I watched the 1st meeting day of RFK Jr’s handpicked committee of vaccine advisors. It was utterly depressing.
-- Atul Gawande
@agawande.bsky.social
https://skywriter.blue/pages/did:plc:qrq3ybgokbsqivyiap7vnin4/post/3lz6ytzkye22k

DOGE did not find $2T in fraud, but that doesn’t matter, Musk allies say - Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/doge-did-not-find-2t-in-fraud-but-that-doesnt-matter-musk-allies-say/

That is one kickass image https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:5gy3v7opwo3bfoa7dojkfhvp/post/3mbdm5ia3u22i

Helen Kennedy (@helenkennedy.bsky.social)
New York City has a new mayor

The year in rainforests 2025: Deforestation fell; the risks did not https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/the-year-in-rainforests-2025-deforestation-fell-the-risks-did-not/

The year in rainforests 2025: Deforestation fell; the risks did not
The story of the world’s tropical forests in 2025 was not one of dramatic reversal, but one shaped by accumulated pressure. In several regions, deforestation slowed. In others, loss continued in less visible forms, shaped by fire, degradation, and political choices not limited to large-scale clearing alone. Governments continued to speak the language of protection, […]

What Radley said.
The big questions lurking behind this rush to war:
(1) Where are the Epstein files?
(2) Is this regime redacting or suppressing their full release? https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:c7ozmxoc5b2ky4iam2o36uic/post/3m6rrrnggjk27

Sonnet 083 - LXXXIII
I never saw that you did painting need,
And therefore to your fair no painting set;
I found, or thought I found, you did exceed
The barren tender of a poet's debt:
And therefore have I slept in your report,
That you yourself, being extant, well might show
How far a modern quill doth come too short,
Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.
This silence for my sin you did impute,
Which shall be most my …

What a paragraph. From
https://restofworld.org/2026/india-tech-workers-crisis-suicide/

There might be nothing I hate more than when a company deletes all record of a product from their web site.
Just list it as discontinued, keep any manuals or documentation, show it as 'no longer available', but damn, don't pretend it did not exist. We both know it did!
I'm not a fan of more laws, but a consumer protection law/rule for this would be welcome.

What did the Cowboys accomplish in the last 5 days? https://insidethestar.com/what-did-the-cowboys-accomplish-in-the-last-5-days/

I’d bet that there’s illegal drugs on some of those boats… @… https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app

Leah McElrath (@leahmcelrath.bsky.social)
TEAM ORCA: From Jeff Bezos to Michael Jordan, these are the billionaire superyacht owners currently anchored in St. Barts and the surrounding Caribbean islands for New Year’s Eve. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimdobson/2025/12/16/inside-the-billionaire-superyacht-rush-whos-cruising-the-caribbean-this-holiday-season/

This thread is brilliant, and a call to action.
#visionzero #annarbor https://b…

Adam Goodman (@akgood.bsky.social)
The @annarborobserver.bsky.social newsletter had a decent summary of the dynamic at the #a2council Transportation Commission meeting last week (https://mailchi.mp/aaobserver/a2view-november-26-2025?e=476ffa7e6c ). But we need to take some time to talk in detail about why the city's presentation was so damaging and damning... (🧵)

Wanna see something really disgusting?
"Trump tracked Individual migrant girls pregnancies"
Original post: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:jwdnkiy7svjyeg4fq6bmec6a/post/3mbatcv7jxs2t

Had Fun

Bought a car/micro-camper

Bought a van to do up as a micro-camper, and did a temporary rush job of that conversion myself while waiting in the list for the pro to do it.
Then the pro gave himself a health criss the week it was booked so I took apart my temp job and only got another temp kit-job in it's place.
Went out in it like four times during that and then broke my wrist and couldn't really use it or improve it.
Then had to take it apart even more to try
and figure out where the ad-blue hole was.
I will do a proper permanent job of the
floor and walls and ceiling and adjustments to the kit-job to make it the nicest it's been so far during the spring next year.
My assumption that the prior conversion
into a van and for wheelchair-access meant the microcamper conversion was half-done already turned out to be false.
If I buy a new one, it'll be one that has never been wheelchair adapted.
But it's going okay. Only scraped it once so far.
Fewer than aimed for or booked, but I broke my wrist and had to cancel the second half of the summer.
Went to a conference about money and computers and fringe decentralized social media and it wasn't as boring as you might expect and felt pretty much like a festival.
Exactly the target number! It's lovely.
Took 3 times longer than I'd hoped and
50% more money than I'd planned for really.
Still improvements to make but they will
be incremental and gradual over the coming year or two now.
It's been interest-only for 20 years so a big old lump sum payment that I never really expected to be able to make. Expected to have to sell and move at the end of the mortgage term.
But surprisingly the stocks ISA got high enough to pay it off after all, so I did that.
Cash-flow ruined by that and the bedroom but should start to feel a bit richer next year.

