‘Trump to Minnesota: Give me your voter data, or else.…’ (Cameron Peters via Vox)

‘The Globe & Mail uncovered that the Canadian military has been modeling what an American invasion might look like… So, what are the broad strokes of Canada stopping a southern invasion? We can’t. Within hours, American military superiority would crush any resistance.

However, occupying Canada becomes the real problem. Canada is massive. No nation has the numbers to dominate and hold it sustainably. Even if the government surrendered, military and civilian resistance could disappear into the wilderness or rural areas where hunting them down would prove difficult. The CAF model suggests Canadian forces could continue fighting using ‘unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military or armed civilians would resort to ambushes, sabotage, drone warfare or hit-and-run tactics.’ Sound familiar? Think Taliban in Afghanistan or Vietcong in the 1960s and 1970s. Hit-and-run attacks, IEDs, blending into the civilian population—tactics that proved nightmarish to counter. You can’t measure success or predict where the next ambush comes from.

With NATO countries sending troops to Greenland to counter Trump’s annexation threats, other formerly friendly nations are reconsidering what to do if America comes knocking.…’ (Séamus Bellamy via Boing Boing)

‘Author: 

Here’s a cool website you should check out if you love astronomy and want to see what the Hubble and Webb Space Telescopes are looking at right now (or close enough). “Space Telescope Live“ is a web application originally developed in 2016 for Hubble updates. It now includes images from both telescopes, giving us access to their past, current, and upcoming observations.…’ (Jennifer Sandlin via Boing Boing)

Interview with Henry Farrell, a professor of international affairs at Johns Hopkins University, who recently wrote an op-ed for the New York Times titled “Europe Has a Bazooka. Time to Use It:” 

‘…Clearly there has been some real sense that there is a coalition which is engaging against this measure, and that coalition is sufficiently credible that the United States has something to worry about… It really does look like a climbdown disguised as a declaration of enormous victory. The fact that this is happening through Rutte and through NATO rather than, for example, through direct negotiations with Denmark, suggests that what is going to happen is that we’re going to get some kind of agreement on security in the Arctic region, which everybody is more or less on the same page on and Trump will declare this a glorious victory over Greenland and then move on.…’ (via Vox)

‘Trumpism will shadow the next president, even if that is a Democrat.…’ (John F. Harris via POLITICO)

‘Will Republicans in Congress ever step in?…’ (Anne Applebaum via The Atlantic)

‘Europe can wield this $8 trillion ‘sell America’ weapon as Trump reignites a trade war over his Greenland conquest ambitions…

(T)he U.S. has a key vulnerability the EU can exploit, according to George Saravelos, head of FX research at Deutsche Bank.

“Europe owns Greenland, it also owns a lot of Treasuries,” he wrote in a note on Sunday.

(via Fortune)

‘”Some folks want to befriend crows, or get them to bring trinkets. I have… other goals.”…’ (via Futurism)

‘Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom in a joint statement: “We will continue to stand united and coordinated in our response. We are committed to upholding our sovereignty.” I remember when this is how the world would respond to Russia and China’s actions, not the United States’.…’ (via Birchtree)

‘As violence has come to surround Russian youth, many seem to have become more violent themselves.…’ (Anna Nemtsova via The Atlantic)

‘These designers found a clever way to keep the president’s mug off their America the Beautiful entry passes…In the wake of the DOI’s new sticker ban, she adapted the design to guarantee that users won’t be penalized. Instead of adding the sticker directly to their passes, customers can now purchase a $2 plastic card sleeve from Dirt Roads Project to keep their cards completely unaltered while still obscuring the president’s face.’ (via  Fast Company)

‘The president has mused about skipping the midterms as approval for his administration continues to slip…’ (Nikki McCann Ramirez via Rolling Stone)

‘On Friday, Russia attacked Lviv, a major Ukrainian city near the Polish border, using Oreshnik: an intermediate-range, nuclear-capable ballistic missile. Security-camera footage captured brief flashes in the sky, the missile’s multiple warheads entering the atmosphere at 10 times the speed of sound, and then—impact. The missile that struck Lviv did not carry a nuclear payload, but it did carry a political one, at a moment when Vladimir Putin appears to be cornered and Donald Trump is more belligerent than ever.…’ (Andrew Ryvkin via The Atlantic)

