remember when the IRS put out a a free online tax filing system where you could just do your taxes through the IRS and it was actually well made and was pretty well recieved and then the tax filing industry and Republicans killed it and now you have to use TurboTax again

Greater Minnesota schools felt the fear as ICE presence surged While the surge of federal agents in the Twin Cities grabbed much of the attention the past few months, stories of children hiding at home, crying in class and being detained have quietly gripped some...

While the surge of federal agents in the Twin Cities grabbed much of the attention the past few months, stories of children hiding at home, crying in class and being detained have quietly gripped some Minnesota small towns since January.

My daughter reported that the ICE presence outside her school during recess last week involved ICE officers sitting IN AN ICE CREAM TRUCK. And this wasn't kids misinterpreting. We had an email from the school the day it happened; we just didn't get the ice cream detail in the email.

Over on threads someone just use ai;dr and we all need to adopt that right quick

Does anyone know of a Signal 101 primer resource out there?

I don't mean ones like "here are the most secure settings", I mean like "every church lady on the block has installed this app at the same time and has no idea whatsoever how to use it, here's how to do it and what settings even are"

Bad Bunny 101

Ooookay here we go. Bad Bunny 101 condensed into six weeks of music, reading material, and perreo

It’s the “season of love and giving”…but this year, doesn’t it seem more like a “season of fear and taking”? Like many of you, I’ve been saddened by the human impact of draconian government budget cuts and how angry many housed Americans are at unhoused Americans.

🧵 1 of 9

A large (maybe 3 feet wide by 5 feet tall) sign on the end of a row of bookshelves that tells the “address” of books that have sensitive content.

Sometimes I think it’s going to be the librarians who will save us all.

And I get it, times are tough and books can be expensive. But so is every form of recreation today. Live and read within your budget. Use the library (ebooks too). Oh no, there's a wait on a popular book. Tough shit. Don't steal it or pirate it. Wait. Read something else. You'll be fine.

This. Also, it sucks that we live in a world where someone must make a positive argument in favor of buying books. Someone had to write that book and convince someone with deep pockets to publish and distribute it. If you are interested in a book, just buy it (and read it).

Y’all wanna hear a wild story? Charlie is right — this medley Prince made 30 years ago, blending many of his greatest hits & fan favorites into an extended mashup, is one of the most fun “only Prince could do this” things he made in the 90s. BUT: he told us he was gonna do it. In an AOL chat room…

🎃 happy spooky time 🎃

Portland is ... right there. It's a real place. People live in it. People can go look at it. You could call someone there right now.

A Mouthful of Dust Hunger makes monsters in this dark new tale in Nghi Vo's Hugo Award-winning Singing Hills Cycle."Nghi Vo is so good."―NPR on The Brides of High HillWanderi...

Happy book birthday to A Mouthful of Dust, standalone novella in the Singing Hlls Cycle, out today!

This time, Cleric Chih and Almost Brilliant the hoopoe memory spirit are investigating the town of Baolin, famous for its pork recipe and its famine.

us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

This is why Molly is not allowed to do tours.

Photo of my fluffy white cat Francie meowing at the camera with her little pink, toothless mouth open looking like the cutest lil gremlin. The words art show are written in sloppy digital crayon above and below her face.

THURSDAY ART SHOW! If you are a working artist (i.e. you depend on income from your art) just respond to this post with your non-pornographic, non-violent, non-AI generated ✨CAT-RELATED✨ art/crafts and I will repost! From now until 10:30 pm EST. Include any relevant links like your website or etsy!

Soon, Chris Ware USPS stamps.

Columboxd: Track Your Columbo Episodes One more thing…

I launched columboxd.com, a site to track and review episodes of Columbo!

There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc. There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation. There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely. Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time. For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual. As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.

So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone. Then the appearance arises that the task is to map “liberalism”, or “progressivism”, or “socialism”, or whateverthefuckkindofstupidnoise-ism, onto the core proposition of anti-conservatism. No, it a’n’t. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh. The core proposition of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is necessary. What you see is what you get: The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.

I think it's now possible to make a poli-sci course that equips one for modern political analysis better than most classic theory and has a syllabus sourced entirely from random internet posts.

Text 1. Wilhoit's Law, born as part of a 2018 blog comment
crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/l...

* CUT OUT AND TAPE NEAR YOUR COMPUTER OR TV BREAKING NEWS CONSUMER'S HANDBOOK 1. In the immediate aftermath, news outlets will get it wrong. 2. Don't trust anonymous sources. 3. Don't trust stories that cite another news outlet as the source of the information. 4. There's almost never a second shooter. 5. Pay attention to the language the media uses. • "We are getting reports"... could mean anything. • "We are seeking confirmation". "... means they don't have it. • "[News outlet ] has learned". "... means it has a scoop or is going out on limb. 6. Look for news outlets close to the incident. 7. Compare multiple sources. 8. Big news brings out the fakers. And photoshoppers. 9. Beware reflexive retweeting. Some of this is on you. ON THE MEDIA

This is one of those days that people need to be extra vigilant and mindful of what information they share about breaking news and events, ESPECIALLY if it confirms your biases and preferred narratives.

…I wonder how much of the Super Bowl Shuffle the Pope can recite from memory

Map of local National Weather Service office "areas of responsibility" modified (using polygons with black outlines and red fill) to indicate where recent/expanding cuts to NOAA/NWS have resulting in understaffing so extreme that some offices can not longer operate on a 24/7 basis.

I just created a quick map depicting which portions of the United States are now (as of today) or will imminently be (by early June) without 24/7 local National Weather Service coverage (per Washington Post reporting). #CAwx #CAfire #CAwater #ORwx #AKwx #WYwx #KSwx

Relatable: pope signed up for Google+ but had no idea what to do with it web.archive.org/web/20190309...

A booth showing the California Raisins NES game.

It feels subversive and wonderfully stupid that at a conference filled with expensive tech and AI blockchain crap, we are showing off the 30-year-old California Raisins video game

#Doves with jobs: Home builder

Page from an X-Men primer by Kurt Busiek and Scott McCloud.

Page from an X-Men primer by Kurt Busiek and Scott McCloud.

Page from an X-Men primer by Kurt Busiek and Scott McCloud.

I cannot think of a better setup than that to dig into my Twitter backup and (re)post your and Scott's delightful X-Men primer from RBCC #152 in 1979.

Btw; just to break toxic fanboys brains: here is Gene Roddenberry literally saying he wished he had gay sex and wishing that he was nonbinary.

Tongue twister: A very large and poorly-organized percussion manual is a

jumbled jumbo drum book.

Software catalog Fall 1991

Bring back software that makes me feel like any of the people in this photo