Bethan

Photo of my left hand holding a snack size Ziploc bag containing three different styles of stickers from Plan C: two in English and one in Spanish. They all have the website and the square sticker has a QR code

Photo of a Plan C sticker on a clear plastic paper towel holder in a bathroom. It says “need to be un-pregnant?” Then a QR code plus the URL plancpills.org

Photo of a Plan C sticker in Spanish on a metal dispenser inside a bathroom stall. It says “¿Necesitas no estar embarazada?” Then a QR code plus the website es.plancpills.org

Photo of a Plan C sticker on a metal paper towel dispenser in a bathroom. Text in the blue ring around the edge reads “your guide to abortion pills by mail” and “Plancpills.org.” in the center is an illustration of a map of the United States and the right hand of a black woman holding five pills representing one mifepristone and four misoprostol.

PS @plancpills.bsky.social has stickers you can plaster in bathrooms, on lampposts, or wherever to spread the word about abortion pills. Free with suggested donation to cover costs, and available in English and Spanish
www.plancpills.org/stickers

I’m One of the Clergy ICE Assaulted. They Treat Immigrants Worse I learned the hard way that my clerical collar doesn’t offer much protection from ICE. But immigrants have no protection at all.

“We have rarely witnessed such brutality erupt into public view like it has in Chicago,” writes Michael Woolf, senior minister of Lake Street Church of Evanston. “For me, this is a spiritual emergency, and it means putting our bodies on the line in order to stop deportations.”

My God.

One more plug for @boltsmag.org, as the night is coming to a close:

If you've enjoyed our work, consider: Our journalism at Bolts has no paywall, but it requires a lot of resources. We thrive with your support & subscriptions!

Right now is THE time to make your support multiply, here's why:

the fact that Chicago is still under invasion & most of the rest of the country just chugs on, is reminding me really really unpleasantly of losing more than a million Americans to the early pandemic, with a collective shrug.

Tech guy sinks $250K into Seattle suburb’s council elections Jeff Lyon's spending is extraordinary, especially in a city of less than 10,000 voters where the biggest news in recent years was the closure of a garden store.

“I’m kind of in a different income bracket”
= a techie who has spent $250,000 on a council seat in a town with ~10,000 people, and drives a cyber truck.
Seems like he really just wants development in Woodinville to happen exactly how he wants it to happen, maybe based on vibes.

‘AI psychosis’ discussions ignore a bigger problem with chatbots Don’t frame chatbot failures as human “insanity.”

“Relying on chatbots isn’t fringe — it’s the predictable result of care made scarce, stigmatized, and costly. Recognizing that doesn’t mean uncritically embracing chatbot care, but it’s past time to name what’s happening: Privately owned chatbots are functioning as public health resources.”

The DOJ's "election monitoring" is really voter suppression Trump's Big Lie has become government policy.

New in PN: The DOJ's "election monitoring" is really voter intimidation

"If Hispanic voters are no longer in the GOP fold after watching Trump’s ceaseless, country-wide violence against immigrants, the administration’s solution is to make sure they can’t cast a ballot."

Why not just cut to the chase and pull the plug on the networks entirely and send the reporters to go spit-polish boots at the white house

Zenni’s Anti-Facial Recognition Glasses are Eyewear for Our Paranoid Age These anti-facial recognition glasses technically work, but won’t save you from our surveillance dystopia.

Overall, a great read on photo surveillance.
“One of the biggest dangers of facial recognition is not a corporation running an advanced camera with fancy sensors, it’s an angry Taylor Swift fan who doxes you using a regular picture of your face.”
from @404media.co
www.404media.co/zennis-anti-...

Why are American women leaving the labour force? Maybe they are becoming tradwives. Or maybe there is a more straightforward explanation

Why are American women leaving the labour force?

You’ve been given free access to this article from The Economist as a gift. You can open the link five times within seven days. After that it will expire. 🤷‍♀️
economist.com/finance-and-...

Image is a screenshot from an email header on this mail from Seattle Times says, “Could a centrist coalition shake up WA’s 2026 legislative session?” Then the intro to the email and article link says, “new moderate coalition forming…”

“Centrist” and “moderate” are different words for a reason, @seattletimes-rss.bsky.social

Link to article: www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

OpenAI Catches Up to AI Market Reality: People Are Horny Just two months ago, Sam Altman acknowledged that putting a “sex bot avatar” in ChatGPT would be a move to “juice growth.” Something the company had been tempted to do, he said, but had resisted.

More @404media.co gold:
“If you are actually interested in the generative AI boom and you are not identifying porn as a core use for the technology, you are either not paying attention or intentionally pretending it’s not happening.”
The whole article is great. #AI
www.404media.co/openai-sam-a...

Live: ‘No Kings Day’ protests in Seattle, WA and across U.S.: What to know The second round of "No Kings Day" protests come amid a partial federal government shutdown and as Trump deploys, or threatens to deploy, National Guard troops to Democrat-led cities.

