Fava Bean

no amnesty

Listening to a report about Google chopping down a quarter of a million trees in Finland to build a data centre while washing out yoghurt pots for the recycling

i am inviting anyone from a legacy media organization to explain to me why the house judiciary dems report on trump’s epstein’s ties and multiple allegations of rape isn’t worthy of extensively reporting on. i’m serious. i want to understand.

Seeing how little coverage that house report that added another rape accusation to Trump's tally got today, I looked back on just the front page Benghazi stories (there were many, many more inside over these months).

We call for a full and immediate withdrawal of Russian forces, a return to pre-2014 borders, changes to the Russian constitution to limit the military to 100,000 personnel, a constitutional guarantee to withdraw from the CSTO, and immediate presidential elections under UN monitoring to replace Putin

I think we should go all in on this. Put the Super Bowl on a Wednesday morning. I’m sick of watching sports on my own time. Championships should play by World Cup/Olympics rules: Unless you’re performing surgery, they preempt work.

I don't know that there is a definitive line to cross that makes you say, "I live in a police state now" but when masked gunmen can routinely brutalize the public, citizen or immigrant alike, with impunity, you have reached that point.

There's nuance here about "how do we use platforms owned by the fascists". You *have to understand the political purpose of the platforms* in order to use them to subvert authoritarians. For the most part, Americans simply do not. Centrists (including DNC consultants) do not. Major media does not.

As I said before, we have got to change the law so that click-through EULAs cannot be used to steal IP and rights from website and app users. One-sided contracts that people are forced to sign to to use a service or keep a job should be very limited and never for waver of rights.

Well this is eleventy-million kinds of Fucked Up. @latimes.com (who once contracted with me as a freelance reviewer and whom I struggled to get paid by) asserts that *merely reading its website* constitutes a permanent waiver of your right to sue it under *any circumstances*.

Prism reports on a police surveillance platform owned by Axon that is rapidly expanding, even as local resistance to Flock sweeps the nation:

The US is not about to have a free and fair election. The state has put its thumb on the scale to favor the ruling party in multiple ways. It's a mostly free, somewhat unfair election. But still one where the ruling party can be overwhelmed by numbers. Hence the term "competitive authoritarianism."

In his acceptance speech, Lula says he will work to regulate digital platforms in Brazil. “Digital crimes must be dealt with like real-life crimes.” This comes after Meta directly interfered with the Brazilian elections, favouring Flávio Bolsonaro.

The correct legal approach to this seems to be that when platforms start favouring some content over other, they don‘t deserve immunity for third party content on the basis that they are just platforms. They should become liable. finance.yahoo.com/media-advert...

I’m not a political journalist, so was gladly surprised at the community I found here last night. To Americans anxious about the upcoming elections, a key thing we learned in Brazil that might help you: DO NOT engage with the far-right online. Don’t share rage bait. Amplify your people. Ignore them.

It's really important to pay attention to the fact that Lula beat the fascist candidate not by compromising and trying to meet fascist voters in the middle, but by sticking to his guns, promising prosecutions for election interference, and mobilising his own voters to turn out in greater numbers.

Congrats to Lula on overcoming Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump to defeat Hospital Pervert Jr., even as his opposition literally blocked off roads and turned off bus service during election day. Fascists are scary but they are always, 100% of the time, ultimately gigantic fucking losers.

between serbia, brazil, and hopefully november 3, a good reminder: voting works it’s not the end, there’s always work to be done after the vote, but if you want to beat the motherfuckers and keep them out of power: vote your asses off

Oh so a country *can* choose not to make the same mistake twice

boy it sure seems like the main threat to democracy everywhere across the globe is right wing media and certain social media companies

Bolsonaro-friendly mayors appear to be sabotaging public transport on Election Day. Buses aren’t running in Lula-friendly areas, flights and ferries mysteriously canceled. Traffic lights have gone out and people’s power cut in Salvador, indigenous people’s travel restricted

A Brazilian union member complains that Meta blocked her union's account for supporting Lula (Subtitles)

This monster thinks we should see him as a human when he is sending people he knows to gulags for profit. He's a sick fuck who doesnt deserve a moment's peace for the rest of his miserable life. He should be imprisoned for life for his participation in these crimes against humanity.

we have to think so much less about finding the right candidates and so much more about building political power that makes individual candidates simple stewards of the will of the bases they are accountable to

josh turek sucks, there is no reason whatsoever to be doing this other than a truly unacceptable level of personal bigotry

every male college professor apparently needs to be given a starter pack here is your office, here is your chair, here is a buzzer that will shock you every time you think about fucking one of your students

I think we also need to reexamine the willingness of the press to cover the sexual abuse of children even when it's out in the open. Trump's association with Epstein was largely ignored until *MAGA* made it an issue in 2024.

If the agent who lied to the court doesn't go to jail for contempt, the judge is not serious about bringing Mr. Soliman home.

AI firms want you to believe their fraud bot is alive so they won’t be held responsible for the fraud bot’s crimes. But there is no gray area here, they hold the on/off switches in their very human, very prosecutable hands.

Complete bullshit. The body cam footage shows nothing of the kind. It shows a bunch of cops rushing a car over alleged shoplifting, and a driver trying to flee. It’s an easily disproven lie, strikingly similar to the DHS lies about Renee Good and others. mississippitoday.org/2026/10/22/s...

Now, this is something Tolkien would have something to say about. What the fuck are we doing here? I'll summarize books and academic papers for you and answer your relationship questions, no clearcutting required. Make them plant a million new trees. Two million.

nobody stopped Musk before he broke the state monopoly on violence, so now either he goes or the nation-state does

It’s a morel hazard

It's a choice (a bad one) to tell readers this driver "passed too close to cyclists" when there's video evidence showing he drove his car into them, made contact and hurt someone. Fellow journalists: we can explore the nuances of punishment for drivers without obfuscating their dangerous behavior.

how sure are we the guy was dead when the cop who stole his home found him

Video games has decided to discontinue its once leading product, the video game

New: We found cops who kept using Flock to spy on women after they left the force. One used it for five years after retirement, tracking his wife during a custody battle. Another ran searches while he was suspended (and later fired) after killing a 15-year-old boy. Free to read: wapo.st/3UEwWU7

My brain cannot process this level of corruption. She was being paid $50 million to engineer a pardon from Trump *while working at the Justice Department* as a "Special Government Employee." And it worked. He got the pardon, and she got the money. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/20/u...

This is one of many parts of American law that infuriates me. Violence cannot be performed on inanimate objects. You can violently beat an inanimate object, but the recipient of injury from that violence is you, the organism in the situation. You can't hurt a building.

*completely sincerely* No one man should have all that power.

New story: In 2025, the FBI was examining the actions of Sen Lindsey Graham, Rep. Jim Clyburn, and Rep. Joe Wilson as part of a sweeping bribery probe. Then Trump’s campaign of retribution demolished public corruption investigations. www.propublica.org/article/nava...