maxcelcat | Network

Challenge #9

Talk about your favorite tropes in media or transformative works. (Feel free to substitute in theme/motif/cliche if "trope" doesn't resonate with you.)

This is not the best question for me, because I don't really think in terms of tropes very much. I'm a characters first, tropes second kind of person, so my approach to tropes is always "how does the trope provide a framework for exploring the character or relationship?" rather than "I have a favourite trope that I want to read/write".

Any trope can be good for this, except for tropes that impose characterisation from somewhere else onto the characters. So stuff like A/B/O is not for me.

Mostly, I like tropes that force intimacy onto the characters, or make them lose their inhibitions, so fake relationships, soulbonds and sex pollen (generally not all at the same time - but hey, it could work 😂) are up there as tropes for me.

Snowflake Challenge promotional banner featuring an image of a wrapped giftbox with a snowflake on the gift tag. Text: Snowflake Challenge January 1-31.

siderea

(h/t

hudebnik)

Two things: this is a thing that has happened, I have a read on what it is that nobody else seems to have come up with.

1) The thing that happened:

2026 Jan 16: NYTimes: "Thousands of Chinese Fishing Boats Quietly Form Vast Sea Barriers" by Chris Buckley, Agnes Chang and Amy Chang Chien

The most interesting thing here is the visualization animations, so if that link doesn't work for you:

2026 Jan 17: TaiwanPlus News [TaiwanPlusNews on YT]: "NYT: China Tests Civilian Fishing Boats in Maritime Military Operations"

Watch on YouTube

2) Take:

“The sight of that many vessels operating in concert is staggering,” said Mark Douglas, an analyst at Starboard, a company with offices in New Zealand and the United States. Mr. Douglas said that he and his colleagues had “never seen a formation of this size and discipline before.”

“The level of coordination to get that many vessels into a formation like this is significant,” he said.

Yeah, so, about that:

Watch on YouTube

It turns out that the world leader in developing systems for coordinating large numbers of semi-autonomous vehicles is China.

The way a drone show works is that the design of the show and the intended positions and trajectories of all the individual drones is calculated and stored on the coordinating computer, from which they are transmitted to the drones during the show. However, drones in the air can be knocked off course by turbulence, so they also have onboard collision avoidance and position resumption algorithms.

The drone show company in question, Shenzhen DAMODA Intelligent Control Technology Co., Ltd. brags they can control 10,000 drones from a single laptop.

There were only 2,000 ships. Well within what their system could handle.

So what this could be is a test of such a coordination technology deployed to civilian boats.

Perhaps on each of those ships was either a sail-by-wire system that puts them under remote/autonomous control, or a receiver/interface that relayed instructions to the human pilots from a drone-controller that both received orders from command-and-control and managed the specifics of positioning through the same sort of collision-avoidance and repositioning algorithm as light-show drones.

Also, I suspect the way DAMODA manages to control so many devices from a single laptop – I was not able to quickly get a bead on this, and it would be unsurprising if they were less than forthcoming about their secret sauce – is that they have been figuring out ways to offload more and more of the steering logic onto the drones themselves. There comes a point, I suppose, where the logic for collision avoidance and repositioning crosses over into what used to be called (back in the 1980s and 1990s) flocking algorithms. Perhaps this was a test of a flocking algorithm based system for boats.

In any event, this might not be an example of a lot of people doing a thing. This might be an example of a thing being done to a lot of people. I mean, it almost certainly is the latter in that the government of China's modus operandi is to "voluntell" its citizens, and one of the concerning things here is the apparent use of civilians for military maneuvers. I'm saying this might be a test of a system that doesn't rely on acquiescence to government authority.

ewx

email saying 'The name “R. Kettlewell” was mentioned in an Aesthetics paper uploaded to Academia'

Well of course it was!

