An op-ed in The Guardian from August 2026, which I missed at the time:

"If you set out to design from scratch a tool to facilitate authoritarian rule, it would look exactly like AI. You would cherish it for its ability to destabilise our shared reality and its creation of disinformation on a scale unprecedented in human history. With it you need no armies of typists and artists to spread your propaganda. It can enable mass surveillance.... Most of all, if you were a would-be autocrat, you would love the way that large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Claude and Google’s Gemini have thrown a grenade into thousands of years of teaching and learning: the way they threaten to upend our ability to think with the robust clarity that is needed in emergencies of justice."

https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/aug/08/i-hate-what-ai-is-doing-to-the-minds-and-happiness-of-the-young-katherine-rundell-on-the-view-from-the-classroom

#AI
#LLM

Philadelphia buddies!
Wanna know how I already voted in the November election safely and securely, without trusting the US Mail?

I went to a Satellite Election Office!

Any registered voter in the city can go in, tell them you want your mail-in ballot, get it there in about 5 minutes, fill it in then and there, and put it in the secure drop box on your way out!

Check the locations and hours. Most of them will be open over the weekend!

https://vote.phila.gov/about-us/satellite-election-offices/

But -- and this is a big deal -- you can only apply for a mail-in ballot until 5pm on October 27th. You can't combine voting with trick-or-treating.

Or if you already received your mail in ballot and don't want to put it in the US Mail, just fill it out at home and put it in a drop box! You don't need an election office for that, and there are a bunch of drop boxes around the city.

https://vote.phila.gov/ballot-drop-off/

#Philadelphia
#Philly
#PhillyVotes
#GOTV
#GetOutTheVote
#Vote

Cheetah kittens, 24/7!

OK, so they're called "cubs" not "kittens", but they are amazingly cute bundles of floof that will grow up to be spotted speed machines. A litter was born at the Smithsonian's cheetah facility in Virginia on October 5th, and they're being livestreamed.

#CatsOfMastodon
#Caturday

https://nationalzoo.si.edu/webcams/cheetah-cub-cam

I was unloading the trailer on my cargo bike at the park when someone saw me and offered to help.

"Four big speakers, and a tablet? Setting up to DJ?"

I set up the sign with the Venmo QR code where it could be seen. "Not quite -- more like an updated jukebox."

They looked at the song titles available. "'Celebration' by Kool and the Gang, Pharrell's 'Happy' -- you're ready for quite the party. And the 'Star Spangled Banner' ?"

I still got occasional deliveries for the wizard who used to live in my apartment. Today's mailbag had tomorrow's headlines. When the alert got pushed to everyone's phone, I cranked up "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" and got the party started.

First song should always be free.

#MicroFiction #TootFic #SmallStories

Reflecting Pool jello for your Independence Day celebration!

Posted by @annenc@bsky.social; photographer unknown

#ReflectingPool #IndependenceDay

Y'all already heard that Canada has decided that Canadian citizen can pass, retroactively, from parent to child for more than one generation -- so that if your parent, or grandparent, or great-grandparent was Canadian, you can get Canadian citizenship. (And if you didn't know that, look at https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/dual-citizenship-eh-under-new-law-millions-of-americans-may-now-also-be-considered-canadian and https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/canadian-citizenship/become-canadian-citizen/eligibility/already-citizen.html)

But the NEW news is, Canada is moving citizenship applications from transgender USians to the top of the queue. So -- if you're trans, you have Canadian ancestry, and you think that you'd like to be Canadian, get that application in!

More about the trans part: https://www.cicnews.com/2026/05/canada-is-fast-tracking-citizenship-certificates-for-trans-americans-0575258.html

EDIT, 14 May 2026: Many folks have posted to me to clarify that there isn't special processing specifically for trans US citizens. Instead, anyone can apply for "urgent" processing, and there are many reasons why an application might be considered urgent. Applicants need to explain why they need urgent processing. (It's not like there's a check-box to say "trans in US".) But trans people with Canadian ancestry have applied for, and received, urgent processing of their citizenship applications.

I haven't seen much chatter about this, with under two weeks to go :
Indivisible and other groups are planning a one-day general strike on Friday, May 1st. Yep, that's May Day, long dedicated to workers' rights.

This hasn't been getting the attention that the three big No Kings demonstrations have. But if you've been wondering what to do next beyond standing in a crowd holding signs, maybe one day of economic action should be on your radar.

No work - no school - no shopping
#NoKings #NoBillionaires

It's April 9th -- the one day of the year I'll put up with looking at the Confederate flag.

The Confederates used several different flag designs -- finding something that used familiar iconography without being confused with the Union flag, especially in poor visibility, was a challenge. But on April 9, 1865, a Confederate officer carried this flag as he approached Grant's lines.

https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_515980

https://www.history.com/articles/when-did-the-white-flag-become-associated-with-surrender

Monks in Kyoto kept records of the peak day for cherry blossoms starting in 812 CE -- indirectly giving us over 1200 years of climate data.

