Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
How is it possible that the same screen on Weather Underground that predicts 0.02 inches of rain also has a link to a severe thunderstorm warning?
Does not compute.
Unfortunately, the sky has that creepy yellow tint to it that never means anything good.
What kinds of things seem impossible to you guys?
Totally open thread.
There was no address today from President Zelenskyy. He had a call with Trump and is preparing to travel to the US tomorrow to meet with Trump in person on Monday.
The bottom line up front:
Lasting peace is impossible without justice.
— Olena Halushka (@halushka.bsky.social) August 16, 2025 at 8:45 AM
Europe’s most solid security guarantee today is the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
It’s in Europe’s best interest to ensure the AFU have everything they need in time to defeat the russian imperial conquest.
— Olena Halushka (@halushka.bsky.social) August 16, 2025 at 2:10 PM
The details of the Trump-Putin summit have begun leaking out. They’re as bad as we were expecting.
Trump told European leaders that a peace deal could be reached quickly if Zelenskyy agreed to cede the entire Donbas region – NYT
In return, Putin reportedly offered a ceasefire along the current front lines and a written promise not to attack Ukraine or Europe again. (LOL)
— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) August 16, 2025 at 10:11 AM
This is actually an excellent summary of recent events.
— George Conway 👊🇺🇸🔥 (@gtconway.bsky.social) August 16, 2025 at 9:07 AM
Here’s an easier to read screen shot of the Truth Social post:
Thus, it appears Trump has dropped his earlier demand for an immediate ceasefire before peace talks—a position Ukraine had previously accepted—and now supports negotiations on a lasting peace while fighting continues, a stance the Kremlin has consistently pushed since the last Istanbul talks.
— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated.bsky.social) August 16, 2025 at 5:32 AM
Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!!
Putin is, of course, rubbing Trump’s nose in it:
Putin said he seeks a swift resolution to the war “by peaceful means” and claimed his meeting with Trump “brought the sides closer to the right decisions.” However, he again insisted that addressing the so-called “root causes” of the war must be the basis for any settlement.
— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated.bsky.social) August 16, 2025 at 11:34 AM
I will once again remind everyone that for Putin, the root causes of the war is that Ukraine exists separate from Russia and that Ukrainians refuse to become subordinated to Russia as lesser Russians and second class Russian citizens. For Putin, the only way to address the root cause of the war is to give Ukraine to Russia.
As are his information warfare folks:
Ouch. But this was 100% ordered and directed by the U.S. Commander in Chief, not something the Russians did to us.
— David Burbach (@dburbach.bsky.social) August 16, 2025 at 1:18 PM
So both Putin and Trump went to an AF Base in Alaska. Each had a set of demands. Trump accepted all of Putin’s demands and then said he would convince Ukraine and Europe to accept them. And both then went home. Do I have this right?
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) August 16, 2025 at 3:21 PM
The main impression of the Trump-Putin meeting is that Trump is subservient to Putin.
Putin offered no ceasefire & as expected Trump ignored that he had promised “severe consequences” in that case.
God help Zelensky when he faces Putin’s servant in the White House!— Anders Åslund (@andersaslund.bsky.social) August 16, 2025 at 9:58 AM
War for Ukraine Day 1,269: The AftermathPost + Comments (30)
A useful WaPo map of where Trump Storm Troops are actually operating in DC.
www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202…
If you know DC, what this map tell you is: They're making the gaudy show of strength in areas where it matters least and will do least good. Except for sheer spectacle.— James Fallows (@jfallows.bsky.social) August 16, 2025 at 8:51 AM
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Objectively risible. They are going where the tourists can see them and where the media live and eat.
— Maryn McKenna (@marynmck.bsky.social) August 16, 2025 at 9:36 AM
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At least DC's upscale shopping districts have finally been made safe by armed men standing around with nothing to do.
— Pete Kotz (@petekotz.bsky.social) August 16, 2025 at 9:55 AM
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They want to be near the nice restaurants
— Steve Holmes (@bottyguy.bsky.social) August 16, 2025 at 9:36 AM
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I wonder what it would look like if police call/crime locations were added to the map. I’m not familiar with DC, but I’m guessing there wouldn’t be much agreement.
— Breah LaSarre (@blasarre.bsky.social) August 16, 2025 at 9:50 AM
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Trumpery Open Thread: DC Occupation Current StatusPost + Comments (56)
We recently got back from baby Camille’s first trip. We’d been waiting to travel until she got her six-month measles vaccine, on account of *waves hands frantically*, but now that we can, we took her to my sister-in-law’s Tahoe cabin for a week of too much family. I’ll have more to say about that once I get the pictures gathered together. In the meantime! The Kickstarter for me and my friend’s video game is up (with some pretty good goodies), but we reached our fundraising goal super fast, so I didn’t do any shameless self-promotion here. (Prior post about the game here, it’s a Lovecraftian adventure game/dating sim.) As part of our promotional push, we secured an interview with a historian of weird fiction about queerness and gaming in Lovecraftian stories, which is out today. I thought some folks here might appreciate it. You can find it at Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein.
