Farrah Bostic

📊 40% of voters name government corruption as a top-three political issue. That is the most cited issue in our August Compass Poll. 📈 Up from 34% in February 💸 Inflation and cost of goods: 36% 🏥 Healthcare costs: 27% changeresearch.com/r...

cyberpunk thriller where a team is hired to kill an AI CEO decades after his death

So I expected to have an episode out last week… But we are moving in 4 days. So I will see what I can pull off. Hoping to get one out this week before the midterms. And then there’s one I’m so excited to get to you and wanted to go before the election but … with any luck it’ll be even better after.

Good morning!

There’s one more week left of voting in the American midterms.🗳️ Here’s a handy guide for which states have early in person voting which I strongly suggest this year. Also google elections and the county that you live in to get local information. ℹ️ ballotpedia.org/Early_voting... #voteearly

Tomorrow is Tuesday. My car is in the shop. There’s still packing to do. They come to pick up the container on Thursday. We’re supposed to leave Friday.

i am inviting anyone from a legacy media organization to explain to me why the house judiciary dems report on trump’s epstein’s ties and multiple allegations of rape isn’t worthy of extensively reporting on. i’m serious. i want to understand.

Why does packing house always take SO MANY HOURS

... and then THE WEEK BEFORE THAT it was @farrahbostic.bsky.social, where we talked about Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future as an anchor for saying things that people don't want to hear in order for change to happen. (links also at www.verylittlegravitas.com/how-people-w...)

... and then LAST WEEK on the show we had the amazing @larahogan.bsky.social, you can grab links to her episode at the link below. (it's not just Claude, that's just a little bit. We mostly talk about trust + influence) And look, headshots now! www.verylittlegravitas.com/how-people-w...

In both countries, the opposition ran heavily on the platform of transparency, accountability and asset recovery. The last of these items, the pledge to establish new independent bodies to recover misused funds and illicitly gained wealth from corrupt politicians, is particularly noteworthy.

People in Belgrade celebrated following Serbia's Aleksandar Vucic speech conceding defeat to a student-led protest movement in a historic election that ends his long grip on power and heralds a new political era in the Balkan country. reut.rs/4zkXvww

Meanwhile, pro-democracy, pro-Europe protesters in Tbilisi, Georgia, are tonight nearing their 700th consecutive day of protest against the pro-Russian government. They haven't missed a single day in the last 23 months.

One question I always ask of a choropleth map is whether it is any more helpful than a table. Is there anything inherently spatial about the pattern? And do people know what's where? Maybe enough people have a sense of which states are where. Probably less so for counties within a state.

no matter how sure you are that these guys have broken a whole bunch of laws, you aren't nearly as certain as they are

I can confirm. Indivisible Action spends about a dime of every dollar raised on fundraising costs, which is very efficient. They are a good example of what a genuine grassroots operation looks like.

This is taxpayer-funded research data and info that belongs to the public and is not this administration’s to erase.

Russia-US Ukraine talks increasingly follow the interest of the insider court rather than the nations. This is what neo-royalism looks like. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

👇About France but also about America and honestly, a lot of places

#earlyvote early morning update 10/23: at least 21 million people have voted in the 2026 general election 🥳 election.lab.ufl.edu/early-vote/2...

Up here in the English Peak District it is pretty wet, hence the reservoirs But this is what Ladybower looks like now - nearly two-thirds of the way through Autumn This bodes very badly for summer 2027 Standpipes in the street would be no surprise at all www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Why is this student so upset about the mushroom, though? What could it have done to make her protest across the whole continent

“Unsupervised autonomous ride-hailing requires specific local and state regulatory permits. Insurance may be difficult to obtain. And in most places, it’s still illegal for individuals or outside companies to use their own self-driving cars as driverless taxis or passenger rides.”

This is exactly what vouchers are designed to do. Never forget- scratch a book banner, find a legislator who's working with the anti-public education dark money crowd. Bc it's hard to sell: I don't believe poor ppl deserve an education. But it's easy to sell: public schools are grooming your kids.

Google’s defense is ‘We are still following our AI Principles.’ For a good laugh, follow the link in the story to their current ‘AI Principles’, and read them. Then scroll down to the links to older ‘AI Progress’ reports, and compare today’s Principles with those listed in the 2019-2023 reports.

A couple of weeks ago, I got to talk to Paige Williams about what she calls narrative intelligence. As a qualitative researcher & consultant, I assure you, I had plenty of thoughts. You can check them out here! Her channel (and our conversation) is called 100 Stories: www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkLr...

One thing that should be noted about this @thewesternedge.bsky.social story: the investigation into the 2024 ballot box bombings seemed to completely halt when the investigation was handed over to the FBI. www.thewesternedge.media/p/the-alien-...

In any other admin, this would probably be the most outrageous official statement ever made by a sitting FCC director: Strongly implying that the government forbids broadcast networks from reporting on the president's falling poll numbers. (Sorry to paste from twitter but that's where he posts.)

This x100. The much discussed Balancing Costs (part of dealing with intermittent renewables) are up by 20% in 6 years, from a small-ish base. Not nothing, but not that much either. Transmission costs are the big rise among network costs, and a lot of that probably isn't even net zero-related

And if you extend the analysis to look at the whole energy bill, including electricity and gas, the story is again very clear. Rising wholesale gas costs are not our only problem, but they are overwhelmingly the biggest problem...