Fiddler

@cfidd.bsky.social

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Comic book lover, oenophile, Virginian. Obsessed with/nation's foremost expert on state politics. carolyncfiddler at gmail dot com. she/her

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'murica

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Fiddler

about once a week, i have to explain to someone on the phone that the police have no obligation to do anything for you and, even if their refusal literally leads to your murder, the courts have been clear that there's no case to pursue

A man has been using Facebook to terrorize his ex and their children. He brags about it: “I want her to worry about who’s waiting on the corner.” But police do nothing and nobody seems to take it seriously. Chilling story from Stacy St Clair and Joe Mahr www.chicagotribune.com/2024/07/07/f...

How one man uses Facebook to frighten his children's mother and why police do nothingwww.chicagotribune.com An analysis of data from nearly two dozen Illinois police departments found police rarely arrest people for electronic harassment, even as complaints increase.

Me flirting

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Fiddler

Me flirting

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Fiddler

This guy was such a G for telling his evil wizard cyborg boss that his religion is bullshit during a work meeting.

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Fiddler

At best it lasted from 1965-2000. Even then we had widespread gerrymandering, Senate malapportionment, unequal voting access, Jim Crow ex-felon voting bans, etc. 7 of 12 elections since 2000 have seen Republicans win one or more of the presidency, Senate, or House despite fewer votes than Democrats

For most of its history, America hasn’t been a democracy, by any meaningful definition of the term! This isn’t some It Can’t Happen Here shit, in a way, it’s already happened. It just may not have directly affected you.

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Fiddler

Right on time

Sinn Féin on course to have more MPs than any other Northern Ireland partywww.theguardian.com DUP loses Lagan Valley seat vacated by former leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, and is under pressure in North Antrim

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Fiddler

really great that prominent political journalists won’t just say that trump is lying and here’s why

Huh

A little light state legislative reading for your holiday weekend (...okay, not THAT light) open.substack.com/pub/thisweek...

New Laws, Who Dis? editionopen.substack.com I swear I had your bill number saved on my old phone

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Fiddler

TURN THIS UP

This is one of the coolest things we've done in a while.

MTV News Is Back (Kind Of) Thanks to the Internet Archivewww.rollingstone.com The Internet Archive has created a searchable index of the old MTV News website, after it was unexpectedly pulled down last week.

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Fiddler

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Fiddler

AP story waits until paragraph 16 to mention police & prosecutors are accused of conspiring to protect the cop who's apparently the real killer, until then making him seem like a lone wolf

Just a jaw-dropper from the state whose attorney general is currently trying to execute an innocent man. innocenceproject.org/missouri-cir...

Missouri woman who has served more than 40 years for murder is declared innocent by judgewww.nbcnews.com She must be freed or retried for the 1980 murder within 30 days, a judge ruled, but the Missouri AG has asked an appeals court to review the judge's decision.

Turns out putting on a bathing suit is a surefire way to jinx yourself out of being able to escape work early for the pool

Some good news, as a treat

BREAKING: Advocates submit double the amount of signatures needed to put a constitutional right to abortion on the ballot in Arizona.

Abortion-rights advocates in Arizona submit needed signatures to put the issue on November ballotapnews.com Abortion-rights advocates in Arizona have submitted more than enough signatures to put the issue on November’s ballot in the key swing state.

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Fiddler

Just unfollowed someone so fast on the other site after they shared a post talmbout people being selfish for 'fearmongering' about Project 2025 in order to get people to vote Republicans' stated intentions are scary, but providing accurate info about them is not fearmongering! It's just the stakes!

[[lays in more masks]]

*CDC: 4TH HUMAN CASE OF H5 BIRD FLU TIED TO DAIRY COW OUTBREAK *CDC: FOURTH HUMAN CASE OF H5 BIRD FLU IDENTIFIED IN COLORADO

NYT tomorrow, probably: Trump Lays Out Bold Agenda For Second Term

Presidential candidate who the far-right members of the Supreme Court just placed above the law tells voters how he will exercise his new powers.

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Fiddler

John Roberts pretends not to know what Donald Trump will do with the immunity Roberts just gave him just like John Roberts pretended not to know what Republicans would do when John Roberts gutted the Voting Rights Act.

John Roberts must be the most neurotypical person in existence because the immunity ruling reads like someone who has never had a single “but what if…???” anxiety spiral in his life

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Fiddler

Jesus. Automated enforcement advocates really underestimate the potential for abuse with these cameras. The amount of information they collect is staggering, as is the ability to piece it all together to meticulously track individual people. reason.com/2024/07/01/s...

Sacramento cops shared license plate data with anti-abortion statesreason.com Sacramento authorities are not only collecting drivers' information but sharing it with law enforcement agencies in other states without a warrant.

This is ghoulish

Earlier this week, AI company ElevenLabs said it is bringing digitally produced celebrity voice-overs of deceased actors to its newly launched Reader app. The company said the app takes articles, PDF, ePub, newsletters, e-books or any other text on your phone and turns it into voice-overs.

AI resurrects deceased actors’ voices to read audiobooks | CNN Businesscnn.it Actress Judy Garland never recorded her voice to read an audiobook of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, but you’ll soon be able to hear her rendition of the children’s novel that inspired the movie nonethel...

Happy Fourth of July Eve

Wishing myself a v happy half-birthday

Holy snot did LF Payne just subscribe to my newsletter?? 🤯

Goddammit I did it AGAIN but this time it was 20 MINUTES

Woke up three minutes before my alarm went off and I'm going to be mad about it all day

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Fiddler

The Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority didn't happen overnight. This is the inside story of how Leonard Leo built a machine that reshaped the American judiciary and legal system.

We Don’t Talk About Leonard: The Man Behind the Right’s Supreme Court Supermajoritywww.propublica.org The inside story of how Leonard Leo built a machine that remade the American legal system — and what he plans to do next.

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Fiddler

“you hysterical lib do you REALLY think — LIB (communist) — that Trump would order the shooting of a domestic political enemy? Cmon” He did already! I happened, he tried to! Sure an unarmed Black Lives Matter protester in front of the White House is a different kind of political enemy than Hillary…

also, as we point out in this piece, Trump repeatedly told senior officials in his administration (thank goodness there wasn’t a “yes sir” uttered in these cases) to shoot protesters or migrants in the legs… www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol... Chances are high that would kill them!

Trump Allies Try to Convince Supreme Court He’d Never Order Hit on Rivalwww.rollingstone.com A pro-Trump group tells justices he could never have the military kill non-military targets — even though he allegedly suggested shooting protesters.

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Fiddler

on the plus side my computer tells me to eat rocks and glue now

Google’s emissions climb nearly 50% in five years due to AI energy demandwww.theguardian.com Tech giant’s goal of reducing climate footprint at risk as it grows increasingly reliant on energy-hungry data centres

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Fiddler

note that when companies announce things like this, they're announcing a *choice* they made the announcement could easily have been "Google falling short of no-big-deal AI target, cites important climate needs"

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) — Google falling short of important climate target, cites electricity needs of AI.

This actually elevates you to Mountaintop Sage status, congrats!

Yes I am an idiot for the record but at least I’m an idiot who remembered to Google first