‘Chances of a democratic transition are slim…’ (Daniel Block via POLITICO)

‘Verizon is offering customers a $20 account credit following a massive outage that brought down service across the US on Wednesday. In an update on X, Verizon says you’ll receive a text message when the credit is available, which you can redeem by logging into the myVerizon app and accepting it.…’ (Emma Roth via The Verge)

‘Today, Donald Trump announced that he is considering using the Insurrection Act to send the U.S. military to Minneapolis if state officials do not quell anti-ICE protests there. Deploying federal troops on American soil against the objections of state and local officials is an extreme measure––and seems likelier to inflame than to extinguish unrest there, given that needlessly provocative actions by ICE officers helped create conditions on the ground. Yet the president seems eager to suppress the actions of people he calls “professional agitators and insurrectionists.” For months, members of his administration have laid the rhetorical groundwork for a martial crackdown.…’ (Conor Friedersdorf via The Atlantic) 

‘Attend a public event in Canada and you will likely hear it open with a land acknowledgment. In the city of Vancouver, for example, the script might read:

“This place is the unceded and ancestral territory of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh speaking peoples, the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, and has been stewarded by them since time immemorial.”

I’ve been present for many of these recitations, which are common in liberal areas of the United States too. They are usually received by their audiences as a Christian invocation might once have been: a socially required ritual in which only some believe, but at which it would be rude to scoff. After all, what harm does it do?

In the past few months, Canadians have learned that these well-meaning pronouncements are not, in fact, harmless. Far from it. Canadian courts are reinterpreting these rote confessions of historical guilt as legally enforceable admissions of wrongful possession.…’ (David Frum via The Atlantic)

Jason Weisberger, via Boing Boing, explains that pedestrian crossing buttons aren’t a scam, but they’re widely misunderstood. They don’t make the light change faster or reduce waiting time. Their real function is simpler: they tell the traffic system that a pedestrian is present and should be included in the signal cycle. A clear technical walkthrough of the wiring and logic shows that the buttons matter, just not in the way most people assume—they register demand, not impatience. (

‘The “Make Everything OK” button is a website containing nothing but a single button. Press it, and after a moment of processing, you’re informed: “Everything is OK now. If everything is still not OK, try checking your settings of perception of objective reality.”…’ (Popkin via Boing Boing)

A helpful rundown by Lauren Jeffries, sleep features editor for Tom’s Guide. 

‘Former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon is laying the groundwork for a 2028 run for president, two people familiar with his thinking tell Axios.

Why it matters: The MAGA godfather isn’t serious about becoming president — that’s not the point. Instead, he’s told allies he wants to shape the debate and pressure Republican candidates to embrace an “America First” agenda — including a non-interventionist foreign policy, economic populism and opposition to Big Tech.…’ (Alex Isenstadt via Axios)

‘History suggests that regimes collapse not from single failures but from a fatal confluence of stressors. One of us, Jack, has written at length about the five specific conditions necessary for a revolution to succeed: a fiscal crisis, divided elites, a diverse oppositional coalition, a convincing narrative of resistance, and a favorable international environment. This winter, for the first time since 1979, Iran checks nearly all five boxes.…’ (Karim Sadjadpour and Jack A. Goldstone viaThe Atlantic)

Is the Trump regime coming close to checking these boxes too? (One can hope.)

‘The danger isn’t to ICE officers. The danger is ICE officers.…’ (via engadget)

‘In a landmark study, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis (WashU) have shown for the first time that stimulant medications mainly act on the brain’s reward and wakefulness centers, rather than on its attention circuitry. This upends traditional thought on how drugs like Adderall and Ritalin work.…’ (via New Atlas)

‘A massive global genetics study is reshaping how we understand mental illness—and why diagnoses so often pile up. By analyzing genetic data from more than six million people, researchers uncovered deep genetic connections across 14 psychiatric conditions, showing that many disorders share common biological roots. Instead of existing in isolation, these conditions fall into five overlapping families, helping explain why depression, anxiety, PTSD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and substance use disorders so frequently occur together.…’ (via ScienceDaily)

Findings such as these resonate strongly with the stance of diagnostic skepticism that I have held throughout my career as a clinical and academic psychiatrist. Psychiatry has repeatedly taught us that its categories are provisional tools rather than natural kinds, and that our confidence in them often outpaces the solidity of the underlying science. The recurrent experience of patients accumulating diagnoses over time—sometimes within a single hospitalization, sometimes across decades—has always suggested that something more fundamental than discrete disease entities is at work.

