Dr Emma L Briant 🐸🎃 BOO! 👻

‘Strung Up and Tortured’: Hostage Recounts 2 ½ Years of Captivity

‘Strung Up and Tortured’: Hostage Recounts 2 ½ Years of Captivity www.nytimes.com/2025/11/05/w...

Federal agents pulling a woman out of Rayito Del Sol, a daycare by Lane Tech high school

Trump: "They're gonna make DC a state and they're gonna make Puerto Rico a state. So now they pick up two states, four senators. They're gonna pick up electoral votes. It's gonna be a very, very bad situation. Now, if we do what I'm saying, they'll most likely never obtain power."

You have to admire the bloody-minded ambition of a pelican trying to eat a whole capybara (who seems utterly unconcerned).

The thing with pelicans is that they have ONE super-power & their brains default to "get it in your mouth & deal with it later."

Let's talk about the gular sac of the pelican.

CBP Quietly Launches Face Scanning App for Local Cops To Do Immigration Enforcement The app, called Mobile Identify and available on the Google Play Store, is specifically for local and regional law enforcement agencies working with ICE on immigration enforcement.

New from 404 Media: CBP has quietly launched a facial recognition app for local cops to do immigration enforcement. Scans their face, tells cops whether to contact ICE about this person or not. A truly rapid expansion of ICE's facial recognition app to local cops
www.404media.co/cbp-quietly-...

Not a good look for your brand.

"AI made me believe in the human soul by showing me how a soulless art looks like" has never been truer.

I bet that wasn't written by AI.

The Gunpowder Plot's influence on Britain is profound Adapted from a 2017 New Statesman article

“It entrenched the fear of the home-grown ‘other’, motivated centuries of catholic persecution and injected a heady dose of nationalism into the Protestant state religion.”

My article on the Gunpowder Plot, terrorism and nationalism. open.substack.com/pub/rebeccar...

Two Massachusetts Men Charged in Explosion at Harvard Medical School

They caught two suspects who allegedly detonated something at Harvard Med School for reasons unknown.

It's quite the contrast.

At a time when Trump is bringing the poop-plane memes, @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social is bringing the eloquent oratory.

Deutsche Bank explores hedges for data centre exposure as AI lending booms Executives discussing options including shorting basket of artificial intelligence stocks or using derivatives to transfer risk

"Deutsche Bank is exploring ways to hedge its exposure to data centres after extending billions of dollars in debt to the sector to keep up with demand for artificial intelligence and cloud computing."

YouTube video by Simon Clark Who is at COP30 and why are there so many fossil fuel lobbyists?

🎟️ Who is attending #COP30 and why are there so many fossil fuel lobbyists?

@simonoxfphys.com explores how industry presence raises serious questions about whose interests shape the negotiations.

www.youtube.com/shorts/ED6wj...

Editors leave Hungary top tabloid after pro-Orban group takeover - Europe - The Jakarta Post The purchase is widely seen as another example of Orban's business allies buying media outlets, with expectations that it will be turned into another pro-ruling party organ.

The editor-in-chief of Hungary’s most-read newspaper Blikk has resigned after a group linked to PM Viktor Orban’s party bought the tabloid. The sale is "widely seen as another example of Orban's business allies buying media outlets" www.thejakartapost.com/world/2025/1...

