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Reposted by bplane

Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 1d

This heartfelt and meaningful statement by Portland resident and author Cristina Breshears on another social media platform bears reposting here. I don't think the intent is to idealize Portland but to remind all of us what is important and why. (Posted here with permission.)

For nine nights now, the steady thrum of Black Hawk helicopters has circled over Portland. The sound is constant, invasive; a low mechanical beating above our homes. It’s expensive. It’s intimidating. And it’s unnecessary.

Our protests have been largely peaceful. There is no insurrection here. Yet this federalized military presence makes us feel like we are living in a war zone (the very kind of chaos this administration claims to be protecting us from).

The irony is painful: it is only this occupation that makes Portland feel unsafe.

Each hour of helicopter flight costs taxpayers between $2,000 and $4,000, depending on crew, fuel, and maintenance. Multiply that by multiple aircraft over multiple nights, and you’re looking at hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars burned into the sky.

Meanwhile, the Woodstock Food Pantry at All Saints Episcopal Church — which feeds working families, elders, and people with disabilities — has seen its federal funding slashed by 75%. How can we justify pouring public money into intimidation while cutting aid to those who simply need to eat?

This is waste, fraud, and abuse in plain sight:
* Waste of public resources on military theatrics.
* Fraud in the name of “public safety.”
* Abuse of the communities that federal agencies claim to protect.

Portland is a Sanctuary City. A sanctuary city is not a fortress. It’s a promise — a living vow that a community will protect the dignity and safety of everyone who calls it home. It means that local governments and ordinary people alike will refuse to criminalize survival. That schools, clinics, churches, and shelters will remain safe spaces no matter who you are or where you were born. But the term reaches far beyond policy. It’s an ethic of belonging; a refusal to criminalize need, difference, or desperation.

Sanctuary isn’t weakness. It’s courage. It takes moral strength to meet suffering with care instead of punishment, to believe that our neighbors’ safety is bound up in our own, to insist that safety is not achieved through force but through community, inclusion, and trust. It is living Matthew 25:40 out loud and in deed. It is an act of moral imagination and moral defiance. To hold sanctuary is to say: you belong here.

When we hold space for the most vulnerable — refugees, the unhoused, the undocumented, the disabled, the working poor, the displaced — we become something larger than a collection of individuals. We become a moral body. We do more than offer charity. We offer witness. We declare that the measure of a nation is found not in its towers or tanks, but in its tenderness.

Sanctuary cities are not lawless; they are soulful. They represent the conscience of the nation, a place where the laws of empathy still apply. To make sanctuary is to affirm that the United States is not merely a geographic territory, but a moral experiment: a republic that must constantly choose between fear and compassion, between domination and democracy.

A nation’s soul is measured not by the might of its military, but by the mercy of its people. When helicopters circle our skies in the name of order, while food pantries struggle to feed the hungry, we are forced to ask: What are we defending, and from whom? The soul of a nation survives only when we make sanctuary for one another. Not through walls or weapons, but through compassion and collective will. If we allow intimidation to replace compassion, we will have traded our conscience for control.

Please know that despite the hum of war machines overhead, the conscience of our city — whimsical, creative, stubbornly kind — can still be heard.

Portland is not the problem. Portland is the reminder. A reminder that a city can still choose to be sanctuary. That a people can still choose to be human.

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bplane @bplane.bsky.social · 23h

Realtime pictures coming out of the Portland Ice protests

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Reposted by bplane

Ian Boudreau @ianboudreau.com · 2d

ICE in Portland is coming off like Gargamel getting repeatedly rolled by the Smurfs

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bplane @bplane.bsky.social · 2d

I love this city so damn much.

The Oregonian @oregonian.com · 3d

Things are happening at Portland's ICE facility tonight.

Read more of our protest coverage here: www.oregonlive.com/crime/2025/1...

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Reposted by bplane

Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 3d

As the administration goes all in on an alternate reality about portland that bears no resemblance to fact and rule of law, continuing radical (and just plain funny, ridiculing) acts of the imagination along with other ways of getting out the reality on the ground may help curb their momentum.

fake film poster with a sunset and the portland frog protestor with words The Portland War, A Film by Ken Burns

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bplane @bplane.bsky.social · 3d

Barack Obama with Edward Said, Rashid Khalidi, and Ali Abunimah seated together at a Palestinian charity event in 1998. His treatment of Palestinians are a betrayal of the values held by the others at the table.

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bplane @bplane.bsky.social · 3d

3yo just requested Femininominon by Chappell Roan immediately followed by Sesame Street. What an icon.

bplane @bplane.bsky.social · 4d

Corporatists are such babies. This game sounds sick as hell. I'd love to swan dive off a barn roof into a pile of hay and shank Grand Wizard Cleetus in the back.

