Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

In my day, never was longer.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Petty moves from a petty man.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

This really is a full service blog.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

How stupid are these people?

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night Open Thread: Not All Heroes

Reader Interactions

63Comments

  5. 5.

    prostratedragon

    More AI bs:

    This is fucking grim. Somebody invented a white guy, an “IT professional” named Edward Crabtree, who stopped the Bondi shooting and spread it all over the internet, which was picked up by AI agents and slop aggregation sites.

    The real hero is a fruit stand owner named Ahmed el Ahmed.

    As CT Bergstrom says,

    Yet another example of what happens if we allow LLMs to become a form of epistemic grounding for society.

  6. 6.

    satby

    Don’t know if Jose Andres was ever Person of the Year, hope so. I was excited to meet one of his development staff at the farmer’s market yesterday. Felt almost as excited as if I met the man himself, I’m such a fan girl 😂.

  7. 7.

    satby

    @prostratedragon: Fortunately, it seems the true hero has been recognized and that news suppressed the AI news. Though the fake news will probably have a long life in the conspiracy theory space.

  12. 12.

    Baud

    Via Reddit

    National cabinet agrees unanimously to strengthen Australia’s strict gun laws in wake of Bondi terror attack

    We can’t have this because of racial fears.

  14. 14.

    Baud

    Uh oh

    LIVE UPDATES: Brown University person of interest to be released from police custody, officials say

    Authorities said late Sunday the person of interest was being released from custody with evidence pointing in a different direction now.

  15. 15.

    Scout211

    Person of interest in Brown University shooting to be released as manhunt for killer is underway

    A person of interest identified in Saturday’s mass shooting at Brown University will be released from custody, authorities said late Sunday, sparking a manhunt for the killer.

    “Evidence now points in a different direction,” Gov. Dan McKee said at a news conference Sunday night.

    The 24-year-old man was detained Sunday morning, three senior law enforcement officials told NBC News. On Sunday night, officials said there was no longer a reason to keep him in custody in connection with the shooting, which killed two students and wounded nine other people at the Ivy League school.

    The tip that led to the 24-year-old being detained was fielded by the FBI, said Providence’s police chief, Col. Oscar Perez.

    “It was actually picked up by the FBI and they followed through with it and they ended up coming and locating this individual of interest,” Perez said.

    The police chief making sure that it’s clear that the FBI detained the wrong suspect, not his department.  Way to go, Kash Patel.

    ETA:  Baud got there by first.

  17. 17.

    Baud

    @Scout211:

    If Trump’s FBI arrested the right person right away, they’d have to stop arresting people, and the Trump people love arresting people.

  18. 18.

    Deputinize America

    @Baud:

    His dad was a German emigre in 1950, a Nazi party member. He himself has repeatedly defended Pinochet’s government and has expressed monstrous plans for correctional practices.

    This doesn’t bode well for Chile.

  20. 20.

    Baud

    @Deputinize America:

    This year’s presidential race was the first time since 2012 that voting had been compulsory in the country. There are approximately 15.7 million eligible voters in the South American country.

     

    Interesting

  22. 22.

    montanareddog

    @Baud: ​  It’s a typical Orange maladministration/MSM/Social media clusterfuck:

    FBI arrests the wrong guy
    Leak the name and his state of origin which is published by the Wapo and NBC
    Guy has a not particularly unusual name and social media vigilantes proceed to doxx several different people from that state
    FBI releases the guy.​

  24. 24.

    Princess

    The thing about that cover is not a single one of those people would have the guts to do what those men did every day and sit on that girder (neither would I!) so the photo looks fake and weird, as if they’re floating in unreal space and like a simulacrum of work — and I think that’s what the person who designed it may have intended, which is kind of clever.

  26. 26.

    Princess

    @Baud: Trump had announced they got the shooter, when they hadn’t, so Patel was under orders to round up the usual suspects so Trump wouldn’t look bad.

  29. 29.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Princess: …. as if they’re floating in unreal space and like a simulacrum of work

    they are. In unreal space. And it’s not like real work.

    also, talk about getting high. Or gathering in a precarious spot..