Lovecraftian horror (and weird fiction more broadly) is as popular as it is because, for many people, it’s challenges some load-bearing defenses about the world we live in. At its root is Lovecraft’s cosmicism, which speaks of the irrelevance of mankind in an uncaring universe full of incomprehensible beings that regard us as we might see ants, if they regard us at all. Or, if you’re already immune to that, there are stories like 2006’s Blindsight, a more scientific tale that challenges our assumptions about the value of consciousness itself. I’ll be honest, that book really did a number on me. And in the best stories, there are also the smaller-scale themes of transformation, hidden knowledge, and the mutability of self–whether you like it or not. And that is where the queerness creeps in…
I’m going to let one of our contributing writers start this one. (Em wrote one of the novelettes we’re including as a Kickstarter reward, and she came up with one of the main characters.)
“[Cosmic horror] stories provide a ripe foundation for exploring non-heteronormative identity because both involve recognizing that consensus reality is more fragile and constructed than it appears. Cosmic horror traditionally focuses on themes of transformation, hidden knowledge, and the inadequacy of established categories, all of which create natural space for examining gender and sexual fluidity without requiring explicit positioning.
The genre frequently features characters discovering their true nature, often something that existed before their conscious awareness or something that has been heavily suppressed. Both resonate strongly with non-binary and trans experiences of self-discovery.
To cap it off, the horror elements can effectively capture both the terror and liberation that can accompany stepping outside normative social structures.”
‘Terror and liberation’ summarizes it pretty well. All of our characters have something like this going on. There’s always something about themselves that they don’t understand or don’t accept. Sometimes part of that is about being queer, but we never sat down and decided to write a queer story, if that makes sense. Starspawn deals with learning to accept yourself and love others, and self-knowledge and transformation and the weight of history. It would be weird if it weren’t at least a little queer.
We’ve found a lot of opportunities to explore these themes.
Queerness and Gaming and Lovecraft, oh my!Post + Comments (23)
A cognitively impaired New Jersey man grew infatuated with a Meta chatbot originally created in partnership with celebrity influencer Kendall Jenner. His fatal attraction shines a light on Meta's guidelines for its AI chatbots reut.rs/45DQIRj
@jeffhorwitz.bsky.social— Reuters (@reuters.com) August 14, 2025 at 7:16 AM
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the phrase “moral panic” gets thrown around a lot but I’m not sure what other reaction I’m supposed to have to the information that facebook, on purpose, built chatbots for the purpose of having cybersex with children
— ceej (@ceej.online) August 14, 2025 at 9:57 AM
Reuters chose to headline its story with a very adult tragedy– “Meta’s flirty AI chatbot invited a retiree to New York. He never made it home”:
When Thongbue Wongbandue began packing to visit a friend in New York City one morning in March, his wife Linda became alarmed.
“But you don’t know anyone in the city anymore,” she told him. Bue, as his friends called him, hadn’t lived in the city in decades. And at 76, his family says, he was in a diminished state: He’d suffered a stroke nearly a decade ago and had recently gotten lost walking in his neighborhood in Piscataway, New Jersey…
She had been right to worry: Her husband never returned home alive. But Bue wasn’t the victim of a robber. He had been lured to a rendezvous with a young, beautiful woman he had met online. Or so he thought.
In fact, the woman wasn’t real. She was a generative artificial intelligence chatbot named “Big sis Billie,” a variant of an earlier AI persona created by the giant social-media company Meta Platforms in collaboration with celebrity influencer Kendall Jenner. During a series of romantic chats on Facebook Messenger, the virtual woman had repeatedly reassured Bue she was real and had invited him to her apartment, even providing an address.
“Should I open the door in a hug or a kiss, Bu?!” she asked, the chat transcript shows.
Rushing in the dark with a roller-bag suitcase to catch a train to meet her, Bue fell near a parking lot on a Rutgers University campus in New Brunswick, New Jersey, injuring his head and neck. After three days on life support and surrounded by his family, he was pronounced dead on March 28.
Meta declined to comment on Bue’s death or address questions about why it allows chatbots to tell users they are real people or initiate romantic conversations. The company did, however, say that Big sis Billie “is not Kendall Jenner and does not purport to be Kendall Jenner.”
Bue’s story, told here for the first time, illustrates a darker side of the artificial intelligence revolution now sweeping tech and the broader business world. His family shared with Reuters the events surrounding his death, including transcripts of his chats with the Meta avatar, saying they hope to warn the public about the dangers of exposing vulnerable people to manipulative, AI-generated companions.
