Spaceminks Hijinks

Dali was obsessed with Hitler and fascism.

"The letter from Dalí to Breton in 1935 presents Dalí's ideas and offers some insights into why he was expelled from the Surrealists in 1939. Breton kept the letter as evidence against him."

Breton was friends with Aimé Césaire, so he was not having it.

OpenAI is in early talks about a potential sale of stock for current and former employees at a valuation of about $500 billion, people briefed on the investment discussions said, marking an enormous gain in value for the artificial intelligence leader. The company is targeting a secondary stock sale in the billions of dollars, the people said, asking to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Existing investors including Thrive Capital have approached OpenAI about buying some of the employee shares, the people said. If the deal goes ahead, it would elevate OpenAI’s on-paper price tag by roughly two-thirds. Its previous valuation stood at $300 billion in a $40 billion financing round led by SoftBank Group Corp. — making it one of the largest privately held companies in the world. Representatives for OpenAI and Thrive declined to comment.

(An AI summary previously at the top of this story was removed because it mis-attributed a line from the text.)

LOL, the kicker on this story about OpenAI's $500 billion valuation.

It remains beyond human capability to create an LLM that doesn't constantly bullshit answers, misattributing and fabricating sources. It's inherent to the technology.

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

When I was a kid in the town I grew up there was a thriving music scene because there was:
1) a council-funded music rehearsal studio
2) a youth club that hosted gigs on Friday and Saturday nights
3) a council-funded battle of the bands competition that ran across several weekends

You know what? Rather than just b!tch about this, I'm going to start a running series of posts explaining the most common fallacies, data misinterpretations, and conceptual mistakes I run into in both social and traditional media on an almost daily basis. But something fun, and no dunking.

i keep thinking about the party he and cheryl hines threw during covid that required their friends to bring proof of vaccination and how they never actually answered whether they had themselves been vaccinated

An entire state with no Planned Parenthood. We knew it was coming, but it’s still a shock.

When you see Russell Vought & the tr*mp administration assaulting secondary & public ed & government departments, these are some of the names who pushed the radical theology that is the foundation of Project 2025, Christian Reconstructionism.

Novel Bivalent mRNA‐LNP Vaccine for Highly Effective Protection against Pneumonic Plague (Adv. Sci. 26/2025) mRNA Vaccine Against Pneumonic Plague In article number 2501286, Dan Peer, Ofer Cohen, Emanuelle Mamroud, and co-workers show the design of an effective mRNA vaccine against pneumonic plague. The cov...

Researchers have developed an mRNA vaccine against the bacteria that causes plague.

advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

We are not just a worker-owned media collective.

We at The Flytrap are putting our money where our mouth is by paying freelancers fair market rates or higher before we’re even turning a profit and paying ourselves.

And that’s now backed by an agreement with the National Writers Union

And Karen of the Court had the absolute nerve to come for Justice Jackson. *spits*

Every reputable expert I know considers mRNA vaccine technology to be one of the most revolutionary advances in medicine in our lifetimes. Its inventors won the Nobel Prize in 2023. Shutting it down now is pointless self-harm to humanity.

Seeking to quell the backlash, the Justice Department dispatched a top official to meet with Ghislaine Maxwell, Mr. Epstein’s longtime associate who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking. On Friday, Ms. Maxwell was moved to a lower-security facility. That fueled speculation that Mr. Trump might commute her sentence or even pardon her in return for her cooperation.

Here's how NYT explained that TRUMP'S FUCKING DEFENSE ATTORNEY went to meet the sex trafficker who "stole" his spa girls, turning one into a sex slave.

No mention of his name, no mention of his role as defense attorney, no mention that sex traffickers don't go to prison camps.

one of the most infuriating parts of the Epstein story is over the same years that young women went to police and reported assault, and were ignored, law enforcement is pushing this idea that they need massive grants and manpower to rescue thousands of girls they say don’t even know they’re victims

Context for gerrymandering debate

“How responsive/congruent is state policy with state public opinion” is one of the most studied poli sci questions

Red & blue states both passed more 'extreme' policy in recent decades. Blue state policy shifts were aligned with state opinion. Red states’ weren’t

Texas is a majority pro-choice state with an abortion ban. Missouri expanded Medicaid over its out of step legislature. The Utah legislature seems to not want to obey any ballot initiative at all. 60% of Kansas voters rejected an abortion ban.