  34. 34.

    BellyCat

    @Deputinize America: OT: Might I contact you via email from WaterGirl?

    My family law / constitutional matter is going to be submitted for consideration to the U.S. Supreme Court. The contours are bizarre and a favorable outcome would benefit the rights of children and parents.

    Summary: custodial rights disturbed in error at inception without cause, without notice, and without opportunity to be heard due to breakdown in court operations. Appeal withheld for 5 years, until a final custody order was issued (by the FIFTH judge due to voluntary recusals). Pa Superior Court then dismisses appeal as moot and Pa Supreme Court refuses to hear appeal (hooray retained judges! /s).

    Controlling case law is unanimous Armstrong v. Manzo (1965) decision by USSC.

    Perhaps of possible interest to you and others?

  35. 35.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Baud: fascinating.
    way later than those early fires, but early:
    dr Irving Finkel says they had writing at Gobekli Tepe, thousands of years before Mesopotamia. He’s got some new YouTubes up.

  36. 36.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Princess:

    Trump had announced they got the shooter, when they hadn’t, so Patel was under orders to round up the usual suspects so Trump wouldn’t look bad. 

    Even though that makes Dump look like a dumbass.  But what else would you expect from a dumbass?

  37. 37.

    Deputinize America

    @BellyCat:

    Sure!  It’s in my wheelhouse, but I can only talk to you about it in general as I’m not licensed in PA so I can’t give specific advice.

  38. 38.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud: ​
    Dammit, I love South Carolina (apparently not too large to be an insane asylum after all) despite itself. But they not only have a measles epidemic, they’ve got a stupidity epidemic as well.

    The two are not unrelated, of course.

  39. 39.

    frosty

    @gene108: OMG!

    I never gave any thought to how that photo was taken but of course he had to be on high steel with his subjects. The tie, suspenders, and dress shoes are crazy!

  40. 40.

    lowtechcyclist

    @satby: ​

    part of the context is Time once named Hitler Person of the Year.

    The criterion used to be something like ‘the person who has had the most effect on the world, for good or ill’ which is why they picked Hitler back then, but they apparently backed off a bit on the latter part of that standard after they (correctly, by those standards) picked the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979 and were hit with all sorts of outraged reactions.

    That seems to have resulted in their not picking Osama bin Laden in 2001, and going with Rudy Noun-Verb-9/11 instead.​​

    ETA: Back then, TIME’s Person of the Year was still a big deal. Do people pay much attention to it now? Hopefully not.

  41. 41.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @frosty: he doesn’t even appear to be clamping down on that border with his thighs; he appears relaxed. And those leather shoes probably are smooth bottomed. I can’t figure out how this was doable. Stunning.

  42. 42.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @Baud:

    @Deputinize America:

    @Betty:

    It’s immigration. The flood of migrants from Venezuela has empowered right-wing parties all over South America. The fact Maduro and Chavez before him were leftists and their policies destroyed the Venezuelan economy has also added fuel to the far right.

  46. 46.

    Princess

    @mrmoshpotato: It’s dumbasses all the way down.

    I will not be shocked if the actual murderer turns out to be a right winger.

    And on a similar topic, I’m still gobsmacked at how uninterested magaworld is in the fellow accused of killing Kirk. No attention to how that is moving through the courts at all.

  48. 48.

    evodevo

    @Princess: Yeah, funny thing about that.  It’s as if it’s not attached to the left in some way, they don’t really care LOL. What a bunch of soulless bots…

  49. 49.

    TONYG

    Years ago I used to see Time Magazine in the waiting rooms of doctor’s offices.  Now I don’t even see it there.  An irrelevant publication trying to suck up to the “AI” billionaires who are destroying the world.

  50. 50.

    Scout211

    Relevant here:

    Merriam-Webster names slop as its 2025 word of the year

    The dictionary publisher defined it as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence,” and said it reflected the “absurd videos, off-kilter advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks pretty real, junky AI-written books” that have invaded people’s social media feeds this year.