(On the other hand, the less said about the mention in a Copper Slag paper, the better.)

andrewducker

1. Song banned from Swedish charts for being AI creation: (tags:AI Sweden music )
2. Why Greenland's natural resources are nearly impossible to mine: (tags:mining Greenland )
3. Who wants to be a Chinese Empress? (I had no idea that games like this existed!): (tags:games china videos )

luthien

Challenge #8

Talk about your creative process.

In which I ramble on about how I write...

( My creative process )

Snowflake Challenge: A flatlay of a snowflake shaped shortbread cake, a mug with coffee, and a string of holiday lights on top of a rustic napkin.

siderea

This was it. This was the week that America admitted America is going fascist – which is to say has gone fascist, i.e. has had its government seized by fascists with broad fascist support for imposing fascism which it is now doing with zeal, i.e. has an acute case of fulminant fascism.

I've been watching this bear down on us for a half a century, so it's slightly dizzying to finally have everybody else come into alignment. One of the basic exigencies of my life has been moving through the world being reasonably certain of a bunch of things that I knew the vast majority of my fellows thought were insane to believe. Over the last ten years, more and more people have been noticing, "what are we doing in this handbasket and where is it going?" but – as evidenced by the behavior of the DNC over the last year – it's taken the secret police gunning Americans down in the streets (since I started writing this: and throwing flashbang grenades at or into (reports vary) passing cars carrying little kids) for the greater liberal mass to come around.

Obviously, it would have been nicer for the realization It Could Happen Here to have not required It Happening Here to be the conclusive rebuttal of their pathological skepticism. But one of my favorite sayings is, "There's three kinds. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves," (Will Rogers) and this is why. Clearly America needed to piss on the electric fence for itself. I try to be philosophical about it.

I just felt, if only for myself and posterity, I should note this long-in-coming nation-wide realization has finally been attained.

I'm not getting too carried away, though. It's hard to be too jubilant when the problem that brought us here is still very much with us, by which I don't mean the fascism itself, I mean the terrible mentality on "my" "side" that causes that pathological skepticism and other catastrophic thinking faults that brought us to this pass and lead to the fascists getting away, quite literally, with murder.

siderea

This is blackly hilarious and absolutely worth a read.

Leftist journalist Laura Jedeed showed up at an ICE recruiting events to do scope it out and write about what she found. What happened next is... eye widening.

2026 Jan 13: Slate: "You’ve Heard About Who ICE Is Recruiting. The Truth Is Far Worse. I’m the Proof." [Paywall defeater] by Laura Jedeed:

At first glance, my résumé has enough to tantalize a recruiter for America’s Gestapo-in-waiting: I enlisted in the Army straight out of high school and deployed to Afghanistan twice with the 82nd Airborne Division. After I got out, I spent a few years doing civilian analyst work. With a carefully arranged, skills-based résumé—one which omitted my current occupation—I figured I could maybe get through an initial interview.

The catch, however, is that there’s only one “Laura Jedeed” with an internet presence, and it takes about five seconds of Googling to figure out how I feel about ICE, the Trump administration, and the country’s general right-wing project. My social media pops up immediately, usually with a preview of my latest posts condemning Trump’s unconstitutional, authoritarian power grab. Scroll down and you’ll find articles with titles like “What I Saw in LA Wasn’t an Insurrection; It Was a Police Riot” and “Inside Mike Johnson’s Ties to a Far-Right Movement to Gut the Constitution.” Keep going for long enough and you might even find my dossier on AntifaWatch, a right-wing website that lists alleged members of the supposed domestic terror organization. I am, to put it mildly, a less-than-ideal recruit.

In short, I figured—at least back then—that my military background would be enough to get me in the door for a good look around ICE’s application process, and then even the most cursory background check would get me shown that same door with great haste.

[...]

I completely missed the email when it came. I’d kept an eye on my inbox for the next few days, but I’d grown lax when nothing came through. But then, on Sept. 3, it popped up.

