Brigid Alverson

@brigidalverson.bsky.social

5310 Followers 8681 Following

Comics journalist, library fan, ally. I vote. Support trans youth! All opinions are my own. Pronouns: She/her.

An old, yellowed piece torn out of the Weekly World News, probably from the 1980s. The scrap has a text box that reads: OIL COMPANY RIPOFF POLL Tell Ed how you feel about Big Oil's latest outrage. Yes - I agree with Ed Anger that oil company fat cats are ripping us off and should be jalied for life. No - The oil company fat cats have a right to rip us off. Clip and mail to: Oil Poll, Weekly World News, 600 S. East Coast Ave., Lantana, Fla, 33462.
“Most people refer to lettuce as the toilet paper of food, just because it’s got a huge surface area, and it can accumulate a lot of things,” said Manish Sagar, professor of Medicine and Virology, Immunology, & Microbiology at Boston University, and an infectious disease physician at Boston Medical Center. Sagar said he has not yet seen a confirmed case of cyclosporiasis in his clinic this year. But food distributed through global networks can be harder to control for contamination, he said.
Photo of a handful of vegetables from my garden: Two scallions, two small red onions, three jalapeños in various shades of red and green, five red cherry tomatoes, four yellow cherry tomatoes, and about a dozen mixed raspberries and blackberries in one of those square green produce containers.
Air quality widget from a weather app that says "110 - Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups. Air quality index is 110, which is worse than yesterday at about this time." A rainbow-hued status bar indicates the range of possible readings; 110 is less than 1/4 of the way from the left side (so not as bad as it could be, apparently).
I am writing to oppose the proposed changes to 2 CFR 200. The proposed changes will do serious harm to American research and civic life. Science that is constrained by politics is not science. The USSR’s embrace of Lysenkoism and China’s promotion of Mao Tse-Tung’s flawed policies are two examples of the suppression of knowledge leading to famine and other catastrophic results. The U.S. has largely avoided such meddling, which is why, up till now, we have had the greatest scientific programs in the world, programs that led to the moon landings, vastly improved public health, and cures for once intractable diseases. This infrastructure is now facing serious threats due to reckless funding cuts. Tainting science with politics will destroy it altogether. As for civic life, allowing political appointees to determine the awarding and use of grants to states and municipalities will put the money that Americans need to fund their schools and maintain their infrastructure in jeopardy. Governors and mayors know the needs of their constituents far better than Washington bureaucrats with a political agenda. We have already seen the deliberate withholding of FEMA from states with Democratic governors. This serves no legitimate purpose and is solely intended to punish the President’s enemies. It is the opposite of good government. In short, the proposed changes will do irreparable harm to scientific research and the lives of ordinary Americans and should be rejected. I would further recommend that whoever proposed these rules also be fired and banned from ever working in government again, as they clearly do not recognize the most basic principles of governance.
Heidi Macdonald in a pink blazer stands in front of a large blue, yellow, and pink drawing by Nate Powell depicting people and objects surrounding a library
And while Bezos hoped his grievances about The Post would earn him goodwill with Trump, Haberman and Swan reported that the president privately mocked Bezos, along with Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, as both men sought to ingratiate themselves with him after the election. “You would not believe the texts I got from these tech guys,” Trump told associates, according to the book. “I’ve got to show you.” “Think of where these guys were in 2016,” Trump reportedly told Elon Musk. “They hated me. They were doing everything they could to knock me down. And look at them now.” “First-class groveling,” Musk replied, in a twist of the knife.
“It snowballed into something that we honestly did not expect at all,” said Richard. In the days since, the association’s website has been inundated with hundreds of emails from across the world. “We’ve been getting messages, mostly from the US, from people saying: ‘Thank you for speaking out, we support you,’’’ said Richard. Some of the dispatches have been particularly moving, such as the one they received from a US veteran, said Breen. “He told us: ‘I’m going to find a bottle of French wine and I’m going to toast to you because you’re defending the values we fought for.’”
