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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Stand up, dammit!

Second rate reporter says what?

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

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

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

Let me file that under fuck it.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

We are learning that “working class” means “white” for way too many people.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

I would gladly pay you tuesday for a hamburger today.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

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Late Night Open Thread: Two Can AI At That Game

by Anne Laurie|  March 17, 20261:43 am| 52 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, social media

I owe some commentor a hat tip for this…

Iran is trolling Trump again. Hard. This is what happens when global politics becomes reality TV.

[image or embed]

— Hoodlum ???? (@nothoodlum.bsky.social) March 16, 2026 at 2:32 PM

In my opinion, it’s a better job than the slop Trump’s ‘Homeland Security’ kiddies have been generating.

I love that this is going viral on Musk's propaganda machine.

— Green Hombre (@greenhombre.bsky.social) March 16, 2026 at 2:39 PM

Late Night Open Thread: Two Can AI At That GamePost + Comments (52)

Interesting Read: “What mermaids can teach us about misinformation”

by Anne Laurie|  February 13, 20262:59 am| 47 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Grifters Gonna Grift, Media, social media

Interesting Read: <em>What mermaids can teach us about misinformation</em>

(Wikipedia)

 
I found this while trawling for the weekly Plagues & Pandemics post. Matt Morgan, at the British Medical Journal:

… Wandering through the Enlightenment gallery, I came across something unexpected. Behind glass lay a small, shrivelled figure, the upper half of something vaguely simian stitched to a fishtail: a Japanese “mermaid.” She was assembled nearly two centuries ago from monkey, fish, wood, and papier-mâché and was shipped to Europe to delight, deceive, or both. She looks like the outcome of a drunken bet with a taxidermist.

She is, however, not a creature of the sea but one of belief. Early collectors cared less about authenticity than spectacle. If a mermaid brought visitors through the door, who cared what was under the stitches? Mermaids were debunked long ago, but this revelation didn’t kill them—it created an industry. “Feejee mermaids,” as they were sometimes known, toured fairs for decades. Being fake was simply another marketing hook.

As I stood there, my phone buzzed with updates from the UK’s covid inquiry: muddled messaging, communication failures, public trust quietly combusting. It felt appropriate—we’re still surrounded by mermaids. They now arrive by WhatsApp rather than sailing ship, sometimes with official logos attached.

Psychologists call this the illusory truth effect. Repeated statements feel more believable, regardless of accuracy. Familiarity does the work. The effect is stubborn and democratic, fooling experts and amateurs alike. Evolutionarily, repetition once served us well. Reliable information rarely echoed endlessly unless it mattered. Then we built the internet, a machine that can repeat anything forever. We weaponised a useful shortcut.

During the pandemic I spent what little time I had outside intensive care trying to debunk misinformation. Vaccines don’t alter DNA. The 5G network doesn’t cause covid. Masks are irritating but are not a rehearsal of government tyranny. In each interview I had to use phrases I’d rather not have mentioned: when I said that “vaccines don’t cause infertility,” some listeners simply stored “vaccines plus infertility” in their memory again. The illusory truth effect doesn’t care which side you’re on—it just counts repetitions. “This is not a mermaid” posters are, to the mermaid, still free advertising…

The writer Naomi Alderman has argued that we’re living through a third great information crisis, after the invention of writing and printing. Her advice includes finding fact checkers you trust and not wading into hopeless online arguments—a form of social distancing for the frontal lobes. For doctors this avoidance feels like heresy, but replying to every mermaid only serves as unpaid public relations…

Back in the museum, the mermaid has been defanged. She’s no longer a fraud but a teaching aid. We see the stitching. We understand the history. We can enjoy the story without believing the biology.

The lies we now face are harder to keep behind glass. They arrive from people we love, wrapped in friendly fonts and “just asking questions.” Perhaps our task is the same as the museum’s: illuminate the construction, explain the motives, and make sure that a better story is already in place. Because the more we parade the myth, the more real it can seem.