“Please note that this is a TENTATIVE offer only, therefore do not end your current employment,” the email instructed me. It then listed a series of steps I’d need to quickly take. I had 48 hours to log onto USAJobs and fill out my Declaration for Federal Employment, then five additional days to return the forms attached to the email. Among these forms: driver’s license information, an affidavit that I’ve never received a domestic violence conviction, and consent for a background check. And it said: “If you are declining the position, it is not necessary to complete the action items listed below.”

As I mentioned, I’d missed the email, so I did exactly none of these things.

And that might have been where this all ended—an unread message sinking to the bottom of my inbox—if not for an email LabCorp sent three weeks later. “Thank you for confirming that you wish to continue with the hiring process,” it read. (To be clear, I had confirmed no such thing.) “Please complete your required pre-employment drug test.”

The timing was unfortunate. Cannabis is legal in the state of New York, and I had partaken six days before my scheduled test. Then again, I hadn’t smoked much; perhaps with hydration I could get to the next stage. Worst-case scenario, I’d waste a small piece of ICE’s gargantuan budget. I traveled to my local LabCorp, peed in a cup, and waited for a call telling me I’d failed.

Nine days later, impatience got the best of me. For the first time, I logged into USAJobs and checked my application to see if my drug test had come through. What I actually saw was so implausible, so impossible, that at first I did not understand what I was looking at.

Somehow, despite never submitting any of the paperwork they sent me—not the background check or identification info, not the domestic violence affidavit, none of it—ICE had apparently offered me a job.

According to the application portal, my pre-employment activities remained pending. And yet, it also showed that I had accepted a final job offer and that my onboarding status was “EOD”—Entered On Duty, the start of an enlistment period. I moused over the exclamation mark next to “Onboarding” and a helpful pop-up appeared. “Your EOD has occurred. Welcome to ICE!”

I clicked through to my application tracking page. They’d sent my final offer on Sept. 30, it said, and I had allegedly accepted. “Welcome to Ice. … Your duty location is New York, New York. Your EOD was on Tuesday, September 30th, 2025.”

By all appearances, I was a deportation officer. Without a single signature on agency paperwork, ICE had officially hired me.

Click through to read the whole thing.

sabotabby

Today's episode is Wizards & Spaceships' "Editing Roundtable ft. Alexandra Pierce and Josh Wilson." If you read any SFFH, you'll know that the short story and critical essay markets are central in ways that they really aren't in other genre fiction or in literary fiction. If you hang out with SFFH people, you'll notice that "we should start a magazine" gets said almost as often as "we should start a podcast." Anyway, this episode looks at magazine publishing. Alexandra is the editor of Speculative Insight, which publishes critique and analysis about genre fiction, and Josh Wilson is the editor of The Fabulist, which specializes in extremely short SFFH. It's, among other things, a much more positive episode than I normally post here, so you should check it out.

kiaa posting in

talkpolitics

In case you missed the headlines (or your car texted you the alert), German regulators have effectively forced Toyota's premium Lexus brand to turn off the remote pre-heating feature on hundreds of thousands of combustion-engine vehicles sold in Germany so you can no longer cozy up a frozen car at the tap of an app before you've even found your gloves. The official line is refreshingly undramatic: lawmakers consider unattended idling "avoidable pollution", so Toyota flipped a software switch to keep owners out of trouble, while all-electric and plug-in models still get their toasty interiors:
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/economy/germany-forces-lexus-to-remotely-turn-off-car-warm-up-function-over-environmental-impact-report/3801107

Meanwhile, in the "send this to your cousin who thinks AI writes secret laws" corner of the internet, some outlets are gleefully proclaiming that Germany has declared remote start a crime against humanity and that "Big Brother" is yanking buttons right out of your dashboard:
https://autos.yahoo.com/policy-and-environment/articles/germany-forces-lexus-remotely-kill-173212814.html

That sort of sensational spin makes great water-cooler outrage but only serves to remind us that the real world often has perfectly rational explanations - even if it's colder waiting for your windshield to defrost.

dewline

All this horror and heroism in Minneapolis-St. Paul of late...in the cities that gave us Charles Schulz of all people.