Series C, Episode 07 - Children of Auron
SERVALAN: Deral? What are you talking about?
GINKA: Did you know he persuaded the woman Franton to remove some cells from one of the placentas and replace them with his own.
SERVALAN: Whose cells did he replace?
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/307/551<…

@… wird es einen neuen #did Event bei euch geben ?

Where did Raiders go wrong under Kelly and what can Olson fix? https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/raiders/where-did-raiders-go-wrong-under-kelly-and-what-can-olson-fix-3588221/

Aka the whole program is a sort of long con to funnel money to companies that did Space Shuttle stuff and to Musk.
A lot of it is now financed by shutting down actual science and research at NASA.

Rescued an old Lenovo laptop (with #IBM logo) for a colleague. And patience is a virtue, isn't it - with 1GB RAM... #Linux #did

Missed Cowboys flight one factor in Diggs' release https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/47464859/missed-cowboys-flight-one-factor-trevon-diggs-release

I wasn't expecting a story of science malpractice in The New Yorker. This one is dark.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/02/02/did-a-celebrated-researcher-obscure-a-fatal-poisoning
(Notice how The Lancet made thing…

Did a Celebrated Researcher Obscure a Baby’s Poisoning?
Ben Taub investigates the death of Tariq Jamieson and the claim by the Canadian toxicologist Gideon (Gidi) Koren that he died from a breast-milk morphine overdose from codeine contained in Tylenol prescribed to his mother.

@… did you post on your main thread? I want to boost a not-reply

for those who can't be bothered with the bogus age limit thing, check it out at: https://skyview.social/?url=https:%2F/bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ragtjsm2j2vknwkz3zp4oxrd/post/3mbcvjmqdtk…

Blocking the work of MSF is absolutely depraved. Israel continues to fumble its way out of the community of civilized nations.
https://apnews.com/article/gaza-israel-hamas-palestinians-ceasefire-war-news-286106d7a5a911704cdcf1c93…

Israel to halt operations of several humanitarian groups in Gaza starting in 2026
Israel says it will suspend several humanitarian organizations for failing to meet its new rules to vet international organizations working in Gaza. The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs said on Tuesday that the organizations that will be banned on Jan. 1 did not meet its new requirements for sharing staff, funding and operations information. It accused Doctors Without Borders, known as MSF by its French acronym, of failing to clarify the roles of some staff that Israel accused of cooperation with H…

I did a year after high school on a tall ship and travelled around the South Pacific.
I came back and debated between chef & marine biologist (because I thought I could swim with dolphins as a job).
Chose university, failed 2nd year organic chem, switched to CompSci major, hired by Nortel.
Answering a prompt from The Recurse Center

Das rechtsextreme #Stadtbild, gegen das Friedrich #Merz mit der @… ganz aktiv so gar nichts unternimmt.
Ich befürchte fast, die rechtsextreme AfD will er…

Ann-Katrin Müller (@akm0803.bsky.social)
Was man zur neuen AfD-Jugend und dem Demo-Wochenende in #Giessen wissen sollte? Das hier. Mit guter Nachfrage des Kollegen Mathis Schneider bei Jean-Pascal Hohm! Ganzes Video gibt’s hier: https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/afd-jugend-in-giessen-so-lief-die-gruendung-der-generation-deutschland-a-61cbbb7a-c25f-4e10-bad5-9b5d2b1bdf51?sara_ref=re-so-app-sh

How did we end up with the EU being eerily proud of a tight bond with the new #India? A “mother of all deals?”
Trump virtually learnt from Modi.
https://www.