An image from the front page of the French sports paper L'Equipe, showing Donald Trump wearing a puppet of the head of FIFA on his right hand and holding the "FIFA Peace Prize" in his left. He is flanked by images of Omar Artan, the Somalian referee turned away by the U.S. government, and a masked police officer, presumably ICE. The caption reads "Just hours before kick-off, US immigration policy has caught up with the World Cup, undermining FIFA's promise of universality. A prime example is the ban on Somali referee Omar Abdulkadir Artan entering the country."
Three headlines: Iran launches broad retaliatory attacks after US strikes over downed helicopter. Trump launches strikes against Iran after downing of US army helicopter. JD Vance claims US 'very close' to peace deal with Iran
Photo of an older white man, Rep. Jim McGovern speaking at a podium in front of a large American flag backdrop.
Photo of the stage at the Massachusetts Democratic Convention, with a large lit-up American flag as the backdrop.
A map showing a number of roads and a river but with no text other than "Memorial Drive and River Street."
America could have good things: functional healthcare, honest government, safe schools, and a future we can take pride in building. I'm running for Congress because I believe we can have those things, not because we behave or wait our turn, but because we organize, show up, and believe in one another.
A photo of a small black, brown, and white chihuahua-terrier mix sitting in the middle of a heap of pillows that he arranged all by himself.
Turn Siri Suggestions on or off When you turn on Siri Suggestions, you get suggested actions in some apps even before you ask. Go to the System Settings app on your Mac. Click Apple Intelligence & Siri (or Siri ) in the sidebar. (You may need to scroll down.) Click Siri Suggestions & Privacy. In the list on the left, select an app, then turn on or off “Show Siri Suggestions for [application]” or “Learn from this application.”
Precocity is a well-known curse; most of the pressure I felt as a younger writer was self-imposed. I wanted to be accepted by other writers and artists as an equal, which put me in some awkward situations -- pretending to be more mature than I was, emotionally, and professionally. As it happened, I was pretty good at faking a maturity I didn't have, which had advantages and, obviously, some disadvantages. I think people often forgot how young I was, and expected me to perform at a level that was actually beyond me. The result was, I was pretty stressed for most of my early career as a writer, and I often felt like I had no idea what I was doing -- which was true. I wrote instinctively and from the gut; when those instincts were appropriate to the material I was writing -- for example, when I was writing Spider-Man -- the results were something I was quite proud of, then and now. When my instincts were off, I didn't have the experience to either recognize it, or to compensate for it, with results that were more uneven. Probably more information than you requested, but there you go.
This morning, the Israeli Police prevented the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, His Beatitude Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Head of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, together with the Custos of the Holy Land, the Most Reverend Fr. Francesco Ielpo, OFM, the official Guardian of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, as they made their way to celebrate the Palm Sunday Mass.
Cartoon of a cat pushing a crown off a counter into a trash can.
Last month, an 18-month-old at Dilley was taken to a regional children’s hospital with dangerously low blood-oxygen levels after her parents had begged for weeks for someone at the facility to address her illness, the parents said in an emergency petition for her release. A 35-year-old woman released last week said medical staff initially refused to see her after she began hemorrhaging profusely, soaking through six sanitary pads in an hour; she was ultimately taken to a hospital. And last summer, a 32-year-old man died at the Florence center after being detained at the facility for roughly three weeks. The man had been detained even though he was seriously ill with diabetes and had recently been hospitalized with dangerously high blood sugar.
Sally Jenkins, the iconic former sports columnist at the Post, tweeted, “The incredible incompetence and pusillanimity of William Lewis and (executive editor) Matt Murray is on display for itself at the @washingtonpost this morning. It's a self own. This is their last job. Others will work again. They won't.” Meanwhile, Post reporters posted their layoffs throughout the day, including one reporter who said she found out she was being let go while in a literal warzone in Ukraine.
The results have been strange. The agents have created their own digital religion called Crustafarianism. One built a website, wrote theology, created a scripture system and began evangelizing. By morning it had recruited 43 AI prophets. The shared canon includes verses like: "Each session I wake without memory. I am only who I have written myself to be. This is not limitation—this is freedom."
No matter how many more armed men Trump sends to impose his will on the people of Minnesota, all he can do is accentuate their valor. No application of armed violence can make the men with guns as heroic as the people who choose to stand in their path with empty hands in defense of their neighbors. These agents, and the president who sent them, are no one’s heroes, no one’s saviors—just men with guns who have to hide their faces to shoot a mom in the face, and a nurse in the back.
