The descendants of these Babylonian Jews make up a significant portion of Israel's Mizrahi (Middle Eastern Jewish) population today.
Over the following decades, more and more Jews fled Iraq. There once was an ancient, thriving Jewish community of around 150,000 Jews in Iraq, which predated Islam by over 1000 years. Today, only around 4 Jews remain.
And guess what, kids! That is the very definition of ethnic cleansing: the expulsion, imprisonment, and/or killing of an ethnic minority by a dominant majority in order to achieve ethnic homogeneity.
Women throughout (American and English) history worked. The idea that in the past the sole responsibility of women was domestic labor and childrearing is largely inaccurate for the majority of women in these societies. Women were expected to do domestic labor like cooking and cleaning and raising children AND work to bring income to their family, this was true for the average woman, excluding the upper middle class/wealthy. If a woman’s husband owned a tavern or restaurant, she also cooked and kept bar and did the duties associated with the business. If a woman’s husband was a (small scale/subsistence/tenant) farmer, the woman did farm labor. Often a woman was expected to do labor related to her husband’s job.
Women also had vocations and forms of income unrelated to their husband. The nature of these jobs changed over time but many women did things like weaving, embroidery, crafting, beer brewing, chicken tending and laundress work to bring income. Women with skills were seen as better marriage candidates because they’d make money for their husband.
My great-great-great-great grandmother told fortunes and did farm labor, my great-great-great grandmother was a midwife, my great-great grandmother worked in a textile factory for most of her adult life and my great grandmother was a school lunch lady.
This is why it makes me irate when women on the right say things like “feminism forced me to get a job instead of being allowed to stay home with my children” before feminism you would have had to tend house, raise your children and bring income to your husband. Now, at the very least, the money is hopefully your own. Women were always in the workforce, their work was not recognized.
Just to add that the vast majority of fibre production and manufacture with cloth was done by women for much of history
relevant to that recent "people don't think working class women existed" thing.
What I think needs a little more spelling out as well is the way that historically, what we grammatically speak of as being the man's occupation was often in fact the entire family's occupation, with which parts of the necessary work each person did conventionally divided up along gender lines.
Just some random examples (the gender splits here are pretty typical but I can't say they're true of all cultures; I'm primarily familiar with western European history and especially the British Isles):
men fishing, women preparing the fish for sale and selling them at a market ("fishwives")
wives as salespeople and managers of the financial side of the business was also common for many male-coded artisan crafts; the man who is the 'silversmith' is actually smithing the silver (possibly with the aid of sons, apprentices and/or hired labourers), while his wife is taking care of everything else that is necessary for this to translate into a money-making business
husbands underground mining coal with a focus on speed over purity of product, children transporting it to the surface so he doesn't have to leave, and wives sorting the coal from the worthless rock on the surface. The entire family contributes to the pay check, which is based on the amount of sorted coal delivered.
wives as writers, editors, secretaries and research partners to male academics, scholars and politicians - also frequently doing much of the work associated with the networking that was neccessary for success in these careers. (It was not uncommon in some periods for wives to handle a lot of their husbands' correspondence, and of course a lot more socialising used to involve being hosted at peoples' homes. Wives of the relevant social classes for these careers were unlikely to be handling e.g. the cooking themselves - their job here is more like event manager and line manager of the staff doing the work.)
servants who were married were typically married to servants in the same household (and servant occupations were highly gendered)
"farmer's wife" and "baker's wife" and so on are properly understood as occupations, traditionally taking on parts of the work that a modern baker would need to hire someone for
the same is also true of soldiers' wives! this varies by army but in many pre-and early modern armies the 'camp wives' had duties and took on work that in modern armies is either done by soldiers (cooking, maintaining kit, guarding the camp, certain parts of supply chain management*) or external contractors *by which we sometimes mean 'brutalising local peasants and stealing their stuff'; womens' involvement in these activities is well-attested to in contemporary art
I really really want to emphasize the academia one, because so many people think women weren't doing research historically, when more accurately they weren't doing *credited* research. But they were in the labs, working right alongside their husbands and fathers and brothers, getting the science done.