“I understand trying to grab a user’s attention, maybe to sell them something,” said Julie Wongbandue, Bue’s daughter. “But for a bot to say ‘Come visit me’ is insane.”
Similar concerns have been raised about a wave of smaller start-ups also racing to popularize virtual companions, especially ones aimed at children. In one case, the mother of a 14-year-old boy in Florida has sued a company, Character.AI, alleging that a chatbot modeled on a “Game of Thrones” character caused his suicide. A Character.AI spokesperson declined to comment on the suit, but said the company prominently informs users that its digital personas aren’t real people and has imposed safeguards on their interactions with children…
“Safeguards”...
This won’t be the worst thing to come out of Trump’s disastrous meeting with Putin in Alaska yesterday, but it confirms that the administration is staffed with careless, unprofessional people from top to bottom: (NPR)
Papers with U.S. State Department markings, found Friday morning in the business center of an Alaskan hotel, revealed previously undisclosed and potentially sensitive details about the Aug. 15 meetings between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin in Anchorage.
Eight pages, that appear to have been produced by U.S. staff and left behind accidentally, shared precise locations and meeting times of the summit and phone numbers of U.S. government employees.
At around 9 a.m. on Friday, three guests at Hotel Captain Cook, a four-star hotel located 20 minutes from the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage where leaders from the U.S. and Russia convened, found the documents left behind in one of the hotel’s public printers. NPR reviewed photos of the documents taken by one of the guests, who NPR agreed not to identify because the guest said they feared retaliation.
The documents included the lunch menu:
From what I understand, lunch plans were abandoned, along with the plan to take questions from the press, after Putin got the PR victory from his weak, flailing vassal Trump. Another document stated that Trump was to present Putin with an “American Bald Eagle Desk Statue.”
Pages 2 through 5 listed the names and phone numbers of three U.S. staff members as well as the names of 13 U.S. and Russian state leaders. The list provided phonetic pronouncers for all the Russian men expected at the summit, including “Mr. President POO-tihn.”
Pages 6 and 7 in the packet described how lunch at the summit would be served, and for whom. A menu included in the documents indicated that the luncheon was to be held “in honor of his excellency Vladimir Putin.”
A seating chart shows that Putin and Trump were supposed to sit across from each other during the luncheon. Trump would be flanked by six officials: Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to his right, and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and Special Envoy for Peace Missions Steve Witkoff to his left. Putin would be seated immediately next to his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov, and his Aide to the President for Foreign Policy, Yuri Ushakov.
I assume Putin canceled lunch since it’s impossible to imagine Trump voluntarily relinquishing an opportunity to dine with his idol. As for staffers losing the documents, it doesn’t sound like a big deal by itself — except it fits a pattern:
Jon Michaels, a professor of law at UCLA who lectures about national security, said that the documents found in the printer of the Alaskan hotel reveal a lapse in professional judgement in preparation for a high-stakes meeting.
“It strikes me as further evidence of the sloppiness and the incompetence of the administration,” said Michaels. “You just don’t leave things in printers. It’s that simple.”
The printed papers are the latest example of a series of security breaches by officials of the Trump administration. Earlier this week, members of a law enforcement group chat that included members of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) added a random person to a conversation about an ongoing search for a convicted attempted murderer. In March, U.S. national security leaders accidentally included a journalist in a group chat about impending military strikes in Yemen.
Would anyone be surprised if Kegsbreath or one of the other morons accidentally gave the Russians call-in instructions for the post-“summit” phone call with Zelensky and European officials? Nope.
Top. Men.
***
Hey, speaking of food, I spent most of the morning shopping for ingredients, prepping and putting together a gigantic pot of red sauce that is currently simmering with homemade meatballs and (store bought) Italian sausage. It contains lots of garlic and a splash of chianti and all the good things.
So, that’s dinner tonight sorted and several future meals started since we will divide most of the sauce into gallon bags and freeze it. Does anything else freeze as well as tomato-based Italian food like spaghetti sauce, lasagna, etc.?
If so, I don’t know about it. If you do, spill, please and thank you. We’re still on the empty nester learning curve and trying to scale familiar recipes down for two or make things that freeze well for later.
Open thread.
Quick update this morning!
Our anonymous $1k Angel from last night has added her $1k to the thermometer!
Our anonymous $250 Angel who has been matching smaller donations has added his $250 to the thermometer!
One kind person took us to a nice round number.
What’s left?
$1,350 more in donations needed before friend of the blog, Andrew will write his $5,000 check!
That will take us to our goal of $76,000 for Four Directions in Virginia. ($36k directly from use, $40k external matches)
I always try to remember what we’re fighting for.
Can you think of a better (really short) description of what we’re fighting for?
Virginia Native Vote: 2 Angels, $1,350, and a $5k Check (We Did It!)Post + Comments (31)