Current Mood: melancholy

conuly

in which two teens independently fall into a toxic mud puddle and develop mind-reading abilities. Spoilers, they're not the only ones!

They're at a family reunion, and one person mentions that there have been a few breakins, how odd, because all the broken-in houses had security systems. And as they mention that, everybody in range automatically thinks their PINs. This, of course, is how the (telepathic!) thief had broken into the houses in the first place.

Ever since then, every time I've had to enter a PIN or a password anywhere, I've carefully also thought some other random letters or numbers. It's a silly habit, which I only developed long after I outgrew poking around closets for Narnia and had nearly outgrown poking around closets for secret passageways, and it wouldn't really deter a mind-reading thief for very long, but I still do it. If there ever is a telepathic malefactor in close proximity to me, at least they'll have to to try a few different codes to use my bank card!

******************

( Read more... )

dorchadas

I'll just go check on part prices and-

SSD prices

Perhaps I should have bought a computer earlier.

(Still have to do it because I'm getting daily restarts now but boy, I should not have waited)

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: Meganeko - Computer Blues

siderea

2026 Jan 14: NYT: "Renfrew Christie Dies at 76; Sabotaged Racist Regime’s Nuclear Program" by Adam Nossiter. "He played a key role in ending apartheid South Africa’s secret weapons program in the 1980s by helping the African National Congress bomb critical facilities."

Renfrew Christie in 1988.

Renfrew Christie, a South African scholar whose undercover work for the African National Congress was critical in hobbling the apartheid government’s secret nuclear weapons program in the 1980s, died on Dec. 21 at his home in Cape Town. He was 76.

The cause of death was pneumonia, his daughter Camilla Christie said.

President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa paid tribute to Dr. Christie after his death, saying his “relentless and fearless commitment to our freedom demands our appreciation.”

The A.N.C., in a statement, called Dr. Christie’s role “in disrupting and exposing the apartheid state’s clandestine nuclear weapons program” an “act of profound revolutionary significance.”

From the doctoral dissertation he had written at the University of Oxford on the history of electricity in South Africa, Dr. Christie provided the research needed to blow up the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station; the Arnot coal-fired power station; the Sasol oil-from-coal facilities that produced the heavy water critical to producing nuclear weapons; and other critical sites.

The explosions set back South Africa’s nascent nuclear weapons program by years and cost the government more than $1 billion, Dr. Christie later estimated.

By the time the bombs began going off, planted by his colleagues in uMkhonto we Sizwe, the paramilitary wing of the A.N.C., Dr. Christie was already in prison. He was arrested by South African authorities in October 1979 on charges of “terrorism,” three months after completing his studies at Oxford, and spent the next seven years in prison, some of that time on death row and in solitary confinement.

“While I was in prison, everything I had ever researched was blown up,” he said in a speech in 2023.

Terrorism was a capital offense, and Dr. Christie narrowly escaped hanging. But as he later recounted, he was deliberately placed on the death row closest to the gallows at the Pretoria Maximum Security Prison. For two and half years, he was forced to listen to the hangings of more than 300 prisoners.

“The whole prison would sing for two or three days before the hanging, to ease the terror of the victims,” Dr. Christie recalled at a 2013 conference at the University of the Western Cape on laws regarding torture.

Then he recited the lyrics of an anti-apartheid folk song that reverberated in the penitentiary: “‘Senzeni-na? Senzeni-na? What have we done? What have we done?’ It was the most beautiful music on earth, sung in a vile place.”

Watch on YouTube

“At zero dark hundred,” he continued, “the hanging party would come through the corridors to the gallows, slamming the gates behind them on the road to death. Once they were at the gallows there was a long pause. Then — crack! — the trapdoors would open, and the neck or necks of the condemned would snap. A bit later came the hammering, presumably of nails into the coffins.”

