Notices by Tiffany Li (tiffanycli@mastodon.social)

Becoming a parent is realizing you’ve gone from main character to backstory

Silicon Valley execs will not be giving their kids AI toys that risk their emotional development. But they’ll gladly sell them to yours.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-barbie-dolls

ICE abducted a mother and her 7-month-old baby (a U.S. citizen) and locked them in a hotel, with no phone, no way to contact family or a lawyer, and no records in any system for anyone to find them.

https://theintercept.com/2025/08/07/ice-immigrant-detention-airport-hotel-chicago-mvm/

In retrospect, the Dr. Seuss books were extremely dark?

The Sneetches is about racism

Horton Hears a Who is about genocide

The Butter Battle Book is about nuclear war

Thinking about the “Lie to me” scene from Buffy frequently these days

“He’s easily bruising. He has bone pain. He looks pale .… He has also lost his appetite …. His mom is terrified that these are symptoms that his leukemia situation might be deteriorating.”

A 6-year-old with cancer is languishing in a U.S. detention camp. Who will answer for this cruelty?

https://www.chron.com/news/politics/article/family-files-for-release-in-lawsuit-considered-20396546.php

“We will not stay silent on vaccines,” say leaders of five major U.S. medical associations https://www.statnews.com/2025/06/26/vaccine-policy-us-aafp-aap-acp-acog-idsa-presidents/

What’s the worst detail in this story?

The mother forced to use unclean water to make formula for her baby?

The child with cancer now facing relapse symptoms?

The 16-year-old trying to be strong for her 2 younger siblings and mom, all trapped in the camp together?

This is America. Don’t look away.

https://apnews.com/article/migrants-child-supervision-texas-e4994b2b6786717ea79a4be230e476bf

My IP law students when it’s almost final exam time:

California is the world’s 6th largest economy by GDP, bigger than most nations. This is not a minor announcement. https://www.newsweek.com/california-newsom-trade-trump-tariffs-2055414

Good start but we should go further. Tax all birds. 25% tariffs on all avian exports. Support mammalian manufacturing. Trade war with reptiles next. https://www.wired.com/story/trump-tariffs-antarctic-islands-heard-mcdonald/

Every safety regulation is written in blood. As in, we get regulations only after terrible things have happened, to prevent them from happening again. Now the Trump Administration is firing the people whose job it was to stop the bleeding.

Dating Tip: Women love being told you’re dating them “to advance a sociopolitical strategy.” It’s not creepy or off-putting at all.

The breakdown of society has already begun. Someone stole the rotisserie chicken from my Costco cart.

Linguistically, “DEI” is now the new “critical race theory”: a scapegoat phrase used devoid of any of its actual meaning by people who never understood the original in the first place

Being nihilistic about the courts and legal institutions *helps* authoritarians. They want you to lose faith in the rule of law and stop holding power to account. As much as you can, don’t let them.

I thought the New Gilded Age was going to come with better hats

New Meta policy makes sense because Texas, unlike California, is famously full of politically neutral people

Live your life so that hundreds of thousands of people do not celebrate your untimely death

Big fan of Interior Chinatown on Hulu. If you like mindbending mystery shows, with comedy and heart, and meaningful themes around identity and what it means to play a part in society, you’ll like this. And it’s a 10-ep limited series. Perfect holiday binge!