I suspect the Pope sounds "woke" to many Christian conservatives because the US is steeped in prosperity theology, where the point of worship is to deliver health and wealth to believers. Thus, "feed the hungry" and "show mercy for the poor" sounds needlessly political and "woke."

Someday, someone is going to make a movie about the tech-bros who recklessly dismantled the professional US administrative state and it’s going to be devastating. Gripping excerpt from “Into the Wood Chipper,” Nicholas Enrich. h/t @marisakabas.bsky.social www.thehandbasket.co/p/trump-usai...

Reality Check💀 Decline and Fall open.substack.com/pub/dreamwea...

More than 400 women have been arrested for pregnancy‑related charges since Roe was overturned. Meanwhile, not a single man in America has faced charges from the Epstein files. If you feel like the scales aren’t balanced, you’re not imagining it. Keep resisting.

It is true that you get less of the bullshit if you are assaulted by a stranger in public and are seriously injured. But there is no way to be sexually assaulted that protects you from victim-blaming. None.

Quote du jour👍

Convincing women to go on the record by name when they’ve seen that it results in no change — and a lot of people won’t believe them — can take years. One of the named sources in a 2024 story of mine declined to participate in 2017. Eventually, her life and job enabled it. And he’s still in office.

I think another reason many Americans Feel Bad About the Economy: There is a constant barrage of information indicating to the casual observer that people who run scams and lie and refuse to play by the rules aren't just going unpunished, they're *making way more money than you are* as a result.

What a time to be alive (as the comments point out, Islam considers Jesus a prophet)

Today in good and encouraging news...

I think the analogy to what the US is experiencing - a similarly large decrepit empire with a diverse and disparate population - should be obvious. The only blueprint I see for *anything* better is what Mamdani is doing. The establishment Dems are so familiar to me as the thieves who run E. Europe.

I don't think I need to explain how this all went nowhere good. Some people found an equilibrium & either openly opposed the current mess or (most) keep it private. Many have just lost their goddamn minds, helplessly looking for security and safety anywhere.

Was thinking ab 1989-92 when Soviet citizens went thru learning everything they'd ever been taught was wrong. Most thought they were fully cynical & certainly none trusted the media or govt. But still reality crumbled. Instead of good leadership & new collective values, they got criminals in charge.

Journalists know that losing the Wayback Machine would be a nightmare: www.wired.com/story/the-in...

It took a bit longer than two weeks, but the Trump health care plan has been released:

Comment WIN😸 ‪ Gil Durán‬ ‪@gilduran.com‬ that is Thiel assuming his final form

I was wondering when Trump would dig that orb out of storage and finally start using it to heal people.

Taemin FTW❤️

Happy Orthodox Easter 💫 Not Taemin ascending at Coachella like K-pop Jesus mid-performance 😭 (The disciples in the painting and the crowd at Coachella: converted immediately) Credits: @1004_6v6_ | Gebhard Fugel (1893)

Hope those Catholic forced-birth fanatics are realizing they voted for a heretic cosplaying The Antichrist

Reposting, despite the retina burn from this repulsive cartoon

Jesuits FTW

JD Vance went to Hungary to help the fascist there but instead lost him the election. Everything he touches dies LOL

Hungary election live: Viktor Orbán concedes defeat in Hungarian election after 16 years in power

this is why there’s been mass revolt and opposition to data centers being built in communities. it is genuinely a health hazard to live this close to something emitting this much sound. these need to stop being built

Yes, I'm a sucker for clever cat names😺

Consumer sentiment is at the lowest level ever. This is not what you’d predict given inflation, GDP, spending data. But one variable from UMich sheds some light on the subject: the percent of people who are saying prices are nominally high is at an ATH. www.gelliottmorris.com/p/2026-04-12...

Maybe we should just stop electing Republicans who suck instead of trying to One Neat Trick their power, which is inevitably going to be abused by the Republicans we proceed to elect? It feels like we've learned nothing.

Drowsy dog, 1650, by Gerrit Dou. Today was his day.

call me a liberal nationalist but I feel proud to export an American culture of space exploration, multicultural immigrant cuisine, the Black American music tradition, football basketball baseball, NY Jewish comedy, land grant universities, and social libertarianism

I had the lighting and the energy to do a proper photo shoot of my cupcakes from last night. Now that I’ve had some distance from the project, I am quite pleased with how they turned out. They are lemon cupcakes with lemon curd filling and vanilla buttercream. I made them for my sister’s birthday.

Heating oil now $6+ per gallon up here in the frozen north. And I was griped last fall when it was $4/gallon, lol. Fortunately, thanks to El Heat Pump, my bigass fuel tank is still half full; but I feel sorry for those on a monthly fill plan. Any oil extortion going on in your neck of the woods?😼

Nearly two decades later, the pernicious @dsquareddigest.bsky.social cult is beginning to take root crookedtimber.org/2007/05/10/i...

ALSO a former navy seal

When survivors talk to a reporter (or reporters plural) and don’t report to the police, it’s not because they’re less trustworthy and don’t want to see systemic action. It’s because survivors have been failed so spectacularly by cops and courts that many survivors rightfully no longer trust them.

All of this to say—I trust and believe survivors through the types of investigations and disclosures THEY choose, because the ENTIRE system works against them. I hate when people treat a journalistic investigation as not enough compared to going to the cops and courts. It is enough.

A lot of survivors will wind up in the court system regardless of whether they report because perpetrators use litigation abuse now more than ever. Defamation lawsuits and custody disputes are completely legal ways perps torture and abuse their victims even more, and the court enables it.

I trust journalists way more than cops and courts to investigate sexual violence allegations. When a thoroughly reported journalistic investigation comes out, like the ones about Eric Swalwell, I’ve seen enough. If you haven’t done this work you may be unaware of how much goes into it.

The regime wants you to believe that there’s been change after Minnesota but deportation agents are still harming our neighbors. We compile ongoing abuses of power here weekly👇🏽 #AbuseOfPowerWatch

“You do not know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump” - Fran Lebowitz

"The American people are unhappy with Trump. They do not like this war. But they need a dose of truth right now. The truth is that the American people twice elected Donald Trump over more qualified Democratic women." www.liberalcurrents.com/after-a-dark...

first in my bloodline to see someone get excommunicated by a community note

the reality of his war uncomfortably intruded on the carefully cultivated false reality he has created for himself and his supporters and he is desperately trying to reconstruct new boundaries for his false reality to prevent the actual reality of his loss from spilling in.

African youth wearing a turban. Early work by Gerrit Dou, who was born on this day more or less, in 1613.

While I know this is a more than four year old tweet, I do believe with the successes of both Artemis I and Artemis II, Boeing is better at building large rockets then SpaceX is.

An informative convo on all sorts of energy stuff, if you missed it👍

I go back and forth on what's most depressing about the last 10 years: a) the absolute profusion and ubiquity of terrible people, or b) the utter lack of heroes, of virtually *anyone* rising to the occasion. Today it's B.

The root of authoritarian thinking is hierarchy and "man over woman" is the original, primal hierarchy that shapes & determines all others. All subaltern populations -- races, religions, sexualities, whatever -- are slotted into that "woman" role.

Reinforcing my pet theories: 1) all reactionaries/authoritarians are basically the same; 2) misogyny is the molten core of every reactionary/fascist movement; 3) persecution of LGBTQ is downstream of the misogyny; 4) so are all the other bigotries (this is more tendentious I concede).

January 21, 2029….