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Moira Donegan @moiradonegan.bsky.social · 1d

You can keep potstickers in your freezer and whip up a quick sauce, maybe some sauteed vegetables, in a matter of minutes when you're too tired to cook a real meal. They do not want you to know this.

Kevin Gannon (now a Moo Deng fan account) @thetattooedprof.bsky.social · 1d

When in doubt, dumplings for dinner is never the wrong choice

Chengdu style dumplings from The Dumpling Lady's stand in Charlotte. Half of them have already been eaten.

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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 1d

This is why I think the next Democratic president needs to use the EXACT tools that SCOTUS has handed Trump. Don't leave room for any distinctions.

Impound funds for deportation. Give ICE the USAID treatment. Refuse to collect government-backed debt. Purge MAGA loyalists from the executive branch.

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Thistle313 @thistle313.bsky.social · 1d

Also finished reading @tkingfisher.com's newish book, Hemlock & Silver. I always enjoy reading her fractured fairy tales, because they come at the story from an angle that I don't expect. Of course once I finish, I think "So why didn't I think of that before!"

Image of a book with a black cover showing a wreath made of flowers and a snake, surrounding a bright red apple. Elements of the wreath also twine around the title, Hemlock & Silver, and the author's name, T. Kingfisher. The edges of the book's pages are sprayed poison apple green.

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Thistle313 @thistle313.bsky.social · 1d

I zipped thru @caseyjohnston.bsky.social's A Physical Education in two days. (I had planned on three, because I'm giving the book to my daughter for her birthday today!) I enjoyed this book a lot and it may even get me to go to the gym with my kid. LOL

Cover of Casey Johnston's A Physical Education: How I Escaped Diet Culture and Gained the Power of Lifting. Shows a muscular woman's back with a rainbow gradient from left to right.

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Ryan Marino, MD @ryanmarino.bsky.social · 1d

The efficacy after 2 doses is 99% for measles, 95% for mumps, and 90% for rubella after just 1 dose. There has never been a single documented death attributable to the MMR vaccine. The risk of life-threatening side effects is ~1 in 1 million doses. It can even be given as post-exposure prophylaxis!

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Kevin Hearne @kevinhearne.bsky.social · 2d

The hockey season begins tonight, and this Saturday marks the first Hockey Night in Canada. For the rest of this year into April, if you need a Canadian on a Saturday night, no you don’t

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Ward Q. Normal (he/him) @wardqnormal.bsky.social · 2d

I have taken
the freedom of speech
that was in
the Constitution

and which
you were probably
using
for peaceful protest

Forgive me
the courts said they were
so agitating
and so irritating

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2d

Trump: "We took the freedom of speech away because that's been through the courts and the courts said you have freedom of speech, but what has happened is when they burn a flag it agitates and irritates crowds."

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Beth Andres-Beck @beth4ma.bsky.social · 3d

My TikTok feed is talking about the “passive-aggressive” resistance in Portland.

What a great description!
Find passive-aggression annoying? So will fascist!
Their reaction makes them look totally out of line? Hey, truth in advertising!

Our best hope is the creativity of ordinary Americans.

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Thistle313 @thistle313.bsky.social · 3d

The Green Bone Saga is so good. Try it, you’ll like it!

Fonda Lee @fondalee.bsky.social · 3d

The JADE CITY ebook is an Amazon Prime Day deal today (Tuesday) for a ludicrously low $2.99 which is much less than what I paid for boba tea yesterday so if you still haven't jumped on the Green Bone Saga bandwagon, this is your sign👇

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John Rogers @johnrogers.bsky.social · 4d

Abolish. Fire. Prosecute.

Judd Legum @juddlegum.bsky.social · 4d

1. Federal agents from ICE and other agencies are wrongly detaining U.S. citizens, sometimes detaining them for days, on suspicion that they are undocumented immigrants.

The raids are done without search warrants or other procedures designed to protect civil liberties.

How federal agents are terrorizing American citizens

Last week, hundreds of heavily armed federal agents descended on an apartment complex in Chicago, arriving in Black Hawk helicopters and moving trucks.

popular.info

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ashley fairbanks @ziibiing.com · 4d

i don’t really understand why this made me start bawling i just really love seeing people try to help each other in creative ways and that this shit is necessary

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JB_AU @jbau.bsky.social · 12d

This whole section really.

