Librarian Cake

Wow, huge credit to Katie and the rest of the nutrition team at @centeronbudget.bsky.social. USDA has now issued revised numbers because CBPP caught them either accidentally or intentionally making huge errors that would severely underfund SNAP, in direct violation of court orders.

New data: CBPP analyzed USDA’s contingency fund spending plan & found it is only going to release 2/3 of the funding they committed to in court filings, cutting families’ SNAP benefits far more than necessary, violating USDA’s own regulations & shortchanging millions of families.

Georgia’s Medicaid Work Requirement Program Spent Twice as Much on Administrative Costs as on Health Care, GAO Says Republican lawmakers cite Georgia’s Pathways to Coverage as a national model for federal Medicaid work requirements that are set to take effect in 2027. A new report shows the program has spent at lea...

#ICYMI: GOP lawmakers cite Georgia’s Pathways to Coverage as a national model for federal Medicaid work requirements that are set to take effect in 2027.

A GAO report shows the program has spent twice as much on administrative costs as on health care.

Critics see something different. Suresh Venkatasubramanian, director of the Center for Technological Responsibility, Reimagination, and Redesign at Brown University, said that Friend is clearly an example of a frothy AI company, but that it also bore a “pernicious” resemblance to a mostly forgotten early-20th-century fad: “radium necklaces.”

When Marie Curie’s new glowing discovery first hit the market, jewelers embedded radium in pendants and bracelets and sold them as chic wellness accessories—until decades later, people started dying of cancer.

“I look at Friend and I think, ‘Are we making the same mistake?’” Venkatasubramanian told Fortune. “We’re rushing these intimacy machines into people’s lives with no evidence they’re safe, or even helpful.”

Sick burn. finance.yahoo.com/news/22-old-...

We’re flattered they love us so much and want to be associated with our awesome brand. But it would be nice if they had reached out to us and perhaps shared some of the profit since we are a public transit agency in financial crisis.

I spent the week at the police surveillance convention and let me tell you my biggest observation: The name of the game now is consolidating as much information as humanely possible from surveillance devices, the internet, other governmental data, and literally a million other places. 🧵

we wrote about this WH tactic recently. they’re asking journalists for expert source names and then using them to look up political donations in FEC records to try to discredit those sources as biased.

www.npr.org/2025/08/18/n...

Trump’s allies now control X, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, & TikTok.

They own Fox News, CBS, WaPo, WSJ & NY Post.

They own Sinclair Broadcasting which has 200 tv stations and local news in 100 markets.

“Freedom of speech” is now what Trump and his billionaire pals say it is.

FOR THE FOLKS WONDERING WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE:

There is a direct ideological throughline between the "anti-CRT" movement/attacks on Black studies and the firing of Stephen Colbert and suspension of Jimmy Kimmel.

Not posting this to say "I told you so" but bc you must understand the storyline.

Librarians Are Being Asked to Find AI-Hallucinated Books It’s a trippy time to have a library card.

New reporting about AI slop in libraries from rockstar reporter @clurrese.bsky.social featuring some rockstar librarians! 🥰

www.404media.co/librarians-a...

CAIR-CA Denounces Senate Education Committee Vote to Advance AB 715

We built a calculator that doesn't work, but don't worry, it's also a plagiarism machine that will tell you to kill yourself. It runs on the world's oceans and costs 10 trillion dollars.

Hand holding small black and white hand lettered zine titled "How to Report ICE and Help Keep Our Neighbors Safe". Sunflowers in background.

Hand holding open zine. Pages read: "S Size of group, A Actions/Activity, L Location, U Uniforms/Clothes, T Time/Date, E Equipment

"How to Report ICE" zines are available for free printable download for these places:
California
Chicago
Colorado
DC Metro Area
Florida
Massachusetts
NC Triangle Area
NYC
Philly
Pittsburgh
Portland
St. Louis Metro Area
Washington State
Zine request form in folder.
drive.google.com/drive/folder...