Historically, this tension is not new. Psychiatric classification has oscillated for more than a century between lumping and splitting. At certain moments, the field has favored broad, integrative constructs—neurosis, psychosis, affective illness—emphasizing shared phenomenology and presumed common mechanisms. At other times, it has moved toward increasingly fine-grained distinctions, carving syndromes into narrower subtypes in the hope of diagnostic precision, prognostic clarity, and targeted treatment. Each swing has been accompanied by a sense that the current framework finally “gets it right,” only to be followed by revision as anomalies accumulate.

Large-scale genetic findings like these offer a compelling biological explanation for why neither extreme has ever fully succeeded. If multiple psychiatric syndromes share substantial genetic architecture, then comorbidity is not an artifact of poor interviewing or diagnostic sloppiness, but an expected consequence of overlapping vulnerability systems expressing themselves differently across development, context, and stress. The apparent neatness of our diagnostic manuals may therefore obscure a far messier underlying reality.

Importantly, this does not invalidate diagnosis itself, nor does it imply that all conditions should be collapsed into a single undifferentiated category. Lumping and splitting are not opposing dogmas so much as complementary lenses. Lumping has value when the goal is to understand shared mechanisms, reduce artificial boundaries, recognize common trajectories, and avoid reifying distinctions that lack biological or clinical robustness. Splitting, by contrast, becomes indispensable when precise phenomenology matters—when predicting course, tailoring treatment, communicating risk, or conducting focused research on well-defined clinical problems.

In practice, good psychiatry has always involved knowing when to do each. A clinician may need to lump in order to see the larger pattern of vulnerability, suffering, and adaptation in a patient’s life, while simultaneously splitting enough to recognize specific syndromes that carry distinct risks or treatment implications. The emerging genetic evidence does not demand allegiance to one approach over the other; rather, it reinforces the wisdom of holding our categories lightly, using them pragmatically, and remaining open to revision as our understanding deepens.

Seen this way, the enduring oscillation between lumping and splitting is not a failure of the field, but a reflection of the complexity of the phenomena it seeks to describe.

‘The shift in this scenario is from today’s highly polarized but still shared world — where groups interpret events differently — to a fractured reality in which the events themselves cannot be verified, origins cannot be traced, and no authoritative source can prove what is real. Instead of opposing political narratives and conspiracy theories, society enters a state of psychosocial freefall where AI creates a series of parallel realities. It will mark a transition not from disagreement to deeper disagreement, but from disagreement to the collapse of a shared reality altogether.…’ (via POLITICO)

‘By going around Congress, the president is showing contempt for the will of the public… The probable illegality of Trump’s actions does not foreclose the possibility that his approach will improve life for Venezuelans. Like too many world leaders, Maduro is a brutal thug, and opposition figures have good reason to insist he isn’t the country’s legitimate leader. I hope and pray his ouster yields peace and prosperity, not blood-soaked anarchy or years of grinding factional violence.…’ (Conor Friedersdorf via The Atlantic)

New York Times Editorial: Attack on Venezuela Is Illegal and Unwise

‘If there is an overriding lesson of American foreign affairs in the past century, however, it is that attempting to oust even the most deplorable regime can make matters worse.…’ (via New York Times)

‘“Wow, she hates him more than I even imagined. They never look at each other. They never touch each other. I guess he didn’t pay her enough for the night.”…’ (Patrick Penrose via TVovermind)

‘Trump’s ego, Rob Dannenberg argues, is a vulnerability that Putin knows how to exploit —and Trump, the CIA veteran fears, is “incredibly naïve” where the Russian president is concerned.