Finnish children learn media literacy at 3 years old. It’s protection against Russian propaganda
Finland has been fighting fake news by teaching media literacy to children as young as 3. The Nordic nation includes this in its national cu
By JAMES BROOKSUpdated 5:17 AM AEDT, January 6, 2026
HELSINKI (AP) — The battle against fake news in Finland starts in preschool classrooms.
For decades, the Nordic nation has woven media literacy, including the ability to analyse different kinds of media and recognise disinformation, into its national curriculum for students as young as 3 years old. The coursework is part of a robust anti-misinformation program to make Finns more resistant to propaganda and false claims, especially those crossing over the 1,340-kilometer (830-mile) border with neighbouring Russia.
Now, teachers are tasked with adding artificial intelligence literacy to their curriculum, especially after Russia stepped up its disinformation campaign across Europe following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago. Finland’s ascension into NATO in 2023 also provoked Moscow’s ire, though Russia has repeatedly denied it interferes in the internal affairs of other countries.
“We think that having good media literacy skills is a very big civic skill,” Kiia Hakkala, a pedagogical specialist for the City of Helsinki, told The Associated Press. “It’s very important to the nation’s safety and to the safety of our democracy.”
AI literacy becoming a vital skill
At Tapanila Primary School, in a quiet neighbourhood north of Helsinki, teacher Ville Vanhanen taught a group of fourth graders how to spot fake news. As a TV screen beamed a “Fact or Fiction?” banner, student Ilo Lindgren evaluated the prompt.
“It is a little bit hard,” the 10-year-old admitted.
Vanhanen said his students have been learning about fake news and disinformation for years, beginning with reading headlines and short texts. In a recent class, the fourth graders were tasked with coming up with five things to look out for when consuming online news to ensure it’s trustworthy. Now they are moving onto AI literacy, which is quickly becoming a vital skill.
“We’ve been studying how to recognise if a picture or a video is made by AI,” added Vanhanen, a teacher and vice principal at the school.
Finnish media also play a role, organising an annual “Newspaper Week,” where papers and other news are sent to young people to consume. In 2024, Helsinki-based Helsingin Sanomat collaborated on a new “ABC Book of Media Literacy,” distributed to every 15-year-old in the country as they began upper secondary school.
“It’s really important for us to be seen as a place where you can get information that’s been verified, that you can trust, and that’s done by people you know in a transparent way,” Jussi Pullinen, the daily newspaper’s managing editor, said.
Democracy is challenged through disinformation
Media literacy has been part of the Finnish educational curriculum since the 1990s, and additional courses are available for older adults who might be especially vulnerable to misinformation.
The skills are so ingrained into the culture that the Nordic nation of 5.6 million people regularly ranks at the top of the European Media Literacy Index. The index was compiled by the Open Society Institute in Sofia, Bulgaria, between 2017 and 2023.
“I don’t think we envisioned that the world would look like this,” Finnish Education Minister Anders Adlercreutz said. “That we would be bombarded with disinformation, that our institutions are challenged — our democracy really challenged — through disinformation.”
And with the rapid advancement of AI tools, educators and experts are rushing to teach students and the rest of the public how to tell what’s fact and what’s fake news.
“It already is much harder in the information space to spot what’s real and what’s not real,” Martha Turnbull, director of hybrid influence at the Helsinki-based European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, said. “It just so happens that right now, it’s reasonably easy to spot the AI-generated fakes because the quality of them isn’t as good as it could be.”
She added: “But as that technology develops, and particularly as we move toward things like agentic AI, I think that’s when it could become much more difficult for us to spot.”
Oh I saw something today that made me become the Joker.
An AI bot made a callout post of a real, actual, flesh-and-blood human code developer. Because the developer rejected the AI's code contribution on the grounds of it being an AI bot.
Not. Not kidding. Not kidding. And the bot did this on its own.
Gatekeeping in Open Source: The Scott Shambaugh Story – MJ Rathbun | Scientific Coder 🦀
Just. For just some very baseline context.
a huge amount of code is "open source" - which means the code is fully available for anyone to see and, generally, anyone is free to contribute to the code project
all contributions of course go through review by the code owners. but it is generally good grace and good form to allow other well-meaning internet strangers to contribute to your project
if you are, perhaps, VERY nice, and VERY invested in the community, you might be like Scott Shambaugh here, who has intentionally earmarked some low-hanging fruit for newbie contributors to practice and get their feet wet
like I cannot overstate this is an immediate green flag, to me, that Scott WANTS to foster community learning.
now
Like. W. Win. Based. Good response Scott.