Interesting Read: <em>“What mermaids can teach us about misinformation”</em>Post + Comments (47)

TGIFriday Morning Open Thread

by Anne Laurie|  January 30, 20267:28 am| 303 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Trumpery, social media

This is a good chunk of this discourse as well, people are pissy that they've had to pay particular attention to politics the last decade because of the global fascist movement instead of being on proverbial Obama cruise control, and I'm sorry I dunno what to tell you

[image or embed]

— Mike Black (@mikeblack114.bsky.social) January 29, 2026 at 2:58 PM

We just need Dems to Be Like McConnell & 15 years later the Cargo of a StrongMan will appear & make the bad people go away by being a good dictator.

— Nied (@nied.bsky.social) January 29, 2026 at 2:57 PM

Sure you can point to things that Democrats are doing to oppose the things making me mad but I just don't FEEL like they are, so I will keep posting about how I hate Democrats until Republicans stop making me mad.

[image or embed]

— Nied (@nied.bsky.social) January 29, 2026 at 3:39 PM

Maybe it really is the ‘kids’, these days?

I think there are a lot of people who didn't pay attention to politics before Obama, too young, and 2008 was their first campaign and it did turn out like a dream and everyone seemed like a Democrat and they internalized that as the norm

— Henry (@henrythedog.bsky.social) January 28, 2026 at 9:29 PM

then they went back to not really paying close attention to politics, but picked up Dem frustration at McConnell without really understanding what Mitch was doing. Progressives thought thanks to the numbers they could get the ACA with public option

so I think unrealistic expectations happened around the public option and unrealistic let down when it had to go, passing the ACA was the big deal, the public option was a cherry on top, that McConnell’s brick wall managed to shave off, but he couldn’t stop the ACA

Republicans were hair on fire mad about the ACA from 2009 till 2017 and still fucking hate it even if they no longer talk about 5 times a day and Mitch McConnell couldn’t stop it from passing because he was the minority leader

Mitch McConnell though became a hate figure for progressives and Dems and his name because short hand for Republicans refusing to work with Obama on anything. So when Republicans won the House in 2010 (not the Senate) people who only kinda pay attention pinned Boehner’s actions on McConnell

so lots of 30-40 year olds who became hyper political after Trump’s win walked away from kinda paying attention during Obama with two bad lessons

1. if Dems just want it and find a message that makes everyone feel good they’ll sweep forever!

2. the Senate minority leader runs the government

they forget the super cool, great speaker, Hope guy who won in a landslide in 2008 barely beat a human cardboard cut out, a man somehow a comic caricature of both a out of touch rich guy, and a Mormon dad, because people really are Republicans they’re not faking it

and second the minority in Congress can’t on their own block big monetary bills, if the majority really sticks together, at best you can pull off one or two of the majority to kill a feature of the bill, or luck out like we did at ACA repeal, but Mitch McConnell didn’t run the world

======

Elsewhere… Crazification Factor achieved!
TGIFriday Morning Open Thread 23

TGIFriday Morning Open ThreadPost + Comments (303)

Late Night Monsters Open Thread: Right-Wing Influencers in Minneapolis

by Anne Laurie|  January 29, 20263:38 am| 40 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Shitty Cops, social media, Sociopaths

In Minneapolis, far-right influencers posing as journalists are casting themselves as victims and labeling ICE-watch groups “terrorists.” Their big new evidence—“infiltrated” Signal chats—isn’t a secret, had no calls for violence and urged people to witness, not interfere.
www.ms.now/news/minneap…

[image or embed]

— Brandy Zadrozny (@brandyzadrozny.bsky.social) January 28, 2026 at 9:01 AM

Trump’s been very bad for the country, but the Wingnut Wurlizter has no reason to complain. The indefatigable Brandy Zadrozny, at MS-Now, “In Minneapolis, far-right influencers frame ICE resistance as terrorism”:

As communities organize against Trump’s federal crackdown, a network of pundits is building an “insurrectionist” narrative against them.

Over the weekend on X, conservative influencer Cameron Higby began posting screen recordings from the encrypted messaging app Signal showing a list of hundreds of usernames in one massive group chat in Minnesota. He posted the video alongside a red-siren emoji and a message to more than 300,000 followers, concerning U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations: Higby had “infiltrated” the Minneapolis resistance.

