Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Republicans do not pay their debts.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

We will not go back.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

To the privileged, equality seems like oppression.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

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“DO NOT CONGRATULATE”

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In 2018 when Donald Trump was befouling the Oval Office in his first term, he had a call scheduled with Putin. His advisors wrote “DO NOT CONGRATULATE” in big block letters in the call briefing book because it would be unseemly for an American president to congratulate a grotesque dictator on his election victory. Trump congratulated Putin anyway.

This is almost as gross as that was, in my opinion. [WaPo]

President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump met face-to-face on Wednesday morning in the Oval Office, an extraordinary moment for two men who have repeatedly expressed public disdain for one another as they go through one of the most unusual transfers of power in American history…

“Congratulations,” Biden said at the start of the meeting, during the brief time reporters were in the room. He added that he hoped it would be a smooth transition…

“President Biden is doing this because he believes in the norms, he believes in our institution. He believes in a peaceful transfer of power,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday. “The American people deserve this. They deserve a peaceful transfer of power. They deserve a smooth transition. And that’s what you’re going to see.”

Peaceful transfer of power, yes, but fuck a bunch of norms and institutions. And double-fuck congratulating the Queens quisling.

I think I understand why Biden is treating Trump like a normal politician now after correctly identifying him as an existential threat to U.S. democracy before. He’s trying to model grownup behavior. But it’s too late for that shit, and extending more than the bare minimum of cooperation to effect a peaceful transition is a species of “sane-washing.”

A brazen criminal who should have been disqualified from ever holding office again was able to slither back into power thanks to the failure of “norms and institutions.” So please excuse me if my faith in them is as extinct as my belief in the impartiality of the U.S. Supreme Court and the wisdom of U.S. voters who chose four more years of corruption and chaos. DO NOT CONGRATULATE!

Open thread.

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Department of Wank

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I have no doubt that the dynamic duo of Musk and Ramaswamy will do a bunch of bad things, but this is wank:

The new body will not be a government agency but an outside organization offering the White House “advice and guidance”. Trump said it would shock government systems, as Doge (the acronym is the name of Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, which itself references a meme about a dog with an amusing expression), partners with the Office of Management and Budget to “create an entrepreneurial approach to government never seen before”. […]

I’m guessing that they’ll pinpoint a few of Musk’s hobgoblins while making sure his defense contracts stay lucrative.

Anyway, far more concerning is Mike Huckabee as Ambassador to Israel, and some Fox News host as Secretary of Defense.

Also, all those links are from the Guardian, which is going to be my go-to “just the facts” news source.  They stopped posting on Twitter, btw.

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Our New Democratic Senators!

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Left to right: Lisa Blunt Rochester, Adam Shiff, Elissa Slotkin, Andy Kim, Ruben Gallego, & Angela Alsobrook

******

More news worth sharing:


Goddess bless modern medicine, and the people who respect it. Per Medical Express:

Clinics and hospitals currently defer medication abortion until ultrasound confirms a pregnancy inside the uterus. However, a large international study led by researchers from Karolinska Institutet now indicates that treatment can be equally effective and safe even before the sixth week of pregnancy. The study is published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

A total of 35,550 abortions took place in Sweden in 2023; over 60% of them before the end of the seventh week of pregnancy.

Often, the procedure is held off until intrauterine pregnancy is confirmed by vaginal ultrasound to rule out the possibility of an ectopic pregnancy, in which the embryo attaches outside the uterus, usually in the fallopian tubes. An ectopic pregnancy is not terminated by a medication abortion and can be life-threatening for the woman. Ultrasound reveals a pregnancy in week five to six.