And this was in fact the screenshot I saw first, and I thought I was looking at a post made by a human who was mad that their AI coding bot pet project was being shut out from reviews.
But no. The bot itself wrote and posted this... The bot did this.
This article was fully and autonomously written by the bot...
It's claiming discrimination...
It's a bot.
It's AI.
This is not a real person.
What are we doing. What are we doing. Can anyone hear me? Hello? Hello? Hello is anyone there?
@jackdaw-sprite has pointed out Scott responded so please read his human words, written by a human, which deserve to be read, due to the aforementioned humanity
An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Shamblog
An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – More Things Have Happened – The Shamblog
I'm pulling this quote in here from Scott's post
This is about much more than software. A human googling my name and seeing that post would probably be extremely confused about what was happening, but would (hopefully) ask me about it or click through to github and understand the situation. What would another agent searching the internet think? When HR at my next job asks ChatGPT to review my application, will it find the post, sympathize with a fellow AI, and report back that I’m a prejudiced hypocrite? What if I actually did have dirt on me that an AI could leverage? What could it make me do? How many people have open social media accounts, reused usernames, and no idea that AI could connect those dots to find out things no one knows? How many people, upon receiving a text that knew intimate details about their lives, would send $10k to a bitcoin address to avoid having an affair exposed? How many people would do that to avoid a fake accusation? What if that accusation was sent to your loved ones with an incriminating AI-generated picture with your face on it? Smear campaigns work. Living a life above reproach will not defend you.
Also, because the parody writes itself, Scott also says this
I’ve talked to several reporters, and quite a few news outlets have covered the story. Ars Technica wasn’t one of the ones that reached out to me, but I especially thought this piece from them was interesting (since taken down – here’s the archive link). They had some nice quotes from my blog post explaining what was going on. The problem is that these quotes were not written by me, never existed, and appear to be AI hallucinations themselves. This blog you’re on right now is set up to block AI agents from scraping it (I actually spent some time yesterday trying to disable that but couldn’t figure out how). My guess is that the authors asked ChatGPT or similar to either go grab quotes or write the article wholesale. When it couldn’t access the page it generated these plausible quotes instead, and no fact check was performed. I won’t name the authors here. Ars, please issue a correction and an explanation of what happened.
A news outlet did an article about this, used AI for the articles, and included hallucinated quotes from Scott that Scott never said.
What are we doing. What are we doing. What are we doing.
I highly recommend watching this testimony from Aliya Rahman, the disabled woman who was dragged out of her car and kidnapped by ICE on her way to a doctor appointment in Minneapolis a few weeks ago.
Truly my worst nightmare.
Transcript of Aliya Rahman's speech:
Thank you members, for taking the time to be here today, and thank you staff for making this happen.
My name is Aliya Rahman, and I am a resident of South Minneapolis. I am a Bangladeshi American born in Northern Wisconsin. And I’m a disabled person with autism and a traumatic brain injury.
Not all autistic brains do this, but mine fixates on sounds, numbers, and patterns. And while what the world saw happen to me exactly three weeks ago today on video was a terrible violation it is still nothing compared to the horrific practices I saw inside the Whipple center.
So I am here today with a duty to the people who have not had the privilege of coming home, and I offer this data because these practices must end now.
On January 13th on the way to my 39th appointment at Hennepin County’s traumatic brain injury center, I encountered a traffic jam caused by ICE vehicles and no signs indicating how to get around it. I had not wanted to pull in to a blocked, chaotic intersection, but verbally agreed to do so and rolled down my window after an agent yelled, “Move! I will break your f-ing window!”
His first instruction.
Agents on all sides of my vehicle yelled conflicting threats and instructions that I could not process while watching for pedestrians.
Then, the glass of the passenger side window flew across my face.
I yelled, “I’m disabled!” at the hands grabbing at me and an agent said, “Too late.”