Finally: AI cannot do your job, but an AI salesman can 100% convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job, and when the bubble bursts, the money-hemorrhaging "foundation models" will be shut off and we'll lose the AI that can't do your job, and you will be long gone, retrained or retired or "discouraged" and out of the labor market, and no one will do your job.
AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations:

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Timothy Snyder @timothysnyder.bsky.social · 5d

One of the lessons I discuss in "On Tyranny":
Listen for dangerous words.

Text card: Listen for dangerous words.
Be alert to the use of the words extremism and terrorism. Be alive to the fatal notions of emergency and exception. Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.
#OnTyranny

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Dr Lindsey Fitzharris @drlindseyfitz.bsky.social · 6d

Memphis writer Dan Conaway, who helped found the @dailymemphian.bsky.social & comes from a century of local journalism, has just been censored by his own publication.

Here’s the column they wouldn't run.

Please consider writing:
[email protected]
[email protected]

Stand with Dan.

"Family and friends," he said, "then home – where you live, your neighborhood, your town, your city – then your state, then your region, then your country."
My father was explaining to me when I was 11 or 12 why he went to war when he didn't have to. He was driving me to Boy Scout camp, and we had some time to talk. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, he was an engineer, and his company had government contracts that could keep him here. At almost 33, he was also getting long in the tooth for war. My mother would also have me tell you he also had two small children, my brothers, one eight months, and the other five.
He joined the Navy a week after Pearl Harbor.
"Those are the priorities in the order of priority," he continued. "But if your country is threatened, really threatened, everything flips. If your country, this country, falls, everything in that lineup falls, everything in that lineup is at mortal risk."
"So, I'll know when it's country first?"
"You'll know," he answered.
Last week, I shared the mayor's plan for peacefully enduring, if not gaining, from the National Guard presence in our city.
That was last week.
This week changed everything.
This week, the president called an extraordinary meeting. He and the secretary of defense addressed a room of some 800 generals and admirals called from their command posts around the world to hear the president's words in Virginia.
He told our country's top brass their attention would soon be turned inward. That they would be commanding military operations in our cities against the "enemy within." Further, he said that they should hold military training exercises in our cities.
Never mind what Secretary Hegseth told them. His message was as empty as his suit. He basically told them they had to shave and lose weight.
The Commander in Chief told them their enemies are Americans, and that their field of battle would be Democratic cities. The great power and might of America's military would be turned toward its own.

Toward here, people. Not here in general terms, here in very specific terms. Memphis is an official battlefield.
"Family and friends," he said, "then home – where you live, your neighborhood, your town, your city ..."
As the rest of the world rages, the president told his top military leaders that we will disengage from the protection of our interests and those of our allies and attack the political enemies of our president, root out the "radical left," crush "the woke," seal our borders against mighty Venezuela, and reduce blue cities and states to whimpering vassals of the federal government.
The president who would be king.
Before this week, he commanded the justice department to intimidate and threaten, even indite, his political enemies including a former director of the FBI, and DA's in Georgia and New York.
A president can't do that. Not just because it's blatantly personal and political. Not just because it's abuse of power, petty, and childish.
Because most if not all of what he's doing is straight-up, in-your-face, unconstitutional. It is, in fact, just the latest additions to the long list of unconstitutional that defines the dangerous actions of this man.
You know this is wrong. No what-about this or that. You know this is wrong. No bemoaning the awful state of something or somewhere. You know this is wrong.
Nothing excuses this. Nothing.
Now, he has openly told the military that anyone in America that challenges him is the enemy, and where they live the new front.
The National Guard deployed here will be unarmed and have no power to arrest. They are a camo-covered smokescreen, eye candy for the cameras disguising what will really be going on, click bait for the internet.
We now know that Trump and his minions are sending hundreds of ICE agents and FBI agents to Memphis, not to mention a small army of Justice Department prosecutors and investigators. The mission is to arrest, prosecute, incarcerate/deport as many people as possible.

Pam Bondi, U.S. Attorney General, was here this week to tell us that, along with Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, and Stephen Miller, Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff. Not to mention, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, looking very much like he was waiting to be told wat to do, bless his heart.
Here, ready to rumble.
Who wasn't here or invited was Steve Cohen, the duly elected Democratic representative in Congress of all the people who will be in that rumble.
Republicans should be every bit as alarmed as Democrats – every American should – because every time Trump stomps on the Constitution, he leaves that boot print on every one of us.
Or, as the very first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, famously put it, "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
Due process and habeas corpus are becoming quaint reminders of a once proud nation of constitutional laws and justice.
What happened in that room in Virginia this week, and what happened out at Shelby Farms give us more than a hint of what could follow the National Guard to Memphis.
"So, I'll know when it's country first?"
"You'll know," he answered.

