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Statement from Michael and Susan Pretti Parents of Alex Jeffrey Pretti “We are heartbroken but also very angry. Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital. Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately, he will not be with us to see his impact. I do not throw around the ‘hero’ term lightly. However, his last thought and act was to protect a woman. The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He had his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down, all while being pepper sprayed. Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man. Thank you.

Kare 11 local news just read, in full, this statement from Michael and Susan Pretti, the parents of Alex Pretti.

"Please get the truth out about our son."

He was doing what many have been saying white men should be doing. He went outside to observe, he documented, he put his body on the line to protect another person and for this he was murdered by the gatekeepers of the fascist regime.

I don’t want to hear anything from an elected official unless it’s a plan to defund the DHS and impeach Noem, Bovino, etc. No texts. No emails. No talk about the economy. Step up or step off.

Guest Gist: 2026, Our Already Rotting Future Seamus O'Reilly warns of AI maximum bubbledrive this year.

In what's now become an annual tradition, I've written another piece for The Gist about how and why I hate A.I.

On a bubble about to burst, a future rotted to its core, and the limits of the Mrs Doyle Theory of artificial intelligence.
www.thegist.ie/guest-gist-2...

This set of observations is produced by my scrolling Reddit and otherwise listening to people talk about "how to write."

A) there is no requirement that any of your characters has any sort of "arc" let alone a redemption.

B) there is also no requirement that your fiction has a plot.

I saw it in the theatre when I was maybe 12, first time going to the movies alone. That would've been the 80s, so apparently it must've been a revival screening? Weird!

My wife reading a joke from a cracker: why do they call it the Dark Ages?

Me: they don’t

Her: because there were lots of knights.

Everyone: hahaha

Me: ok let me stop you there. Number one…

There really should be a Most Gorgeous Prose category

I looovvvve this book

I love my two blackout drunk Minnesota sons

It's so fucked up to have been a kid during the D&D is the devil freakout and the Tipper Gore dirty lyrics freakout and live to see the teen suicide machine get such a pass.

This is Charles Clyde Ebbets, the photographer who took the iconic “Lunch atop a Skyscraper” picture. Look at this fearless, dapper fuck wearing spats, suspenders, and a tie 850 feet above the ground. Absolute legend.

Bong Joon Ho took a characteristically radical approach when questioned on his thoughts around the rise of Al technology at the jury press conference of the Marrakech Film Festival on Saturday. The Korean director, who is president of the jury, gave two responses, one measured, the other deeply personal. "My official answer is, Al is good because it's the very beginning of the human race finally seriously thinking about what only humans can do. But my personal answer is, I'm going to organize a military squad, and their mission is to destroy AI," he said.

Bong Joon Ho hit me up for the squad you legend deadline.com/2025/11/bong...

Evergreen

A cropped screenshot from a Canadian government website with the prompt "What's your occupation?" The answer "Writer" has been provided, generating the red text error response "Please enter a valid occupation."

Almost a year now since I received this absolutely classic burn from the Canadian government.

Flatlay yellow background (it's my coffee table) with white circular trivet and a copy of the book in the center. Book is dark blue with a darker blue hand with gold sparks flying from it. Title in gold.

THE GLOWING LIFE OF LEEANN WU is out now! I hope you enjoy my novel about a magical midlife midwife dealing with generational trauma while discovering her true power.

Available in print, ebook, and audio. Info and buy links here: rubylangwrites.com/the-glowing-...

I’m sorry I just found out that in 1379, as in, 650 years ago, a baby girl was born in Yorkshire and named Diot Coke

history is a fucking joke lmao

Background: a pile of copies of The Glowing LIfe of Leeann Wu. Book open to dedication page which reads: For everyone who's going through it.

THE GLOWING LIFE OF LEEANN WU is out in 2 weeks!

rubylangwrites.com/the-glowing-...

those of you who are afraid of aging, please understand that one of the huge blessings of middle age is arriving at this exact station

I will happily watch three seasons of a popular sitcom about the two Chicago popes.

It's hard to overstate how fully engaged Chicago and the surrounding suburbs are in this ICE madness. There are neighborhood watch alerts, spontaneous crowds gathering outside schools at pick up & drop off plus madly blowing whistles and honking car horns, this city is fighting back and hard.

OpenAI’s ‘embarrassing’ math | TechCrunch No, GPT-5 did not solve a bunch of previously unsolved math problems.

An OpenAI executive said GPT-5 found solutions to 10 "previously unsolved" math problems when in reality all it did was find online references to places where people had already solved them

techcrunch.com/2025/10/19/o...

you don't understand. as someone who isn't inherently good at art, stealing paintings from the museum is the *only* way i'm able to express myself creatively. i wouldn't be able to paint beautiful portraits. but by breaking into a museum and stealing the paintings, now i am

!!!

The jealousy that instantly burned in my heart upon reading this - of the people who found it and those who made it - is unprecedented

zeldawilliams 20m From Create Mode •• Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad. Stop believing I wanna see it or that I'll understand, I don't and I won't. If you're just trying to troll me, I've seen way worse, i'll restrict and move on. But please, if you've got any decency, just stop doing this to him and to me, to everyone even, full stop. It's dumb, it's a waste of time and energy, and believe me, it's NOT what he'd want. To watch the legacies of real people be condensed down to 'this vaguely looks and sounds like them so that's enough, , just so other people can churn out horrible TikTok slop puppeteering them is maddening. You're not making art, you're making disgusting, over-processed hotdogs out of the lives of human beings, out of the history of art and music, and then shoving them down someone else's throat hoping they'll give you a little thumbs up and like it. Gross.

And for the love of EVERYTHING, stop calling it 'the future. Al is just badly recycling and regurgitating the past to be reconsumed. You are taking in the Human Centipede of content, and from the very very end of the line, all while the folks at the front laugh and laugh, consume and consume.

Daughter of Robin Williams, Zelda Williams 💔

The risible thing about these "AI = people" posts is that there would be a philosophical dilemma if we encountered truly sentient AI. There are roughly one million sci-fi stories on this very topic. But they're doing all this for autocomplete. They're doing this for a spellcheck that can't spell.

A mass walkout of the UN General Assembly as Netanyahu prepares to speak.