Valerie Steel

vivek's hairstyle kind of looks like dessert at the cheesecake factory

just heartbreaking stuff Alex Pretti's mother calls out ICE and the Trump administration for killing her son and smearing his name, and calls for justice to be done.

Since August, Home Depot parking lots around Seattle have become hotspots for immigration arrests. As arrests continue to rise, community groups have set up neighborhood watches to report ICE activity and to connect with workers and their families.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) must let his Democratic opponent, State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, review more than a thousand pages of unredacted communications he’s had with billionaire Elon Musk, a judge has ruled. news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/a...

Big Brother is watching, but now we can watch Big Brother right back. I love that MapQuest is flipping the script. Apple Maps, where you at?!

Mayor Mamdani and Councilmember Kayla Santosuosso visited the New York Aquarium to meet some seals and celebrate the impact of the administration’s $2 million investment in the aquarium.

"Whatcha doin'?" "Oh, you know... duck stuff." 🦆

I keep saying this: Stephen Miller is trying hard to preemptively scapegoat someone ELSE in case the GOP loses Texas. But they're naming him by name. www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

"The Cuban regime has stifled any viable domestic opposition. But the withering of the state—a process that has been under way for decades—has accelerated, and is shocking to see up close" From Robert Worth, @theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

Here's a joke that was shared on another site. Be sure to read it all, in order. 🤣🤣😈 1/4: #USDemocracy #Voices4Victory

Bolsonaro-friendly mayors appear to be sabotaging public transport on Election Day. Buses aren’t running in Lula-friendly areas, flights and ferries mysteriously canceled. Traffic lights have gone out and people’s power cut in Salvador, indigenous people’s travel restricted

Larry Kudlow was a longtime notorious coke head. And sometimes it shows. bsky.app/profile/atru...

Wolves Descend on Finnish Villages After Google Hacked Down 1,300 Acres of Habitat to Make Room for AI Data Centers futurism.com/future-socie...

A carefully planned Russian propaganda operation is underway. Having starved people in Oleshky for months, Russia, with the 'intervention' of Melania, will allow people to leave and pretend Ukraine was at fault. Read @zarinazabrisky.bsky.social www.kyivpost.com/analysis/88041

Trump: "My uncle invented radar! Can you believe it?"

Just an idea ~ step away from bluesky, put on your hat and coat & go for a walk along the shore.

www.sfgate.com/local/articl...

I’m ready for my closeup, cat edition

This was always going to happen. My guess is that Trump will issue a blanket pardon for every political appointee. Signaling a move like this will embolden his underlings to disregard and break the law. And that's the point.

Plutocracy in action. Elon Musk instructs Ken Paxton, attorney general of Texas, whose campaign is being funded almost entirely by Elon Musk, to go after his principal business rival, Sam Altman and OpenAI, and Paxton does exactly as instructed. www.politico.com/news/2026/10...

Every morning at 9 a.m., Ukrainians observe a minute of silence to honor those killed by Russia.

“Palantir cofounder and CEO Alex Karp states ‘AI will undermine the influence of highly educated, often female voters and give it to working class men. We have feminine energy running our cities and our courts,’ he complained.”

The time to determine whether Dan J. Sullivan Jr. could appear on the Alaska ballot for U.S. Senate was months ago, and Alaska courts did so. What's additionally batshit about this is that the candidates' names are printed on the ballot in a way which makes abundantly clear who's who.

Gary Tyler, a quilt artist who spent decades on death row for a crime he didn’t commit, now has his first solo exhibit at the Grand Rapids Art Museum

Good morning, folks. My latest essay for @atrupar.com Public Notice is out. In it, I argue that, to succeed, a new generation of Dem fighters must *heed* one party mantra…but, more importantly, *ignore* two others: open.substack.com/pub/aaronrup...

republicans’ closing message could not be clearer: they are the party of pedophile rapists

In Kharkiv today, russia struck an ordinary commuter train. Killing kids, striking markets, Killing dogs, burning trains - everything is possible if you are a great "humanitarian"

🚨 EXCLUSIVE: MeidasTouch obtained NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN photos and videos revealing devastating damage to U.S. bases from Trump's Iran war. Troops and military families describe being abandoned by their own government. “It’s so much worse than people realize.”

"Native recipients lost a greater percentage of their obligated funding than non-Native recipients.The cuts disproportionately affected environmental protection, agriculture, climate resilience and economic development projects intended to strengthen Tribal communities." substack.com/@gohini/note...

🚨BREAKING: Thousands of North Carolina midterm ballots are set to be rejected over minor technical issues after a federal court upheld strict new Republican-backed rules for mail voters, according to data shared exclusively with Democracy Docket. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

Even if you close your eyes..….

Incentivizing Trump voters to call in their suspicions about about black and brown people? What's the worst that could happen?

The start of the GOP 2028 primary

Republicans giddily allowed President Bill Clinton’s assault weapons ban to expire in 2004. After which, mass shootings exploded. This is America.

you can't be serious. This reads Meta/Facebook/Insta is looking to grant itself the rights to scrape websites across the open web - and train Meta's AI - if a company after Oct 30, 2026 uses Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or other Meta services. So every biz. Read that again. Outrageous. 1/5

Award-winning American photojournalist Heidi Levine describes being violently attacked by a mob of Israeli settlers while covering the olive harvest in Turmus Ayya near Ramallah this morning. By Oren Ziv @mekomit.bsky.social

“Today I was brutally attacked by … at least 50 masked men and slingshots …. “I was attacked, pushed to the ground. … Luckily I had my flak jacket and helmet; otherwise I probably wouldn't even be here because they kept kicking me and kicking me, probably like 50 times.”

One man's misfortune is another man's gain The container ship that sank near the Strait of Hormuz was carriying various packages, and small goods—including luxury perfumes and boxes of iphones—floating in the water as local retrieve them.

This is what happens when you close the early voting locations on campus! North Carolina, ya all! Tomorrow, the rest of America joins them! #NoKings

Trump: "Jon Ossoff has spent more money on makeup -- and by the way I wear very little and I do it myself. Yaaaaaaaaaaahhhh. Because if you don't put a little on, you look a little bit like a dead person. I don't want to look that way. But he goes full bore."