Brad
bookwormbugbear.bsky.social
Brad
@bookwormbugbear.bsky.social
A handsome bugbear reading quite a few books
Reposted by Brad
This is torture. The US is torturing children. Children whose words and whose art contain infinitely more humanity than the people keeping them detained.
5/ “I have already spent more than 60 days waking up eating the same repetitive meals…going to the doctor and that the only thing they tell you is to drink more water and the worst thing is that it seems like the water is what makes people sick here…”

From 12-year-old Ender, detained 60+ days
February 9, 2026 at 1:38 PM
Reposted by Brad
In Boston ICE randomly pulled over this huge white Irish guy with a Mass drivers license, 20 years in the states, legal status, pending green card and have held him for 5 months, his citizen wife paid a $4k bond that was ignored(!) ICE forged his signature on deportation agreement, no appeal
Kerryman who is married, living and working legally in the United States for >20 years has been incarcerated by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) since September 2025.

Profoundly disturbing report by Karlin Lillington @klillington.bsky.social
www.irishtimes.com/world/us/202...
‘Absolute hell’: Irish man with valid US work permit held by Ice since September
Seamus Culleton has been in a detention facility in Texas for nearly five months despite having no criminal record
www.irishtimes.com
February 9, 2026 at 12:42 PM
Reposted by Brad
Since the early days of the space program, astronauts have quarantined before missions because any illness could be disastrous. It’s eminently logical — not “extreme” — for athletes who’ve trained their WHOLE LIVES for one event to take similar precautions in order to stay in peak physical condition
npr.org NPR @npr.org · 15h
For most people, the pandemic days of masking are behind us. In certain corners of the Winter Olympics, though, things still look a lot like they did in Covid times. Some athletes are taking extreme measures to stay healthy. n.pr/4akK70l
Olympic Covid restrictions are gone, but some athletes still self-quarantining
For most people, the pandemic days of masking are behind us. In certain corners of the Winter Olympics, though, things still look a lot like they did in Covid times. Some athletes are taking extreme measures to stay healthy.
n.pr
February 9, 2026 at 4:39 PM
Reposted by Brad
The No ICE in Minnesota Charity Bundle has officially LAUNCHED!

There are 1,439 games to discover for a $10+ donation to Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota!

Purchase the bundle here: itch.io/b/3484/no-ic...
February 9, 2026 at 2:33 PM
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"For perspective, only 14,500 satellites are currently in orbit. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk now wants to dramatically increase that number by about 70 times, raising questions about the environmental toll from the required rocket launches and the potential for space debris."
FCC Fast-Tracks SpaceX's Plan for 1M Satellites. And It Wants Your Thoughts
Usually, the commission takes weeks or months to respond to a filing, but it kicked off a public comment period for SpaceX's orbital data center plan in just a few days.
www.pcmag.com
February 9, 2026 at 6:43 PM
Reposted by Brad
GOOD NEWS! A UNIVERSAL sarbecovirus vaccine candidate has officially started clinical trials! GBP511 is the FIRST vaccine to reach human testing that is intended to protect against MULTIPLE strains of SARS-CoV-2 as well as other related coronaviruses with the potential to spark dangerous outbreaks.
February 8, 2026 at 5:00 PM
Reposted by Brad
Annihilation (2018)
the bushes were people 😂
February 9, 2026 at 4:48 AM
Of the books I read for the first times in 2025, only the Cloud Roads by @marthawells.com has pulled me into rereading.

When I pitch it to friends, it’s that Wells made her own new omegaverse-like species/gender combination and the main character is a cross between Rapunzel and Wreck it Ralph
February 9, 2026 at 9:13 AM
Reposted by Brad
Democrats need to understand that they can just say “It’s insane to threaten Greenland” and “I don’t think ICE should murder Americans in the street” and you don’t need to pretend to link it to the affordability crisis.

Say bad things are bad.
January 7, 2026 at 7:45 PM
Reposted by Brad
I've always thought that the whole "natural immunity is the best way to protect people" thing was a bit like saying "getting pregnant is the best form of birth control."

