Bat-child Librarian

The Jurassic era probably smelled the craziest. Followed by the Devonian.

FRIEND (IN CANADA): What's the Gulf called, what's the lake called, who won in the US in 2020? GOOGLE: Mexico, Ontario, Biden. ME (IN AMERICA): What's the Gulf called, what's the lake called, who won in the US in 2020? GOOGLE: America, America, I am not at liberty to disclose.

Brazil banned online gambling and people started spending the money on food. It's also an incredibly popular policy. There's literally no downside!

The singularity in action

the term "colonizer" gets thrown around a lot, but it really is one of the best single word definitions for Musk's entire deal www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Hi Friends! The Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies (JCLIS) seeks a new managing editor. Could this be you?!?! Learn more: litwinbooks.com/call-for-a-m...

Better a stand-alone amendment that defines a right to vote (and to have it counted and to have it count) than to narrow it to a symptom like “fix partisan gerrymandering.” Especially since, you know, the Constitution doesn’t currently define that right.

I'm in favor of taking constitutional amendments seriously and not dismissing them as impossible, but it's silly to say you're proposing an amendment for things that could already be done by regular legislation. It's also unserious to bundle a grab-bag of unrelated things into a single amendment.

Montana will lose a university in 2027. dailymontanan.com/2026/10/27/u...

Fun fact: it takes fewer votes to impeach and remove the president than to override a veto.

Expensive goods changing hands without consideration is one of those blaring lights you look for when investigating public corruption. It means the giver is expecting something other than money from the receiver.

Meet the guy Republicans are hoping to gerrymander into Congress by diluting the voting power of Black people in Memphis.

Oshkosh middle school teacher arrested for deportation by ICE via @isiahholmes.bsky.social wisconsinexaminer.com/2026/10/27/o...

“Flávio Bolsonaro left for the USA. Plane in flight *** Information was confirmed by people close to the family. Flávio's last message was sent to Rogério Marinho, at 8am this Tuesday” 10/27/26

Six men stole 3,000 pounds of frozen snow crab from a tractor-trailer while the driver was asleep in the front of the truck in Southwest Philadelphia Tuesday morning.

Hey hey it's my first for @theemancipator.org: An Arkansas genealogist found previously unknown evidence of slavery at the Old State House Museum. Then she was told to cover it up. theemancipator.org/2026/10/27/i...

“Flávio Bolsonaro rumoured to have fled Brazil after presidential election loss *** Authorities demanded he hand over his passport after loss to Lula but far-right senator remains unaccounted for” 10/27/26 … 1/

3% of Michigan Republicans actually say they’re voting for El-Sayed, but this minuscule number certainly hasn’t led to a host of stories about divisions within the GOP.

the markets have essentially become a gauge for how much corruption the government in power is going to let the business class get away with

“The breadth of the local economic damage” mirrors the breadth of Trump’s mass deportation agenda, writes UPenn professor Hernandez. A new study found ICE activity led to fewer shoppers, less consumer spending and lasting economic damage across multiple industries. www.inquirer.com/news/ice-tax...

This is legit wild. One of the Trumpiest GOP kooks we’ve had holding high office here in Texas makes an absolute spot-on, beautiful, non-partisan call for government transparency against the governor’s attempt to hide his emails with Elon Musk.

Texas Transgender Student Union, the anonymously registered LLC in Wyoming that sent the bogus mailers, has retained Ken Paxton's impeachment attorney, Chris Hilton, to represent them in a court cased filed by Transgender Education Network of Texas, the group that TTSU impersonated in the mailers.

Rowling *never* writes about women’s rights, workplace discrimination or the threats to women from predatory men. I tracked her posts for five months: Well over 200 hateful transphobic smears. Not a single post about women’s actual concerns or needs None

More than 900 women faced criminal charges for conduct related to their pregnancies since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, according to a new report. stateline.org/2026/10/27/9...

1. Not sure when a new, on-the-record rape allegation against a sitting president isn’t considered news — especially considering Trump was found liable by a jury in a similar case — but it was ignored by most mainstream media outlets

Will anyone—anyone at all—ask Trump about the rape allegations published in an official report by the House Judiciary Democrats? Or will he continue to escape accountability for his violence?

I think the problem with AI as peer reviewer is the same idea as "blockchain will enhance trust". It's a solution-shaped technical object. Oh will blockchain enhance trust because nobody can edit the distributed ledger except the humans who input the data originally who you already have to TRUST.

Brazilians recommending not to amplify right-wing talking points by dunking and quoting, as a winning strategy Next day, my tl is full of people dunking on rfk jr I literally would not have seen the bigotry if it wasn't for y'all repeating it. That's exactly what the Brazilians were on about!

trying to generate something you want using AI is exponentially more frustrating the more ability you have to actually make something, because you won't be satisfied with a vague facsimile of the thing you want

I saw a theoretical "use" for gen AI art where an artist who lost the ability to use their hands or other physical means of drawing could use AI to continue to make art and that's just such an attitude only someone who doesn't make art could come up with

people always use vague phrasing like "can be an assistive technology" because there's no actual argument for what the kinds of AI people don't like does for a disabled person that's essential or valuable

Sharing with alt text:

Homepage of the @miamiherald.com with story by @jkbjournalist.bsky.social that mentions rape in the first paragraph. See, it's not so fucking hard. www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-...

@people.com won’t be stopped, and my praise for them will be evergreen:

The only reason I can think of for this news not being absolutely everywhere is that large media orgs don’t want to be seen as putting their thumbs on the scales a week before election day. And that’s cowardly as shit.

California’s Proposition 4 would let the state enact public campaign financing programs, giving candidates the chance to run competitive campaigns without depending on large donors. bit.ly/47fVe9M

I know there's a lot going on but I feel it should probably be more of an above-the-fold story that members of Congress released a thoroughly documented report directly accusing the president of the United States of being a serial rapist.

BREAKING: Another immigrant has died in ICE custody, the 28th death in ICE detention in 2026.

the people have spoken, we don't want uncanny horrid plagiarist slop, we want organically made "weird little guys"(tm)

What's striking to me are the rules of engagement and the methodology of action here, which more or less is predicated on burying liberal delusions about "debate" or the "marketplace of ideas". The rules were ultimately very simple: amplify your own message and suppress your opponent's.

This one's up there but speaking from experience, the LP gets a few hundred or so people on the ballot nationwide every cycle, and one or more of them doing something bizarrely insane and/or tragic and/or criminal happens at... a higher rate than the general population, I'll put it that way.

NEW: "Donald Trump was an active participant in Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of young women during the mid-to-late 1990s," per new House Judiciary Dem report. Report has new allegation that Trump raped a 24-year-old and then promised the victim a visa & NYU admission, demanding she stay quiet.

Optimism October must lead to not-that-bad November

“My Catholic Latina opponent wants to impose Sharia Law” is a hilariously desperate closing message. thehill.com/homenews/617...

there's no question that there's still a lot of froth in "AI," but having watched Tesla plow through multiple crises with vastly worse business fundamentals than what Anthropic is disclosing I'm not sure I'd get too hung up on a transformative bubble pop scenario