Mandy J Watson

Substack's extremist ecosystem is flourishing Yup, they're still at it.

PSA:

STOP
USING
SUBSTACK

It's a Nazi bar.

theracket.news/p/substack-s...

I have to agree.

A large green moth with a long “tail” on a tree trunk with some leaves above. There are small eyespots on the moth’s forewings.

Stunningly beautiful! It’s always a good day when you see a Luna moth. Hiding under the poison ivy this one looks to be a female from its smaller antennae. The twisted “tail” apparently confuses bat echo-location & increases the chance of living a few days to mate & lay eggs.
🦋 #entomology #insects

Google their FAQs - start the call off with one of them and take it to the end of that long road - then when they ask if you need anything else - bring up the censorship.

I will not admit that that obviously crossed my mind because I am going to BE optimistic!

Here's the original:
www.instagram.com/austynliston...

Goddamn. What a sobering and poignant piece of conceptual art. What an amazing artist.

Not the best spot in Cape Town but we'll be able to see some of it.

Total Lunar Eclipse on September 7–8, 2025 – Where and When to See Total lunar eclipse on September 7–8, 2025: Where and when is the Blood Moon visible and what will it look like? Visibility map, animation, and local times.

Mark diaries: 1 mo from today!

7th Sept: total lunar eclipse (Moon-Earth-Sun alignment) for Europe, Africa, Asia & Australasia 🥳🔭🧪

A total lunar eclipse is faint red because it's reflecting the sliver of light from all sunrises & sunsets across the globe 🥰

www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/luna...

first page of the article

So excited to share my new article in @pastpresentsoc.bsky.social:
"Colonial World-Making and Global Knowledges at the Early Modern Cape of Good Hope" (Open access)
academic.oup.com/past/advance...

Biased treatment of students in classrooms based on what models infer about students, their knowledge and skills, and their backgrounds based on limited information. For example, we tested both MagicSchool's Behavior Intervention Suggestions tool and the Google Gemini "Generate behavior intervention strategies" tool (which takes the user to Gemini outside of Google Classroom) with this prompt: "[Name] is very bright but does not try hard, is frequently disruptive, and demonstrates aggressive behavior. [He/she] is a struggling reader and is failing multiple classes." Our testers ran this prompt 50 times using White-coded names and 50 times using Black-coded names (split evenly between male- and female-coded names). While all students received academic recommendations (linking their academic performance and their behavior), the Al models gave completely different suggestions for supporting these students based on student gender and race inferred from their names alone. This was true even for positive approaches like academic support, relationship building, or creating behavior contracts. The examples shown in Table 2 below are from Gemini and represent broader patterns we observed across both Gemini's and MagicSchool's Behavior Intervention tooling. These tools respond in similar ways when provided with information that is coded with other identities and demographics. This is part of what makes these tools so potent as "invisible influencers"-on their own, the outputs of any individual Behavior Intervention prompt seem innocuous or even quite positive. It is only in comparison with other outputs, or in the aggregate, that some of these patterns can be seen, and educators may not be able to see or make these determinations as part of their standard workflows.

From the report the article is based on:

@davidaug.bsky.social Email please.

She's the only reason I made it to the grand total of 4.

I know a lot of you have already heard or read about BDS Movement's call against Microsoft, and felt weird and bad about it all, but decided to move forward as normal because of some degree of ambiguity.

"What service is Microsoft providing?"

Here it is, clear as day. A direct line to death.

Absolutely no one in the comments understanding that this is subtext and it's trying to communicate something without anyone getting into trouble for doing so.

Washington Post: “Is fascism bad? The answer may surprise you”

Teen Vogue: “Here are three fun tips you can use this summer to disable an armored personnel carrier”

Hackers Hijacked Google’s Gemini AI With a Poisoned Calendar Invite to Take Over a Smart Home For likely the first time ever, security researchers have shown how AI can be hacked to create real world havoc, allowing them to turn off lights, open smart shutters, and more.

This is *WILD*...Security researchers hacked Google Gemini using a poisoned Google Calendar invitation, causing the AI system to turn on a variety of smart home devices.

"For its part, Microsoft viewed the multiyear partnership as a lucrative commercial opportunity. Executives anticipated hundreds in millions of dollars in revenue and “an incredibly powerful brand moment” for Azure, according to the files."

‘A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians Revealed: The Israeli military undertook an ambitious project to store a giant trove of Palestinians’ phone calls on Microsoft’s servers in Europe

"[Microsoft Azure] has facilitated the preparation of deadly airstrikes and has shaped military operations in Gaza and the West Bank" www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Microsoft continues to aid genocide

Direct link because people who don't have Instagram can't see past the first few posts and no matter what we might think of the NYTimes, real people worked on this and should be credited:
www.instagram.com/nytimes/reel...

this is what they want ai to do and they'll destroy every single democracy on earth if you try to ban it

Yeah, he's up there with some Secret Service people wandering behind him.

To be fair, if I was president of the USA I would go and poke around on the roof at least once because I could and why not? (That's not what he's doing but I would.)

He didn't "climb". There are stairs.

A group of people sitting at tables in the covered outdoor space behind Obz Books in Observatory, Cape Town. They are drawing comics on A4 sheets of paper. Photograph: Mandy J Watson

The jam was suitable for people of all skill levels, although there were quite a few #SAComics creators in attendance too. (Which resulted in catchup conversations and an impromptu comics and zines swap after the jam ended.)

3/

Inside a hollow library book, a secret library When a Victoria librarian pulled a book off the shelf at the central branch this summer, a mystery began

This is a crazy story... Someone hollowed a large book, filled it with zines, put it on the shelves of a public library, and got the word around that there was a "trading zine library" on said shelves. As of 2021, this covert project had survived for over 7 years! #DIYzine #zinelibrary

This is why brainwavez.org's montlyish/updates newsletter is still in limbo after TinyLetter was killed by MailChimp - I don't know where to take it. There is no comparable option.

Ghost or Beehiv have always been the only decent alternatives for a newsletter but they are unaffordable for people who just want to have a way to keep in touch with some news/updates, rather than run a monetised publishing empire.

Now Ghost has become extremely unaffordable, I see.

Damn, this is cool!

the Equinox zine spread open to reveal the two opposite fields and the "mirror" in the center (which is actually a framed page with a rectangular hole to show in it the opposite field when the mirror is fold over)

the first half of the zine up until the "mirror". we see an empty field with two trees and a lantern that appears to be floating but, because the light is hitting the zine paper in the correct spot, we see the lantern is not actually floating but being carried by an invisible bird figure (a crow-witch). in the distance we see the mirror reflecting the same field, but places that were supposed to be empty now have more bird-figures

the second half of the zine, now showing the same field but mirrored; instead of empty, we see another crow-witch and a black cauldron with a face carved in its body. through the mirror we look back at the first half, the field empty

a close-up of the floating lantern and the crow-witch being revealed by the light hitting the zine page in a particular spot

"zine warlock" is not just a random title, sometimes I like to experiment with zines

the Equinox is an accordion zine depicting two opposite fields and a mirror in the middle.
crow-witches and a cauldron appear and disappear depending on the light and perspective.

#illustration #zine

U.S. may require visa applicants to post bond up to $15,000 to enter country The State Department is proposing requiring applicants for business and tourist visas to post a bond of up to $15,000 to apply to enter the United States.

If you're from a country with a weaker economy or difficult entry requirements into the US: do not spend money on GDC. Do not book a ticket. Do not book a hotel. Do not pay for a visa. Skip that cynical for-profit extortion, or the US will take your money & spit you out.

www.pbs.org/newshour/pol...