One man has put 340 million people at risk of losing this democracy. Just as surely as he's made the Oval Office look like a bad imitation of royal chambers at Versailles, just as surely as he's made the majority of both house of Congress look like lackeys waiting to empty the king's chamber pot, just as surely as he's turning the Constitution into a Mara-a-Lago doormat, just as surely, he's coming for us.
You're right, Dad. I know.
I'm a Memphian, soon under siege.
(Lt. Frank E. Conaway Sr., 1943)

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Gillian Branstetter @gbbranstetter.bsky.social · 5d

Like yes, calling a trans kid by their chosen name and pronouns makes them feel more safe at school and that improves overall mental well-being, but you should also do it because you're an adult who can choose not to act like a dick

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Thistle313 @thistle313.bsky.social · 5d

I really enjoyed @victoriagoddard.bsky.social’s new novella, Olive and the Dragon. It’s part of a longer series- Greenwing & Dart- so not really standalone. But most of my favorites are part of a series. Happy Birthday!

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RC deWinter @rcdewinter.bsky.social · 6d

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Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 6d

This isn't "one bad apple" shit. It never was. This isn't even a collection of rotten apples that has spoiled the other apples.

They were never apples. The fruit was always poison. All of it.

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Thistle313 @thistle313.bsky.social · 6d

Also read @poopraven.bsky.social's Jack of Thorns this week. What do an American florist and an English aristocrat have in common? More than they think! I enjoyed spending time with Laurence and Quentin and look forward to reading more of their story. More English folklore - you know I can't stop!

Cover image for Amelia Faulkner's novel, Jack of Thorns showing a blond man in a black shirt and the shadow of another man dressed in a suit.

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Thistle313 @thistle313.bsky.social · 6d

Tore thru @seananmcguire.bsky.social's newest October Daye novel, Silver and Lead. After the excitement of the last three books, this one is a little more laid back. Still extremely satisfying, but I'll need to reread it again more carefully soon.

Cover image of Seanan McGuire's newest novel, Silver and Lead shows a brown haired fair skinned October in a blood spattered tshirt and leather jacket, holding a short sword, with other objects (knife, cup, books, clock) in the foreground.

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MiMi Aye @meemalee.bsky.social · 7d

Author and filmmaker Justine Bateman on generative AI

"They're trying to convince people they can't do the things they've been doing easily for years - to write emails, to write a presentation. Your daughter wants you to make up a bedtime story about puppies - to write that for you." We will get to the point, she says with a grim laugh, "that you will essentially become just a skin bag of organs and bones, nothing else. You won't know anything and you will be told repeatedly that you can't do it, which is the opposite of what life has to offer. Capitulating all kinds of decisions like where to go on vacation, what to wear today, who to date, what to eat.
People are already doing this. You won't have to process grief, because you'll have uploaded photos and voice messages from your mother who just died, and then she can talk to you via AI video call every day. One of the ways it's going to destroy humans, long before there's a nuclear disaster, is going to be the emotional hollowing-out of people." - author and filmmaker Justine Bateman from a piece by Emine Saner for the Guardian

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Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 7d

"but the second amendment protects against tyranny--"

Oh really? Well, where are you people, while ICE agents are storming people's homes without a warrant?

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Beth Andres-Beck @beth4ma.bsky.social · 7d

Hiding the job numbers doesn’t give people jobs. Failing to release the Epstein files doesn’t mean fewer crimes were committed.

Refusing to govern doesn’t mean government is useless. It just means these people are incompetent.

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Beth Andres-Beck @beth4ma.bsky.social · 7d

We knew this would happen. Congress could have fixed it. They chose not to.

It is time for change.

Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 7d

I just got a call from my rheumatologist. Because of the changes to Medicaid, which no longer reimburses telemedicine appointments, I can either pay out of pocket or drive two hours away every three months, which is not possible for me most of the year due to my work schedule.

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Thistle313 @thistle313.bsky.social · 7d

All of the Xuya Universe books are great!

Rhys. @rhysshelmerdine.bsky.social · 13d

Currently reading Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard. A wonderful queer space-opera novella with lots of tension through action and politics. I feel like I need to read it all over again too, to fully understand the world that’s being built. So much detail in short book.

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