I did not know about ggplot_build() before. It can come in handy in situations where you want to access computed metrics of a #ggplot. https://ggplot2.tidyverse.org/reference/ggplot_build.html…

Build ggplot for rendering. — ggplot_build
build_ggplot() takes the plot object, and performs all steps necessary to produce an object that can be rendered. This function outputs two pieces: a list of data frames (one for each layer), and a panel object, which contain all information about axis limits, breaks etc. The ggplot_build() function is vestigial and build_ggplot() should be used instead.

So sad to loose Catherine O'Hara. What a legend. No one ever did it better.

Did I go back in time 20 years? This is exactly what I remember Northridge Mall looking like before it went very poorly.
#Southridge #Greendale #Mall

A new report from the grassroots organization #RootsAction aims to do what a promised “autopsy” from the Democratic National Committee ultimately did not:
publicly reckon with the failures of the Democrats’ 2024 presidential campaign.
While the Democratic Party’s official postmortem assessment was pulled from public release earlier this month, RootsAction’s
“

“The Blue Road to Trump Hell”: Norm Solomon on “How Corporate Democrats Paved the Way for Autocracy”
A new report from the grassroots organization RootsAction aims to do what a promised “autopsy” from the Democratic National Committee ultimately did not: publicly reckon with the failures of the Democrats’ 2024 presidential campaign. While the Democratic Party’s official postmortem assessment was pulled from public release earlier this month, RootsAction’s “Democratic Autopsy” looks at how factors like “service to corporate power, hostility to the progressive wing of the party, …

Just published 🚀: I Misunderstood Skills Entirely
#artificialintelligence

Minnesota State Police using LRAD on protestors (1/27/26)
Video Source:
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:f7utvjkqbgwfjonqtpfcf5fu/post/3mdgq65jwb22l
Article:

Did little Luana really need to be lazy about removing batteries from original wiimotes after using?

Four big things Congress did in 2025 -- and how they could affect you (Sahil Kapur/NBC News)
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/four-big-things-congress-2025-impact-rcna249338
http://www.memeorandum.com/251230/p25#a251230p25

Hey friends of the #mountains - I almost didn't make it away from my couch today morning. But as you can see, I did!
I spent a couple of hours hiking into the snow. During the ascent I was happy that I left my snow shoes at home. Yet for half an hour or an hour, I really missed them when I sometimes sank in deeper than my knees.
But it was all well manageable and I regained so …

Memo to staff: a Times of London editor says two incidents where reporters were duped, including the de Blasio case, "did serious damage to our reputation" (Jake Kanter/Deadline)
https://deadline.com/2025/10/bill-de-blasio-fake-i…

ChatGPT-Composed Bill De Blasio Interview Was “Humiliating”, Times Of London Associate Editor Tells Newsroom
A senior The Times of London editor has bemoaned the damage inflicted on the newspaper's reputation over a botched Bill de Blasio interview.

Even #Channel4News has fallen for the frothing right wing myth that Reeves "lied". She said taxes would need to be raised. And then did it. The only leader who hasn't fallen for it is Ed Davey. #CiaranJenkins you are usually better than this. Just stop it. It's pathetically po…

Did the friar have an oral affair?

@… Sorry!
BTW, did you see that Beamer presentations won’t be accessible, and you need to use a new class, which is unfinished and only partly compatible: https://www.

@… Sorry!
BTW, did you see that Beamer presentations won’t be accessible, and you need to use a new class, which is unfinished and only partly compatible: https://www.

At the 2026 Queens Tech & Career Expo, at the New York Hall of Science. There's a lively crowd of tech-oriented people in the building.
Did you know that the NYHS was originally built for the 1964 New York World's Fair?
https://nysci.org/

Did Clawdbot/Moltbot really change its name AGAIN?