  52. 52.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Gloria DryGarden: I meant to share with you (& everyone else) the below the mind bending work of poetic art from over 1600 years ago, but didn’t see you in the threads over the weekend (click through the X link for images of the work):

    Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand

    This strange square is undoubtedly the most extraordinary work of literature in human history. Yet, unfortunately, barely anyone in the West has ever heard of it.

    There was this woman poet in 4th century China called Su Hui (蘇蕙), a child genius who had reportedly mastered Chinese characters by age 3.

    At 21 years old, heartbroken by her husband who left her for another woman, she decided to encode her feelings in a structure so intricate, so beautiful, so intellectually staggering that it still baffles scholars to this day.

    Came to be known as the Xuanji Tu (璇璣圖) – the “Star Gauge” or “Map of the Armillary Sphere” – it’s a 29 by 29 grid of 841 characters that can produce over 4,000 different poems.

    Read it forward. Read it backward. Read it horizontally, vertically, diagonally. Read it spiraling outward from the center. Read it in circles around the outer edge. Each path through the grid produces a different poem – all of them coherent, all of them beautiful, all of them rhyming, all of them expressing variations on the same themes of longing, betrayal, regret, and undying love.

    The outer ring of 112 characters forms a single circular poem – believed to be both the first and longest of its kind ever written. The interior grid produces 2,848 different four-line poems of seven characters each. In addition, there are hundreds of other smaller and longer poems, depending on the reading method.

    At the center a single character she left implied but unwritten: 心 (xin) – “heart.” Later copyists would add it explicitly, but in Su Hui’s original the meaning was even more beautiful: 4,000 poems, all orbiting the space where her heart used to be.

    Take for instance the outer red grid of the Star Gauge. Starting from the top right corner and reading down, you get this seven-character quatrain:
    仁智懷德聖虞唐，
    貞志篤終誓穹蒼，
    欽所感想妄淫荒，
    心憂增慕懷慘傷。
    In pinyin, it is:
    Rén zhì huái dé shèng yú táng,
    zhēnzhì dǔ zhōng shì qióng cāng,
    qīn suǒ gǎnxiǎng wàng yín huāng,
    xīn yōu zēng mù huái cǎn shāng.
    Notice how it rhymes? táng / cāng / huāng / shāng

    The rough translation in English is: “The benevolent and wise cherish virtue, like the sage-kings Yao and Shun, With steadfast will I swear to the heavens above, What I revere and feel – how could it be wanton or dissolute? My heart’s sorrow grows, longing brings only grief.”

    Now read it from the bottom to the top and you get this entirely different seven-character quatrain:
    傷慘懷慕增憂心，
    荒淫妄想感所欽，
    蒼穹誓終篤志貞，
    唐虞聖德懷智仁。
    The pinyin:
    Shāng cǎn huái mù zēng yōu xīn,
    huāngyín wàngxiǎng gǎn suǒ qīn,
    cāngqióng shì zhōng dǔzhì zhēn,
    táng yúshèngdé huái zhì rén.
    It rhymes too: xīn and qīn, zhēn and rén

    And the meaning is just as beautiful and coherent: “Grief and sorrow, longing fills my worried heart, Wanton and dissolute fantasies – is that what you revere? I swear to the heavens my constancy is true, May we embody the sage-kings’ virtue, wisdom, and benevolence.”

    That’s just 2 poems out of the over 4,000 you can construct from the Xuanji Tu!

    At the very center of the grid, the 8 red characters wrapped around the central heart, she “signed” her poem with a hidden message:
    詩圖璇玑，始平蘇氏。
    “The poem-picture of the Armillary Sphere, by Su of Shiping.”
    Or reversed:
    蘇氏詩圖，璇玑始平。 “Su’s poem-picture – the Armillary Sphere begins in peace.”

    Many scholars, and even emperors, throughout Chinese history have been completely obsessed by Su Hui’s puzzle.

    For instance, in the Ming dynasty, a scholar named Kang Wanmin (康萬民) devoted his entire life to the poems (http://kangshiw.com/contents/461/2635.html), ending up documenting twelve different reading methods – forward, backward, diagonal, radiating, corner-to-corner, spiraling – and extracting 4,206 poems. His book on the subject (“Reading Methods for the Xuanji Tu Poems”, 璇璣圖詩讀法) runs to hundreds of pages.

