Mira Mortal

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Doing one of those earnest posts where we kindly remind you that we lost half our operating budget over the summer, and that we're looking for ways to keep this whole thing going, and that if you like what we do or that we exist, the best thing you could possibly do to support us is to subscribe

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a woman in a black and white striped shirt stands in front of a sign that says 6t6t6 ALT: a woman in a black and white striped shirt stands in front of a sign that says 6t6t6

Oops

Yorkshire Water: it’s time to end the rip-off Handing the company back to local people would return both control and value to those who need it most

"Yorkshire Water was privatised in 1989 under the Water Act, launched debt-free and promoted as the start of a new, efficient era.

What followed was anything but. Today, the company carries almost £7bn in debt. Our rivers are polluted, our bills keep rising, and we’re told to pay still more..."

My heart!

a bucket of colorful sprinkles is being poured into a bowl ALT: a bucket of colorful sprinkles is being poured into a bowl

I didn’t know Doritos made whole Cool Ranch sprinkles.

Amazon is helping fund a $300 million build of a ballroom for the White House.

Independent bookstores are donating to food banks and organizations that help with food insecurity.

They are not the same.

Progress Update: Building Healthier Social Media - Bluesky Over the next few months, we’ll be iterating on the systems that make Bluesky a better place for healthy conversations. Some experiments will stick, others will evolve, and we’ll share what we learn a...

Okay, good:

"Dislikes are private and the signal isn’t global — it mainly affects your own experience and, to an extent, others in your social neighborhood."

Because public dislikes would be TOXIC AS HELL.

bsky.social/about/blog/1...

Ksksksks 🧔🏻

Change one letter, ruin a candy.

Gummy beard

GOP state senators in North Carolina have answered Trump's plea to gerrymander congressional maps to maintain their U.S. House majority in 2026. The redistricting—if adopted, as expected, by the state House—would oust one of the state’s three Black members of Congress. trib.al/aiIUOAs

I'm sharing this photo from the great Stephanie Williams because honest to god if I saw this collection of talent in one spot at a con I believe I would pass out.

DC’s Access Journalists Turned the News Into a Luxury Good Before the internet, what would today be called a “paywall” was just...

@ddayen.bsky.social on how paywalls and the privatization of information corrupted politics journalism: "Obviously the tenor of coverage changes when the core audience is investors, lobbyists, and political professionals."

talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/dcs-a...

Garbage’s Shirley Manson Speaks Out Against Music Industry Economics: “This Is An Alarm Call” Just before they kicked off their current run of dates, the ’90s alt-rock greats Garbage announced that it would be their final North American headline tour. When the band played at Denver’s Mission B...

“Average musician makes $12 a month on Spotify. The fact that they are not even able to sell a record and it’s taken from them by rich motherfuckers on streaming platforms who get paid royally by record labels,Ticketmaster, merch companies. They’re all fucking getting paid, except for the musician.”

Robin Williams’ Daughter Tells Fans to ‘Stop Sending Me AI Videos of Dad’: It’s ‘Gross’ and ‘Not What He’d Want’ Zelda Williams tells fans not to send her AI recreations of father Robin Williams, calling them "gross."

Zelda Williams: “And for the love of EVERY THING, stop calling it ‘the future,’ AI is just badly recycling and regurgitating the past to be re-consumed. You are taking in the Human Centipede of content, and from the very very end of the line”

variety.com/2025/film/ne...

Your Cheat Sheet to the 2025 General Elections - Bolts Four contests have come to largely define the 2025 elections: the elections to lead New Jersey, Virginia, and New York City, plus California’s redistricting measure. But there’s so much else... Read M...

NEW: November general elections are around the corner, so it’s time to launch my cheat sheet of what’s on the ballot this fall!

I guide you thru the *185* elections I'm watching, & why: lawmakers, governors, judges, DAs, mayors, school boards, & dozens of ballot measures.

Explore, share, save:

Who’s your favorite Jedi? Wrong (“wrong”) answers only.

I totally follow him and his blessed posts. 🙏🏽

The dismantling of the US Forest Service is imminent The public has less than a week remaining to comment on the administration's plans.

The dismantling of the US Forest Service is imminent [via @highcountrynews.org]

Lift as you climb.

Concern over low birth rates was what the theocracy in Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale used to come to power.

An empty booth with a sign that says “vendor removed for selling AI art #ArtBYHumans”

I love the smell of consequences in the morning. Thank you, @dragoncon.org

By the time I was growing up, this new supercharged brand of capitalism was ascendant. To varying degrees, it reshaped liberal democratic governments around the world—they deregulated key industries, privatized public goods, and lowered taxes on the rich—as it channelled the individualism of the counterculture into the consumer frenzy of the 1980s. In the Cold War logic of the era, democracy became synonymous with an abundance of consumer choice; freedom was access to commodities, not access to the welfare commons. As social provision shrunk, striving became a form of personal insurance against future risk; as employment became more precarious, education was advertised as the most reliable path to upward mobility. Competition was extolled as the most effective way to keep afloat, and the purchase of new products the surest path to self-expression. Wealth and power concentrated at the top, but everyone was free to buy—if not with cash, then with credit. Unhinged from the material security that once sustained it, the postmaterialist emphasis on personal freedom and self-expression began to take on a desperate, darker, and more insecure edge. According to this new paradigm, by valuing objects and seeking status through them, the elementary school children who so confused me were only doing their civic duty.

Another excerpt. This follows a brief history of Thatcher and her goals. "Thatcher’s version of individualism—which involved shrinking the social safety net and weakening organized labour—left people even more atomized and scrambling."

Wowwwww this just took me back!

Right??

While Meta allows its chatbots to engage in explicit roleplay with minors and X has an AI that will describe the sexual assault of a journalist in detail, that Bluesky is the one getting attacked says all you need to know about the union between the tech elite and fascism.

1968 Ford Mustang convertible in metallic teal 😍