Stephen Totilo @stephentotilo.bsky.social · 4d

SCOOP: Last year, Ubisoft cancelled an Assassin's Creed game set during Reconstruction. Was to feature a Black Assassin who, among other things, fought the rise of the Klan

Sources: Leadership nixed it over concerns re: U.S. political climate, backlash to Yasuke

www.gamefile.news/p/scoop-ubis...

Scoop: Ubisoft cancelled a post-Civil War Assassin’s Creed last year

Company leadership deemed the project too controversial for the moment, sources tell Game File

www.gamefile.news

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bplane @bplane.bsky.social · 4d

A lot of people are asking questions already answered by my "Antifa is real" shirt.

Reposted by bplane

Steve Mullis @stevemullis.net · 6d

"hand-to-hand combat with antifa every night"

a guy in a frog costume standing facing a line of police and ICE agents in Portland

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bplane @bplane.bsky.social · 7d

That might be true with some of the plaintiffs, but there have been instances of researchers successfully retrieving identical or nearly identical copies of the input data.

We just don't know how feasible it is, and most individuals don't have the tools to validate that, unlike Anthropic.

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bplane @bplane.bsky.social · 7d

I see no reason why Anthropic wouldn't just remove the training data, but then train on the data already ingested by the models which is a distinction without a difference, but probably gets them off the hook legally.

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bplane @bplane.bsky.social · 7d

Supposedly they are required to remove authors' work from the training data, but it's unclear to me if the court order required Anthropic to block usage related to the offending material in the existing or future models.

I suspect not, which means it's basically just a tax on stealing IP.

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bplane @bplane.bsky.social · 7d

"Why can't they just liquefy the homeless into soylent green so I'm not mildly uncomfortable when walking to Starbucks?"

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bplane @bplane.bsky.social · 8d

Don't forget ableist for the tool currently lowering users' neural connectivity.

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bplane @bplane.bsky.social · 8d

They're disappearing our neighbors. They arrested a Quaker kid, because some facial recognition software said he through a rock through a window.

They aren't your highschool bully. They won't go away because they're not just looking for a thrill, they're looking for power.

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Reposted by bplane

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 8d

There is a simple and basic truth here which is that this is not how legitimate law enforcement agencies in a democratic nation state behave.

It’s simple and basic, so much so that it bears repeating again and again lest it slip away through the open Overton window.

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bplane @bplane.bsky.social · 9d

At ~1:20: "We do not need a warrant for somebody under arrest." Insane to actually say that out loud on camera, but this is the stage of fascism we're at.

Eric Reinhart @eric-reinhart.com · 9d

ICE just blatantly violated the law and arrested sitting Chicago Alderperson Jessie Fuentes while seeking to illegally arrest a patient in a hospital. Fuck these fascists.

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bplane @bplane.bsky.social · 10d

If the Supreme Leader of Iran wants to send me Antifa money, my cashapp is

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bplane @bplane.bsky.social · 10d

A distinction without a difference.

Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ @aaronrosspowell.com · 10d

His argument here is that every child deserves the highest quality education. And that true. But gifted ed programs aren't higher quality, they're accelerated. Gifted kids get bored and tune out in a regular classroom because it doesn't move fast enough, but it's the right place for other kids.

bplane @bplane.bsky.social · 12d

Hey, you've got a picture of Tom Morello as your PFP. Here's what he has to say about Palestine.

starlordziggy on Instagram: "Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine on Kneecap and PalestineView all 259 comments"

Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine on Kneecap and Palestine

www.instagram.com

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bplane @bplane.bsky.social · 12d

How are you so far behind on this messaging? The president is making an "invisible enemy from within" for anyone to the left of Joseph McCarthy. What are you even talking about?

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bplane @bplane.bsky.social · 12d

"Burning down buildings isn't helping things. Here's how one arsonist is reshaping the future of the accelerant industry."

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bplane @bplane.bsky.social · 12d

"Burning down buildings isn't helping things. Here's how one arsonist is reshaping the future of the accelerant industry."

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bplane @bplane.bsky.social · 12d

Every single article about Silicon Valley is "Tech CEOs have failed us at every opportunity and are stripping the country for parts, here's one Tech CEO's plan to fix it." And it's just the worst dogshit you've ever heard in your life.

CNN @cnn.com · 12d

The artificial intelligence industry has a big problem: 95% of companies that try AI aren’t making any money from it, according to a recent report.

Most companies aren’t seeing a return on AI investments. This tech CEO wants to change that | CNN Business

The artificial intelligence industry has a big problem: 95% of companies that try AI aren’t making any money from it, according to a report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last month. O...

www.cnn.com

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