“In 1982, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches declared that Apartheid is a heresy. Not only that it was a bad policy, or a violation of human rights, or a denial of the fundamental principles of liberal democracy. Not even that it was merely a sin. It was found to be heresy — a grave theological mistake and a lie.”
“The Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce are impeding much-needed fixes to the system used to track firefighters working in remote, active blazes, the investigative arm of Congress has found.”
“I feel like we’re to blame. Honestly, I feel foolish. I can’t believe I fell for it, knowing who we were dealing with. I just could not wrap my head around the idea that they could screw this up any more than they already have. And they have, in glorious proportion. It would have been so easy for them to embrace this community and watch it embrace you back, but Fisher is salting the earth here, just like he did in Oakland.”
“The records show that Noem quickly expedited more than $11 million of federal money to rebuild a historic pier in Naples, Florida, after she was contacted by a major financial supporter last month. The pier is a tourist attraction in the wealthy Gulf Coast enclave and was badly damaged by Hurricane Ian in 2022.”
“Small solar-panel kits that can be assembled as easily as an Ikea bookcase and plugged into a regular residential outlet could be coming soon to New Hampshire and Vermont.”
“According to data compiled by intelligence platform PeakMetrics, nearly half of the early posts about Cracker Barrel’s logo change appeared to be generated by bots.”
“Why the case against James Comey may end in humiliation for Trump’s DOJ”.
Can this marriage be saved…from ChatGPT?
“AI is fueling violent threats against women judges”.
“This is a tricky story to talk about for obvious reasons, but it’s also yet another sign of a decades-long pattern of errors at the hands of Oprah Winfrey, one of the most influential women on the planet and a noted fan of what can most charitably be described as woo-woo wellness. Winfrey spent many years on her legendary talk show sharing unchallenged anecdotes and anti-science propaganda under the guise of helping her audience ‘live their best lives.’”
“And but so still, again, I am at least pleased to see that we are all in apparent unanimous agreement that cold-blooded murder is a Very Bad Thing and that it should remain a crime — something regarded as both immoral and illegal. Maybe that ain’t much, but in 2025, I’ll take what I can get.”
“Right-wing extremists have killed 112 people over the decade, according to a new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies—and that’s more than the number of deaths committed by left-wing extremists and jihadists combined.”
“Trump Claims ‘No Downside’ to Avoiding Tylenol During Pregnancy. He’s Wrong.”
“An Oral History of David Letterman’s Top Ten List on Its 40th Anniversary”.
“Are homer-reliant teams worse in October, when the weather gets chillier, the pitching gets better, and the pressure ratchets up? No.”
“My bet is that this shutdown will break the 35-day record, with no partial shutdown asterisks.”
“If there’s a real lesson from the shutdowns and hostage-taking dramas of the Obama era, it’s that the public blamed Republicans for their shutdown antics in the moment but the general climate of dysfunction and austerity it caused was taken out on the party in power, i.e., Obama and the Democrats.”
“PEN America released its list of the most-banned books of the 2024-2025 school year on Wednesday – and warned that the number of books challenged or banned in public school districts across the country has risen exponentially in the past two years.”
RIP, Jane Goodall, scientist and activist whose work on chimpanzees was groundbreaking and influential. And you’ve never heard about the controversy involving a Far Side comic, well, there you go.
“I will note that this settlement is not “free” money – my work, along with the work of thousands of other authors, was stolen to feed an LLM whose function is at the heart of Anthropic’s current $180 billion-plus market valuation. This settlement is, bluntly, the absolute minimum Anthropic could get away with paying.”
“President Donald Trump’s deportation army is growing by the day, and a shocking number of its foot soldiers don’t even work for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The vast majority, in fact, come from other law enforcement agencies.”
“Someone who says I’m against abortion but is in favor of the death penalty is not really pro-life. And someone who says I’m against abortion but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”
“This gives China more leverage on us.”
For shame, Apple. For shame. Do better!