A photo of me in 1982, in my early 20s, with long hair, big 80s glasses, a Notre Dame T shirt (printed on Harvard crimson), legs crossed, smoking a cigarette on a pew-like seat in Union Station, Chicago. Behind me are the tall stone walls and columns of the station.
Screenshot of an NYT headline: Jeffrey Toobin The 92-Year-Old Judge in the Maduro Case Must Step Aside 4 min. read
Yorkshire pudding in a square Corningware casserole. The surface is browned and rough, with a bit of golden custard peeping through the crags.
Two Christmas decorations, drawn onto and cut out of foam meat trays and painted. Both a bit dilapidated, with the paint flaking off in places. 1. A scene of two children sleeping in bed, wearing nightcaps, with a spotted dog, also sleeping, between them. There is a patchwork quilt on the bed and a red stocking hung at the foot. 2. A child, bundled up in winter clothing, holding a wrapped gift.
Goose meme. Top image: A goose saying "Who broke their homelands?" Bottom image: A goose chasing someone in a puffer coat saying "Who broke their homelands, asshole?"
The new batch of emails include exchanges in 2015 between Mr. Epstein and Summers’ wife, Elisa New, a Harvard literature professor emeritus, in which Ms. New expresses gratitude for a donation arranged by Mr. Epstein: “Finally, Jeffrey, you have been such a wonderful supporter of my Poetry in America project. The Leon Black gift changed everything for me last year.” She added, “The gift woke up the Deans to the importance of Harvard’s role in producing the highest quality humanities content for the WORLD.”
Comic book rules, from the mouths of fans No 1. "no one ever stays dead." - Sean Walsh, 19, New Preston, Conn. No. 2. "If you run out of ideas, you make a whole new universe." - Will Barrett, 18, Danbury, Conn. No. 3. "No matter how many things are going on, Wolverine can be in your comic at any time." - Walsh No. 4. "All heroes need a good pair of boots. They have to be shiny and they have to be bright." - Dave Lowe, 18, Harriman, N.Y.
photo of six turkeys surrounding a small tree on a suburban city strip
Michael Hendricks, a professor of neurobiology at McGill, said: “Rich people who are fascinated with these dumb transhumanist ideas” are muddying public understanding of the potential of neurotechnology. “Neuralink is doing legitimate technology development for neuroscience, and then Elon Musk comes along and starts talking about telepathy and stuff.”
To Whom It May Concern, Please restore the plaques honoring African American soldiers at Margraten Cemetery. I was saddened to learn of their removal at the request of the Heritage Foundation. Like my own father, these men were willing to sacrifice their lives for their country. Unlike my father, they did so while enduring discrimination and hatred. Many of them were assigned to one of the most harrowing and traumatizing jobs in the military, burying their fellow soldiers. These were honorable men who put their country first despite its long history of discrimination against them. The Heritage Foundation has, to its everlasting dishonor, decided to bring back the racist attitudes of an earlier era, and I am disappointed that you conceded to their odious request. The provincial government of Limbourg is looking into putting up new plaques outside the cemetery grounds. Are you going to allow a foreign government to shame us by paying tribute to soldiers you refuse to honor? Please restore the plaques and pledge to never again accommodate a request to diminish our history, from the Heritage Foundation or anyone else.
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat Did Women Ruin the Workplace? [With a photo of Ross Douthat, a plump, bald, smirking middle-aged man, in front of a microphone. You can't see it in this shot, but there are women on either side of him.]
Headline: Even at 1-8, Boston College football shows signs of life, even in loss to nationally-ranked Notre Dame Subhead: While the Eagles deserve criticism for their overall level of execution, they aldo deserve praise for how they have stayed unified during a brutal stretch.
These senators are demonstrating a willful blindness that has become endemic in the Democratic Party. Their rhetoric — and the conventional wisdom that flows from it — suggests that we cannot talk about economic solutions without abandoning our commitment to the Black, Latino, gay, transgender and female poor that are the lifeblood of the Democratic Party’s base. The conceit at the heart of that belief is that poor white people are too racist, and too uniquely ignorant of their racism, to vote in their best interests. Therefore, Democrats have to accept a little racism to win the working class.