Danneberg told the iPaper, “Putin looks at Trump and sees a weak guy, vain, with huge ego…. He’s being manipulated in the way that a good case officer like Putin would manipulate this guy. He’s not monogamous, he’s greedy, he’s fascinated by gold — all these are things that, if I were a case officer, I would be leveraging to get this guy to do what I want him to do. When that happens to align with Trump’s ambition to get a Nobel Peace Prize, so much the easier, right? You’re pushing on an open door.”…’ (Alex Henderson via Alternet.org)

‘Some species officially bid us farewell this year.

They may have long been gone, but following more recent assessments, they’re now formally categorized as extinct on the IUCN Red List, considered the global authority on species’ conservation status.

We may never see another individual of these species ever again. Or will we?…’ (Hayat Indriyatno via Mongabay)

‘Researchers have discovered that Alzheimer’s disease may be reversible in animal models through a treatment that restores the brain’s metabolic balance. This study, published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine, demonstrates that restoring levels of a specific energy molecule allows the brain to repair damage and recover cognitive function even in advanced stages of the illness. The results suggest that the cognitive decline associated with the condition is not an inevitable permanent state but rather a result of a loss of brain resilience.

For more than a century, people have considered Alzheimer’s disease an irreversible illness. Consequently, research has focused on preventing or slowing it, rather than recovery. Despite billions of dollars spent on decades of research, there has never been a clinical trial of any drug to reverse and recover from the condition. This new research challenges that long held dogma.

…The researchers focused on a molecule called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, known as NAD+. This molecule is essential for cellular energy and repair across the entire body. Scientists have observed that NAD+ levels decline naturally as people age, but this loss is much more pronounced in those with neurodegenerative conditions. Without proper levels of this metabolic currency, cells become unable to execute the processes required for proper functioning and survival.…’ (Karina Petrova via PsyPost)

‘Earlier this month, the company behind the pioneering smart vacuum, iRobot, filed for bankruptcy. The remainder of the business will go to its primary manufacturing partner—the one it owes all that money to—Shenzhen Picea Robotics. It’s a stark reminder that the longevity of a connected smart device depends entirely on the financial health of the company that made it.

…Whether you have a Neato, a Roomba, or another robot vacuum approaching the end of its connected, you can mirror my steps to keep your device cleaning.…’ (Florence Ion via Lifehacker)

When Blaise Metreweli spoke recently, she didn’t issue the usual warnings about rising powers or looming catastrophe. Instead, she described something more unsettling: a world that has quietly slipped beyond the post–World War II order.

 In this world, wars are rarely declared, borders are routinely ignored, and power no longer rests only with nation-states. Conflict now unfolds through AI-enabled drones, autonomous weapons, hyper-targeted psychological operations, and algorithms that rival states in influence. Information itself has become a weapon.

 This isn’t a future scenario. It’s the terrain we’re already standing on.

 The conflicts Metreweli outlined don’t begin with explosions. They begin with destabilization—confusion, economic pressure, disinformation, and the slow erosion of democratic trust. The front lines are no longer just physical; they are digital, cognitive, and economic. War now moves from sea to space, from battlefield to boardroom, and from social media feeds directly into our heads.

 Perhaps most alarming is her core observation: power is becoming radically diffuse—shifting from governments to corporations, platforms, and even individuals. Private actors now control satellite networks essential to warfare, shape elections through information systems, and deploy AI faster than laws can meaningfully constrain them. This is conflict without uniforms and accountability without borders.

 What gives this warning real weight is what’s happening quietly alongside it. Across Europe, democracies are preparing. Britain’s military leadership is calling for a “whole-of-nation” response. Germany and France have reintroduced forms of national service. Europe is rapidly restructuring defense production, supply chains, and industrial capacity.

 These are not symbolic gestures. Democracies don’t mobilize like this unless multiple intelligence streams are telling the same story.