It should surprise no one that this decade is having the earliest blossoms in that whole database.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/date-of-the-peak-cherry-tree-blossom-in-kyoto

#ClimateChange

Often misattributed to Kurt Vonnegut; actually from a Tumblr poster with the handle Three-Rings (in a thread that started with discussion of Vonnegut), and something that I found today. I think more people need to hear it, esp with AI out there now:

When I was 15 I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.

Opinion piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Saturday Feb 1, by Jane Esberg:

"I am a scholar of authoritarian politics at the University of Pennsylvania. I research and teach about repression and censorship. The Trump administration is engaged in state terror. And, in a page ripped from the autocrat’s playbook, they are trying to convince us that the victims deserve it."

https://share.inquirer.com/69h1dM
#USPol
#PhiladelphiaInquirer

#3GoodThings #ThreeGoodThings

Weekend visit from a dear friend continues;

Tied scores in two different boardgames! (I lost both tiebreaker, but still astonished)

Sweetie made French toast (eggs, milk, and bread -- the things people stock up on before a snowstorm) as snow came down this morning.

For those wondering why I'm making such a fuss about #Solstice, here's an excerpt from Terry Pratchett's #Hogfather. Susan, a mortal who is Death's granddaughter, has just saved the Hogfather (a Santa/Father Christmas type figure) from a messy death at the hands of those who would prefer a more clockwork universe.

I WILL GIVE YOU A LIFT BACK, said Death, after a while.

"Thank you. Now... tell me..."

WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU HADN'T SAVED HIM?

"Yes! The sun would have risen just the same, yes?"

NO.

"Oh, come on. You can't expect me to believe that. It's an astronomical fact."

THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN.

...

"Really? Then what would have happened, pray?"

A MERE BALL OF FLAMING GAS WOULD HAVE ILLUMINATED THE WORLD.

They walked in silence for a moment.

"Ah," said Susan dully. "Trickery with words. I would have thought you'd have been more literal-minded than that. "

I AM NOTHING IF NOT LITERAL-MINDED. TRICKERY WITH WORDS IS WHERE *HUMANS* LIVE.

"All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... *fantasies* to make life bearable. "

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little --"

YES. AS PRACTICE YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

-----

Happy #Hogswatch to all who celebrate.

From Alan Lamoreau, seen on Bsky:

Oh! A neat goose hybrid posted to "What's this Bird?’ but when you zoom in on the photos the bill details have been too manipulated by Al photo editing to be accurately assessed for which species may be involved.

Scroll on... A cool-looking Red-tailed Hawk that someone is wondering which subspecies it might be - right up my alley! But when you zoom in on the photos literally every feather group has been so heavily manipulated and altered by #Al editing that it's impossible to determine subspecies because the photo is essentially fake now; just a mashup of whatever Al thinks parts of a Red-tail
should look like.

Scroll on... WOW! That's a remarkable trail cam photo of a Bobcat! It almost looks like a painting... but the head looks oddly small... hmmmm. After some prodding the original photo is produced and sure enough it had been so heavily altered by Al ‘post processing’ that the photo posted was essentially a digital mock-up with totally different proportions and fur markings. No longer the photo off the trail cam; it may as well have just been ‘created’ by Al from scratch.

This stuff is killing me. My days on social media are becoming very limited. We can't even trust simple, everyday photos of animals to be real. The wildlife community needs to quit editing with Al, and we need to start calling out photographers that are using it. Our reality is being destroyed all
around us.

The reporters at Washington Post got the lede right today.

(h/t to @joshuaeaton.bsky.social)

Paywalled article at https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/11/20/coast-guard-swastika-noose/

The little park on the #Philly end of the #Manayunk bridge attracts donations from friends and neighbors: wooden picnic tables, plastic chairs, sturdy kids' toys. Things that can withstand getting left outside.

But a #BabyGrand #piano got left there about 2 weeks ago. And even with a tarp to cover it, it's going to get ravaged by weather soon. Local report is that it got dropped off by someone who had to move on short notice and couldn't find a home for it. In the days of electronic keyboards, real pianos are a glut on the market.

But it breaks my heart to see it outside as the winter comes.

Spread the word: if you want a baby grand and have a way to haul it, it's waiting for a home. (Or a church, or a school....)

One more image from #NoKings day. Sadly, I don't know who took the time to make this sign or where they were marching.

Will Bunch of the #PhiladelphiaInquirer has an article on the recent shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas, including info ICE tried to keep hidden: the names of the detained immigrants who were killed:

Norlán Guzmán Fuentes
Miguel Ángel García Hernandez

Gravely wounded:
José Andrés Bordones Molina

The whole editorial is worth reading.

🎁 https://share.inquirer.com/lHLEIC

For #caturday, from @unenthusiast.com on bsky:

live action catbus looking pretty sweet

Happy #Caturday from the synchronized snoozing team!