social mithridatism

We are all familiar with those videos and images of people in Finland happily cycling to school in the middle of a Nordic winter, huge smiles on their faces. Or, the bustling bikeways of Copenhagen. Riding a bicycle makes people happy. More cycling, more happiness.
momentummag.com/the-top-coun...

♥️ Nautilus ♥️

Sam Alito has an oil money problem 30 percent of Alito’s individual stock portfolio is directly tied to fossil fuels.

The Supreme Court has decided to hear a major climate case against fossil fuel companies

Alito has not recused himself, despite owning nearly $200,000 in fossil fuel stocks—including in Phillips 66 and ConocoPhillips, which are being sued in cases that would be directly affected by a SCOTUS ruling

The singling out of a state for political punishment, by selectively denying it access to federal funds, violates every principle of the Union.

This stunt where ICE releases people far from home with no proper clothing and no way home should be treated as attempted homicide. In this case, actual homicide. These cases are not accidental or based on misunderstandings. They are deliberate attempts to inflict bodily harm.

idea: pandas attempting almost* every winter olympic sport

*maybe let's not give them guns

i've decided not to listen to the audio of a teacher reporting a kindergartender because frankly I don't want to become the person that that event would turn me into. but one thing I hope we are collectively coming to grips with is what it meant that we have lived among such people this whole time

This country is doomed.

The three journalists who helped ruin Ava Cordero's life when she tried to stop Epstein in 2006 *currently* work at NBC News, New York Magazine, and News Corp Australia. The one at NBC News is covering... Epstein.

BREAKING:

The federal judges in the Eastern District of Virginia unanimously appointed longtime litigator James W. Hundley to serve as interim U.S. attorney on Friday — and the Trump Justice Department almost immediately fired him.

I am sorry but this is still the core problem with trying to parse anything he says about tariffs.

A brown and gray Cooper’s hawk is walking right to left on the top of a blue metal tube fence. This adult is showing the field mark dark gray cap on its head. A blurry green hill is behind.

Gary is on a two a day schedule now, morning and late afternoon. Pretty quiet in the yard now.
#birds #raptor Cooper’s hawk

Note, NYT assumes that DHS told the truth about what happened, which would be crazy because they literally Never Have when they shot someone, especially an American.

What an opening paragraph.

“Antiseptic judicial rhetoric cannot do justice to what is happening. Across the interior of the United States, agents of the federal government-masked, anonymous, armed with military weapons, operating from unmarked vehicles,

So rude of Apparat to release an album while I am asleep.

Remember back in the day when Congress used to be in charge of appropriations?

The political effects of X's feed algorithm https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10098-2 Received: 16 December 2024 Accepted: 4 January 2026 Published online: 18 February 2026 Open access • Check for updates Germain Gauthier,5, Roland Hodler?5, Philine Widmer35 & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya3,4,5 m Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects'. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk's platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users' feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X's algorithm has persistent effects on users' current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.

A new paper shows that less than 2 months of exposure to Twitter’s algorithmic feed significantly shifts people’s political views to the right.

Moving from chronological feed to the algorithmic feed also increases engagement.

This is one of the most concerning papers I’ve read in awhile.

In the dark we have heart 🤍🌎

The FBI is investigating #ExtinctionRebellion

A former member of #XRNYC was visited by the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force outside of New York City. This is not an isolated situation.
The administration has escalated to a new focus:
the climate movement.
1/2

ask anyone on the left about high-speed trains

This is voter suppression.
Full stop.
Do not pass Go.
Do not collect $200.

Appalling: During Trump's effort to indict Dems for the video warning against carrying out illegal orders, one of their lawyers asked prosecutors to say what statute was allegedly violated, I'm told. They failed to name one. Then they tried to indict anyway.

New:

newrepublic.com/article/2066...

The difference between a judicial warrant and an administrative warrant is the difference between a $20 bill and a napkin that a fascist wrote "twenty dollars" on.

OKAY BIG ONE FOR YA

NEW report out today: I dig deep into how big tech has been muddling tech types and overstating evidence to claim "AI" will make global emissions drop like a stone....

Not only will it not, it seems to be verifiably doing the opposite!!

ketanjoshi.co/2026/02/17/b... + 📼+🧵>

Each arrest takes like a half dozen agents. They just don’t have the manpower for this. I am not even sure where the marginal utility of this type of thing would be. Maybe if they concentrated their efforts in one congressional district or something.

Just a reminder if the federal government is sending non judicial warrants to tech companies to reveal users names and locations of anti ice accounts you don’t have a first amendment or constitution anymore

A photograph of a hard-bodied mite, covered in long, spiky bristles.

"We have such mites to show you"

Today is the last day to vote in the 2026 Bug of the Year contest!

Vote now for the Hellraiser Mite: bugoftheyear.ento.org.nz/vote-here-20...

P.S. There is also a giant earthworm worthy of your love (you get 3 votes) 🪱

#BugOfTheYear #BugOfTheYear2026 🧪

How. Is. Anyone. Still. On. His. Shit. Ass. Social. Network.

Free yourself of the expectation of constant availability. Go frolic in a field.

Drew Pavlou tweet, selfie with some sort of security guy in background, at airport DREW PERFORMANCE ART UPDATE Billie Eilish got me deported from the US - I think her legal team contacted DHS I spent 30 hours at LAX immigration trying to explain that my shit posts were just a joke and that I didn't actually plan to personally move into her mansion Honestly most of the agents...

Oh my God no way

Collage of four photographs of a black and blue swallowtail butterfly

Pipevine swallowtail ... the most fluttery butterfly ever ... on verbena #Invertebrates