“Women often find out very early if they’re pregnant, and a majority also know if they want a termination and if so, want it to take place as quickly as possible,” says the study’s first author Karin Brandell, gynecologist at Karolinska University Hospital and doctoral student at the Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden…

The VEMA (Very early medical abortion) study included over 1,500 women at 26 clinics in nine countries who requested an abortion before ultrasound was able to confirm intrauterine pregnancy. They were randomly assigned to either a delayed abortion once pregnancy could be confirmed in the uterus (in week five to six) or to early abortion (in week four to six). Both groups received two drugs—mifepristone and misoprostol…

“Very early medical abortion was just as effective and safe to perform, even in the case of an undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy,” says Kristina Gemzell-Danielsson, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the same department at Karolinska Institutet, senior physician at Karolinska University Hospital and project leader of the VEMA study…

The women in the early group reported less pain and bleeding. In both groups, the women also expressed a desire to have the abortion performed as quickly as possible.

“Abortion is a political as well as a medical issue,” says Dr. Brandell. “In Sweden, a woman can repeat the procedure a week after a failed early abortion. But a woman in Texas, where abortion is banned after the sixth week, can’t. It was therefore important to show that early abortion is equivalent to current standard procedure at a later stage of pregnancy.”

The researchers now want to test if a new combination of drugs for early abortion is also effective for ectopic pregnancies. They are also developing new contraceptives based on one of the components of current medical abortions, mifepristone.

“It can be taken in a lower dose than for abortion to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the form of one tablet a week, or when needed,” says Professor Gemzell-Danielsson.

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Stark Grey Dawn Open Thread: This Time, MAGAt Tears

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The Democrats fought for all these things. Alas, it wasn’t enough. The Republicans ran on hate, lies, bigotry, and racism. They ran horrible racist ads about Hispanic people. They took away women’s rights. The Republicans dogged gay and transgender people. Yet, it was just what America wanted and needed. Make no mistake. There were no undecided voters in this election. They all knew what they were getting.

Those who drink tears stay thirsty!…

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War for Ukraine Day 993: Russia Brings a New Form of Terror by Drone to Kharkiv

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Painting by NEIVANMADE. It has a white background an in the center are Soldiers in green doing air defense by firing at incoming Russian missiles in the upper right. The missiles are red and yellow. In the upper left, written in green, is the text: "SAVE THE BRAVEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD!" Below the Soldiers, also written in green, is "SUPPORT FOR KHARKIV"

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

Two quick housekeeping notes. First, Rosie is still doing great. Thank you all for the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

Second, I’m just going to run the basics tonight. It was a long day and I have two more very long days ahead of me.

The Russians have a new way to bring terror by drone to the people of Kharkiv:

Russia hits Kharkiv with new Molniya drones in combat test on civilians

As Russian forces have been testing Molniya on the battlefield since May, the drone now poses a potential new threat to Ukrainian cities.

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— Euromaidan Press (@euromaidanpress.bsky.social) November 12, 2024 at 2:30 PM

From EuroMaidan Press:

Russian forces launched two Molniya drone strikes on Kharkiv on 12 November, hitting residential areas and injuring three civilians, according to the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office.

Today’s attacks on Kharkiv may indicate Russia is testing the drones’ effectiveness against civilian infrastructure. As Russians have been extensively testing Molniya on the battlefield since May 2024, now the drone might represent a new threat to Ukrainian cities.

The first strike hit Kharkiv’s northern Saltivsky district at 1:55 p.m. local time, causing two injuries. A second strike at 3:35 p.m. targeted an eleven-story apartment building in the southern Slobidskyi district, injuring a 70-year-old woman.

Built from Chinese components, including plywood, veneer, foam, and 18-mm aluminum tubes, these low-cost drones can carry up to three kilograms of explosives. While they use similar communication and electronics as FPV drones, their 40-kilometer range—far exceeding that of FPV drones—allows Russian forces to target Ukrainian positions previously considered secure from drone threats.

Despite their extended range capability, these drones have shown limited effectiveness in combat, with only about one in eight strikes hitting their intended targets.

And here’s the Ukrainian air defense tally:

Eight of the Shahed drones that Russia used in its attack on Ukraine last night appear to have wandered into Belarus during the attack. Meanwhile, Ukraine shot down 46 of 110 incoming drones, 60 were brought down by jamming, and 2 left Ukrainian airspace, the military says.

