Republics are already unusual, rare, beautiful things, historically speaking. A republic composed of some small sliver of every country, people, language and culture is an even more wondrous, special thing. And to have it have succeeded so remarkably. To betray that...I have no words.

'Heritage American,' noun. 1) An American insufficiently committed to the founding values of the United States. 2) An American actively betraying those principles. 3) A white supremacist euphemism used by [2] to mean 'white people.'

They want no consequences for their actions or words, ever. free speech to them is everyone being forced not only to listen to them but to never be allowed to criticize them in word or deed. It's the same view of the world as a toddler.

Lots of things to fix out there but a decent argument that a real fix (if such a thing existed) for what can reasonably be called “elite impunity” would cascade out fixes for like 90 percent of the rest of it

Elite free speech discourse has culminated in state action to compel labor

THE FACT THAT ONE OF THE POP-TARTS CHOSE TO LIVE MAKES THE WHOLE THING WORSE SOMEHOW

another robot highlight for 2025: man wearing humanoid mocap suit kicks himself in the balls

This is an excellent book. You should buy copies for your annoying relatives and make them read it.

One of my favorite presents ever—my dad found and framed this pic of my mother @sunminkimes.bsky.social at a Seattle courthouse after she passed her US citizenship test in 1981. Like so many of the people who come here to start a new life, she is the best of us—the bravest, strongest person I know.

Things like this build community, a sense of belonging to something bigger than a mere campaign. Where possible, all Dems should be doing things like this constantly. The Dems should be the party of food drives and summer picnics, of job help and softball leagues.

Frankly, I have always wondered why more campaigns didn't do this. Constituent services are such an important part of good politics.

One of the MAJOR PROBLEMS with wealth inequality at this scale is exactly that people amass this much wealth and attendant power and then use it to say, “Policy is what I say it is, I am too powerful to offend.” They become entirely immune to policy. You can’t live that way.

No they are not. If they wanted to live in Arkansas, for example, they would already live in Arkansas. They did this in MA, and now MA has more money and more millionaires before the tax.

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There is, I suppose, a 'clever' explanation of this where Vance wants the USA as a kleptocratic authoritarian state to realign with Russia against NATO. But I honestly this the more parsimonious explanation here is just that he fried his brain on internet racism and has as a result gone crazy.

Threads is everything bad about Facebook, just with people I didn’t go to high school with

“they divide my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots.” Psalm 22:18

This is wrong, and this is abuse. I know people don't see it as such, they see it as a prank with no harm, but you're using someone's medical condition to fuck with them, and that's not okay. When people with dementia have to be redirected, sometimes with fibs, that is different.

And Tiny Tim who did NOT die, imagined a boot stomping on a human face -- forever

There's too much replay in sports

and the reason isn’t the quality of his prose or the sharpness of his mind, the obvious reason IS that he is a loudly and publicly “anti-woke” black person (sorry, “ex-black man”) who fully aligns entirely key gatekeepers in the literary and journalism worlds.

thomas chatterton williams, whose main literary output is three memoirs of declining quality, and who has written the same essay ad nauseam for 10 years, nonetheless has a sinecure at the atlantic, a teaching job at an elite college, and a nice handful of prestigious fellowships

Sir Terry Pratchett is best understood as one of the most interesting, deeply ethical practical (I would say Pragmatist but I cede to actual experts) philosophers of the late 20th Century who just happened to work in deconstructed fantasy literature as his medium.

Discworld QOTD, from Hogfather

Tell me you shouldn't be trusted with a short piece of string much less a gun without ....

This is NGC 2264, also called the "Christmas Tree Cluster." It's a cluster of young stars about 2,500 light years away. They were 'born' during the Pliocene Epoch (2-5 MYA), about the same time as early hominids like Ardipithecus or Homo habilis, so they're barely older than humanity. 🎄💫🔭

Merry Christmas! Please enjoy the opening to this Japanese Christmas concert special that I watch every year. As far as I can tell, this has otherwise been scrubbed from the internet

When you're grumpy because three annoying ghosts kept you up all night.

Found the CBS feedback form. Left a message about Bari www.cbs.com/showfeedback...

Pope Leo said in a Christmas Eve sermon that the story of Jesus being born in a stable because there was no room at an inn should remind Christians that refusing to help the poor and strangers today is tantamount to rejecting God himself. For @reuters.com

It is your civic duty to freedom of the press to Streisand the heck out of this 60 minutes report about CECOT so here's another place you can watch it and pass it around www.thereset.news/p/breaking-h...

ah yes a true holiday classic

Read this thread, from a an account of the spiked 60 Minutes story that was (apparently mistakenly?) aired in Canada. Weiss refusing to air this story isn't just journalistic malpractice, it's running interference to help cover up atrocities.

Something which isn't always acknowledged is that "contrarian thinkers" are just regurgitating conventional wisdom with a little extra racism, and these forbidden views are generally expressed by the most platformed mainstream figures, like Pinker.

Mm-hm.

So Bari Weiss’s first real editorial intervention at CBS is to repress coverage of American concentration camps.

The Trump supporter who runs CBS news just killed a story about Trump’s favorite torture prison. Here’s why America has a liberal media bias problem.

Censoring a story about the outsourced regime gulag is not consistent with freedom of speech. But it is consistent with the belief that “free speech” is when conservatives can say what they want and when you can say what they want.

They were never defending freedom of speech. They were defending a right to monologue. The former cannot coexist with the latter.

Looks like Bari Weiss didn't like the fact that it old the truth about a Trump admin policy and killed it. CBS news has been completely corrupted and Dems should remember that.

What does the future hold for Nick Lardis with the Blackhawks? Nashville's Luke Evangelista offers some clues. "Learning to be consistent and maintain that kind of production throughout a full pro season is going to be big for him." New story: chicago.suntimes.com/blackhawks/2...

i actually don't have a lot of trouble believing that god returned for his flock and the refs were the only ones to be raptured

I'm sure Jamelle knows this, but the people like MY and Jain are not data people. They are using data not as illumination but as a club. they are centrists and want centrist polices. Which, fine. But when they cherry pick data (Jain does not mention the pol in question outperformed Biden) 1/2

also, casten beat harris's margin in 2024. so curious how these guys only cite the data that match their ideological priors!

Okay, I have never heard of this bowl before today and now I am rearranging my schedule to watch this.