Lisa Stampnitzky

A preserved carved turnip jack o'lantern from the 19th century

A preserved carved turnip jack o'lantern from the 19th century

A reminder that the original Hallowe'en jack o' lanterns date back to 18th century Ireland if not earlier, were based on a shady boozy blacksmith called Stingy Jack who cheated the devil & was trapped between 2 worlds, were carved from turnips and looked like this:

😵

YIKES

We're seeing a massive institutional deportation and state violence apparatus being built and it honestly feels like people dont grasp the sheer scale of it and what already is in place. For every horrific video of masked feds kidnapping people there are so many people pushing paper to help.

i strongly encourage the white house to make vance the face of their shutdown defense, i cannot think of a better man for the job, this defense is flawlessly persuasive, keep it up

Just reposting this. I can be reached by email if you need to contact me.

Alice Walker said, “When it is all too much, when the news is so bad meditation itself feels useless, and a single life feels too small a stone to offer… Find those people who are committed to changing our scary reality… People gathering, people working to change the intolerable.”

I have been charged in a federal indictment sought by the Department of Justice.

This political prosecution is an attack on all of our First Amendment rights. I’m not backing down, and we’re going to win.

Struggling to imagine the chutzpah it takes to say that someone "doesn't understand New York culture" because they're an immigrant.

Fucking hell
This is dystopian

@tressiemcphd.bsky.social is spot on here, as usual.

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/485594b3-5a72-4ae1-aa93-8ee987be1569 Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform is to offer users the chance to trade on the outcome of elections and sports games, extending the US president and his family’s involvement in the booming prediction markets sector. The Trump Media & Technology Group, which controls the social media platform, on Tuesday announced it would partner with Crypto.com to introduce “Truth Predict”, which would allow users “to react instantly to developments in major current events”.  Crypto.com previously donated $11mn to Trump causes. Earlier this year the Securities and Exchange Commission closed an investigation into the company, and on Friday, it announced that it applied for a US bank charter. In August, TMTG also signed a multibillion-dollar deal to buy Cronos, the tokens issued by Crypto.com, which sent their price soaring. “For too long, global elites have closely controlled these markets — with Truth Predict, we’re democratising information and empowering everyday Americans to harness the wisdom of the crowd, turning free speech into actionable foresight,” said Devin Nunes, TMTG’s head.

Excuse me? So the company the President currently owns is teaming up with a cryptocurrency company to create a prediction market, which will take bets... on things the President himself has quite a lot of control over?

Gosh, I'm sure nothing bad will happen.

www.ft.com/content/4855...

Chart showing Trump's net approval compared with this point in previous presidencies. In 2009, Obama's approval at this point was approximately +7, in 2017 Trump's was -16 and in 2021 Biden's was -7

Donald Trump's approval rating in our tracker has fallen to -18, the lowest it has ever been (lower than any point in his first term) www.economist.com/interactive/...

This is a real thing that a judge had to say to the Chief of US Customs and Border Protection.

Finding: lack of reliability w/ LLM data annotation

Scholars have already questioned underlying assumptions & data quality in many human-coded datasets. LLMs intro new sources of unreliability & bias

It still matters what material you're giving the human coders or the LLM & how you understand it

starving over 40 million people right before major holidays + massively upping healthcare costs does strike me as a rather bold move this early in the authoritarian consolidation game for any given fascist regime, but I guess we’ll see what happens

Indiana University banned its student newspaper from printing just days before homecoming weekend — after firing the paper’s advisor when he refused to censor critical coverage. That would be bad enough on its own, but FIRE is taking this one personally, as the Indiana Daily Student reported this hostile campaign was due in part to its coverage of FIRE’s ranking Indiana University as the worst public university for free speech. You read that right. The school’s response to the news that they are bad at free speech … is to censor the news. It’s ironic — and not just in the Alanis Morissette sense — that these actions will likely push its overall ranking even lower next year. At least we can’t fault them for consistency.

Why did Indiana University attack and cut its own student newspaper?

Well, in a twist of irony any English professor would call clichéd, it turns out IU did it because they were angry about the students' reporting on a FIRE report naming IU as the worst public university for free speech in the US.

An upwards-tilted black and white photo of a road sign. Behind it are trees and powerlines and a blustery cloudy sky. The sign reads: (up arrow) Dubois 10 (left arrow) Paradise 3 (left arrow) Desire 5 (left arrow) Panic 7

The Pennsylvania Conceptual Zone

Kodak XX
Nikon N90

#filmphotography

This is the future liberals want.

Can't wait for our government to stand up for the rights of a British citizen who has been kidnapped by overseas forces.

US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces The Human Rights Reporting Gateway acted as a formal "tip line" to the US government.

The Leahy law is being killed off. "The US State Department has removed an online portal for reporting alleged human rights violations by foreign military units supplied with American weapons." www.bbc.com/news/article...

"normies do not care about this thing and so it is no use raising a stink" is imho just an excuse for not doing politics, which is the job of making normies care about something

!

"New research released Wednesday by the European Broadcasting Union and the BBC reveals a major problem with using AI chatbots for news. An alarming amount of the news information AI chatbots provide to users is false."

I thought this was going to be about the White House 😵

Handmade sign reading "FUCK ICE YOU FUCKING FASCIST FUCKS"

people's handmade signs did NOT hold back lol

On one day's notice, thousands of New Yorkers marched in NYC today for immigrants and against ICE.

More photos soon!

Known Lethal U.S. Attacks on Civilian Vessels in the Caribbean Total reported killed: 34 people Notification Date Number Reported Killed Approximate Location Notification URL September 2, 2025 11 “in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility” (later revealed as between Sucre, Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago) View September 15, 2025 3 “in International Waters… in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility”; Colombian president claimed it was a fishing boat in Colombian waters View September 19, 2025 3 “in international waters… in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility” near the Dominican Republic View October 3, 2025 4 “in international waters just off the coast of Venezuela” View October 14, 2025 6 “in International Waters… just off the Coast of Venezuela” View October 16, 2025 2; 2 reported survivors “in the Caribbean” View October 17, 2025 3 “in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility” View October 21, 2025 2 “in the Eastern Pacific” View

34 people killed in 50 days. Their guilt or innocence unknown, for an alleged crime that doesn't carry a death sentence. That's a lot of death.

adamisacson.com/boat-strikes/

It's a very, very large number of people who've just been told to "go home" by HM's opposition. Add their friends, relatives and supporters and you have an enormous chunk of the voting population. Without those people's votes, the Labour Party is finished. It needs to be made to understand that.