Anyway, cool to see it's better for the immune system to see vaccine before virus from an effectiveness standpoint too.
A study on 1.7 million people in Hong Kong shows superior hybrid immunity to Covid in people who got vaccinated before infection vs. people who got infected first. "Our findings are a direct rebuttal to arguments for natural immunity," the authors write. doi.org/10.1016/j.va...
Redirecting
doi.org
December 8, 2025 at 2:37 AM
Reposted by Brad
Oh, here's a big surprise. The transphobes don't believe in ADHD either.
then, the transphobes , feeling victorious at how many people they have made unhappy and despairing in the previous week, move on to anything else that has a spectrum and the possibility of more colours than they can conceive - such hateful people - they cannot understand anything that is not THEM
December 8, 2025 at 1:08 PM
Reposted by Brad
Today marks the UK release* of @tkingfisher.com's latest book Snake-Eater, which (depending on how you define it) is her 50th book of fiction! In honor of this milestone I wanted to do a little retrospective of her 50 books
November 11, 2025 at 11:00 PM
I can’t bring myself to read Bury Me In The Midnight Soil at any decent pace and I can’t put my finger on it. It is at times unique, it’s clearly queer, but it drags. I think because I often find vampire fiction tiresome. Not the book’s fault, probably mine.
November 12, 2025 at 9:59 AM
The frustrating post of this is the lack of discernment between nearly decade old machine learning algorithms often home brewed by a company to do a job a human cannot, and the rise of generative AI and large language models that have much worse accuracy.
November 12, 2025 at 9:54 AM
Reposted by Brad
FYI,

#RomanceCon is run by Mischief Management whose founder and CEO is Melissa Anelli. She’s the author of Harry, a History, was a cohost on the Pottercast, and is still the webmaster of The Leaky Cauldron, which posted about the Wizarding World attraction on July 9th of this year.

#Romancelandia
July 13, 2025 at 7:46 PM
Reposted by Brad
Litigation as intimidation and continuation of abuse. Sexual predation is always wrong -- there's no carve-out for tolerating violent men simply because we value their art.

(Or if we agree with their political ideology/voting record, as I discussed last week re Al Franken abusing *8* accusers.)
Fuck that guy, eternally. Link within to Lila Shapiro's definitive @nymag.com piece. Using this link because some folks might not be aware that NG is **suing** one of the survivors of his alleged abuse. something something "ally" something something "feminism" www.vulture.com/article/neil...
July 3, 2025 at 3:18 PM
Reposted by Brad
IF YOU ARE IN ONE OF THESE DISTRICTS PLEASE MAKE A CALL RIGHT NOW

DOES NOT MATTER IF YOUR VOICE SHAKES

CALL AND SAY YOU OPPOSE BBB

Scripts here: 5calls.org
July 3, 2025 at 3:45 PM
Reposted by Brad
He proposes releasing some ICE prisoners to labor on farms where the employers will “own them” and be responsible for them.

Historians have spent decades meticulously proving the straight line between slavery and modern capitalism’s concept of the laborer—or we could just let them say it.
The camp is to filter out workers for Trumps new Slavery policy where he sells them to businesses.
He says so in this video
Make Americans Slaves Again
July 3, 2025 at 8:00 AM
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catbus.phd Catbus @catbus.phd · May 11
I don't know who needs to hear this but,
May 10, 2025 at 1:44 PM
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The Great Grey Goose, Hjonk. 🦢
My favorite Dark Souls Boss.

#darksouls
May 9, 2025 at 9:42 PM
Reposted by Brad
"Masked security forces captured an opposition leader in the coastal province of New Jersey as regime officials continue their months-long crack-down against pro-democracy elements in the embattled United States. The arrest comes as the regime issued calls for summary detentions without trial."
HAPPENING NOW: Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was just taken into custody while protesting outside the Delaney Hall ICE detention center
May 9, 2025 at 10:10 PM
Reposted by Brad
Basically traps AI crawlers and sends them down an "infinite maze" of static files with no exit links, where they get stuck and thrash around for months. Once trapped, the crawlers can be fed gibberish data, aka Markov babble, which is designed to poison AI models arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...
AI haters build tarpits to trap and trick AI scrapers that ignore robots.txt
Attackers explain how an anti-spam defense became an AI weapon.
arstechnica.com
February 5, 2025 at 8:52 AM
Reposted by Brad
It’s weird to me that scholars keep writing that John Singer Sargent was a very private man who left no evidence of his sexuality when his sketches are like the definition of being horny on main, 19th century style.
May 9, 2025 at 6:50 PM
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If six months ago you'd told me that in autumn 2025 I'd have to go to Canada to get my annual COVID vaccine but I wouldn't do it because coming back through immigrations was too risky for someone who had criticized the government, I would have looked at you like you were having a stroke.
In what proportions is our new NIH Director a flaming ignoramus vs. a brazen liar?
April 23, 2025 at 6:51 PM
Reposted by Brad
April 16, 2025 at 2:05 AM