In an interview years later with the BBC, he said the “gruesome” experience affected him for the rest of his life.

Dr. Christie acquired his fierce antipathy to apartheid at a young age, growing up in an impoverished family in Johannesburg.

Many of his family members fought with the Allied forces against the Germans in World War II, and “I learned from them very early that what one does with Nazis is kill them,” he said at a 2023 conference on antinuclear activism in Johannesburg. “I am not a pacifist.”

At 17, he was drafted into the South African Army. A stint of guard duty at the Lenz ammunition dump south of Johannesburg confirmed his suspicions that the government was building nuclear weapons. “From the age of 17, I was hunting the South African bomb,” he said at the conference.

After attending the University of the Witwatersrand, he received a scholarship to Oxford, which enabled him to further his quest. For his doctoral dissertation, he chose to study South Africa’s history of electrification, “so I could get into the electricity supply commission’s library and archives, and work out how much electricity they were using to enrich uranium,” he told the BBC.

From there, it was possible to calculate how many nuclear bombs could be produced. Six such bombs had reportedly been made by the end of apartheid in the early 1990s; the United States had initially aided the regime’s nuclear program. Thanks to the system of forced labor, South Africa “made the cheapest electricity in the world,” Dr. Christie said, which aided the process of uranium enrichment and made the country’s nuclear program a magnet for Western support. (South Africa also benefited from its status as a Cold War ally against the Soviet Union.)

Dr. Christie turned his findings over to the A.N.C. Instead of opting for the safety of England — there was the possibility of a lecturer position at Oxford — he returned home and was arrested by South Africa’s Security Police. He had been betrayed by Craig Williamson, a fellow student at Witwatersrand, who had become a spy for the security services and was later granted amnesty by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

After 48 hours of torture, Dr. Christie wrote a forced confession — “the best thing I ever wrote,” he later told the BBC, noting that he had made sure the confession included “all my recommendations to the African National Congress” about the best way to sabotage Koeberg and other facilities.

“And, gloriously, the judge read it out in court,” Dr. Christie added. “So my recommendations went from the judge’s mouth” straight to the A.N.C.

Two years later, in December 1982, Koeberg was bombed by white A.N.C. operatives who had gotten jobs at the facility. They followed Dr. Christie’s instructions to the letter.

“Of all the achievements of the armed struggle, the bombing of Koeberg is there,” Dr. Christie said at the 2023 conference, emphasizing its importance. “Frankly, when I got to hearing of it, it made being in prison much, much easier to tolerate.”

Renfrew Leslie Christie was born in Johannesburg on Sept. 11, 1949, the only child of Frederick Christie, an accountant, and Lindsay (Taylor) Christie, who was soon widowed and raised her son alone while working as a secretary.

He attended King Edward VII School in Johannesburg and was conscripted into the army immediately after graduating. After his discharge, he enrolled at Witwatersrand. He was twice arrested after illegally visiting Black students at the University of the North at Turfloop, and was also arrested during a march on a police station where he said the anti-apartheid activist Winnie Mandela was being tortured.

He didn’t finish the course at Witwatersrand, instead earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Cape Town in the mid-1970s before studying at Oxford. At Cape Town, he was a leader of the National Union of South African Students, an important anti-apartheid organization.

On June 6, 1980, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison under South Africa’s Terrorism Act, with four other sentences of five years each to run concurrently.

“I spent seven months in solitary,” Dr. Christie said in the 2023 speech. “Don’t let anybody kid you: No one comes out of solitary sane. My nightmares are awful.”

After his years in prison, he was granted amnesty in 1986 as the apartheid regime began to crumble. (It officially ended in 1994, when Nelson Mandela became the country’s first Black president.) He later had a long academic career at the University of the Western Cape, retiring in 2014 as dean of research and senior professor.