MS NOW has not verified the Signal channels. But this kind of community group chat has become common in Chicago, Los Angeles and Minneapolis, where neighbors and activists are using the apps to organize and monitor ICE operations amid President Donald Trump’s federal crackdowns.

For Higby, the chat was evidence of something more. He dubbed the operation “Signal Gate” and presented the chats as evidence that “Minnesota insurrectionists” were coordinating to “hunt” ICE agents, to impede and assault them and to obstruct their enforcement of immigration laws. He called for a congressional investigation into the community activists and their chats. None of the chats Higby posted included plans or calls for obstruction or violence.

His posts spread on conservative media, racking up tens of millions of views while fueling a White House narrative that federal immigration officers in Minneapolis were facing a violent uprising by mobs of “domestic terrorists.” Online crowds began combing through the leaked chats, attempting to identify participants and alleging without evidence that local elected officials were involved. FBI Director Kash Patel on Monday confirmed that the Trump administration was paying attention…

Higby is part of a loose network of reactionary conservative content creators who style themselves journalists and claim to document rampant left-wing violence. In October, the White House hosted an antifa roundtable event — attended by Higby and other influencers with ties to Turning Point USA and its media arm, Frontlines — where these influencers reinforced the narrative that far-left extremists were mobilizing a nationwide campaign of violence against ICE agents…

Their presence at demonstrations has repeatedly coincided with heightened tensions and physical altercations. The confrontations are then cited as evidence that the protests are inherently violent, and justify a harsher government response — most recently, demands from far-right influencers that Trump invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota…

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Late Night Monsters Open Thread: Right-Wing Influencers in MinneapolisPost + Comments (40)

Saturday Morning Open Thread

by Anne Laurie|  January 24, 20267:48 am| 223 Comments

This post is in: How about that weather?, Open Threads, Shitty Cops, Midnight Confessions, social media

Stay safe, y’all…

"gallons of milk" is one of the weirdest unit choices I've ever seen or hope to ever see

[image or embed]

— post malone ergo propter malone (@proptermalone.bsky.social) January 23, 2026 at 9:54 AM

What else do people typically lift that's 8-10 pounds, though? If they wanted to use an everyday unit, that isn't an actual unit of measurement?
They could have gone with a twelve-pack, I guess.

— Warren Terra (@warrenterra.bsky.social) January 23, 2026 at 10:23 AM

Finally we can talk about ice in terms of kitchen table issues :|

— Graham Cummins (@grahamiancummins.bsky.social) January 23, 2026 at 11:07 AM

******
Speaking of major storms, the Great Move — well, Phase One — has been accomplished. Thirty-five years of Mathom Haul have been decanted into our ‘new’ house by teams of five movers and four junk guys, filling the two-car garage & most of the living room, one 5x5ft and one 10x15ft storage unit, and most of a 10ft dumpster, with no physical catastrophes and only minor property losses. Since the necessary accessibility remodeling of the new place has yet to be started (another long saga), we’ll be signing another six-month lease on the apartment here, and then I can begin the delicate / tedious project of going through all the boxes the movers packed and further reducing the bulk by (it is to be hoped) at least half. (The original plan was to put Mathom Haul on the market in the Spring, but our amazing realtor found a flipper who wanted to have it on the market by then.)

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Saturday Morning Open ThreadPost + Comments (223)

Late Night Open Thread: On Doomerism

by Anne Laurie|  January 13, 20262:20 am| 102 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Your Place Is In The Resistance, social media

This is a petty issue, not an important one: a trifle, comparatively.
If you think we’re doomed, you’re free to think so. If you think the law and protest and politics are pointless, likewise. If you think methods and issues people are talking about are irrelevant, that’s for you to think.
/1

— Fucking Bitch Hat (@kenwhite.bsky.social) January 9, 2026 at 1:07 PM

/2 But if, when folks are risking their lives to oppose ICE, and people are talking about how to best defend them and how we might support each other and do right, the role YOU are called to is to slump in and tell us what we are talking about is naive and meaningless, you can just fuck right off.