 The unsettling implication is simple: the war Metreweli described isn’t coming. It’s already underway. (Via Dean Blundell)

‘From mudstones on Mars to strange gases in exoplanet atmospheres, tentative evidence for extraterrestrial life is starting to come thick and fast. But when we’ve found it, how will we know for sure?…’ (Miriam Frankel via New Scientist)

So the shortest day came, and the year died,

And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world

Came people singing, dancing,

To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;

They hung their homes with evergreen;

They burned beseeching fires all night long

To keep the year alive,

And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake

They shouted, revelling.

Through all the frosty ages you can hear them

Echoing behind us — Listen!!

All the long echoes sing the same delight,

This shortest day,

As promise wakens in the sleeping land:

They carol, fest, give thanks,

And dearly love their friends,

And hope for peace.

And so do we, here, now,

This year and every year.

Welcome Yule!!

‘The speech was a jumble of his usual false or even impossible claims — like a promise to reduce prescription drug costs by an impossible 400 percent — smashed together in no particular order. The speech began with a discussion of the cost of living, a subject he would drop and then return to as if just remembering that it was the number one reason his polls were low. Even the delivery was weird: Seemingly under network time constraints, the president read off the teleprompter angrily and quickly, speaking with the motormouth intensity of a 20-something banker who just discovered cocaine and now has a really great idea for a new restaurant.

So why am I writing about it at all?

Because the fact that it happened at all tells us something much more important: that the Trump administration is sinking, and his White House has no idea what to do about it.…’ (Zack Beauchamp via Vox)

‘Trump went to North Carolina to talk about the economy and ended up explaining how Melania organizes her underwear drawer.

President Trump traveled to Rocky Mount, North Carolina on Friday to deliver what the White House billed as an economic message. Ninety minutes later, he had covered his wife’s lingerie organization system, the proper arm shape for furniture, and why beating Hillary Clinton was more fun than he expected.…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)

‘”Historians will study how bad this book is. English teachers will hold this book aloft at their students to remind them that literally anyone can write a book: Look at this, it’s just not that hard to do.”

That’s how Scaachi Koul describes American Canto, a memoir by journalist and political operative Olivia Nuzzi. Koul reviewed the book for Slate. This review is one of several collected by Literary Hub for a roundup of the most cutting book reviews for the past year.

Other books considered and then eviscerated are the first novel by comedian Louis C.K., a memoir by former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and a posthumously published collection of short stories by Harper Lee.…’ (John Farrier via Neatorama)

‘Ryan Coogler’s bloodsucker blockbuster is all about Black creative freedom. No wonder the industry saw it as a threat.…’ (A.A. Dowd via American Prospect)

‘The internet makes most information instantly available. What if that’s why mass culture is so boring?…’ ( W. David Marx via The Atlantic )

‘Planning a trip to Cuba, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, or southern China? The CDC would like a word. The agency has issued Level 2 travel advisories — “practice enhanced precautions” — for all four destinations due to outbreaks of chikungunya, a mosquito-borne virus with no treatment and a name that sounds like it was invented to be unpronounceable by English speakers. Brazil, Colombia, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand are also flagged as higher-risk destinations.

…Chikungunya won’t likely kill you, but it will make you miserable. Symptoms include fever, joint pain, headaches, muscle aches, swelling, and rash, typically showing up three to seven days after a mosquito bite. Most people recover within a week. The virus is vaccine-preventable, though, so if you’re heading to affected areas, get the shot and bring the bug spray.…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)

‘…Sacks spent decades in therapy exploring why he couldn’t stop embellishing. He called his writing “symbolic autobiography” — projecting his own psychological conflicts onto patients. The healer who saw the hidden genius in broken minds was, in some sense, trying to heal himself through fiction he labeled fact.…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)

‘There’s no better way to close out the year than with an awe-inspiring display of fireballs streaking across the sky. The Geminids are set to peak during this weekend under perfect conditions, giving sky-watchers a chance to marvel at up to 100 meteors an hour.

The annual Geminid meteor shower should peak on Saturday night and continue onto early morning on Sunday while remaining visible until December 20. This year, the prospects of viewing bright streaks of light are high with the Moon being in a waning crescent phase. That means Earth’s natural satellite will not hamper your viewing opportunities of the shower.…’ (Passant Rabie via Gizmodo)

‘The 2024 election was widely viewed as a referendum on diversity, equity and inclusion and, once in office, President Donald Trump wasted no time in dismantling programs in the federal government and pressuring the private sector to follow suit.