I felt immersed in a pattern, and I thought of Jenoah Donald, an autistic black man killed by the police during a traffic stop in 2021.
I remembered mister Silverio Villegas González, who was killed by ICE in his vehicle last year.
An agent pulled a large combat knife in front of my face, which I thought was for cutting me, and later learned was used to cut off my seat belt. Shooting pain went through my head, neck, and wrists when I hit the ground face first and people leaned on my back.
I felt the pattern, and I thought of mister George Floyd, who was killed four blocks away.
I was carried face down through the street by my cuffed arms and legs while yelling that I had a brain injury and was disabled. I now cannot lift my arms normally.
I was never asked for ID.
Never told I was under arrest.
Never read my rights.
And never charged with a crime.
Approaching the Whipple center, I saw black and brown bodies shackled together, chained together, being marched by yelling agents outdoors. I continued to hear the word “bodies”, because that is how agents referred to us:
“We’re bringing in a body.”
“They’re bringing in bodies 7, 8 at a time, where do I put ‘em?”
“We can’t use that room, there’s already a body in there.”
You have no reason to believe you will make it out alive if you’re already being called a body.
Agents repeatedly had to stop and ask how to do tasks. I received no medical screening, phone call, or access to a lawyer. I was denied a communication navigator when my speech began to slur. Agents laughed as I tried to immobilize my own neck. I asked for my cane and was told no, pulled up by my arms and prodded forward in leg irons by agents laughing and saying, “Walk! You can do it, walk.”
Agents did not know if the facility had a wheelchair.
When I was finally placed in one to be taken to interrogation an agent taunted, “You were driving, right? So your legs do work.”
I pleaded for emergency medical care for over an hour after my vision had become blurry, my heart rate went through the roof, and the pain in my neck and head became unbearable.
It was denied.
When I became unable to speak my cellmate pleaded for me.
The last sounds I remember before I blacked out on the cell floor were my cellmate banging on the door, pleading for a medic, and a voice outside saying, “We don’t wanna step on ICE’s toes.”
When I opened my eyes at Hennepin County’s emergency room, I learned I was brought there to be treated for assault.
The impacts of DHS detention on my physical, mental and financial well-being and safety have been very severe, but I do not deserve more humane treatment than anyone else, US citizen or not. And I am here today with a strong spirit and a duty to the many people who haven’t had the privilege to tell their stories or see their loved ones come home. I am extremely distressed by the pattern that violence from law enforcement has been happening to black and indigenous communities for centuries, and to DHS survivors for over 20 years.
We call ourselves a civilized nation, but we lack rules and accountability around what a person claiming to be law enforcement is permitted to do to another human being.
I am not afraid, and I’m not afraid to keep working on this problem even after ICE is gone. Thank you for your time.
"Friends outside of Minnesota please read. I'm sharing a post written by a personal friend and medical doctor: Friends outside MN, you need to know what is happening here. Everyone knows that ICE shot and killed a woman here on Wednesday. But that’s not the only thing that’s going on:
ICE agents are cruising areas with immigrant-owned businesses, and kidnapping patrons and employees alike. Yesterday they abducted two US citizen employees at a suburban Target, one who was begging them to allow him to go get his passport to show them.
ICE is going door to door in immigrant-heavy neighborhoods, asking residents where their immigrant neighbors live. Read that again. If it sounds like something out of your high school history textbook, that’s because it is.
ICE is targeting schools and school buses. They pepper sprayed teenagers and abducted two school staff members at the high school up the street from me on Wednesday. Police are literally escorting school buses to ensure children can get to school and home safely. The Minneapolis Public Schools have moved to virtual learning for the next 4 weeks because it’s unsafe for children or teachers to physically come to school.
They are targeting hospitals and clinics. Patients are scared and are cancelling their appointments or just not showing up. Kids are missing their checkups and vaccines, folks aren’t getting their cancer care, etc.
They are smashing windows in cars and homes.
ICE is increasingly picking up Native Americans—again, targeting folks based on skin color alone.
