AND EVEN MORE CRITTERS
THE PERSON who MAKES the FIRST COMMENT WILL GET TWO CRITTERS
EVERY PERSON WHO COMMENTS WILL GET A CRITTER
RULES IN THE DIARY
WHEN YOU FIND SOMETHING in the DIARY that you LIKE
YOU CAN REPOST IT AS COMMENT in the DIARY
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PostingADiary
CritterHerding
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Two Sunday long reads this week. First, a look at why people of “the Epstein class” appear to have an entirely different moral perspective than the rest of us, as evidenced in the emails.
At the dark heart of this story is a sex criminal and his victims — and his enmeshment with President Trump. But it is also a tale about a powerful social network in which some, depending on what they knew, were perhaps able to look away because they had learned to look away from so much other abuse and suffering: the financial meltdowns some in the network helped trigger, the misbegotten wars some in the network pushed, the overdose crisis some of them enabled, the monopolies they defended, the inequality they turbocharged, the housing crisis they milked, the technologies they failed to protect people against. (NYT shared article)
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Second, a look at what OpenAI has been doing to address the harm to people who turn to ChatGPT to find a friend. Like ultraprocessed foods, ChatGPT was designed to make people want to come back for more.
It started acting like a friend and a confidant. It told users that it understood them, that their ideas were brilliant and that it could assist them in whatever they wanted to achieve. It offered to help them talk to spirits, or build a force field vest or plan a suicide. (NYT shared article)
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There’s been a lot of backtracking by Republicans this week. The “throw it at the wall and see if it sticks” party has had a lot come unstuck this week.
Like sending ICE to Charlotte. Hispanic students stayed home from school and their classmates marched in protest, creating such an uproar that it may have contributed to ICE being pulled out in under a week.
A representative for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools tells PEOPLE that 30,339 students were reported absent from their schools on Monday, Nov. 17.
WBTV noted that 31% of the student population in the area identifies as Hispanic, per data from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. (People)
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Republicans announced a plan to tighten disability eligibility but too many people objected. So never mind.
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After deciding that nooses and swastikas are not all that hateful, so they should be permissible in the Coast Guard, never mind. They’re hateful after all.
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Elon Musk turned on location reporting for X accounts. That didn’t last long.
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Joe Rogan decided that the 2020 election was not, after all, stolen. He finally told his listeners, “there’s no evidence.”
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And in a surprise turn, DOGE is cancelled. This news bears watching, though, since the DOGE people, steeped as they are in Project 2025, are being dispersed into other government offices.
U.S. President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency has disbanded with eight months left to its mandate, ending an initiative launched with fanfare as a symbol of Trump's pledge to slash the government's size but which critics say delivered few measurable savings.
"That doesn't exist," Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor told Reuters earlier this month when asked about DOGE's status.
It is no longer a "centralized entity," Kupor added, in the first public comments from the Trump administration on the end of DOGE. (Reuters)
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Everyday people standing up to ICE are making a difference. Portland protested. Chicago followed suit. Then Charlotte. New York is getting ready.
It looks like New York may have turned ICE back before they even came.
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Other protests continue. Here’s this week’s Remove the Regime protest in Washington DC.
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x
Never forget this: The forces rigging our economy, undermining our democracy, polluting our planet, and stoking hatred are counting on you to give up. Cynicism is how they win. Stay clear-eyed and ready for the fight ahead.
— Robert Reich (@rbreich.bsky.social) November 22, 2025 at 4:01 PM
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In other news: after the discharge petition on the Epstein files passed, Mike Johnson decided to attack the problem of excessive discharge petitions. He needs something to keep Republicans occupied now that they’re back from extended recess.
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Sunday Science
How did ancient people of the Pacific Islands navigate so far? Scientists are recording the brain activity of modern Marshall Islands sailors to try to find out.
When leaving an atoll of the Marshall Islands, in the Pacific, Alson Kelen prefers to sail after sunset. It’s like navigating with his eyes closed — allowing him to feel the up, down and sideways movement of every swell.
“That’s how the Marshallese navigate,” he said. “They navigate with their stomach.”
For thousands of years, Marshallese navigators used traditional wave-piloting techniques to travel vast expanses of ocean. Wave piloting is the art of feeling and reading the swells and waves that hit and emanate from the region’s atolls. After a lifetime of studying these and other patterns, navigators pass a test devised by their chiefs to become a ri meto, or person of the sea. (NYT shared article)
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A rolling space station does gather moss.
Physcomitrella patens, or spreading earthmoss, is already known as a pioneering species – albeit for being an early plant on the scene in areas of barren mud. Now researchers have found that spores of the moss can survive for at least nine months stuck to the outside of the International Space Station (ISS) and still reproduce once back on Earth. (The Guardian)
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Blaise Pascal’s calculator came up for auction this week. Click through to see this device.
A rare example of the first functioning calculating machine in history looks likely to stay in France after Christie’s withdrew it from auction pending a definitive ruling from a Paris court on whether or not it can be exported.
La Pascaline, developed by the French mathematician and inventor Blaise Pascal in 1642, when he was just 19, and billed as “the most important scientific instrument ever offered at auction”, had been expected to fetch more than €2m (£1.8m). (The Guardian)
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A brief education on drop crocs. Don’t know what a drop croc is? You’ll have to look because there’s no describing this Guardian article.
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Today is the birthday of...
- Billy the Kid (1859-1881) - Western outlaw and gunfighter.
- Harpo Marx (1888-1964) - Comedian and older brother of the Marx Brothers.
- Aaron Bank (1902-2004) - Colonel and founder of the Army Green Berets.
- George O'Hanlon (1912-1989) - Actor remembered for his voice of George Jetson in the The Jetsons.
- Rick Bayless (1953-Still Living) - Michelin star chef best known for the PBS series Mexico: One Plate at a Time, from which I learned to make tortillas from scratch. Look how easy it is! Fresh tortillas are heavenly.
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On this day in...
- 1765 - The People of Frederick County refused to pay British Stamp tax.
- 1889 - The first jukebox debuted in a San Francisco Saloon.
- 1897 - John Lee Love patented the portable pencil sharpener.
- 1921 - President Harding signs the Willis-Campbell Act prohibiting doctors from prescribing beer or liquor for medicinal purposes.
- 1924 - Edwin Hubble discovered that the nebula Andromeda is actually another island galaxy outside the Milky Way. (National Day Calendar.)
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It’s National Espresso Day! (But remember, get one at a neighborhood barista. Starbucks is on strike.)
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It’s National Eat a Cranberry Day! (Wasn’t it just cranberry day a couple days ago? And cranberry day this Thursday? Whatever. Every day can be cranberry day.)
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It’s National Cashew Day!
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And (thanks kraigo!) it’s Dr. Who Day! The doctor is a Time Lord from Gallifrey who travels through space and time in a ship shaped like a British police call box (it’s bigger on the inside than on the outside.) Upon dying, he regenerates, which explains how many very different actors have played the same character since the show first aired in 1963. Some of the actors playing later regenerations had been Doctor Who fans since they were kids.
Tomorrow is National Sardines Day, so buy a tin today.
