As I’ve been saying for six years, you cannot decide to shut off empathy in just one lil area (all of disabled and vulnerable people.) Endangering people for your convenience and comfort is a drug you do not do recreationally.

Last repost... As someone with a degree of care for and professional investment in "the rules": Yes! Write in the way you feel most moved to write. When you show your writing to others, you'll get feedback and can proceed from there. Writing comes before editing, and editors exist for a reason.

one of the earliest lessons in politics I learned as a kid from my parents was to always vote for a tax increase, because you're trading a dollar amount so small you probably won't notice in order to fund something important that benefits everybody. I wish that was how Democrats messaged this stuff!

They will never stop running toward the center like wile e coyote into the painted tunnel

I want to live in a functioning society and so I dig taxes. My contribution is small because my income is small; that is as it should be. The problem isn't *my* taxes, it's 1) wage suppression and 2) MASSIVE, DESTRUCTIVE, UNTAXED WEALTH. Drop this nonsense and commit to taxing Bezos into the ground.

This site needs a break. Post 3 good things, none of which are the cessation of a negative. 1. Tempura broccoli 2. Those smooth sidewalk squares that are stone, not cement 3. This song: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2nT...

Real talk: Progressives have completely failed to adequately address the significant impacts of Long COVID, and this has left an opening for the far right to exploit vulnerable patients and deceitfully blame vaccines for all chronic illnesses.

Increasingly of the opinion that the correct answer to the Trolley Problem is "fuck you, why are you so fixated on finding reasons to justify killing people?"

For those of you following along at home, yes, the weather is on shuffle this week, sorry, we're trying to find the toggle to switch it back. (Yesterday's high in Baltimore was 80º. Today it is—*checks notes*—snowing.)

This is known as as Brandolini’s Law, a.k.a. The Bullshit Asymmetry Principle which says that it takes an order of magnitude greater effort to refute bullshit, than it does to generate it. AI accelerates this with an unknown exponent.

Submitted for the approval of whatever committee approves this kind of shit: The Story of My Entire Life

Also even a living wage cannot keep up with the fuckin terrible ass economic conditions we are in. Inflation, Tarriffs, Climate Change—-all that shit is drowning us all.

There are SO many writers I would subscribe to if they weren't on Substack. I've objected from the start for business-practice reasons (no transparency about their paid program). Platforming monetized white-supremacy material...also not great! Maybe *this* will move the needle for a few more people.

Omg no, you’re not going to make Anthropic into “resistance tech.” Nope nope nope

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people local newspaper reporters are rarified elites instead of ink-stained wretches driving their Honda Civic to a crime scene so you know don’t have to rely on Nextdoor and the police press release.

Note regarding the last repost: Also, the test is ongoing.

I feel this so strongly. Covid was a test of our moral integrity & decency -- *not just elites, but all of us* -- and we failed. I genuinely think one reason Covid has been memory-holed so hard, & so crusted w/ myths & conspiracy theories, is that on some level we know this & are ashamed.

"They just don't want to do it" explains a great deal of what's wrong in Democratic politics, policymaking, and governing -- far more than most people realize.

Look, now that we're trying for real consequences for the Epstein files, maybe we should also take another look at the Panama Papers

Hey, why are there posts from people I don't follow in my Following feed? I've double checked: I do NOT have the experimental setting that mixes in posts from saved feeds turned on, and I'm not scrolling back super far. This is bullshit and I specifically tailor my media use to avoid it. What gives?

This post is going around again so I will add this excellent resource: leavesubstack.com

Winifred really needs a car to help her catch babies. I do not have an extra car to give her. Let's help her get a car!

OMG

do you know what would help!!!!!!!! living in a society that lets people experiment with their gender without treating it like the most important thing in the world!!!!!!! letting people get it right or wrong without politicising their decisions!!!!!!! just being chilled about gender!!!!!! aaahhhhhh

Restore Customs and the Secret Service to the Treasury. Restore TSA and the Coast Guard to the Dept. of Transportation. Restore FEMA to its original independent status - hell, make it a whole Department, we're going to need it. Restore all the small random agencies to Justice. Be done with it.

They're still snatching people all over the country; motion of the media spotlight doesn't mean they're gone. They're in Chicago, LA, Portland, Baltimore, everywhere... Even if they DO move a few hundred agents around, the public statements about "drawdown" do not match what's actually happening.