In addition to his daughter Camilla, he is survived by his wife, Dr. Menán du Plessis, a linguist and novelist he married in 1990; and another daughter, Aurora.

Asked by the BBC whether he was glad he had spied for the A.N.C., Dr. Christie didn’t hesitate.

“I was working for Nelson Mandela and uMkonto we Sizwe,” he said. “I’m very proud of that. We won. We got a democracy.”

Kirsten Noyes contributed research.

In prison cell and dungeon vile
Our thoughts to them are winging
When friends by shame are undefiled
How can I keep from singing?

– Pete Seeger

kiaa posting in

talkpolitics

Apparently, the internet has decided that on 12 August 2026 the Earth will politely switch off gravity for 7 seconds. Just long enough, we are told, for everything to float, panic, and then crash back down again. The story comes with all the usual extras: a secret government project, tens of billions of hidden dollars, and authorities who "know the truth" but refuse to tell us. Because of course they do:

LINK: The Economic Times

The funny part is not just the claim itself, but how confidently it's being presented. Gravity doesn't "pause" like a streaming video, and no serious physics allows for a planet-wide gravity outage on a timer. If it did, we wouldn't be debating it on social media - we'd be rewriting every physics textbook ever written. Still, the theory survives because it sounds dramatic, scientific enough to fool non-experts, and suspicious enough to fit the classic "they're hiding something" narrative. And of course there's ample numbers of idiots to feed the drama. Or just trolls who'd like some shits'n'giggles.

What actually is happening on that date is far less exciting but much more real: a total solar eclipse. A rare, beautiful, well-understood astronomical event that has been predicted for decades using boring things like math and observation. Somehow, "the Moon blocks the Sun for a few minutes" just doesn't compete online with "gravity collapses and the oceans try to escape".
The money angle also collapses under basic scrutiny. The idea that there's a secret $89 billion operation hidden inside a publicly scrutinized space budget is almost impressive in its optimism. Governments struggle to hide minor accounting mistakes, but sure - a civilization-altering gravity experiment slipped through unnoticed. Totally plausible.

In the end, stories like this say less about science and more about us. Conspiracy theories offer simple explanations, secret villains, and the comforting feeling that you're part of the few who "get it". Reality, meanwhile, is messier, slower, and much less cinematic. Gravity will still be there on 12 August 2026. The real question is why so many people would rather believe otherwise.

luthien

Challenge #7

LIST THREE (or more) THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF. They don’t have to be your favorite things, just things that you think are good. Feel free to expand as much or as little as you want.

( My three things )

two log cabins with snow on the roofs in a wintery forest the text snowflake challenge january 1 - 31 in white cursive text

sabotabby

Just finished: Invisible Line by Su J. Sokol. This was quite good. Xe did a good job in not just complicating utopia—I have a minor dislike of "flee to Canada" as a plot point in dystopian fiction, and the portrayal of Montreal as a bureaucracy subject to limits on its ability to do the right thing is very nuanced and well done—but also making the characters messy and traumatized. The big crisis in the last act could have been averted if the parents talked to their damned kids, but of course they are too paranoid and distrustful from years of living under fascism, so they don't. Looking forward to reading the sequel.

Currently reading: Mavericks: Life stories and lessons of history's most extraordinary misfits by Jenny Draper. This is really fun—TikTok-sized portraits of history's interesting (not always good) characters. I knew about a lot of them, like Ellen and William Craft and Noor Inayat Khan, but a lot of the others, like Eleanor Rykener and The Chevalier d'Eon, are new to me. It's very fun and conversational.