In this 3 min video Tucker Carlson totally forgets that genocide is not something you speak of lightly...
Ahmed Eldin on substack (@ahmedeldin):
""Why call it genocide?" - Tucker Carlson
“Tucker, with all due respect — genocide isn’t a loaded term. It’s a crime.” - Francesca Albanese
Then she walks him thru Namibia, Armenia, Rwanda, Bosnia — and Gaza. A full-on masterclass he did NOT expect. "
#genocide #TuckerCarlson #FrancescaAlbanese

My first reaction: Ooh, he's right. $3/month is a deal.
My second reaction: Hey, there's a deal for an annual subscription.
My third reaction: Whoa! I could get it in an RSS feed so my email isn't overloaded.
Ok, you got me.
https://fed.bri…

Tal Lavin (@swordsjew.bsky.social)
honestly, @flaminghydra.com is a great freakin' deal, $3 a month to get a wild panoply of art and thoughts from some of your fave writers flaminghydra.com [contains quote post or other embedded content]

Adding more than a minute to each end of each day from now thru ~May. @… https://fed.brid.gy/r/https:/…

Solar Detroit (@detroit.solar.v.cx)
The sun will rise in #Detroit #Michigan tomorrow at 7:46, 60 seconds earlier than the day before. It will set at 17:46, 78 seconds later than the day before.

Why did nobody tell me you little lot were over here watching #gladiators?? I feel snubbed!
Only kidding. 👋🏻

Yay, my bluesky domain handle now pass verification for both DNS and HTTP https://bsky-debug.app/handle?handle=rmendes.net

Maybe she should do a collab with Skrillex
https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/a69167004/jameela-jamil-accidentally-orgasm-farmers-dj-set/

@… I nearly did not see the /s

RIP Tom Stoppard. I’m grateful for his masterpiece "Arcadia", and proud of the work we did on it. It's a deep reflection on the nature of truth, love, and art, those who run roughshod over it - very relevant today.
https://theater-u34.de/arkadien/

Health Stuff

Recovered somewhat from whatever that weird fit was at the end of last year.

NHS still has me on some sort of list I think, appointment might turn up next year. Last contact with them they were suggesting maybe November.
But the private treatment gave me the
MRI which
showed nothing weird and post-fit symptoms have been reducing.
Experimented with eating meat to see if that helped.
Tried eating meat for a month to see if it reduced the post-fit symptoms. Maybe it did? Tried vegetarian again and maybe it got worse?
Hard to tell with intermittent symptoms and a terrible memory.
Decided it's more likely to do good than harm (to me, entirely harm to the animals obviously), and eat meat till the end of the year.
While I'm better, I don't really feel fully recovered enough to want to change things so more meat next year I think.
One of those symptoms is that booze tolerance dropped to like zero. Very rarely had more than four pints in a day this year and very rarely more than one night a
week.
Much high number than the target there really.
Tripped over a guy-rope and fell onto the wrist.
Did two days of the festival and the drive home thinking it almost certainly wasn't broken and only confirmed it was when I got home and the hospital put it in a cast.

#today I caught up on some reading; now will attempt to get into the next bit of the #research modelling that my colleague did for me. I have the house to myself currently.

Did you know there is a scientific conference called Artificial Life? ALife in short.
It's actually quite a cool one. They are nerds that nerd about the game of life and the like.

The gig was absolutely brilliant, and they did play The Ocean! 🤘

(2022) Percepts evoked by multi-electrode stimulation of human visual cortex https://www.brainstimjrnl.com/article/S1935-861X(22)00185-1/fulltext
"Discussions with our subjects revealed that they did not perceive coherent shapes or easily identifiable for…

I thought I'd killed my trusty #turrisomnia but it turned out my tinkering had left it and the recovery partition in a very old broken state. Fortunately after failing with a cheapo usb key I did get a more recent factory image on it. I now realise quite how fast back the system was because everything is dark mode by default now with a nice onboarding process.

#Trump: “I did an illegal war thingy,, it was tremendous”
#Venezuela company: “What? We just had a chemical fire dawg”
T: “No I really did an illegal war thingy, we blew that shit up, illegally, in an act of war”