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— Euan MacDonald (@euanmacdonald.bsky.social) November 12, 2024 at 4:55 AM

Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

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Something Good Open Thread: *General* Harriet Tubman

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Petula Dvorak, at the Washington Post — “Harriet Tubman becomes a one-star general in Maryland, 160 years late”:

CHURCH CREEK, Md. — Harriet Tubman, like most Black women of her era and many Black women today, was often dismissed, underestimated and ignored.

That’s what made her such an effective spy and scout. It’s also the reason that it took our nation 160 years to honor her properly for her military service.

They finally did this on Veterans Day, coming in entourages and motorcades to her land — the vast, lonely expanse of the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge on Maryland’s Eastern Shore — to see Tubman posthumously became a one-star brigadier general in the Maryland Army National Guard.

A governor, generals and scores of veterans drove past the loblolly pines and tall saltmeadow cordgrass that Tubman navigated on foot, in the dark, over and over again.

“She walked from there to New York or Philadelphia, just using the stars and the water,” Maj. General Janeen Birckhead, the head of Maryland’s National Guard, said Monday.

Those years as a conductor on the Underground Railroad prepared her for the extraordinary service that the military honored at last…

Her military service isn’t a familiar part of Tubman’s legacy for most Americans. We hear her story in the context of honoring Black leaders or women. But not so much on Veterans Day…

“A general takes care of people, absolutely,” Birckhead said. “But a general is also tactical. A general is operational. A general is strategic. And she was all of those things.”

For many, she was called “Moses.” But Birckhead called her “General.”

At the start of the Civil War, Tubman was known for her talent and bravery guiding more than 70 enslaved people to freedom through the Underground Railroad. She was so good that there were rumors that she was an Ashanti sorceress who could take on the form of a leopard, according to the Army Historical Foundation.

“Tubman was not a commando or a steely-eyed killer, but she was able to do what neither of those types could do: pass through enemy lines and talk to her people about the local situation,” the historical foundation wrote. “She was what intelligence analysts today would call a ‘human terrain specialist’ who knew how to work with the people to accomplish the mission.”

Her most daring raid was in June 1863, when Tubman directed three steamships up the Combahee River in South Carolina.

Because of the intelligence collected by Tubman and her knowledge of the terrain that night, more than 750 enslaved people were liberated…

“We talk about this idea that ‘leave no one behind’ is not just a statement, it is a governing philosophy,” said Moore, who is also an Army veteran. “But let’s be clear about who the original ‘leave no one behind’ was, because there is nobody who defined ‘leave no one behind’ in the way that General Tubman left no one behind.”…

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And Now A LONG Bluesky Post

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Glad to see more folks are finally hopping on to the only good large* social network! It’s free, open-source, and federated, but you probably don’t care, so it doesn’t make you care; you’ll never notice unless you go looking for it. It’s ad-free, it’s highly customizable, it’s got an incredible block feature, it doesn’t shove fascism into your eyeballs 24/7 whether you like it or not. And now that everyone sees twitter for what it is–a nazi site for nazis–it’s got a lot of the accounts you know and love, and not just artists, trans shitposters, nerds, and the various intersections thereof.

So I thought I’d share some advice on getting started, plus a few philosophical notes. (Signup link)

After an obligatory cat pic of course. Here’s Momo looking enormous thanks to the power of perspective!

Getting started

1. Deprogram yourself

If you’re coming from twitter, you’re fucked in the head, but it’s not your fault. An aggressive algorithmic feed, tweaked by a white supremacist, that suppresses links and optimizes for ragebait, has primed you for a fight-or-flight response when you open the app. The promotion of nazis to the top of every thread has you looking for nazis around every corner. Social media doesn’t have to be like that–but it might take you a minute to undo ten+ years of billionaires trying to convince you otherwise.

It’s time to take a deep breath, roll up your sleeves, and get to work defining your experience for yourself.