    Empress Wu Zetian herself, the legendary woman emperor of the Tang dynasty, wrote a preface to the Xuanji Tu around 692 CE (https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%87%E9%94%A6%E5%9B%9E%E6%96%87%E8%AE%B0/22727125).

    Incredibly, there’s even far more complexity to the Xuanji Tu than just the poems:
    – The name 璇玑 (Xuanji) – Armillary Sphere – is astronomical in meaning and the way the poems can be read mirrors the way celestial bodies orbit around a fixed center. It’s a model of the heavens.
    – Her original work, with the characters woven on silk brocade, was in five colors (red, black, blue/green, purple, and yellow) which correspond to the Five Elements (五行) – the foundational Chinese philosophical system that explains how the universe operates. So it’s also a model of the entire cosmic order according to ancient Chinese philosophy.
    – It’s also of course deeply mathematical with this 29 x 29 perfect square grid, with sub-squares, lines and rectangles, and a structure which allows for symmetrical reading patterns in all directions
    – Last but not least, the content of the poems themselves contain multiple registers. On top of expressing her personal grief and longing for her husband, it’s also filled with accusations against the concubine (Zhao Yangtai) he left her for, reflections on politics (with many references to sage-kings) and philosophical reflections.

    So the Star Gauge is simultaneously:
    – A love letter (expressing personal longing)
    – A legal brief (arguing her case against her rival) – A cosmological model (structured like the heavens)
    – A Five Element diagram (encoding the fundamental structure of the world according to ancient Chinese philosophy)
    – A mathematical construction with perfect symmetry and precision

    And yet, for all this complexity, we should not forget this was all ultimately in service of the simplest human message imaginable: a 21-year-old woman asking the love of her life “come back to me”.

    Her husband did, eventually. According to what empress Wu Zetian herself wrote in her preface to the Xuanji Tu, when he received Su’s brocade he was so “moved by its supreme beauty” that he sent away his concubine and returned to his wife. As the story goes, they lived together until old age.

    The heart at the center was filled after all.

    I can’t believe I just came across this a few days ago on my X feed!

    Here is the Wikipedia page on the author, Su Hui.

    The original work is still preserved at the National Palace Museum in Taipei.

  55. 55.

    frosty

    @Eyeroller: ​Yes, I had read that it was staged. Looking at this picture, of course it was! You don’t have a photographer around taking candid shots in a place like that.

  56. 56.

    YY_Sima Qian

    News out of Hong Kong (gift link to WaPo article below):

    Hong Kong court convicts pro-democracy newspaper founder Jimmy Lai
    The landmark case exemplifies the way Beijing, through Hong Kong’s national security law, has swept away any last remaining press freedoms and judicial independence in the city.

    Updated December 15, 2025 at 6:18 a.m. EST

    AI Overview

    Summary is AI-generated, newsroom-reviewed.
    Hong Kong newspaper founder Jimmy Lai was found guilty of sedition and collusion with foreign forces, highlighting Beijing’s crackdown on press freedoms. The 78-year-old could face life in prison. Lai, a British citizen, has been detained since December 2020. His trial has drawn international condemnation, with concerns over his health and legal representation.
    Read the full article for more on:
    The symbolic significance of Lai’s case under Hong Kong’s national security law.
    Details of Lai’s interactions with international political figures.
    The impact of Beijing’s controls on Hong Kong’s media and civil liberties.
    …

  57. 57.

    TONYG

    Actually, for better or worse, “the architects of AI” are the software developers who designed and coded this monstrosity.  These guys are just the people making money off it.

  60. 60.

    Paul in KY

    @Baud: I think we 1st started using fire 900,000 or a million years ago. Maybe we couldn’t start a fire ourselves, but we weren’t scared of it and could carry it around, etc. etc.

  63. 63.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @YY_Sima Qian: v cool. Something about this made the rounds on my Facebook recently. I’ll follow these Wikipedia link.
    It would be amazing to read all the poems in it.

    just 1600 years ago?

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