With DEI programs under attack from the administration, many companies scaled back or eliminated them. Others had already rolled back diversity commitments after facing anti-DEI campaigns from activists.…’ (uthor: Jessica Guynn via USA Today)

‘As BBC Sport reports, President Trump is now the proud recipient of the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize, an award that definitely existed before this week and wasn’t just invented by his close ally Gianni Infantino. The ceremony took place at the Kennedy Center before the 2026 World Cup draw, where

Trump received a large golden trophy, a medal, and a certificate — the full participation trophy experience.

“This is your prize, this is your peace prize,” Infantino told Trump, in case anyone was confused about whose prize it was. Trump called it “truly one of the great honors” of his life. And who wouldn’t be honored by getting a shiny medal from an organization famous for bribery, racketeering, and money laundering?…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing

‘CNN’s KFile unearthed multiple appearances where the then-Fox News contributor warned that service members had a duty to refuse illegal commands. “The military’s not gonna follow illegal orders,” Hegseth said on Fox Business. “You’re not just gonna follow that order if it’s unlawful,” he said on Fox & Friends.…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing))

‘The post-modern philosopher Jean Baudrillard infamously argued in 1991 that the Gulf War did not take place, by which he did not mean that no fighting had actually occurred, but that the real events were something entirely separate from the carefully choreographed presentation the world saw thanks to the novel phenomenon of 24-hour cable news.

It’s tempting to wonder what Baudrillard would have made of the current US military buildup targeting Venezuela, a campaign that often appears to be driven by narratives with only a tangential relationship to actual events taking place.

Take, for instance, President Donald Trump’s dramatic announcement on his Truth Social platform a little over a week ago: “To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.”…’ (Joshua Keating via Vox)

‘The Court’s Republican majority… plans to remake the separation of powers among the three US branches of government into a kind of hierarchy. Under this new vision, Congress’s power to create “independent” agencies that enjoy some insulation from the president must yield to a more powerful executive. And the executive’s authority over these agencies must, in turn, yield to a more powerful Supreme Court.…’ (Ian Millhiser via Vox)

‘….The psychedelic compound DMT disrupts a key brain rhythm linked to self-awareness, providing new insights into how the brain shapes our sense of self.

The research, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, investigated how DMT alters the coordinated brain rhythms linked to self-referential thought and internal narrative known as alpha waves. The team noticed this connection when they identified a neural signature associated with ego dissolution in study participants during the peak effects of DMT.…’ ( Austin Burgess via The Debrief)

‘But once you go back, you might not like what you find.…’ (Caroline Delbert via Popular Mechanics)

‘Across the internet, during the 2024 election and in the first year of his second term, MAGA influencers have increasingly used the R-word to insult and scandalize conscientious “woke” liberals, normalizing a slur that had been largely purged from the national vocabulary. The trend reflects not only a coarsening of public discourse under Trump but new depths of callousness and cruelty in America, with disability advocates warning of the term’s dehumanizing effect. Elon Musk alone has dropped the word more than 30 times on his X account since early 2024, while Joe Rogan has said that its return represents an important win for right-wingers. “The word ‘retarded’ is back, and it’s one of the great culture victories,” the podcaster crowed in an April episode of his show.…’ (Miles Klee via Rolling Stone)

 

‘A major seafood company wants to farm octopuses for their meat. Activists and academics say it’s impractical and cruel.…’ (Kenny Torrella via Vox)

‘The Mari Lwyd is a Welsh tradition in which a group of people carry a horse skull mounted on a pole — draped in a white sheet with the operator hidden underneath — to your door at Christmas and demand entry through song.

You are expected to refuse, also through song.

What follows is essentially a medieval rap battle: the Mari Lwyd party sings their case for why they should be let in, you sing back why they shouldn’t, and this continues until someone runs out of verses. If you lose, the skeletal horse and its entourage get to come inside, and you have to give them food and drink.