IRS asks for public input on free tax filing options to inform congressional report | Internal Revenue Service IR-2025-85, Aug. 21, 2025 — The IRS invites the public to participate in an anonymous feedback survey on tax preparation and filing options, which will run through Sept. 5, 2025.

The IRS wants Americans to weigh in on Direct File, the agency's free tax filing program.

We already know Direct File has been widely popular and successful.

The program could save Americans billions annually between filing fees and time costs.
www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs...

The current NYT frontpage is a series of textbook attempts at authoritarian consolidation by the Trump regime.

Criminalizing opposition, falsely declaring emergencies to claim unchecked power, dismissing officials who dissent from the party line--we're headed towards a one party dictatorship.

AI-critical ALA folks with the bandwidth to take this on, take heed! www.ala.org/aboutala/com...

The deployment of Trellix monitoring software permits extensive surveillance capabilities, including scanning all accessed and executed files, logging detailed metadata (such as filenames, paths, threat names, and hashes), quarantining files, and potentially uploading files deemed suspicious, thus severely compromising faculty privacy and autonomy. More information is available at Trellix's Privacy Data Sheet. The toolsets required by the University will have full access to device information, including installed software; IP addresses (who you are on the internet at a certain time); your browsing history and application usage (what websites you visit and when and what files you open), and information on device use in real time, including processes running, files accessed, and network data.

What could go wrong? sites.google.com/view/delay-m...

🚨
His first term attempt at this was defeated by broad pushback.

Donate to Fobazi’s road to recovery: Kidney and liver transplant, organized by Ysabel Gerrard Hello all, my name is Ysabel and I’m fundraising for my friends … Ysabel Gerrard needs your support for Fobazi’s road to recovery: Kidney and liver transplant

Fobazi is currently in the ICU and could use your support. Apologies to those I haven’t been able to reach out to yet. You can message me for more info and I will be posting updates to GoFundMe. Please share, send healing thoughts, prayers, etc. ❤️ -Elena

gofund.me/c8485b58

I feel like every single day I need to post a reminder: if you ask an LLM about itself it DOES NOT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ITS INNER WORKINGS and WILL NOT TELL YOU ANYTHING ACTUALLY ABOUT ITSELF. It just (as it always does) will make up some plausible sounding answer.

Exclusive: Google is indexing ChatGPT conversations, potentially exposing sensitive user data Thousands of shared ChatGPT chats are now appearing in Google search results.

Well this is bad. Google is indexing ChatGPT conversations exposing sensitive user data

I tried a few quick searches. I found someone's chat where I can see their api key

I found some building their resume. Their name, email and phone numbers are exposed.

www.fastcompany.com/91376687/goo...

Should state violence be as unaccountable as possible? It depends on who you ask.

They're trying to get into school district data?

Let me once again remind everyone that emergency managers and disaster researchers warned Congress that FEMA would not be effective if it was moved under DHS and then within two years they spectacularly fucked up the Katrina response and then Congress still left FEMA in DHS.

@moderation.bsky.app suspended our director, Evan Greer's Bluesky account for speaking out about an awful experience from a transphobic bigot...is @bsky.app on the way to becoming the next Twitter/X ?

Re-skeet + demand Bluesky unsuspend her account!

One thing that’s really important to realize, which took me awhile to understand, is that people will be justifiably afraid to leave their homes. Now is the time to start thinking about aid pipelines to people who can’t leave their houses.

Such an important point, and something I've been thinking about. Thankfully, there aren't 1000s of Stephen Millers inside the federal government. Many of the Trump people are exceptionally stupid and bad at working.

Advocate for robust funding for your library, join your library board, *go* to your library, use its resources, embody the commons! And undercommons as much as you can for those folks whose libraries are under attack (as Brooklyn, Seattle et al have done through BooksUnbanned)!

Solidarity with our city workers! Our sanitation workers start at $45k and our mayor gave herself a 9% raise and created ~15 positions at > $150k salary.

They deserve a living wage and we deserve a city without cronyism