the two americas
Writer. Editor. Chocoholic. Baseball. Cats. Technology. Not always in that order. She/her. Let's be kind to one another. Gaze upon my LinkedIn profile and admire: https://www.linkedin.com/in/estherschindler/
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the two americas
This!
A new crowd-sourced transit platform allows riders to propose, vote on, and activate new bus lines in as little as three days.
Overheard: Although I'm bald, I still own a comb. I just can't part with it.
United Healthcare CEO murder suspect Luigi Mangione is not, in fact, modeling floral button-downs for Shein.
“Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm fog.”—Joseph Conrad
Over the last five seasons, Mets batters have been hit by 484 pitches—only three other teams are within 120 HBP of the Mets. 📊 See the full list here: stathead.com/tiny/XKPyY
Florida counts quick! And they've just tallied up two more sizable overperformances for Dems: • In #SD15: +22 vs. 2024 presidential results • In #HD40: +15 Dems now averaging +15.7 vs. 2024 across 38 qualifying special elections. Complete Big Board: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
That is how my mother used to make meatloaf. I liked discovering the slice of hard-boiled egg. Mom liked that it stretched the budget.
U2 singing “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” with a gospel choir.
ATTN: If you're one of the Treasury employees that handled Epstein's Suspicious Activity Reports, feel free to reach out to me via signal (in my bio). I’ll keep you anonymous- as I have the thousands of current and former federal workers who have sent me tips. Please share this widely. 🙏🏻
"DOGE personnel requested the entire SSA data set and proceeded to copy it, ignoring career employees’ warnings of a possible 'catastrophic impact to SSA beneficiaries and SSA programs.' Putting all Social Security data in an unsecured cloud environment may also violate federal laws related to..."
mood
In Ward’s world, Cold War spies bumbled through Frostbite Falls, fairy tales fractured themselves, and no pun was ever too groan-worthy to leave on the cutting-room floor.
Please remember to register WinZip
"[Tuochao] Chen and a team of UW researchers have designed a headphone system that translates several speakers at once, while preserving the direction and qualities of people’s voices."
"I’ve spent the past month gathering new, never-before-shared data on tech jobs, and talking with nearly 100 leaders and experienced engineers who are actively hiring or job hunting today."
Truth
Four weeks ago, #Google admitted it was hacked—via #vishing. Sadly, this sparked a journalistic game of Telephone: Over the space of four weeks, it became, “2.5 billion #Gmail users hacked!!1!” Sigh. “This is entirely false,” complains Google. In #SBBlogwatch, we bait for clicks during dog days.
How RFID Toll Tags Work (and What Happens When They Don't)
From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."
It is wrong to diagnose from afar. It is, however, therapeutic to wildly speculate.
Rogério Xavier de Azambuja et al.’s X-Wines dataset describes 100,000+ wines produced in 60+ countries.
AZ Home Run! Tyler Locklear homers (3) on a fly ball to left center field. The score is now AZ 3, TEX 0 (Bottom 2)
I love the smell of consequences in the morning. Thank you, @dragoncon.org
My brother and his cat, 2008
The Corps of Discovery left on its journey with a trove of 600 giant pills that the men called “thunder-clappers,” which the soldiers and travelers used to jump-start things when they got bound up. And everyone used them pretty regularly.
Clippy – 90s UI for local LLMs felixrieseberg.githu...
The cat says it's time to take a break! 📸 kunyan_kainyan
TypePad announced that the service would be shutting down on September 30 and that everything hosted on it would also be going away on that date. That gives current and former users just over a month to export anything they want to save. arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025...
I should send @booch.com a cake to celebrate.
Happy second birthday to this perfect interaction
Fun with bottles in Segundo de Chomon's THE RED SPECTRE (1907). The color was likely stencil-applied.
It wasn’t until 1938—more than a half century after the Haymarket Riot and the national strikes for eight-hour workdays—when Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which limited the workweek to 44 hours, and then amended the law two years later to 40 hours.
This little book was issued 30 years ago to mark Penguin’s 60th anniversary with 60 titles by its authors. I was pleased to be included, as it placed me in the company of my betters, from Melville and Poe to Emerson and the Pope. @StephenKing and I received the same fee ($200).
Survey results on books that people identify as shaping their lives after reading them in high school www.npr.org/2025/08/...
Caribbean Parrots Are Remnants Of A Millennial Scale Extinction #SciComm🧪 by @grrlscientist.bsky.social #parrots🦜 #ornithology🪶 #birds🦉 #extinction #caribbean grrlscientist.substack.com/p/caribbean-...
happy labor day everyone. now more than ever we got to remember what it's about.
The Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers offers a fellowship for academics, independent scholars, and creative writers. The program includes a stipend of $90,000 and access to the NYPL collections. Applications are due by September 26, 2025.
“There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they’ll take you.” ~ Beatrix Potter
Why, Hal, ’tis my vocation, Hal, ’tis no sin for a man to labor in his vocation.
Pope Leo XIV met with one of the most prominent advocates for greater LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Catholic Church. The Rev. James Martin said Leo told him that he intended to continue Pope Francis’ policy of LGBTQ+ acceptance in the church and encouraged him to keep up his advocacy.
#AI #privacy #LLM #copyright 'Ateam of computer scientists at UC Riverside has developed a method to erase private and copyrighted data from artificial intelligence models—without needing access to the original training data.' news.ucr.edu/articles/202...
Seeds woven into hydrogel material for hairbands, wristbands, hats, and sandals, among other applications. The seeds grow into sprouts if taken care of properly. Visually cool!
