"Maduro in Minneapolis" ... .... an excellent essay by Timothy Synder -- the scholar of authoritarian politics -- noting that when Maduro's death squads killed Venezuelans, they typically offered the same justifications that ICE did in killing Renee Nicole Good ... ... i.e. the agents were defending themselves against radical assailants

Maduro in Minneapolis

Murderous Lies

I’m having dinner at a ramen restaurant and there are three or four incredibly bland R&B ballads playing on infinite loop, over and over again they have that olestra-like feeling of being genAI music So I try using shazam to recognize it — nothing I google some snippets of the lyrics — zero hits yeah, this is a mix of genAI music bleah

Casio just celebrated its 50th anniversary by producing a huge gallery of dozens of its digital watches, from the 70s to today they are gorgeous beasts here are are three, including the "tv remote" one from 1993 item #8 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read/subscribe to here:

Linkfest #42: Phytomining, Adversarial Poetry, and Popping A Wheelie for 93 Miles

Hello! It’s time for "the opposite of doomscrolling” — my next Linkfest, a collection of the most interesting items in science, culture and t...

behold the gorgeous "aerial embroidery" of Victoria Rose Richards it's the landscape as seen from a plane, except as stitchwork Item #1 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read/subscribe to here:

Linkfest #42: Phytomining, Adversarial Poetry, and Popping A Wheelie for 93 Miles

Hello! It’s time for "the opposite of doomscrolling” — my next Linkfest, a collection of the most interesting items in science, culture and t...

okay people, it's time ⏰ once again for "the opposite of doomscrolling" 😎 the latest issue of my "Linkfest" newsletter just dropped 📬 free to read/subscribe here here here ☘️ :

Linkfest #41: The "Chthulucene", Doom on a Satellite, and The Ethics of Selling a Haunted House

Hello! It’s time for "the opposite of doomscrolling” — my next Linkfest, in which I offer up the finest nuggets of science, culture and techn...

Includes: 🌋 the "Chthulucene" 🎲 crosswords mixed with Tetris 🐦 a global birdsong map 🧠 "mind captioning" ✍️ making a font of your handwriting 📡 Doom running on a satellite 🍸 the evolutionary value of getting drunk 👻 the ethics of selling a haunted house and SO MUCH MORE

Want to travel to an exoplanet? NASA made gorgeous retro-styled posters for seven they're downloadable in high res for printing! Item #1 in my latest "Linkfest":

Linkfest #40: "Microlightning", Quantum Navigation, and There Is Water At The Bottom Of The Ocean

Hail! It’s time for "the opposite of doomscrolling” — my next Linkfest, in which I offer up the finest items of science, culture and technolo...

it turns out that if you video-tape mathematicians working on really hard problems at the chalkboard ... ... their bodies give out a physical "tell" just before they have an "aha" breakthrough which is to say, you could observe and predict a breakthrough slightly before the mathematicians themselves are aware it's about to happen super cool research item #7 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free here:

Linkfest #39: "Xenoparity", Navajo Microchips, and In Defense of the Em-Dash

Hello! It’s time for "the opposite of doomscrolling” — or, my next Linkfest, for which I rifle through the infinite stoop-sale vinyl-crates o...

The latest in the Trump administration’s work to remove material that discusses American slavery Now it’s in state parks, and specifically targeting the famous photo of the “scourged back” https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/09/15/national-parks-slavery-information-removal/

Trump's government has been arguing that if they claim that someone in the US isn't a citizen, they're not entitled to due process this is clearly unconstitutional in March, Timothy Snyder noted the logical endpoint: This means even *citizens* do not reliably have due process, because all the feds have to do is *say* you're not a citizen and ... you can't go to court to prove it Screenshot below:

X (formerly Twitter)

Timothy Snyder (@TimothyDSnyder) on X

If you accept that non-citizens have no right to due process, you are accepting that citizens have no right to due process. All the government has ...

a federal judge just agreed (gift link):

Judge Blocks Pillar of Trump’s Mass Deportation Campaign

Judge Jia M. Cobb rejected what she called “a truly startling argument” from the government that it could use a fast-track procedure to remove ...