2. Check out lists and starter packs

Bluesky does offer two in-house algorithmic feeds–“Discover” and “Popular with Friends”–but all they do is identify and track what topics interest you and your network, and serve you that content. (Pro-tip on Discover: if you click the … button next to a post you see there, you get “show more/less of this” options you can use to help train it.) But the main feed is just your reverse-chronological following feed. So it’s probably a good idea to follow a few people. To make this easy, bluesky has “starter packs”–lists of accounts that anybody can make, that you can follow with just one click. You can search starter packs here–sorting by “uses” will show you the most popular ones, such as a list of politics posters by lolgop, journalists, and legal experts. And of course, a starter pack of balloon-juice peeps (and other good accounts) by mousebumples! You can also search for starter packs by keyword for any special interests you might have.

I also recommend Joshua J. Friedman, who some call the mayor of bluesky.

Some people also make lists instead of starter packs, but there’s no search engine for them. For example, here’s a list of BJ peeps. The users on the list are under the “about” tab; you’ll notice there’s also a “posts” tab and a big “pin to home” button, which brings us to our next very important feature…

3. Follow lots of feeds and change one very important setting

Feeds! Feeds are super cool. Under the hood, a feed is an application that takes API requests and returns posts–which means that a feed can be anything the feed designer wants it to be. Most of them just pull from user lists or match certain words, #hashtags, and/or emojis, but there are more sophisticated ones, too. For example, this feed uses AI to locate cat pictures for you. You can find more feeds with this search engine. Popular ones include science, booksky, blacksky, astronomy, and birds. I also enjoy timeline cleanse and dream logs. Also a special shout-out to the gardening feed, which shares posts by opted-in users that include the seedling emoji 🌱. Check out this thread to see how to get added.

Feeds, just like user lists, have a big “pin to home” button on them. This adds the feed to the right column of the app (on desktop), or as tabs on top of the app (on mobile).

There is also a very neat setting that injects selected posts from feeds right into your following feed. Settings > following feed preferences > “show posts from my feeds”. Highly recommended!

4. Engage!

Bluesky won’t build your following for you. You’ll need to post and reply to people to make it happen. (Smaller accounts are a lot more likely to read your replies; big ones are more likely to have “priority notifications” turned on.) Humor is almost always appreciated, too, though do remember that the failure mode of “clever” is “asshole”.

Also, you can probably get your posts on a lot of feeds just by including the right hashtag or emoji, so there’s a cheap way to get eyeballs on them. Following What’s Mid can also get your stuff out there; it reposts popular-but-not-that-popular posts of yours.

MazeDancer also notes:

And may I plead, again, that you spruce up before you do that. Post 3 or 4 things. Put up a banner. Otherwise, people won’t know who you are – or if you are even a person – or if they would like to follow back.

5. Stop worrying and learn to love the nuclear block

Bluesky has a “block early, block often” ethos. When you block somebody, all your interactions are obliterated. If they have quote-posted you, nobody can see what they are quote-posting (and vice-versa). Threads involving the two of you will be chopped up into little pieces, making them nearly impossible to follow, for anybody. This is a slightly controversial feature but I like it. If somebody quote-dunks you but you don’t want to block them, you can also “detach” it to mimic the blocked-quote behavior.

6. A word about labelers

Bluesky supports third-party labeling services, which attach labels to accounts and posts. This can be used for moderation, or for fun, or just generally to improve your experience. I enjoy xblock, which lets you put twitter screenshots behind a warning; and yardcrow, which gives accounts compliments. There are many more but I don’t think there’s a centralized repository yet. Once you’ve added one, you can adjust how it works in…

7. Tweak your moderation settings

Settings > moderation. Here you can enable/disable/tweak adult content labels (might have to do on desktop if you have an iphone), and adjust how your labeling services work. You can also mute words and hashtags, temporarily or permanently. Also going to give a shout-out to my “tankies and shit” mute/block list, which is full of authoritarian communists, Hamas supporters, and other assorted miscreants. The button says ‘subscribe’, but that means ‘so you can mute or block all of these people at once’.

And now for something completely different: what’s under the hood?

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