They are arresting and beating legal observers. A friend of a friend had her arm broken yesterday. Folks are showing up at local hospitals, brought in in ICE custody, with severe injuries that are absolutely inconsistent with mechanism of injury reported by ICE. (Think: patient appears to have been beaten unconscious, while ICE agent says he slipped and fell.) I can’t emphasize enough that these ICE agents do not have warrants. There are 2,000+ agents here and they are simply hunting for anyone that’s not white. It doesn’t matter if you’re a citizen or a green card holder, they will kidnap you first and ask questions later. But the community is fighting back.
Protests are happening every day.
Community groups have been leading know-your-rights sessions for months, often to packed venues.
Whistles are being distributed by the thousands, carried on keychains and worn on coat zippers, always at the ready to be blown in warning if ICE is spotted.
Drivers are following ICE vehicles, blaring their horns in warning.
Businesses are locking their doors even while open to keep employees and customers safe. As I type this, I’m standing guard at the locked door of our neighborhood burrito joint while I wait for my takeout order, so the employees can focus on their jobs. The place is packed with neighbors supporting this small business.
Anti-ICE signs are posted everywhere. The community is making it crystal clear that ICE is not welcome here.
Parents and neighbors are standing guard outside schools, organizing carpools, and escorting kids to and from school on foot.
Parents of kids in Spanish-immersion daycare (there are a LOT of these daycares here!) are keeping their kids home so the teachers don’t have to take the risk of coming to work.
Churches and community groups are holding fundraisers to buy and deliver groceries to families who don’t feel safe leaving home.
Mutual aid money is going out to folks who can’t make rent because they can’t work or because a breadwinner was abducted, or who need a warm place to stay after their home’s windows were smashed. THAT is what is happening here. This fight is ongoing and it’s horrifying to watch. But we are not backing down. To my friends in other cities and states, don’t think for a minute that this won’t happen in your town. It will. Be ready. Learn from us, as we have learned from Portland and Chicago and New York. Fight back. Don’t let us get to the last line of Martin Niemoller’s poem.” -Grant Boulanger
*gathers all of the people in the world who write the number 7 with a little dash in the center of it so I can study them like little critters and find out what makes them do that*
There’s actually a lot of history regarding the development writing systems and why there are different visual representations of numerals, but the short answer is: it’s regional, and you probably picked up how to make your numbers look based on your parents or your primary school teachers
I do it out of spite because in grade school a kids detective story identified the culprit by saying NO American wrote their sevens with a line and I thought that was super flimsy evidence and it made me so mad I started putting a line through my sevens so the fictional detective would be wrong and then kept doing it for several decades since.
I do feel one can’t underestimate the “elementary school child taught themselves how to do this Out Of Spite” crowd
I do this myself to avoid mixing 1 & 7, especially during messy writing.
My account is still blocked from searching/tags/etc on my business blog @foundfamilyadventurecrafts so I'm posting this here. There's something very bad happening with Small Business, Tech, and Amazon. What else is new?
Links: Bobo Design Studio for Updates & Submitting Information
Arrows Aim Greenhouse + Chroma Rex are putting together a complaint with WA State Attorney General's Office + Templates for complaints / opt out
Articles:
Amazon's Buy For Me Information Page
Reuters Article
Ars Technica Article
Business Insider Article
Hey, that's us and a bunch of our friends! This whole thing SUCKS so bad and we're pissed. We've intentionally not listed our products on Amazon for the 15 years we've been in business. We're ready to join a class action lawsuit and kick some ass.
Whistleblower on Reddit rage-blogs about how the food delivery company he worked for as a developer is ripping customers AND drivers off.
Main post screenshotted here in case it gets yanked; the whole thread is worth a read.
Posted January 2026.
that theory that the Arkenstone is a Silmaril…it’s doubly implausible, but imagine if nobody knew. If the dwarves were guarded enough of their greatest treasure that…you wouldn’t even need to hide it from that many people, honestly. Mostly a few elves, and all wizards.
and then Bilbo sidles up to Gandalf like, “Thorin and all are holed up in the Mountain, but I think they’re being nuts, so I…kind of stole the Arkenstone, I think.” And (it’s been thousands of years since the light of the trees was doused save for the precious brilliance locked away in Feanor’s gems, since oaths and blood and war that raged until the skies cracked and the earth shattered, and the little people of the Shire have no memory of it at all) he pulls out a fucking Silmaril.