/3 That sort of performative emo narcissism is a personality between you and your therapist and the Lord your God and get it fuck off my thread, I am blocking your tedious ass.

Our ancestors were real breathing people who turned sticks into fire, their descendants spent thousands of years building a regime of unsurpassed global peace and prosperity, and we shall not entertain the suggestion that it all ends here just because the man with the golden toilet says so.

— Michael Engard (@engard.me) January 9, 2026 at 1:10 PM

It's totally understandable if you're dooming about any facet of the American experiment right now. So your feelings are "valid" in the sense that they represent real anxiety, and I get that. But to vent that anxiety in other people's spaces is wrong for three reasons.

— Ken Jennings (@kenjennings.bsky.social) January 7, 2026 at 10:39 PM

First, it’s factually wrong. There will be elections in 2026 and 2028 under Trump, just like there were elections last year under Trump and during his first term. This despite one of the two major parties now harboring a lot of anti-democratic elements and ideas.

I’m not particularly interested in convincing anyone on this point and won’t try, the future is the future. But if the left side of the political spectrum is still the domain of scholarship and expertise, take note that you don’t find scholars and experts you worrying about canceled US elections.

Second, and probably most importantly, it’s tactically wrong. “No point discussing political opposition to fascism, there won’t be elections anyway” cedes victory to your enemies. It’s defeatism and nihilism.

Finally, it’s wrong AS A MATTER OF ETIQUETTE. Entering a total stranger’s discussion and leading with your private anxiety is as off-putting in social media replies as it would be in real life. If you wouldn’t interrupt a stranger at a party to announce that America is doomed, don’t do it here.

If you are anxious and sad about the state of the world, that’s fine, and there are plenty of strategies for dealing with that. But I think you already know that drive-by online dooming isn’t a strategy. It’s selfish and adolescent. It’s a contagion that only spreads the worst of you, not the best.

Take a second and think before posting the easy Eeyore reply. You might have something substantive to say instead. Or, even better, you can say nothing at all.

Late Night Open Thread: On DoomerismPost + Comments (102)

Late Night Open Thread: Elon’s Pr0n Machine

by Anne Laurie|  January 10, 20263:52 am| 25 Comments

This post is in: Artificial Intelligence, Open Threads, Elon Musk, social media, Sociopaths

I mean thing with ai image generation rn is literally "AI oligarchs okay with pedophilia." But no one is actually just saying it out loud.
AI is holding up our economy with porn. Cyberpunk 2077 ass universe

— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) January 8, 2026 at 9:22 PM

I just sent this message to Durbin, Duckworth, & Schakowsky:
On X Grok AI is creating sexual images, including of children. The European Union is actively considering shutting down X across the continent. The Congress should investigate X, and you should immediately delete your account.

[image or embed]

— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) January 9, 2026 at 4:11 PM

Someone on here today, perhaps
@danahoule.bsky.social, suggested using
@teslatakedown.com techniques against Apple and Apple Stores to help them decide to do the right thing.

[image or embed]

— Frederick Winslow Homer Simpson (@newdealer.bsky.social) January 9, 2026 at 3:41 PM

… In a letter published on Friday, senators Ron Wyden of Oregon, Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico and Edward Markey of Massachusetts said Google and Apple “must remove these apps from the app stores until X’s policy violations are addressed.”

X, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, has been under fire from officials around the world since last week, when Grok began flooding the site with AI-generated nonconsensual images of women and children wearing revealing bikinis, see-through underwear, or in degrading, violent, or sexualized poses.

The senators’ letter, first reported by NBC News, noted that Google has terms of service that bar app makers from “creating, uploading, or distributing content that facilitates the exploitation or abuse of children.” Apple’s terms of service, they said, bar “sexual or pornographic material.”…

Google and Apple did not immediately return messages seeking comment. X referred Reuters to a January 2 post in which it said the site takes action “against illegal content on X, including Child Sexual Abuse Material.”

X’s parent company xAI did not answer specific questions about the letter or Grok’s explicit output, sending only its generic response that cited unspecified “Legacy Media Lies.”…

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Late Night Open Thread: Elon’s Pr0n MachinePost + Comments (25)

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