andrewducker

1. Trump v BBC - a guide to the case: (tags:usa uk bbc politics law )
2. Iranian-linked Scottish accounts fall silent again with Iran's internet blackout: (tags:iran scotland propaganda )
3. Adelaide Writers' Week cancelled amid controversy over disinvitation of author Randa Abdel-Fattah: (tags:Australia Palestine Israel writing festival )
4. New Tesla feature to automatically create explicit images of pedestrians it passes on the street: (tags:satire funny Tesla nudity )
5. Zoe Saldaña Becomes Highest-Grossing Actor of All Time With 'Avatar: Fire and Ash': (tags:movies money )
6. Government drops plans for mandatory digital ID to work in UK: (tags:IDCards Labour )
7. Warhammer Maker Games Workshop Bans Its Staff From Using AI in Its Content or Designs, Says None of Its Senior Managers Are Currently Excited About the Tech: (tags:AI GamesWorkshop Warhammer )
8. Making a natural freezer: (tags:temperature video ice )
9. A divorce lawyer on the concept of "soulmates": (tags:love relationships video )
10. The polls in Wales are, frankly, unprecedented: (tags:Wales polls )
11. Contract secured for one of world's largest offshore wind farms Berwick Bank (off the coast of Scotland): (tags:scotland electricity windpower )
12. Scientists confirm 2025 was the third hottest year on record: (tags:globalwarming doom )
13. What's the stick in *your* stream?: (tags:advice life )

siderea

Heads up, locals! Observers report evidence of ICE/DHS activity preparing for an operation in MA, imminently.

2026 Jan 13 5pm: u/rarelighting in r/Boston: Boston quietly prepares for an ICE surge, points at:

2026 Jan 13: Axios: Boston quietly prepares for an ICE surge by Mike Deehan

Discussion at Reddit:

OP:

While listening to the Sam Seder podcast today, someone sent in a report about increased activity at the Burlington ICE facilities. Stay alert folks.

u/Neat-Beautiful-5505 • 4h ago

Another Reddit post showed three 18-wheel trucks hauling several new SUVs each to the Burlington ICE facility.

u/_still_truckin_ • 4h ago

Two dozen white Ford Explorers. They’re the same Interceptor models that real police departments use. You can spot them by the searchlight mounted to the driver side A-pillar and lack of tracks for roof racks. Saw them in the parking lot of the Burlington ICE building.

u/ThePirateKing01 • 4h ago

Shoutout to @BearingWitnessBurlington on YouTube and TikTok

To those who say protesting peacefully doesn’t amount to much, this person has been both protesting and monitoring the facility almost 24/7. Without people like this we wouldn’t have the heads up that we do now

u/minilip30 • 4h ago

“The bottom line: While no operation has been officially confirmed, Boston is not waiting to find out — it is mobilizing now.”

Good!

Remember, ICE needs a warrant to enter any private residence or business. Business that aren’t fascist supporting should have signs that they will not allow ICE entry without a warrant.

u/beanandcod • 4h ago

A judicial warrant, signed by a judge

u/Pnoman98 • 4h ago

A lot of police presence at Alewife& Gov Center

u/cccxxxzzzddd • 4h ago

The Rindge / fresh pond apartments at alewife are home to many immigrants, particularly Ethiopians

This is not good

Edit: not good that ice is there

u/mysteriousfrittata • 4h ago

Saw a car full of them parked outside of MGH yesterday evening. All wearing DHS fatigues etc. Naturally the assholes were parked in an ambulance parking spot. I called to report a strange vehicle parked there.

u/HolyMoleyGuacamoly • 4h ago

they appear to be staying at that marriott right next door. was by there for a bit and saw a ton of activity in and out of there of single white men in suvs with beards

Happy_Literature9493 • 3h ago

Copied and pasted from Safari reader mode [the Axios article:]

“Boston quietly prepares for an ICE surge Mike Deehan Boston City Hall is privately getting ready for a potential spike in Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity.

Why it matters: Even without a confirmed federal operation, the city is "planning for the unthinkable," according to Mayor Michelle Wu.