Just finished "It's Lonely at the Center of the Earth" by Zoe Thorogood.
CW: Frank/graphic discussion of suicide and depression (not in this post but in the book).
It feels a bit wrong to simply give it my review here as I would another graphic memoir, because it's much more personal and less consensual than the usual. It feels less like Thorogood has invited us into her life than like she was forced to put her life on display in order to survive, and while I selfishly like to read into the book that she benefited in some way from the process, she's honest about how tenuous and sometimes false that claim can be. Knowing what I've learned from this book about Thorogood's life and demons, I don't want her to feel the mortification of being perceived by me, and so perhaps the best thing I could do is to simply unread the book and pull it back out of my memories.
I did not find Thorogood's life relatable, nor pitiable (although my instinct bends in that direction), but instead sacred and unknowable. I suspect that her writing and drawing has helped others in similar circumstances, but she leaves me with no illusion that this fact brings her any form of peace or joy. I wonder what she would feel reading "Lab Girl" or "The Deep Dark," but she has been honest enough to convey that such speculation on my part is a bit intrusive.
I guess the one other thing I have to say: Zoe Thorogood has through artistic perseverance developed an awe-inspiring mastery of the comic medium, from panel composition, through to page layout and writing. This book wields both Truth and Beauty.
#AmReading #ReadingNow

Conversation today...
Wife - where did my clothes I had hanging go?
Me - I washed them like you asked me to do.
Wife - well, where are they
Me - washed and put away
Wife - I need them.
Me - You didn't ask me when I washed them and put them away.
Wife - OH, can you get them for me?
Me - staying silent while I fetch them for her.

Oh man, who's ready for 4 years of NYPost tears? Delicious salty Murdoch tears! https://bsky.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:dci5jlffbhbi4ui4inf2wk6i/post/3mayzcx4m3225

Elizabeth Spiers (@espiers.bsky.social)
Insane NY Post column suggesting that the new First Lady who is sad about leaving her longtime neighbors in a not fancy NYC neighborhood is an ungrateful brown woman

🇺🇦 Auf radioeins läuft...
Luca Sapio:
🎵 How Did We Lose It
#NowPlaying #LucaSapio
https://open.spotify.com/track/0Az0uzxQsQ39orQfwb3sIH

Wenn Du dieses "Hacker-Guy schleust kurz vor knapp entscheidendes Virus in Bad-Guy-Weltzerstörungscomputer"-Feeling hast, aber an der Packstation.
https://bsky.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:oflombnj6v6xyohhatfkbzyd/po…

Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social)
2/3 I have made three of my cartoons into new, limited edition prints. You can get them now at www.tomgauld.com/shop

How did Christian Parker earn the Cowboys' defensive coordinator job? https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/how-did-christian-parker-earn-the-cowboys-defensive-coordinator-job

Friends, we did it!

See, Elon can’t be an antisemite. Doing Xmas with his Jewish buddies in the Caribbean. @… https://

Tim Dickinson (@timdickinson.bsky.social)
Elon Musk, Jeffrey Epstein and Woody Allen on a Carribean island at Christmastime? https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2010/EFTA01753797.pdf

Recalcitrant members of Congress who refuse to fulfill their Constitutional duty are, like Trump, using the incumbent powers of their office to remake the Constitution in a way that excuses their prejudices and enables their graft
https://skywriter.blue/pages/did:plc:7

Making Sense of Open-Source: Ideals, Reality, and What's on the Horizon
Hosted by the Sensemaking Scenius and featuring @erlend.sh, an online video gathering Dec 3rd
https://smokesignal.events/did:plc:ad5bwszsc5m5jpj2sfa6uzjk/3m62suufa7y2j

'What Did We Do?': Black Truckers Say They Were Denied Service Before White Server Called Cops to Remove Them from South Dakota Denny’s Restaurant Allegedly Because of Their Race
https://atlantablackstar.com/2023/09/05/dennys-is-under-fire-again-for-allegedly-refusing-to-serve-two-black-men/

Raiders GM John Spytek did get one thing right with Patrick Graham’s defense https://raiderramble.com/2025/12/28/raiders-gm-john-spytek-did-get-one-thing-right-with-patrick-grahams-defense/

Did you know Michael Irvin STABBED a lineman in the neck & should have been charged with attempted murder but got away with it "because football"?
Listen to the audiobook, Jeff Pearlman's "Boys Will Be Boys".
https://www.audible.com/pd/B002V9ZBVG?sour

Audible: Hörbücher, Hörspiele & Podcast | 30 Tage kostenlos testen
Die größte Vielfalt nur bei Audible: Hörbücher, Hörspiele & Original Podcasts ✓On- und offline hören ✓Beste Autoren & Stimmen ✓Das 1. Hörbuch ist gratis.

My smartwatch sure is upset about the fact that I did some extra walking yesterday to fill in the activity heart. It wants me to do less activity today.