Applebaum on Autocracy Anne Applebaum warns that Sudan’s descent into chaos shows what happens when institutions fail—and why a free press is essential to prevent America from following the same path.

“For news organizations, the issue isn’t responsibility, but survival. Autocratic leaders don’t want evidence-based journalism of any kind to exist at all: They want to shape reality, to decide themselves what is true and false.” — @anneapplebaum.bsky.social

www.status.news/p/anne-apple...

Gen X: The Only Generation of American Women to Live With Rights My name is Jess and I was a high school Literature teacher for 16 years until I decided to run as a Democrat in a rural, red district in Missouri. I bring you news and politics from Missouri and beyon...

I will turn 50 this September. I was born in 1975, and I represent the only generation of American women born with full rights that have been lost in the same lifetime.

open.substack.com/pub/jesspipe...

The Supreme Court Just Signaled Something Deeply Disturbing About the Next Term A court fundamentally hostile to the rights of voters places the court increasingly at odds with democracy itself.

My New One at @slate.com on the Supreme Court Potentially Killing the Remaining Pillar of the Voting Rights Act: “The Supreme Court Just Signaled Something Deeply Disturbing About the Next Term” slate.com/news-and-pol...

Tesla withheld data, lied, and misdirected police and plaintiffs to avoid blame in Autopilot crash Tesla was caught withholding data, lying about it, and misdirecting authorities in the wrongful death case involving Autopilot that it...

The most damning part: The car was programmed to send all the information to Tesla then delete the local copies. Which speaks to a clear conspiracy to hide the fact that "driver assistance" features contributed to an accident #teslatakedown electrek.co/2025/08/04/t...

Illustration of a Monitor Lizard by Levi Hastings #levihastingsart #wildlifeart #wildlifeillustrators #illustratorsofbluesky #kidlit #reptile #monitor lizard

Illustration of a Monitor Lizard by Levi Hastings #levihastingsart #wildlifeart #wildlifeillustrators #illustratorsofbluesky #kidlit #reptile #monitor lizard

Illustration of a Monitor Lizard by Levi Hastings #levihastingsart #wildlifeart #wildlifeillustrators #illustratorsofbluesky #kidlit #reptile #monitor lizard

This monitor lizard has been lurking in my sketchbook for quite some time, and I recently decided to give her the attention she deserves.

“If it’s really that bad just go to the ER” is not the helpful comment you think it is.

Yes it is that bad. But if we went to the ER every time our symptoms flared, we would literally live there.

That’s chronic illness. We have to learn to tolerate the intolerable.

NEWS: The Library of Congress has launched a significant upgrade to the Chronicling America website, the nation’s leading free resource for historical U.S. newspapers. newsroom.loc.gov/news/library...

This is what's so infuriating about people trying to retcon 2010s austerity as some genius political jiu-jitsu instead of a huge failure. Long term unemployment in your 20s is insanely damaging.

a Norwegian king crab

Cis people being weird about trans people makes me think about king crabs.
Bear with me for this one because it will make sense.
You know king crabs, right? Giant crab, lives up north, has long legs, very expensive and tasty, featured on many a mukbang
Did you know they are technically not crabs? 1/

The Mothership Vortex: An Investigation Into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine How a single consulting firm extracted $282 million from a network of spam PACs while delivering just $11 million to actual campaigns.

The annoying spam texts destroying the Democratic brand:

$678M raised through those spam tactics

$282M to one consulting firm: Mothership Strategies.

$11M to actual campaigns (1.6%)

The party isn’t just treating donors like marks—it’s being fleeced itself yet continues to back Mothership.

(But see also:)

As Marcy says, we should be looking hardest at the comments that Trump is trying to deflect us from. He knows his weaknesses better than anyone.

The most corrupt White House in 🇺🇸 history. Pay for play. Selling the country for parts. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/02/u...

I think really the story of the past ten years was people taking for granted 21st century liberalism was locked in and therefore you could just kinda be fashy for a laugh only to realize a moment too late Skinhead Steve wasn’t joking after all.