Enjoy your Caturday 🐾

Ramadan Mubarak!

Kung Hei Fat Choi!

Laissez bon temps rouler!

Hodesh Adar tov!

Y'ALL

⭐

www.instagram.com/reel/DUVizdn...

ICE in Minnesota — Day 68: Day of Protests, One Month Since Feds Killed Renee Good - UNICORN RIOT Get caught up on some of the updates from a day filled with protests to the ongoing federal occupation of Minnesota which has extended past 68 days now.

NEW: ICE in Minnesota — Day 68: Day of Protests, One Month Since Feds Killed Renee Good

*Jake Lang throws Nazi salute at protesters
*Indigenous-led civil rights rally & Renee Good Memorial
*Alex Pretti Vigil
*40 Dildo-Throwing protesters arrested at Whipple
+ more

unicornriot.ninja/2026/ice-in-...

Re: craftivism; we don't know what's gonna work til we do it. If you had told me last year that 3d printed whistles were going to be the big deal thing that really fucks up the gestapo... i'd have believed you because this moment is very weird BUT I'd have had to stare at the horizon for a minute.

Oop, I didn’t expect this to get any attention but I’ll take it.

I’m a Roman historian with some academic publications in progress. Here’s my essay ripping Gladiator II a new one: www.workingclassicists.com/zine/gladiat...

I also make chainmaille: www.instagram.com/inchaininthe... (and Facebook)

Heads up, all you ghost-loving readers: I have happy news! You should go check it out - and while you're at it, pick up my spooky little rural mystery CINDERWICH for just THREE BUCKS. I mean, if you want to put a little dough in my pockets and/or kibble in bowls: www.cheriepriest.com/blog/happy-a...

YouTube video by MEEK MEEK - Fabulous (Official Video)

Tennessee bestie sent me this, and please don't let me find out she's a terrible terf or something - because this is a *blast*

youtu.be/x-FLnQrUGTc?...

CHARLES RAFFERTY The Problem with Early Warnings People don't like to leave a party unless the house is actually on fire. Even then, if the flames are far enough away to be pretty, they'll finish their drink, take one more pass at the hors d'oeuvres. How things happen has always been unclear. Hurricanes begin in a place where no one lives. Agents of the government start to wear masks. Fascism is a word my neighbors won't use yet. They are following the law, they say, and the sirens are coming for someone else.

This hit so fucking hard today.

Jan. 28 will be the 40th anniversary of the Challenger disaster.

I watched it happen on live TV. In school. I was 11.

After a long, stunned silence, we all just picked ourselves up & went on with our day.

God knows that's not a flex.

It's not how things should have been, but it's how they were.

Weather lesson #1: If you can hear what is falling hit your windows (frozen), it's sleet. If not, it's snow. If it is liquid (raindrops), it is freezing rain.

Weather lesson #2: Measure snow on a hard flat surface with a ruler, averaging multiple measurements. See below.

⚠️ You're likely to start seeing mass-produced weather apps showing ❄️ or 🧊 next weekend. They will flip flop many times, maybe every few hours.

Remember, at 5+ days out, the skill level at predicting details is VERY low. Is there a chance? Sure. Right now we're playing Plinko. Stay tuned.

Same with scientists. Each "fun" generative AI thing shared makes me a little less confident in the quality of your research.

A really sad follow-up to this story — Alexis Erlinmeyer, one of the trans federal intelligence workers who was fired, has died of a pulmonary embolism. She was 31. Her family is burying her under her deadname, so friends are fundraising for an accurate memorial: www.gofundme.com/f/in-memory-...

The reason you go scorched-earth on this is the same reason we should have gone scorched-earth on impoundment; you can't stop it from happening, but you absolutely need to stop it from becoming a normal part of politics. You have to draw a line.

Dear Members, For the past few weeks, dozens of translators who regularly work with Harlequin (HarperCollins France) have been receiving phone calls informing them of the end of their collaboration with the publishing house. Their current contracts will be their last. Collection by collection, Harlequin is abandoning translation: an external service provider, the communications agency Fluent Planet, will handle running the texts through "machine translation" software and directly recruit freelance proofreaders to post-edit the machine-generated French output. The stated objective is to increase profitability by cutting down on working time.

🧵 1 ATLF press release

Harlequin s'ouvre à la traduction automatique par IA, des traducteurs dénoncent un « plan social » - Livres Hebdo Harlequin a contacté en novembre les traductrices et traducteurs de la collection « Azur » pour leur annoncer la fin de leur collaboration, rapportent l'Association des traducteurs littéraires de Fran...

Some people requested more context/sources, so here there are (French only, sorry!)

www.livreshebdo.fr/article/harl...

actualitte.com/article/1281...

So I am going to say something about romance as a genre.

A lot of people think that romance is ignorable because <insert thing they think about romance> and romance authors don't count because <insert thing they think about romance>.

This thread is not about whether you have to like romance.

French publishing house Harlequin decided to use AI translation instead of human translations.

All their freelance translators (some of whom had been working with Harlequin for +30y!!!) were told they would no longer receive work from Harlequin

"Academics literally cannot make genAI go away" we also can't make underage drinking go away and we're not advocating for installing bar carts in every classroom.

Wyldeflowers

12YO girl signed up to do “stand up comedy” at the talent show. 13YO boy decided to heckle her. Teacher started to tell the boy to leave her alone, but the 12YO comedian said “no, no, let him go, this is the closest he’s ever going to get to having a conversation with a girl.”

If you're interested in a decent search engine experience with zero AI to clutter your results, allow me to recommend this: udm14.com - It's literally a cheat code for google without all the garbage.

genAI is STOLEN WORK. Using genAI in *any* capacity is trafficking in stolen work, supporting the plunder. Period. These facts aren't even denied by the AI companies, they just find ways to make that plunder seem benevolent. Using their product enables that lie. Stop enabling the theft of our work.

a colorful fantasy worm or dragon creature with six limbs and a multicolored quilt like pattern on its body. it has a black head with three horns and antennae and is saying "boycott genAI" in a white speech bubble

worm for you

A two-panel comic drawing. The first panel says “why use water-hungry AI…”, accompanied by an abstract drawing of a dark cloud extending fingers into Earth or water. The second panel says “when you can support dehydrated artists?”. The image is of a skull next to a paintbrush and a palette. The skull says “we’re very low impact”.

Support us dry dry humans

There isn’t much for our Supreme Court to hear, the Constitution is already clear. And just to be absolutely clear: the Supreme Court does not have the power to overrule or rewrite our Constitution.

HOLIDAY SHOPPERS: heads up, y'all. I've got links. I've got books. I've got stuff on sale, and you can find it all here:
www.cheriepriest.com/blog/holiday...

From the Professors community on Reddit: "OU student says essay grade was a violation of her rights. Read the essay" Explore this post and more from the Professors community

This thread has some analysis, as well as some speculation about what article the assignment may have been about, as well as the idea that the student may have written the essay based off the abstract alone: www.reddit.com/r/Professors...

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

A Harpers Weekly engraving from 1869 depicting Uncle Sam's Thanksgiving Dinner as described in the main text of this skeet. There are also images of Lincoln, Washington, and Grant on the wall.

How Republicans commemorated Thanksgiving in 1869--with a multi-racial/multi-ethnic gathering of people at a table with a centerpiece celebrating universal suffrage and self-government, and with an engraving of Castle Garden, the pre-Ellis Island point of disembarkation for immigrants.