Incredible

Remarkable how much the legacy media has rotted out

2 0 2 5 Updates Key Races N.Y.C. Mayor Va. Gov. County Margin Shift from 2024 pres. T Votes Loudoun Spanberger +29 * 12 pts. 164,366 Prince William Spanberger +34 × 16 pts. 161,419 Portsmouth Spanberger +47 * 8.1 pts. 29,956 Washington Earle-Sears +49 * 4.5 pts. 20,927 Louisa Earle-Sears +20 * 6.5 pts. 18,719 Orange Earle-Sears +15 * 9.3 pts. 17,127 Powhatan Earle-Sears +40 * 4.4 pts. 16,957 Pulaski Earle-Sears +38 * 7.1 pts. 12,466 Dinwiddie Earle-Sears +17 ~ 6.3 pts. 11,974 Harrisonburg Spanberger +41 × 15 pts. 11,753 Manassas Spanberger +30 * 16 pts. 11,514 Carroll Earle-Sears +57 ~ 6.1 pts. 11,277 Wise Earle-Sears +59 ~ 4.6 pts. 10,962 Fairfax City Spanberger +45 * 11 pts. 10,232 Fredericksburg Spanberger +43 * 11 pts. 10,191 Salem Earle-Sears +12 6.9 pts. 9,374 King William Earle-Sears +34 * 7.1 pts. 8,999 Russell Earle-Sears +63 * 4.9 pts. 8,860

Every single county in Virginia shifted Blue.

Calling all #faculty & #academicsky passionate about #academicfreedom in #teaching 📢

Share your experience with academic freedom in the classroom, in my dissertation study! Take a short survey & participate in a 1:1 follow up interview with me on Zoom.

umn.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Perhaps most significantly, researchers have learned that queer people were largely reported by people in their own communities. As many as a third of LGBTQ+ people who were arrested were denounced, that is reported to the Nazis, by their friends and family. ”That really changes the understanding of the Nazi period, because it’s easier to think that this was just a top-down hard line or dictatorial regime implementing all these policies, and they’re the ones doing the hunting down and finding of the so-called enemies of the state,” said Newsome. “But what we’re actually seeing is that most Germans just did nothing to protect LGBTQ folks.”

Oh

How to Opt-Out of Airlines Selling Your Travel Data to the Government The Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), owned by major U.S. airlines, collects billions of ticketing records and sells them to the government to be searched without a warrant. I managed to opt-out o...

This is good to know www.404media.co/how-to-opt-o...

Dead Bug Vibes

This is newly updated and is among the FREE content available in my Patreon.

‘We got hacked’ emails threaten to leak University of Pennsylvania data The University of Pennsylvania suffered a cybersecurity incident on Friday, where students and alumni received a series of offensive emails from various University email addresses, claiming that data ...

University of Pennsylvania may have been hacked with an offensive and threatening email circulated "The University of Pennsylvania is a dog**** elitist institution full of woke retards. We have terrible security practices and are completely unmeritocratic" www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/securit...

Dick Cheney, one of the most powerful and polarizing vice presidents in US history, dies at 84 The hard-charging conservative became one of the most powerful and polarizing vice presidents and a leading advocate for the invasion of Iraq.

lol @ this story saying Cheney operated from “undisclosed locations” after 9/11. The location was his mansion in my hometown, Jackson, Wyoming, where he flew immediately on 9/11 and where the military drove us nuts circling with fighter jets day and night, as though al Qaeda was going to come to WY

Can Coercive Control on TV Interrupt Real Cycles of Intimate Partner Violence? Television transformed how I think about abuse in romantic relationships.

And happy Flytrap Tuesday! @michellepolizzi.bsky.social writes about coercive control on TV and film, and how we still have a long way to go in terms of representation:

Perfection

How Trump is Building a Violent, Shadowy Federal Police Force Trump’s DHS appointees have dismantled civil rights guardrails, protected agents’ anonymity and encouraged them to wear masks, threatened groups that stood in their way, and overwhelmed legal challeng...

Six months after ICE apprehended 47 people, including nine kids, in Hays County, Tex., County Judge Ruben Becerra says DHS has ignored his attempts to get answers:

“We’re not told why they took them, and we’re not told where they took them. By definition, that’s a kidnapping.”

That's great! 😆

Australian scientist who alerted world that Covid is airborne wins top science prize Prof Lidia Morawska says recognition of her research comes at a fraught time – an ‘age of anti-science’

Australian scientist who alerted world that COVID is airborne wins top science prize

When the WHO falsely claimed in March 2020 that COVID wasn’t airborne, Professor Lidia Morawska took action—organising 239 scientists worldwide to warn about SARS-CoV-2 airborne spread and urge global recognition.