Brian Urrutia

Melissandre from Game of Thrones saying "the night is dark and full of terrors"

Driving somewhere at 6 pm in November in Washington State

pre-writing a devastating obituary for your enemy is god-tier hating of a kind you don’t often see anymore. renaissance haterism. beautiful stuff.

6th Circuit Rules Cis Students May Bully Trans Students By Repeatedly Misgendering Them The Circuit also seemed to suggest that trans students could not misgender their bullies in return.

1. In a devastating decision for trans kids in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee, the 6th Circuit has ruled students can bully trans kids by repeatedly misgendering them.

Trans kids also are not allowed to return the favor to their bullies.

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Tear gas in use during a strike in the 1930s

OK, as promised, here's my thread about the links between tear gas/pepper spray and the arms trade and gun industry.

Roman road network was twice as large as previously thought, new mapping project finds The new digital map increases the Roman road network by nearly 100%.

Experts created a new online database tool called Itiner-e that shows the extent of the road network in the Roman Empire. 🏺🧪

In our Heated World it’s not easy to achieve record cold outbreaks anymore. This will be an exception. The early week #winter #cold blast will be the record coldest in the Southeast US (magenta on map) since at least 1979 in the low-mid levels (850-500mb) of our atmosphere… 1/

‘The use of force shocks the conscience’: Judge issues sweeping injunction on Chicago tactics of immigration agents The incoming preliminary injunction replaces a temporary restraining order issued by U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis in early October that was set to expire at 11:30 a.m.

“And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer”
Judge Ellis today not only denounced the Trump administration’s immigration action, but had biting remarks on its clumsy views of Chicago itself
UPDATE: www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/06/o...

The Data Center Backlash Is Swallowing American Politics Activists on both the left and the right are pushing back against rampant AI development.

my latest: i spent weeks investigating how frustrations about data centers were about to swallow american politics…

…and then the 2025 election happened, proving the electoral impacts are already here.

read and share my deep dive on the bipartisan AI techlash shaping our elections before our eyes!

AI Is Supercharging the War on Libraries, Education, and Human Knowledge "Fascism and AI, whether or not they have the same goals, they sure are working to accelerate one another."

The long-running ideological war on libraries, education, and government workers is not separate from AI boosterism. It is the same ideological war on human knowledge and expertise. In some cases AI is being used to directly supercharge this effort:

www.404media.co/ai-is-superc...

Judge Set to Rule Thursday in Case Centering on Federal Immigration Agents’ Use of Force: ‘I Could See Inside the Barrel’ Protesters, clergy members and others who say they’ve been directly impacted by a series of increasingly aggressive raids across Chicago and the suburbs will testify before a federal judge weighing wh...

Greetings from the Dirksen federal courthouse, where U.S. District Court Judge Sara Ellis has just taken the bench to rule on federal agents actions' during a series of increasingly aggressive raids across Chicago and the suburbs.
Background, for @wttw.bsky.social from @bymattmasterson.bsky.social

How Trump’s Hatchet Man Is Destroying Consumer Protections Russell Vought’s dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is putting the public at risk in areas ranging from auto loans and digital payments to credit cards and credit reports.

Russell Vought’s dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is putting the public at risk in areas ranging from auto loans and digital payments to credit cards and credit reports.

Book cover of "Hemlock & Silver" by T Kingfisher. A bright red apple surrounded by poisonous flowers and a snake woven from their stems.

Fantasy. Retelling of snow white as seen from the point of view of the poison doctor who has to save the king's sick daughter.

Author: @tkingfisher.com

#booksky

Her heros are pragmatic and her worldbuilding relentlessly logical. Even as they run off a cliff it makes sense how they got there.

I knew it would take less than a day for a tiktok dj to make something.

WATCH LIVE: Zohran Mamdani addresses supporters after winning 2025 NYC mayoral race YouTube video by PBS NewsHour

If you missed Zohran’s speech live, this is the link to the whole thing from PBS Newshour on YT: www.youtube.com/live/NnM_RgL...

#zohranmamdani #nyc

Cheney’s decomposing, Mamdani’s on top, women crushed it in my home state, progressives crushed it across the board, and Andy gets to stay another week on DWTS. a great day for the good guys. I shall now dance myself off to dreams of justice and full bellies for all

BIG NO KIDS ENERGY | Culture Study Get more from Culture Study on Patreon

I wrote about what I love about not having kids (before you @ me read the piece!)

www.patreon.com/posts/big-no...

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…

When you book a flight through major travel sites, a data broker owned by U.S. airlines will sell details about your flight—your name, credit card used, and where you’re flying to the government.

We found out how to opt-out of ARC selling your travel data. A guide:
www.404media.co/how-to-opt-o...

Border Patrol agent Lairmore testifies that he was not injured by the sandwich, but he felt the impact through his ballistic vest.

The sandwich came apart and "kind of exploded" on his chest upon impact, he says.

"I could smell the onions and mustard."

Lairmore testifies that other agents gave him a plush sandwich toy, which he placed on the shelf in his office, and a patch that said "Felony Footlong," which he put on his lunch box.

Lairmore has chuckled with the rest of us at times. Defense really trying to underscore the unseriousness of it all

You're laughing? He could smell the onions and mustard and you're laughing?

Fox News Falls for Racist AI-Generated Videos, Runs Completely False Story That Has to Be Updated With Gigantic Correction Fox News ran a story treating AI-generated ragebait as if it were real, in order to stir up anger against SNAP recipients.

i feel like it's not getting enough attention that Fox News ran a *completely false story* based on AI-generated videos it thought were interviews with real people

futurism.com/artificial-i...

As of today (by my count) Sen. Blumenthal has sent letters to all 43 donors to Trump's ballroom project who were previously anonymous but now public—plus 3 firms contracted by the White House—seeking info on the terms of contributions and why they were not previously disclosed

Teen Vogue rising after the 2016 election and dying after the 2024 election doesn't even feel like a metaphor as much as a microcosm of what is happening all over places that were once strong areas of resistance.

They fired every Black woman at Teen Vogue and every trans staffer.

It is astonishing watching the American media ecosystem just falling like dominoes, bowing its knees to fascism.

They gutted the Washington Post. CBS. NYT. Now Teen Vogue.

The point isn't to bring in more conservatives. They've reached that saturation point.

They are killing the fourth estate and buying up the social media to control the messages we see. These were all targeted to disarm the left of truth.

“Humans can just go get manual labor jobs if desk jobs are repaired with AI” is both not going to suffice to provide enough jobs and is also going to result in massive societal anger because manual labor jobs often *are terrible*, which is why people have worked hard to avoid them for generations.

Alas and alack.

My appreciation for physical barriers increased greatly after a stint running bags at IAD in my 20s. The number of different things that can do catastrophic damage to one’s body at an airport is staggering. Watching jet blast toss 165# cargo containers around like tumbleweeds was amusing/horrifying.

I got to tour a facility making I-beams about 15yrs ago. There were surprisingly few folks on-site, plus a lot more automation than I expected, which likely explains the lower staff numbers. Watching folks work a blast furnace looked cool, but I imagine the novelty would wear off quickly.

I know there’s a lot of arguing about which time of history we’re repeating, but I can’t stop thinking about the mechanical loom that ended the profession of all weavers ~ I think some war & climate change on the side..

In 1830 when they wrote chants about having more meals IN prison than outside.