T.J. Mitchell

The Accidental Activist! I chat with Dr. Chad Smith, a small town ER doc, to hear how he was fired for his Facebook Posts (open only to his friends), how the community rallied behind him and what comes next! Links: tinyurl.com/4xyktu65

Los Angeles ME rules Eric Bauza's cause of death at age 46 as HCVD

In one day, two politicians - Bolsonaro in Brazil and Vucic in Serbia - with ties to Trump have lost surprise elections thanks to high turnout. The rise of the international far-right is not inevitable.

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was driving his construction crew to work when an ICE officer shot and killed him in Houston. He wasn’t even the person ICE was looking for. Now Texas voters are leaving their “I Voted” stickers at his memorial. #BlueWaveIn10Days

Holy crap! www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

Here's my latest review for The New York Times, this one of @drlindseyfitz.bsky.social's fascinating look at the man who inspired the Sherlock Holmes stories and the politics of murder in the 19th century.

💚

What a great travel tool! Also, potentially, a tremendous time-waster under the eager fingers of the undisciplined. I would guess. Wouldn't know, personally, of course. Not I, no

Attention NZ media (still no coverage??) – you'll definitely want to pop your heads out from under that #nzpol rock for this one!

QWERTY VTW

This guy was caught on video committing one of the worst road rage incidents I've ever seen, plowing into a group of riders—and then he left the scene. Seriously, fuck the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for framing him as some sort of a victim. You are complicit assholes. www.ajc.com/news/2026/10...

It's absolutely impossible to express how much this means and how unbelievable it seems.

I love New York.

It's raining, #SanFrancisco! I always forget this stuff exists till it returns.

Hey, it’s Best American day! This is my sixth volume as series editor of Best American Mystery and Suspense, and I had the honor of working with my revered friend @meganabbott.bsky.social to select these 20 exceptional stories.

"Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART)... is considering cutting 70% of its service and closing up to 15 of 50 stations, some 30%. Caltrain, the area’s leading local commuter rail system, could discontinue weekend service and shutter up to a third of its stations."

TRIUMPH OF THE WOOL @davidslack.bsky.social fdS* *für den Sieg

Public schools in Utah banned a best-selling Jodi Picoult novel and ordered all copies destroyed. So ... Picoult arrived at a Salt Lake City high school this weekend with 600 copies of the book. And she gave them all away, for free. "Applause and cheers erupted." www.sltrib.com/news/educati...

Watch this whole video. All the way to the end.

Of course, the subtext of this story is that corporations now have more authority over public walkways than pedestrians.

whoa... the current map of "No Kings: Vote Early" events planned for tomorrow, sat oct 17: www.nokings.org

Students from North Carolina A&T can be seen marching back to their HBCU after voting on the first day of early voting in the state. The Guilford County Board of Elections voted to remove the school’s on-campus polling site. (video via Todd Simmons) greensboro.com/news/local/g...

A 75,000-year-old Neanderthal from Shanidar Cave, Iraqi Kurdistan, shows evidence of a potentially lethal spear wound, offering rare insight into violence among our ancient relatives. The findings are published in Scientific Reports. 🧪🏺

Don't ask for permission, ask for Parole.

Ex-boss filed a $12 theft charge against an ex-employee because she got a restraining order in response to his creepy behavior. Charge was never prosecuted, but it gave ICE an excuse to arrest and detain her. Congratulations to the 58 Democrats who voted for the Laken Riley Act. You own this.

No one asked the Oakland Review of Books to make a voting guide, and we made one anyway. Today we start off with the ballot propositions and the regional transit measure: www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/orbs-totally...

Pretty clear that Trump/Hegseth are doing everything they can to force Ukraine to surrender to Putin by withholding all US assistance while actively helping fund the Russian war machine to kill as many civilians as possible including kids. What a dark, evil chapter in US history.

Our analysis found that from 2020 to 2025, the rate of deaths involving ectopic pregnancies nearly doubled compared with the previous six-year period. The uptick was steeper in states with abortion bans.

Well, it’s a quick take, and no doubt data will come in, but it sure looks like based on today’s evidence that a lot of pro-Trump and pro-AfD bot work depends directly on Russian data centers.

Warrantless stops and violent roving patrols by masked federal agents across California, especially the Central Valley, have been terrorizing farm workers for the past 5 days. The chaos is escalating. full statement: www.dailykos.com/stories/2026...

Geese are insane: Example #2,987,304

So we are warring with Iran And Russia is supplying weaponry to Iran. And we are paying Russia to send us diesel fuel. Because we are warring with Iran the ships with the diesel can't get to us. So we are buying it from Russia, which... Yeah, this is some three-dimensional chess right here.

four years ago I posted this image of paleontologist Jan Smit looking at rocks and his son-in-law replied with something even better

BALE SNAILS

Put another way, this is 5(!) times the average daily travelers at LAX, the busiest airport in the US.

These podcasts with Thomas Zimmer and Liliana Mason are excellent.

Absolutely predictable given the incredible number of fatal crashes along the PCH where it passes through Malibu.

The Colorado River basin's 2025-26 water year (October-September) was the warmest on record. It was also the least snowy on record. Only 16.8% of the (below average) precipitation fell as snow - shattering the previous record low.