The {conflicted} package makes sure that namespace conflicts are solved explicitly and prevents unpleasent surprises: #rstats

Did anyone else see what Nikita mouthed to camera? WTF. #strictly

The anti-alarmists e.g. Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, Bret Stephens, Corey Robin, Jon Stewart, David Brooks, William Watson, John Harris, Simon Jenkins, Zachary Karabell, Josh Barro, and Noah Feldman — scolded & derided the Cassandras. Going forward, we should be skeptical of giving them & others like them our attention when they pooh pooh people fighting against obvious racism, fascism, and kleptocracy etc etc yup <-- read the whole thing

Did anyone try #linux on recent t14s #Lenovo amd or arm ? Any driver issues there ?

How did Christian Parker earn the Cowboys' defensive coordinator job? https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/how-did-christian-parker-earn-the-cowboys-defensive-coordinator-job

Long-term alcohol use linked to a sharp rise in rectal cancer #health

Long-term alcohol use linked to a sharp rise in rectal cancer
Drinking heavily over many years is linked to a higher risk of colorectal cancer, especially rectal cancer, according to new research tracking U.S. adults for two decades. People who drank heavily throughout adulthood faced sharply higher risks than light drinkers. Former drinkers did not show increased cancer risk and had fewer precancerous tumors. The results suggest that quitting alcohol may help lower long-term cancer risk.

Did Bears solve the tush push? Jalen Hurts on his crucial fumble: 'It's becoming tougher' https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6846287/2025/11/28/jalen-hurts-tush-push-fumble/

Series B, Episode 06 - Trial
TRAVIS: No one would believe it. [Par exits.] Any more than I do. [Drinks from the flask.]
[Corridor. Thania is waiting for Par.]
THANIA: Did you give it to him?
PAR: Yes, Major.
THANIA: I appreciate it.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/206/240

Did Performance

Played two Loopy gigs

Just a tiny birthday party and in a camping field with friends.
This is probably about the target number really.
It's nice to play now and then but couldn't be monthly or anything even more frequent.
Didn't feel like either went great. Health issues affecting performance plus nerves
Just one with video of any kind.
Added a couple of great songs to the playlists, need to practise more really.
At the end of a Hoopla class and the end of
a self-organised group class.
They were good fun.
But having to book a course every eight weeks means constantly churning co-players and long gaps where I don't get around to it or it was all booked up.
Tried to get a more permanent group going...
Trying to get some sort of indie-group off
the group rather than just short runs of
classes with new people all the time.
We found a group an booked the room but didn't get most of the actual people to turn up. Need to presumably meet more people up for that sort of thing.
So there will be new improv class starting
in Jan.
A new show in March at least.

One Huge Reason Why Chip Kelly's Offense Did Not Work with Raiders https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/onsi/las-vegas-one-huge-reason-why-chip-kelly-offense-did-not-work-with

This is attributed to H.G. Wells:
'The work of woman in prehistoric communities, when carefully analyzed from the fossils with which archaeology, folklore, and philology provide us, assumes somewhat large proportions as compared with the work of men. '
https://skywriter.blue…

The Federal government has killed 9 people under the order of Trump.
Original post: #ICE

Cowboys may have made $90 million mistake in defensive signing https://cowboyswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/cowboys/2025/12/29/did-cowboys-make-mistake-in-signing-cb-bland-to-90-million-exte…

Series A, Episode 10 - Breakdown
VILA: You're back, are you?
ZEN: Status is firm. All systems are functioning normally.
BLAKE: Where were you when we needed you? [to Avon] What did they say?
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/110/341 B7B4

So farewell then 2025. Had some serious health worries, made some stuff, did some performance, made money, had some fun.
Not the best year, suspect health things tend to trend down in the second half of life.
Good though, and promising more good to come.