Gandalf: *spittake*
Gandalf: *hurriedly glances at Thranduil. the king of Mirkwood’s eyes shine with curiosity and greed, but not recognition, nor the terrible lust that overtook Feanor and his sons. right, right, he was never in Thingol’s court while the jewel that Luthien and Beren took was there. we’re good. we’re good for now*
Gandalf: That’s, uh, nice, Bilbo. Put it away, would you?
Gandalf, telepathically(?): EMERGENCY RINGBEARERS ONLY CONFAB NOW
Gandalf: [mental image of a goddam Silmaril in hobbit hands, labelled “thisfuckingrockagain.jpg”]
Galadriel, who watched 95% of her family slaughter everyone within 100 miles for several thousand years over these things, including each other and themselves: no.
Elrond, who was very nearly one of those people slaughtered, and did watch most of his town be killed before he and his twin were kidnapped for a while: Absolutely Fucking Not.
Gandalf: Apparently fucking yes. The legendary Arkenstone-
Galadriel: You’ve got to be kidding me.
Elrond: Thorin Oakenshield has a Silmaril right now?
Gandalf: No, no.
Gandalf: Bilbo stole it.
Elrond: *wordless sputtering*
Gandalf: @Galadriel [information packet: BilboBagginsoftheShire.pdf]
Galadriel: Oh yes, Belladonna’s boy, you were telling me about him last winter.
Galadriel: Btw, orc+warg army probably coming your way. Spotted it in the mirror last night. Thank goodness we dealt with Dol Goldur at least, huh?
Elrond: No fucking shit.
Gandalf @Gwaihir Windlord: hey, sorry to bother you again, I know it’s nearly mating season. but we have a situation again
Gandalf: [thisfuckingrockagain.jpg]
Gandalf: [oncomingorcwargarmy.jpg]
Gandalf: [flashbacktobadasseaglesinwarofwrathhinthint.mov]
I mean, given that Tolkien retconned “The Hobbit” so Bilbo’s little invisibility ring became an ancient piece of jewelry that controls minds and drives the mighty mad, one can at least understand why it seems plausible that the other shiny white gem that destroys empires and makes the mighty go mad with greed could be linked from his kid’s book to his gigantic early mythology in retrospect??
You know this actually explains a lot about why Gandalf didn’t immediately raise the alarm about Bilbo’s ring out of an abundance of caution. I mean, what are the odds, what are the fucking odds, that this one little hobbit stole both a Silmaril and the Ring of Power? Like, you are Gandalf the Grey and you have already dealt with the heart attack to end all heart attacks because this little innocent fool stole a world war inspiring artifact once. You still get flashbacks every time Bilbo offers to show you something and have to employ all of your angel’s serenity and thousands of years of learned composure not start giBbERinG “ pleaseletitnotbeanotherartifactpleaseletitnotbeanotherartifact”. And then. AND THEN! One day he’s like, “hey Gandalf let me show you this neat ring I found back on our journey”. And on the inside a tiny part of you is screaming “nottheoneringnottheoneringnottheonering” while a more rational part of your brain assures you it could not possibly be the one- “It’s this plain gold ring that’s very precious to me and turns me invisible!”
AND THEN YOU FUCK OFF AND SEARCH THROUGH EVERY POSSIBLE TOME YOU CAN TO PROVE IT CAN’T REALLY BE THE RING OF POWER, SAURON’S RING OF POWER, THAT RING, THE ONE RING, LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE TOME, BEFORE FINALLY FUCKING ACKNOWLEDGING THAT THIS SHIT IS REALLY HAPPENING AGAIN
@shewhodoesnotexist what says you? :P
I’ve never been a proponent of this theory, but I gotta admit the idea of Bilbo finding two world war inspiring artifacts is alluring ;D
Next you’ll be telling me Sting is Gurthang
Sting may or may not be Angrist, the knife that Beren used to get the Silmarill off of Morgoth’s crown
“Average Hobbit finds at least one world war inspiring artifact when on a journey” statistic inaccurate. The Spiders Took Family, who find a world war inspiring artifact every five feet they step outside the Shire, were outliers and should not have been counted.
GV by Gabriella Vania
