In the excerpt from this week's Quaker author podcast I ask Anthony Manousos what Friends bring to protest coalitions.

RFK Jr. Warns Mistress That Condoms Cause Autism https://theonion.com/rfk-jr-warns-mistress-that-condoms-cause-autism/

Went with my Quaker meeting to see the John Woolman house in Mt Holly, N.J., today. It as great tour and I learned a lot about the environment that developed the great slavery abolitionist.

If you grow up here you can pronounce it but never spell it correctly.

So strange. A review of a @friendsjournal.org article written entirely by AI (yes I checked). The AI recommends reading the original article but does give the link or even the title (it gives an alternate “implied” title) What’s the point? I’ve called out these jokers on their AI use before.

In this week's "Quaker Ranter" newsletter, I talk with Ron Marullo about his path to conscientious objection in 1969. I also share how I went through my own discernment around military service almost two decades later. us17.campaign-archive.com?u=7e77489ebc...

Quaker convictions about care for others and nurturing the Divine in everyone motivate Friends to visit, worship with, and educate people living in prison. Sharlee DiMenichi talks with Quakers who have been led to work with the incarcerated in various capacities.

After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.

I don't know which morons need to hear this, but THESE GUYS WERE ANTIFA, every last one of them. They fought fascists.

Where the separate divisions of ANTIFA landed on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944:

The Oversight Committee is launching an investigation into ABC, Sinclair, and the FCC. We will not be intimidated and we will defend the First Amendment.

I gave my heart and soul to that place. Built entire sections for journalists pushed out of their home countries. When the writer I hired, Jamal Khashoggi was murdered by Saudi Arabia, they paraded me around as a symbol for press freedom. I put MY LIFE on the line to defend journalism and WaPo.

They are literally canceling culture

so many dead canaries and we just keep on mining

TERRORISM EXPERT HERE: He cannot designate an idea as a terrorist group. There is no org called ANTIFA. There is no leadership or funding path or no membership. Also there is no terrorism law in America. Ask Luigi. He wants to call anyone a terrorist. That’s Fascism. #ReleaseTheEpsteinFiles

A free and democratic society cannot silence comedians because the President doesn’t like what they say. This is an attack on free speech and cannot be allowed to stand. All elected officials need to speak up and push back on this undemocratic act.

Comedy is back, just like they promised.

Exactly this

Also please invest in my spray-tan factory.

What's a catchy phrase for someone who is anti-anti-fascist?

There’s competition, I know. But threatening to pull the broadcast licenses of the affiliates of an entire “big-3” television network unless they stop their evening talk show host from criticizing the president has to be one of the biggest First Amendment violations in U.S. history.

Becoming increasingly clear we’re gonna have to build a parallel infrastructure for all the media we really love. The reason all of this is happening under the color of law is hyperconsolidation, dissent being traded straight up for merger approval, or fear of harassment.

Hate speech is now just speech that Trump hates.

Silly Jimmy Kimmel. He should have just called for all homeless people to be killed and he’d still have a job.

No notes

Oh a forced sale to regime allies? Shocker.

Wow, McSweeney’s just laying out all the bad-faith scapegoating going out right now. So many receipts.

These are right-wing terror events I covered just from 2017 to 2023. It's not even close to comprehensive. The government's trying to erase this history.

Just to be blunt, if you want Wired and 404 and The Verge to employ reporters who understand the memes on bullet casings and can connect them to gaming culture while having the legal and support resources to deal with waves of harassment when we do it… you have to subscribe and pay for the work

the maga constitution doesn’t allow any institution, public or private, to explicitly work to ameliorate racial inequality but allows the government to racially profile

SCOTUS: considering race as one factor in a college applicant's file is blatantly unconstitutional ALSO SCOTUS: considering race as one factor in targeting whom to detain and deport is cool cool cool

The new issue of @friendsjournal.org is live, including my opening column. "One of the roles of faith is to remember that we’ve been here before... We keep ourselves centered and calm by remembering others who found a path through uncertainty and assured us they were held up by a Comforter."

Only someone who avoided the draft would want to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War.

China and India are going to eat our breakfast, lunch, and dinner. China is dumping solar like mad into Africa because of reduced U.S. sales and will contribute massively to reduce that continent’s fossil fuel reliance. We will be left hanging, ironically, in the wind. Or is it poetically?

Beautiful words from Thomas Kelly!

i’m actually fine not having malcolm “koreans can’t fly planes because they’re too polite & the chinese are better at math because of the epigenetic memory of rice” gladwell on my side. i’m sure there’s a lovely garden party where he can go burn a cross with the other harper’s letter signatories.

"Blueskyism" helped make The Onion one of the largest newspapers in the world in less than a year. If we had spent all of our time on Twitter, we'd be poorer, dumber and terminally ill with internet poisoning. He's just angry he's wasting away over there in a nazi agnostic lane that doesn't exist.

Happy 20th to Francis. I took him out to breakfast at Gilcrests, then we headed to the mountain bike trails of Estell Manor Park. Following along behind him I realized just how bad off his bike was so we got a new (old) bike. Then home for Royale Crown ice cream cake.

Gregory passed his Eagle Board of Review tonight!

Trump ignored the rule of law, put his personal lawyer in charge of NJ, and now she’s making our state less safe.

When the UK government started telling trans people which public restrooms they can and can't use, these Quakers decided to make ALL their restrooms gender-neutral. When a transphobe complained, Friends explained the discernment that led to this policy and made it clear they won't give in to hate.

I can't imagine how long it took to hammer out this letter but it's great. It starts with delineating boundaries (“no relationship of accountability"; "lobbying by stealth”), goes into great detail and transparency about bathrooms, and finally clearly calls out—in bullet form!—transphobic tropes.

On Tuesday 26th August tear gas canisters were fired near Ramallah Friends School and a parent was fired on by a sniper while trying to reach the school gates. Nobody at the school was injured but the children were left shaken and their families anxious. www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-eve...

We're all tired of hearing it, but some people who voted for this might be very surprised by what they have just lost. The rights many conservatives sneer at are more crucial than they realize.

"Our words can have their origins in spirits of fear, anger and self-righteousness, rather than the Spirit of love and truth, and we have a responsibility to tell the difference." Well said, Mark! Thank you for this article!! 😍

When does fascist cosplay become fascist reality? (rhetorical question, of course)

Great piece by @markdruss.bsky.social on UK Quaker transphobia. The comments section tell you what you need to know about the limits of limitless debate. As Mark writes, "there is nothing intrinsically good about dialogue. Dialogue and debate can be used as tools of elimination."

I think I randomly saw the TOMEX+ atmospheric laser experiment while walking the dogs. www.nasa.gov/blogs/wallop...

Every lawyer should get the day off in observance of the fact that they actually failed to indict a ham sandwich