Flynn proposes sending Obama “back to Africa”
and suggests we “prosecute” Somalis on welfare.
https://skywriter.blue/pages/did:plc:2g4ozpjxrwesjdog6eys44si/post/3mb2n3dozmk2l

Hall of Fame confirms Bill Polian did vote to induct Bill Belichick https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7005498/2026/01/28/bill-polian-bill-belichick-hof-voting/

Fat Putin will never back down on his drive to "Make America White Again".
Original post: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:5o6k7jvowuyaquloafzn3cfw/post/3mdmgqmusjc2c

Remember, we have an anti-vax conspiracy theorist as the *head* of all healthcare in the U.S.
This particular conspiracy theory is even more bonkers than his others (and there are many others).
How is this remotely ok? 🧪
https://skywriter.blue/pages/did:plc:4

Why did the Browns punt from the 29? Over-under bettors on Raiders total are very confused by decision https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nfl/cleveland-browns/news/why-did-browns-punt-29-over-…

Holy... this is singularly the most Japanese news article ever. Bravo Japan Times! 😂
"Tell me your position on Japanese politics without telling me your position on Japanese politics."
Original post: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:rddeinqb45gzem…

Africa moved as many worlds. It still does.
— Not just rulers, but households, elders, children
— lives lived inside systems of memory, labor, belief, and power that did not require a single name.
So, to talk of Africa as a country is the residue of colonialism — what remains after empire leaves but its grammar stays.

Holy... this is singularly the most Japanese news article ever. Bravo Japan Times! 😂
"Tell me your position on Japanese politics without telling me your position on Japanese politics."
Original post: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:rddeinqb45gzem…

On this day three years ago,
OpenAI released what it referred to internally as a “low-key research preview”called ChatGPT.
And people sure did use it
—more than 1 million of them in the first five days.
ChatGPT grew faster than any other consumer app in history.
Today, it has 800 million weekly users.
ChatGPT’s success has quickly rewired parts of our society and economy.
Now we are living in a world that ChatGPT helped build.

The World Still Hasn’t Made Sense of ChatGPT
OpenAI’s chaos machine turns three.

309 days until we have the best weapon in our arsenal to strike back at Trump: OUR VOTE.
Vote for congressional & local leaders with the backbone to stand up to his fascist dictatorship.
Original post: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:sq6w6264xndxwnfx…

Kyle Cheney. @kyledcheney
Jack Smith says Trump's claims that he won the election were not protected free speech because they were intended to target a government function.
"There is no historical analog for what President Trump did in this case."
Smith says Trump "without question" added to the danger to Mike Pence's life with his 2:24pm tweet while the Capitol was under attack.

Israel on Tuesday said it had
💥suspended more than two dozen humanitarian organizations,
including "Doctors Without Borders" and CARE,
from operating in the Gaza Strip
for failing to comply with new registration rules.
Israel says the rules are aimed at preventing Hamas and other militant groups from infiltrating the aid organizations.
But the organizations say the rules are arbitrary and warned that the new ban would harm a civilian population d…

Israel to halt operations of several humanitarian groups in Gaza starting in 2026
Israel says it will suspend several humanitarian organizations for failing to meet its new rules to vet international organizations working in Gaza. The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs said on Tuesday that the organizations that will be banned on Jan. 1 did not meet its new requirements for sharing staff, funding and operations information. It accused Doctors Without Borders, known as MSF by its French acronym, of failing to clarify the roles of some staff that Israel accused of cooperation with H…

U.S. immigration officials do not plan to detain #Kilmar #Abrego #Garcia again -- as long as a judge’s order banning it stands, according to a Tuesday court filing.
❌Immigration and Customs Enforcement did make clear they would detai…

ICE doesn't plan to detain Abrego Garcia again as long as judge's order banning it stands
Immigration officials do not plan to detain Kilmar Abrego Garcia again as long as a judge’s order banning it stands That's according to a Tuesday court filing from the U.S. government. The Salvadoran citizen’s case has become a lightning rod for both sides of the immigration debate as he fights to remain in the U.S. after a mistaken deportation to his home country, where he was imprisoned. The government court filing comes after U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis earlier this month questioned …

Not going backwards is a win.
Given Donald Trump's fraught relationship with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, that's important.
The Mar-a-Lago meeting did not materially move things forward
but nor was there a bust-up like that Oval Office moment in February.
There were however some notable takeaways.
First, Zelenskyy's facial expressions...

It's easy to get lost in multi-point plans and spin - but Zelenskyy's reaction to Trump said it all
The Mar-a-Lago meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy did not materially move things forward, but there were some notable takeaways - and no bust-up like the infamous Oval Office encounter in February.