John Stracke

Well, I'm just a shill. Yes, I'm only a shill. And I'll keep on doing Donald Trump's will, Until I die still in office, killing democracy, 'Cause the Founders never realized how our longevity Would enable corruption in this new century. 1/2

Farm girl doesn't get married.

In the Foundation books, Seldon maneuvers to get the Foundation on a metal-poor planet so they'll have to develop more efficient tech. These people have been in space something like 13,000 years. Don't they have asteroid mining?

#caturday

Seen at Barnes and Noble, Burlington, MA @alepresser.com @kbspangler.com

Treason is narrowly defined in the US, but Trump might have managed it. In time of war, when Russia is helping kill Americans, he gave Russia a big dollop of aid and comfort.

So, with Epstein gone, I wonder where the elite pedophiles are getting their victims now. Because it doesn't seem like they would have just stopped raping kids. Impeach Trump and maybe we can find out.

US company scrapes the web to train a plagiarism machine, shrugs off complaints. Chinese company trains a more efficient plagiarist on the output of the US one, US company yells "no fair!". www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

Oleoarchy is when a country is ruled by margarine. It's generally a bad idea; hence the term "margarine of error".

"Only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise."—Precise, maybe, but not accurate. Like saying the Earth weighs 1.23456789 kilos.

@alepresser.com

When announcing his order to cut fuel efficiency standards, Trump also said he'd given an order to legalize kei trucks (small trucks from Japan). He compared them to the Volkswagen Beetle. Do you think he knows the Beetle was promoted by Hitler? www.theverge.com/news/838563/...

I wish I could be the slightest bit surprised by this one, but I'm not: https://electrek.co/2025/08/25/scientist-exposes-anti-wind-groups-as-oil-funded-now-they-want-to-silence-him/ tl;dr -- a collection of right-wing lawyers and front organizations are trying to silence the researcher who has […]

Who deserves the credit, and who deserves the blame?

Your reminder that you can create your own Bayeux Tapestry at home, using: htck.github.io/bayeux/#!/

Skirts with pockets @cvirtue.bsky.social

Please help us correct misinformation! Our hotline is being incorrectly shared as "Canada's national suicide hotline open toll free for Americans". We are not a general crisis hotline, we exist exclusively to support the trans community. Find out more @ translifeline.org

The port of Seattle has no ships today.

Reading @scalzi.com’s _The Ghost Brigades_, which mentions the Frankenstein complex, it occurred to me that people pushing for AGI must not have that complex. We might be better off if they did.

This seems very plausible (even likely) to me: only ray of hope is that it's still 13 days away and things are going sideways FAST at the moment: https://medium.com/@aletheisthenes/on-april-20th-2025-the-united-states-will-cross-the-point-of-no-return-0aecac04cfc3

When you read this it becomes apparent that Elon Musk is a showman, nothing more. He's not an engineer. The whole thing is an act.

Dragonfly in my front yard

At a meeting today with staffers for Senators Markey and Warren, the staffers made two concrete asks: 1. Please call or email and share your stories about how the current administration’s actions are hurting or will hurt you personally. The Senators can use these human stories to persuade those /1

From a journalist friend: Just spreading the word. The CDC is purging data, so people should archive their favorite CDC datasets today, namely ones around race/ethnic diversity, LGBTQ, and reproductive health. Also health data involving climate. The youth risk behavior survey has already gone down.

Every historian and expert on fascism: “It was a Nazi salute.” The organization responsible for protecting us from Nazis:

MAGA doesn't give a fuck about anyone but billionaires.

Just saw that Kawasaki has demonstrated a rideable robotic goat. Why a goat, of all things? They’re not exactly biddable.

The famous green owl app Duolingo is going even harder into AI made by stolen content. It's not curated by native speakers so you have no idea if what you're learning is correct. Their algorithm overall tries to hit the happy brain juices instead of helping you learn. So here are some alternatives!

This happened to us this morning. They asked us to bring cash, and said there was no other way to pay. We had my sister call the sheriff's department while we stayed on the line. They said it was the third call they'd had about this scam already today. Pass it on. Warn your friends and loved ones.

BlueSky is trying to monetize so let's show them some numbers: Reskeet this if you refuse to pay for BlueSky+ until trust & safety decides to prioritize marginalized users. That's $96 / year of lost revenue for each reskeet...

I was just thinking about the Star Trek episode where the Pakled kidnap Georgie. The Pakled are stupid—but are they all that stupid, or just the ones that go into space? Maybe their brains are unusually susceptible to cosmic radiation.

Post a pic you took to add some calm to the timeline.

So, I’m not going to cross the Amazon picket line this weekend. What do people think of watching Prime Video that I’ve already paid for? Amazon doesn’t get any more of my money, but I suppose they may get paid some other way.

I’ve had Middlegame, by @seananmcguire.bsky.social, for some time now, but I’m finally getting around to reading it. It is really good…and so intense that I can’t read more than a couple of chapters before needing a break.