ISS External Stream #ISS #InternationalSpaceStation
The path to unionization for Uber and Lyft drivers is a major development in the years-long tussle between organized labor and Silicon Valley over rights for independent contractors
Truck Alphabet by cargocollective.com/erictabuchi
This is disarming.
Domestic migration rates are hovering near all-time record lows after just 7.9% of Americans switched towns or cities last year.
My review of Eating Delancey: a celebration of Jewish food Reminiscences about the famous foods and purveyors. I exclaimed aloud several times: Ratners! Charlotte Russe! Bagel and a schmear! https://amzn.to/4n1dOZ4
Millions of followers ≠ engagement. @theguardian.com has 1.4m followers on Threads with almost no engagement. On Bluesky, links can get 3–4x more clicks than likes. The real question isn’t “how many followers do you have?” but “what kind of engagement do you get?”
The perfect headline doesn't exist -- no wait
🚨BREAKING: Bread is now woke, according to Alex Phillips
Splendid review.
Meet the chocolate chip sea cucumber. It has no true brain. Instead, a complex system of neurons helps it interact with its environment through touch & the ability to feel the presence of light. DYK? There are 1,000+ species of sea cucumbers! Photo: Matteo Cassella, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist
#LaborDay Remembering Utah Phillips He was an American Labor Organizer, folk singer, storyteller, and poet Always telling the stories of American workers and the struggles of labor unions Thank you, Utah Phillips #UnionStrong
HAPPENING NOW: Judge Sparkle Sooknanan holds an emergency hearing as the Trump admin is reportedly trying—imminently—to deport hundreds of Guatemalan children without required process or access to representation. www.courtlistener.com/docket/71240...
Enter a Spotify song URL and get it "translated" to other music services
Isaac Asimov Describes How Artificial Intelligence Will Liberate Humans & Their Creativity
What the -
Man orders 1 water. Man orders 18,000 waters. Man orders -1 water. Man orders water, well done. Man orders water, no cup. Man orders spicy water.
Coincidentally, I just finished rereading one of the early Benjamin January novels. She writes stories that immerse me in other places.
Just published on FOSS Force: What We Learned Building Enterprise Linux Optimized for AI fossforce.com/2025/08/what...
“You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are.” ~ Joss Whedon
It's Minnesota State Fair time! It's time for Minnesotan folk art! Here, for example, is Saturn Devouring His Corn, in the seed art category!
Jack Daniel's parent company: Sales -3% Canadian sales -62% www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
So I imagine that folks who insisted it wasn’t ethnic cleansing, land theft, forced removal are lined up to apologize for insisting that this was just about defeating Hamas fighters and the return of the hostages.
Just saw someone refer to Cheryl Hines as The Marvelous Mrs. Measles and 💀💀💀💀💀💀
They believed no big news would happen, because Nick Castellanos hadn't hit a home run in a while. But they were all of them deceived, for another Castellanos was made
Donald Trump’s rumored death raises new questions about Joe Biden’s health
Entertainment during boring meetings jacksonpollock.org/
WAITER: what else can i get you ME: nothing thanks WAITER: okay I’ll get the check ME: *balls fists* what did i just say
The Progress of Love: The Lover Crowned, by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1771-72, 📸 by 🔐
NOAA.BMF
🐡 🐟🐡 🐠 🐡 🐟 🌱
The work points to mitochondria as a powerful target for therapies that could slow, or even prevent, neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.
All I know is when he dies, anyone tries “don’t speak ill of the dead” is getting punted into the sun. I’m gonna speak so ill of that dead it’ll make Satan blush.
Users are presented with two paintings of chickens and asked to judge them based on a hyper-specific adjective: For example, one might have to choose which of two hens is more maladjusted, mephistophelean, or persnickety. www.fastcompany.com/...
Judgment at Nuremberg is free on Amazon Prime until Monday. I needed a reminder that accountability and compassion remain possible in the world. https://amzn.to/4g10Msh
Marine protected areas aren’t just paper parks. In the first global study of its kind, satellites and AI followed thousands of vessels and found that most MPAs are keeping illegal fishing at bay.
"Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it."-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Oh god yes this
regardless of what happens to the tariffs, they're doomed from the start because the average conservative holds all three of these positions at once: — virtue signals about supporting US manufacturing — against increasing the minimum wage — buys foreign imports because they're cheap
My favorite evergreen Molly Ivins quote: "I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag."
Gardiners Island is the only place in America still held by a grant from the English Crown.
TIL "In September 2017, the museum declined a request from the White House to loan Landscape with Snow by Vincent van Gogh for the private rooms of Donald Trump ...The curator offered to loan America instead. Any reply by the White House was not reported." en.wikipedia.org/wik...
Reuters: MOST TRUMP TARIFFS ARE NOT LEGAL, U.S. APPEALS COURT RULES
Destroying America piece by piece LEGO has stopped shipping more than 2,500 pieces from its Pick a Brick program to both the United States and Canada. www.404media.co/lego-stops-s...
I confess that I laughed aloud
Medieval Europeans were fanatical about a strange fruit with a vulgar name that could only be eaten rotten. Then it was forgotten altogether. Why did they love it so much? And why did it disappear?
People seem to think that Microsoft Excel is a flawed program Personally, I rate it October 10th.
We all recognize this.
Four percent of all passwords studied by Cybernews — meaning roughly 727 million total passwords — included the phrase '1234.' mashable.com/article/pass...
Seems accurate
No notes