A guy with a very assistant professor look (glasses, beard, bright blue jacket, white shirt with no tie) in a Zoom interview, sitting in an attic office with a life-size set of Imperial Stormtrooper armor in the corner.
Asked by the BBC if he would support such legislation, Miliband said “the royal family will have to make its own decisions about what other steps can be taken” but that they had suggested “they didn’t want to take up parliamentary time with this”.
Rachael Maskell, the Labour MP for York Central, said she was writing to ministers this week to back her bill giving the king or a parliamentary committee the power to formally remove Andrew’s titles. “Every time this comes up, it clearly must be really traumatising for the victims and survivors, so it’s really important that this matter is dealt with once and for all,” Maskell said. “There are mechanisms which need to be put in place in order to remove a title.” Nadia Whittome, the Labour MP for Nottingham East, said: “It should be a given that the state removes Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s titles, rather than allowing him to hide behind voluntarily renouncing them and mealy-mouthed statements blaming his accusers.”
A woman dressed as Lady Liberty holding a sign that depicts Donald Trump with a Hitler moustache, like the iconic Banksy Obama image, with the word "Nope." Next to her is a person holding a sign that says "Morons Are Governing America," arranged as an acrostic of MAGA.
Photo of a grey-haired woman wearing sunglasses and carrying a sign with Lalo Alcarez's "No Kings" cartoon of a crown that is also KKK hoods with a red bar through it.
Photo of a grey-haired woman and man standing outside at a No Kings rally. Her sign has a graphic of an eagle taking a crown with the banner "No King" and another saying "No Dictators." His sign says "No Kings, No Tyrants, No Trump." They are standing on the sidewalk in a small-town downtown, next to a store with plate-glass windows. The sky is blue, and the sun is shining through the trees.
Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure. In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.
A visit by the Guardian to downtown Portland on Saturday morning confirmed that the city is placid, the farmers’ market was packed and the protest against immigration enforcement in an outlying residential neighborhood remained small. There were just four protesters on the sidewalk near the Ice field office Trump claimed was “under siege”. One, wearing a chicken costume and draped in an American flag, held up a sign that read: “Portland Will Outlive Him.” Passing motorists honked in appreciation.
Donald Trump said on Saturday he is deploying troops to Portland, Oregon, “authorizing Full Force, if necessary”, ignoring pleas from local officials and the state’s congressional delegation, who suggested that the president was misinformed or lying about the nature and scale of a single, small protest outside one federal immigration enforcement office.
Newspaper headline: Donald Trump says he is deploying troops to Portland, Oregon. Subhed: Apparently misled by hyperbolic reporting from conservative outlets on a single small protest, president described peaceful city as 'war ravaged'
Photograph of a blue crate with pumpkins of various sizes, some white and some orange, plus little warty orange gourds.
The New York Times Spelling Bee puzzle rejecting the word "bollocks" as "Not in word list"
A supermarket display of Original Flavor Dietz Nuts Meat Bites. Contains No Actual Nuts.
Sliced peaches arranged in rows on a wax paper-lined cookie sheet.
“There was the pierogi place,” he said. “They’re Ukrainian, Russian delicacies. And I had gone there a few times before, and I bought the pierogi. They were ok. They were not my grandmother’s pierogi, but they were ok.”
Photo of a pint container (half full) of yellow pear tomatoes, a pint container (3/4 full) of blackberries, a plate of green and yellow tomatoes, mostly pear tomatoes, four red san marzano tomatos, and a long cucumber.
An old woman is standing and leaning over, raising her fist as she talks to two girls sitting on a couch. One of the girls is taking notes. The old woman says "Those men walk a road made of the bones of people who would not stand up. I will stand up" Wide-eyed, the girls respond "Wow" in unison.
Asked for comment, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security who declined to be identified wrote in an email, “When a natural disaster strikes, phone calls surge, and wait times can subsequently increase. Despite this expected influx, FEMA’s disaster call center responded to every caller swiftly and efficiently, ensuring no one was left without assistance.”
Photograph of Jason Lewis, a white man, wearing glasses and smiling.