The tradition dates back to at least 1800, and the groups typically included the horse carrier, a leader, and people dressed as stock characters like Punch and Judy.…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)

‘ARMR’s experimental vaccine is designed to neutralize fentanyl in the bloodstream before it reaches the brain. Keeping fentanyl out of the brain would prevent the respiratory failure that comes with overdose, which causes death, as well as the euphoric high people get while taking fentanyl.…’ (Emily Mullin via Ars Technica)

‘In 2002, astronomers at Johns Hopkins University set out to answer a question nobody asked but everyone secretly needed answered: what color is the universe? Not the black of space you see at night — the average color of all the light from all 200,000+ galaxies they surveyed.

…The corrected answer, published in 2003: a pale, creamy beige. Hex code #FFF8E7. The team needed a name for this color, so they ran a poll. Suggestions included “cappuccino cosmico,” “Big Bang beige,” and “primordial clam chowder.”…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)

‘According to Trump’s new national security strategy, America is done with “democracy promotion”… except in Europe.…’ (Joshua Keating via Vox)

‘The Court’s Texas decision is a victory for Republicans, and it is a terrible blow to all gerrymandering plaintiffs.…’ (Ian Millhiser via Vox)

‘Trump is living his best life in this second and final turn in the White House. Coming up on one year back in power, he’s turned the office into an adult fantasy camp, a Tom Hanks-in-Big, ice-cream-for-dinner escapade posing as a presidency.

The brazen corruption, near-daily vulgarity and handing out pardons like lollipops is impossible to ignore and deserves the scorn of history. Yet how the president is spending much of his time reveals his flippant attitude toward his second term. This is free-range Trump. And the country has never seen such an indulgent head of state.

Yes, he’s one-part Viktor Orbán, making a mockery of the rule of law and wielding state power to reward friends and punish foes while eroding institutions.

But he’s also a 12-year-old boy: There’s fun trips, lots of screen time, playing with toys, reliable kids’ menus and cool gifts under the tree — no socks or trapper keepers.
Yet, as with all children, there are also outbursts in the middle of restaurants.
Or in this case, the Cabinet Room.…’ (Jonathan Martin via POLITICO)

‘For some, Trump’s answer wasn’t just inappropriate — it confirmed their fear that he no longer understands the gravity of anything outside his own ego.

“Everything is about him,” one person wrote on Threads. “Despite his clear decline, which is difficult to assess because he has always been intellectually challenged, his narcissism remains intact.”

“Hey, monster, the subject is a young woman who has died because you need to be macho man,” another Threads user wrote. “Not you and your inflated sense of self.”

“No brains left,” one commenter wrote. “He definitely has mentally left the building.”

Another viewer noted that the question required nothing complicated, “The right answer was the simplest. ‘Yes.’”

“He is socially bankrupt,” one viewer wrote. “The words ‘I’m sorry for your loss’ are not in his vocabulary.”…’ (via Atlanta Black Star)

‘A rhino horn is worth up to £76,000 on the black market. Each rhino is effectively carrying a death sentence on its head, with an estimated 1,900 poached in the last three years across the African continent.

The demand for rhino horn is driven by their use in traditional Asian medicine, and their scarcity only increases prices, fuelling the illegal trade. Rhinos have become the face of extinction, with only around 22,540 left in Africa. The population is at risk from drought, not only because it reduces the amount of food available but because it pushes people already experiencing poverty to take desperate measures to try and support themselves.

But no rhinos were poached in Kenya over that three-year period. A new documentary, Rhino, narrated by Tom Hardy, takes us to Borana Conservancy in central Kenya where the success of the species shows there is hope for its survival.…’ (via Big Issue)

‘What began as rare encounters off the Iberian coast now shows up in captain’s logs from Galicia to the Strait of Gibraltar, and in wary chatter on VHF. Experts say it looks learned, even coordinated. Insurers are watching. Mariners are changing habits mid-season.