'No Kings Day' protests in Seattle, WA and across U.S.: What to know

www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

A jaguar, a wall, a sacred valley: What's at stake in San Rafael - AZ Luminaria In late summer, a jaguar padded somewhere near the San Rafael Valley, a pristine grassland nestled between the Patagonia and Huachuca Mountains southeast of Tucson. Trail cameras monitored by Sky Isla...

A lot of people who aren’t from the desert think of it as an empty space. It’s far from empty: it’s home to some of the most magical landscape and wildlife anywhere.
This ridiculous wall is causing harm to an area already stressed region.
#arizona @azluminaria.org
azluminaria.org/2025/10/07/a...

How Genocide Happened

Front page of Scottish newspaper The National today.

What Happened When AI Came for Craft Beer A prominent beer competition introduced an AI-judging tool without warning. The judges and some members of the wider brewing industry were pissed.

From @404media.co, a great write-up of a really unfortunate attempted use of AI - beer judging.
The development of a beer and how qualified beer nerds analyze & express the qualities that make it good or not are human activities.
AI doesn’t belong anywhere in there.
www.404media.co/what-happene...

ICEBlock Owner After Apple Removes App: ‘We Are Determined to Fight This’ Apple removed ICEBlock reportedly after direct pressure from Department of Justice officials. “I am incredibly disappointed by Apple's actions today. Capitulating to an authoritarian regime is never t...

ICEBlock is a well-designed, useful tool for ppl who care about their community. It doesn’t provide real-time stalking, it’s crowdsourced observation.
This is a disappointing action from #Apple & seems like an obvious, huge free speech issue.
Via @404media.co
www.404media.co/iceblock-own...

If they had the capacity to do this, it would be really bad. And they probably will try to do a couple of high profile examples to make you think they *do* have the capacity. But like a lot of stuff, this is a memo designed to get you to voluntarily stop doing stuff they don’t like.

There's a word for all this: Authoritarianism | Editorial The United States has slipped into authoritarianism, leading to the essential question for those who feel uneasy or opposed: What are you going to do about it?

This editorial is a great example of why I subscribe to @seattletimes-rss.bsky.social
What are we, each of us, going to do?
www.seattletimes.com/opinion/edit...

The Ten Elections to Watch This September - Bolts Ten elections across ten states: Bolts guides you through the races you should be tracking this month, from two congressional seats to acrimonious local recalls.

📣 Don't miss the results of local elections today in Arizona, Alabama, and Georgia. Our guide explains everything you need to know about these races and we will be updating it as the results come in.

Britain, Australia and Canada Recognize a Palestinian State

Britain, Australia and Canada Recognize a Palestinian State www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/w...

YouTube video by Micah Lee "We are currently clean on OPSEC": The Signalgate Saga (DEFCON 33)

My DEFCON talk "We are currently clean on OPSEC" now has over 30k views on YouTube, so now more people watched my talk than attended DEFCON itself. If you haven't seen it, please do! The Trump admin's incompetence is mindbogglingly BONKERS www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFYy...

Image says, “The name antifa and the logo with two flags representing anarchism and communism are derived from the German antifa movement. Dartmouth College historian Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, credits Anti-Racist Action (ARA) as the precursor of modern antifa groups in the United States.”

Image says, “During the first Trump administration, the term antifa became "a conservative catch-all" term as Donald Trump, administration officials, Trump base supporters, and right-wing commentators applied the label to all sorts of left-leaning or liberal protest actions. Conservative writers such as L. Brent Bozell Ill associated the tactics of Black Lives Matter with those of antifa. “

The @wikipedia.org page on antifa in the US says that antifa is a movement, some of they know each other & organize together, most of their actions are non-violent, and also it’s origins in the US are based on anti-racism action.
Here are some relevant bits -

Antifa is not a group or a club or - and this is a biggie - a terrorist organization.
Antifa are people who exercise their protected rights to protest when they need to, and also maybe organize bake sales to support bail funds, and generally just feel obligated to … you know, help prevent fascism.

Let’s not move too quickly past “antifa cell.”
Hi 👋🏻 my name is Bethan, and I’m a parent, a vet, & an antifascist.
Every living room in the country should be an active “antifa cell,” for the same set of reasons we’d be proud if our great grandma helped organize protests for women’s right to vote.

Who Is Brendan Carr of the F.C.C.?

Who Is Brendan Carr of the F.C.C.?

This is a gift link.
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/t...

ABC suspends Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show indefinitely over his remarks about Charlie Kirk’s death ABC has suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show indefinitely following comments he made about Charlie Kirk’s killing.

There’s ABC not getting any of my money or time again, ever. I already cancelled my CBS / Paramount subscription. What should we expect from HBO?

www.seattletimes.com/entertainmen...

Land of the free, my friends.

I take no pleasure in this. Most Black people in the U.S. live in red states. But it’s important to be truthful about the caliber of governance. And so much of this is the bad decisionmaking that results from racism. Like refusing Medicaid expansion. Underfunding public education.