Dance historian and local sweet bright spark Hannah's family is dealing with an awful medical situation (her father—misdiagnosed Coxsackie B infection leading to heart attack and severe cardiomyopathy). So many people are struggling right now, but if you've got the cash, they truly need the help:

Rip out your Ring doorbell RN, jfc

masking is not an extreme measure; it’s like, level zero of measures. it’s the easiest possible option

Shut down all of these concentration camps and provide everyone inside with medical care and US citizenship as reparations, if they want it.

Good morning! Taxing the wealth of the richest 1% of Americans down to the median wealth of the next-richest 9% ($5.2 million per household) would free up $48 trillion. Redistributing that to the poorest 50% of Americans would give *68 million households* an average of *$700k per household*.

I am on a train, wearing an N95 mask. I am the only person in this car wearing a mask. There are no fewer than five people with really gnarly coughs. It would be so easy for them to protect the people around them, but here we are.

Friends, if you are even a little bit into the folky end of the music world and even a little bit near anywhere they're going, I think you should go see Ye Vagabonds. Holy hell, what a set. yevagabonds.com/tour

Last repost: Unbreaking.org is a thing I do with my fighty brain cells. I never know if it matters enough, or how much, or to whom, but I have to think that keeping track of events in a durable, intelligible way is meaningful. 1/3

A thing about this project is that we intentionally work *behind* the news cycle, like gleaners. We wait until we can describe something clearly and then we add that brick to the wall. It’s an unnatural fit for social media, which is kind of the point.

These are the rapid tests I buy. I am not a doctor or scientist, but the doctors and scientists I look to recommend them. Be a responsible resident of the COVID age: Keep supplies on hand and test carefully (interval testing at 48-hr gaps).

A book of many things I didn't hear about in school, relevant to current horrors. We say we fought the Nazis, and we did. We also grew a lot of Nazis at home, before the war, absorbed useful Nazis afterward, and committed a(nother) massive campaign of legalized racial persecution. Things rhyme.

I don't need all the folks working in facial recognition tech who told me I as being ridiculous and overly paranoid when asking about how these tools will be used to track, identify and harm people to apologize. But I do need them to actually *do something* about their work being used this way.

This part. @bmorecitydot.bsky.social telling people to keep off the roads if at all possible, don't drive, seriously, don't—and then kind of doing a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ about all the non-car infrastructure! Curb cuts, sidewalks, bus stops a mess (not to mention alleys don't get plowed *at all*)...

It is after midnight on a Thursday on a night so cold no reasonable person would have a window open, and there is *very loud* music happening. I can feel the bass. I am not usually a noise scold, but come on. Are you trying to subwoof the ice off your sidewalk? Desist.

Many of us are old enough to have been, to various degrees, politically aware during the creation of DHS. Many people said *at the time* that it was a fascist enterprise established for evil ends, and we were right and have only gotten righter with time. Ramirez is right and she should say it.

There is no "immigration problem" There is no migrant problem There is no problem with illegals There is no border crisis Only a problem of the border and the machinery of death that upholds it.

I'm sorry I can't stop thinking "all democrats know how to do is fund police, do means test and lie" on repeat now

Idk I kinda think we should bring beliefs like this back. Tell them we gotta fix global warming asap or the Leviathan will escape. We gotta sacrifice another billionaire to the ocean or the harvest will be bad and food will get more expensive

This is very, very cool. Hard to overstate how cool this is. I've been hearing about this unfinished film for years; the fact that William Greaves's widow and then in turn his children took up the project and brought it to fruition is amazing. They're looking for wide release and I hope they get it.

Baltimore, if you need to shovel and you haven't done it, go do your shovel-and-resalt *now*. Stuff was already decently heavy, and I have a feeling that the little spitty stuff that's coming down right now will make you sad if you stack a few hours of it on top of the overnight snow.

Very much related. Folks not in MN (since MN have this down) - if you're tracking, they're tracking you. You can't do mutual aid if you're on the radar. Don't lead the bastards to your neighbors you're fighting to protect. bsky.app/profile/norm...

I have occasionally gotten satisfying use out "lemon" (in the bad car/unrescuably flawed machinery sense). It does benefit from an adjuvant curse—"You fucking lemon" has real sauce, for some reason)—but it can stand on its own.

Those of you who know me may also know that I generally Just Don't write as myself for any formal public consumption. I'm decent at it. I hate it. So when I tell you that if I ever de-blob myself and volunteer for the despised tortures of actual solo writing, it will probably be about this...

And all of it can fuck off all the way into the sun. I will NOT be sorry. I am a hater.