It started like a shiver through the deck plates. A coastal freighter off Cape Finisterre rolled on a glassy swell, the night bridge lit soft blue, an ordinary watch with the engine ticking steady, when the helm shuddered as if from a hidden hand. The bow kept true, but the autopilot clicked off and the rudder felt heavy, like someone leaning against it from below. A deckhand ran aft and froze. Black-and-white shapes ghosted the wake, three, then five, their dorsal fins cutting the oil-slick moonlight. The ship wasn’t alone out there. Then the rudder stopped answering.…’ (via Jefferson.electric.co.uk)

‘Trump’s right wing billionaire friend Larry Ellison (and his nepobaby son, David) recently acquired CBS and likely co-ownership of TikTok. Like Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, the goal isn’t really subtle: rich, thin-skinned right wingers want to own the entirety of U.S. new and old media, then convert it into a giant propaganda and lazy infotainment bullhorn that blows smoke up their asses.

The Ellisons have since set their sights on Warner Brothers, CNN, and HBO. It won’t be cheap; it’s estimated that Larry and company will have to pay upwards of $60 billion for the acquisition. The Trump administration has openly signaled that they’d very much like the Ellisons to succeed here, in part to force a dying cable news channel (CNN) to be even friendlier to Trump than it already is.

While Ellison has some competing suitors with names like Comcast NBC Universal and Netflix, the winning bidder will need approval from the Trump DOJ and FCC. Knowing that they likely have a distinct tactical advantage via corruption, Ellison and Trump appear to be already measuring the drapes, discussing programming changes (and CNN hirings and firings) that will please the president:…’ (via Techdirt)

Nov 15, 2025: Follow Me Here turned 26. Here’s the first page. (Somehow, when I imported into WordPress years ago, the earlier Blogger posts got duplicated.)

In the long history of cinematic shock tactics meant to rouse us from our stupor about nuclear war — notably the 1983 American television film The Day After and more recently the 2025 apocalyptic thriller House of Dynamite —none has been more disturbing, direct, or effective than The War Game. Stripped of Hollywood’s emotional pacing, Watkins’ quasi-documentary avoided melodrama and instead presented nuclear catastrophe with the matter-of-fact tone of reportage. Its stark depiction of civil-defense futility and the predictable, overwhelming human suffering of a nuclear exchange pierced the collective denial of the subliminal existential dread permeating daily life. The film helped mobilize a generation struggling to articulate the scale of the nuclear threat, shifting public conversation away from abstract statistics, strategic doctrines, and sanitized civil-defense pamphlets. It became a cinematic touchstone for the antinuclear movement.

The BBC’s 20-year suppression of the film —  deeming it too disturbing but also seen by the British government as too effective  in serving the interests of those opposed to its nuclear arsenal — only amplified its impact. The ban became emblematic of establishment fear and denial, further exposing the absurdity of the nuclear arms race. Circulating clandestinely, the film acquired a charged mystique, reinforcing for many, myself included, the moral urgency at the heart of the antinuclear movement.

He would be the first to acknowledge that he was a propagandist and provocateur: 

“Is not the serious filmmaker in a double-bind situation, given the inevitable indoctrinating effect of his or her work?” Mr. Watkins asked [in a late-1970s film course he taught at Columbia University]. “Does the filmmaker have the right to subject a captive audience to his or her vision, especially if there is no potential for a return dialogue? Is there a difference between propaganda for the ‘good’ and for the ‘bad’?”

Why did we send Laika to space? 

‘“After placing Laika in the container and before closing the hatch,” recalled Soviet engineer Yevgeniy Shabarov, “we kissed her nose and wished her bon voyage, knowing that she would not survive the flight.”…’ (via Vox)

‘New York is quietly preparing for a Donald Trump takeover of the country’s largest city.
A wide range of New York’s most prominent civic leaders have for weeks been meeting behind the scenes to plan for the possibility of Trump sending in the National Guard or any other federal agents into New York City, according to multiple top elected officials.
Alarmed at what Trump may do in response to Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York City mayor, Gov. Kathy Hochul has devised a virtual war room and convened a series of conversations with law enforcement, business officials and activist groups to stop or at least mitigate any federal incursion. More meetings are being scheduled, including with New York’s leading clergy and veterans groups, some of whom will be gathering around Veterans Day next week.…’ (Jonathan Martin via POLITICO)