Escalating tensions and violence in other cities are deepening anxieties within immigrant communities and worsening the friction between sanctuary communities and federal authorities. The latest: Wu confirmed on WBUR this week that she is discussing enforcement scenarios with Boston Police leadership.

Her goal is to establish clear protocols to ensure local police resources are not co-opted into federal immigration efforts. Wu maintains that Boston police will not leak information to ICE, a stance she views as crucial to maintaining community trust. The big picture: Boston isn't alone in bracing for federal action.

Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons has stated plans for a larger presence in Boston, promising more agents following disputes over sanctuary policies. Past initiatives mobilized large-scale enforcement across Massachusetts. Zoom in: Unverified but persistent reports from residents and activists note a delivery of SUVs to the Burlington ICE Field Office last week.

Advocates interpret the arrival of three car carriers hauling SUVs as a sign that the local ICE branch is staffing up. What we're watching: If federal enforcement accelerates, pressure will mount on public-facing institutions and communities with sanctuary policies.

Courthouses are typically a flashpoint for arrests. City community centers and schools will need to know how to respond if agents appear at their doors. ICE likely won't limit large-scale enforcement to Boston. Municipalities with large immigrant populations like Chelsea, Everett, Lawrence, Revere and Lynn could also be in the crosshairs. Threat level: Activists have staked out the Burlington ICE office for months and will likely be among the first to know of any major rollout.

Expect throngs of Massachusetts residents to demonstrate against ICE if a surge happens here. The bottom line: While no operation has been officially confirmed, Boston is not waiting to find out — it is mobilizing now.”

dewline

I'm shopping for a particular kind of font family. Looks close to Helvetica UCE, has multiple weights like Gravitica Compressed or Tungsten and has at least two character sets in addition to Latin. Greek and Cyrillic at least.

Can anyone here help me with this?

Current Mood: busy

Profile

maxcelcat

November 2022

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Page Summary

luthien - Snowflake Challenge 2026 - Day 9
siderea - The Chinese fishing boats maneuvers [war, curr ev]
ewx - academia.edu
andrewducker - Interesting Links for 17-01-2026
luthien - Snowflake Challenge 2026 - Day 8
siderea - Well, we're finally here [me, pols]
siderea - Slipping on into ICE [curr ev, pols]
sabotabby - podcast friday
andrewducker - Interesting Links for 16-01-2026
kiaa in talkpolitics - Friday offtopic: The war on windshield defrosting
dewline - Trump vs. Minnesota: A Realization
conuly - When I was a kid I read a Sleator book
dorchadas - Well, the WHEA errors are increasing, I had better buy a new computer
siderea - Sohlangana ezulwini (How can I keep from singing?) [in memoriam, hist]
kiaa in talkpolitics - Come 12 August, watch out for that gravity!
luthien - Snowflake Challenge 2026 - Day 7
sabotabby - Reading Wednesday
andrewducker - Interesting Links for 14-01-2026
siderea - Massachusetts is next [Ω, MA/US]
dewline - Fonts/Mapmaking/Trek Fandom: A Particular Need

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Snowflake Challenge 2026 - Day 9

The Chinese fishing boats maneuvers [war, curr ev]

academia.edu

Interesting Links for 17-01-2026

Snowflake Challenge 2026 - Day 8

Well, we're finally here [me, pols]

Slipping on into ICE [curr ev, pols]

podcast friday

Interesting Links for 16-01-2026

Friday offtopic: The war on windshield defrosting

Trump vs. Minnesota: A Realization

When I was a kid I read a Sleator book

Well, the WHEA errors are increasing, I had better buy a new computer

Sohlangana ezulwini (How can I keep from singing?) [in memoriam, hist]

Come 12 August, watch out for that gravity!

Snowflake Challenge 2026 - Day 7

Reading Wednesday

Interesting Links for 14-01-2026

Massachusetts is next [Ω, MA/US]

Fonts/Mapmaking/Trek Fandom: A Particular Need

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