As someone pointed out, this is the start of the block warden-spies the Stasi ran in East Germany: spy on and report your neighbors, and maybe you’ll get an extra ration of eggs this month …

Oh, they’ll “release” it all right. But they’ll narrow down the scope as much as possible to some combination of “things that have already been released”, “things that can’t be released” (ie, the grand jury records, which are pretty much never released and which require judicial approval), , and “new things the public hasn’t seen yet but which are redacted to near total blackness”.

Most recently, that guy who shot four people in Minnesota (two politicians and their spouses), killing one couple and leaving the other pair wounded.

Funny how when a liberal politician is shot, they’ve been “killed”, but when a conservative influencer is shot, it’s “assassination”.

Why is there a pile of clothing there?

In general, the new shots usually aren’t ready until the end of September/beginning of October, so pharmacies may be using the last of last year’s stock. I know when I got my spring booster in May, neither NovaVax or Moderna were available, so we went with Pfizer as well.

I’m holding off my fall shot until mid-October, so I’ll have maximum effectiveness through the the of February, but it does mean I have to be a bit careful while cases are currently rising in much of the US.

Map of protests and rallies.

Our maternal death rates are the best if we only count white men!

Considering that he’s actually a senior Israelis official, he didn’t need asylum, and we all knew he wasn’t going to return.

Well, let’s see, you’ve closed planned parenthood and outlawed abortion, so more women have to carry sicker babies to term. You’ve gutted Medicaid and lower-cost health insurance, so women can’t afford to get themselves or their babies treated when they become sick. You’ve gutted reproductive services, women’s health services, and prenatal services, so even women carrying healthy babies who can afford healthcare will be generally less healthy. The pandemic reduced the overall number of qualified medical staff in all fields, making access to care even harder to get, and you’ve made that even harder by offering some of the lowest wages in the nation and enacting laws that are hostile, to medical providers, to women, to parents and families, and to public health. Your state is, and has been for decades, the literal definition of social murder.

So now you’re worried and have declared a “public health emergency”, great. What exact, explicit, concrete steps are you going to take to reverse that trend?

What’s that I hear? crickets.

“Oh, we need to release them. I have no problem releasing it, but you’ve got to go through the judicial,” Collins responded.

By which he means the grand jury testimony, which is not going to be released because grand jury testimony is pretty much never released. Anything referring to the grand jury testimony is a red herring, and anyone trying to pass that off as a serious answer should not be trusted.

The people who created imgur sold it to MediaLab. ML had been struggling with bills in general, and they lost a couple lawsuits regarding content. In a completely unrelated move, they banned NSFW content, fired the community moderators and local development teams and replaced them with AI and overseas workers, resulting in unequal rules enforcement and broken infrastructure. Videos wouldn’t upload, wouldn’t play, or freeze partway through. Uploads would disappear without notice. A barely-nsfw post would be deleted and the user warned, while other more NSFW posts made it to the front page. Etc, etc. In short, there’s been a lot of simmering discontent with the platform for a while now.

So, you remember that video/gif of Nazi Richard Spencer that’s been circulating for a few years now? Back when that first came out, naturally some people posted it to imgur - and the content teams deleted the posts and warned the users, who promptly posted screenshots of the warnings, causing even more users to upload Richard Spencer getting punched in the face. They got deleted/warned, pretty much just causing a cascade of Nazi-punching content, until literally the entire popular feed was just Nazis getting punched.

Well, later last week, notifications failed on imgur for some reason - no notifications when you got a reply, or your post reached the front page or got an award, or the people you were following posted something - just dead silence. We were patient, but it started to annoy people. A couple people uploaded images complaining about the lack of notifications, only to have their posts deleted or hidden and in a couple cases they got warned. And it’s pretty much spiralled exactly like the punching Nazis meme: notifications remained down, posts complaining about it got taken down, posts complaining about MediaLab’s censorship got taken down, and then the entire front page became .

Notifications are back on now, though they seem less frequent than normal, and new content is starting to reach the front page but users are still pissed. There have been repeated discussions about moving elsewhere, but no consensus has emerged yet. PixelFed doesn’t scratch the same itch, a bunch of people moved to discord but others don’t want to, some people just disappeared or stopped posting. And that’s where we are, as of this morning.

Imagine thinking an 18 year old with the determination, grit, stamina, and vision to be a professional athlete on a national team is incompetent. Or are you just jealous that she’s accomplished more than you?

Cool story. Where are the unredacted Epstein files?

They’re edible, but you need to cook them first.

Literally from a skinhead, lol

stuff like a “giggly no” is a no.

Thank you for explicitly bringing this up.

If two people are not actually explicitly communicating, then both of them are making assumptions. I’ve slept over at other people’s places because I’ve stayed late and the last bus/train has already left, because I’ve suddenly felt really tired and didn’t want to bother/didn’t feel safe to drive, because it was closer to work the next day, and, yes, because we fell asleep after sex. And absolutely none of that was consent for someone to start having sex with me while I was sleeping. Which is why communicating with your partners is important.

Just because you like being woken up by sexy times doesn’t mean everyone enjoys it. As an example, someone who has been previously been raped or attempted raped might not appreciate it - which happens to be one out of every four woman in the United States.

And the 12% of all women in the US who were raped by an “intimate partner” will likely particularly not appreciate it.

It’s also likely that some of the 81% of US women who have suffered sexual harassment might have some problem with it. So, y’know, maybe you should start explicitly asking before having sex with someone, even if you did have sex earlier that night.

So, the Texas Dems have returned to session and the Texas GOP will definitely push through their redistricting bill. The Texas Dems are claiming victory because California will redistrict to offset Texas. However.

All California is doing at the moment is calling for a vote to allow for redistricting, and I’m willing to bet that that vote fails; even if it passes, the resulting law will be subjected to infinite Republican challenges until after the election.

I am so. Fucking. Mad. That the Texas Dems returned to session and allowed this to happen.

Høiby is alleged to have raped four women between 2018 and November 2024. All the alleged assaults allegedly took place after consensual intercourse while the women were sleeping.

I hope this goes better than Assange’s trial went.