“.. four months after its establishment, the board’s financial fund set up by the World Bank has received no money from donors, according to four people familiar with the matter. ‘Zero dollars have been deposited,’ one said.” @financialtimes.com www.ft.com/content/5ba3...

Biggest impact of AI on college admissions is helping poor kids write like rich kids with consultants. But there's a catch: the elite schools already stereotyped them as bad writers, so poor kids get rejected for suspected AI use while rich kids get admitted. arxiv.org/abs/2602.17791

The railroad commission nominee thinks “sharia law” has infiltrated …. The Texas oil and gas industry. Like where did they find these people?

This plan is actively *insane.* Airlines cannot divert large numbers of international flights from one city to another; they'd just have to cancel flights en masse, causing enormous economic damage that splashed waaaaay beyond a few big cities that were the target.

John Cornyn tried reading Art of the Deal, going to Trump Burger, proposed renaming a Texas highway after him. He ate so much shit for Donald Trump and now he's out of a job, anyway. I wrote about it: www.chron.com/texas/articl...

I know this stuff is going to annoy the piss out of bluesky and realistically the path to Blexas mostly relies on Rs staying home rather than voting for Talarico but: this is Texas, he would be stupid not to try to court some of them especially given how monumentally scandal-plagued Paxton is

lol

This. Build more housing. And then more housing. And then even more housing.

Biden wasn't the president in 2020 when Trump’s taxes leaked. Guess who was?

Florida constitution: you may not gerrymander for partisan reasons Florida Republicans: we are gerrymandering the shit out of this state for partisan reasons Florida judges:

Why bother voting for them if you just get the Tories, then? Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with centrists these days?

Went to Cincinnati this weekend for the first time. You know I had to make this my priority: Cincinnati Union Terminal (1933) by Roland A. Wank of Fellheimer & Wagner and Paul Philippe Cret.

Mirando un poco a largo plazo: la salud fiscal de Estados Unidos es un poco preocupante, porque el sistema político parece haber perdido las ganas de tomarse nada en serio. open.substack.com/pub/4freedom...

Season 2, Episode 8 of Andor, "Who Are You?" is the best damned hour of television made this century. It is just perfect. Absolute peak TV, and the best piece of Star Wars content ever produced.

Tolkien was a devout Catholic and "Lord of the Rings" is a deeply Catholic book, so this would have made him insanely proud.

Season 2, Episode 8 of Andor, "Who Are You?" is the best damned hour of television made this century. It is just perfect. Absolute peak TV, and the best piece of Star Wars content ever produced.

The trailer for Moana, live action, is not bad. Is offensive. You don’t fucking remake a perfect movie.

Mando and Grogu is fine. Just fine.

The trailer for Moana, live action, is not bad. Is offensive. You don’t fucking remake a perfect movie.

The trailer for Moana, live action, is not bad. Is offensive. You don’t fucking remake a perfect movie.

The fact that small scale real estate investors who flip $500k starter homes into $2 million McMansions are NOT required to provide subsidized housing for poor people but the investors who flip the same homes into ten $650,000 townhomes ARE is such an indictment of California housing policy.

Western Motel - 1957 https://botfrens.com/collections/173/contents/3103519

we are well into “I’m not even mad, that’s amazing” mode with star citizen at this point you know what, good for them, I’m glad everyone is having a nice time and people are getting paid to endlessly tinker with semifunctional spaceships and complain about the roadmap

Si he entendido bien las últimas 48 horas de Bluesky, la mitad de los usuarios de esta red social cree que a Lorca lo mataron por ver las películas con doblaje mientras que la otra mitad sostiene que lo mataron por hacer la tortilla con cebolla.

Surprise, surprise. More outright corruption. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/24/u...

You may remember Republicans absolutely losing their mind when Obama released $1.7 billion in frozen Iranian assets.

Resumiendo: Gracias a esta gloriosa guerra, Estados Unidos ha tenido una victoria tan colosal que Irán va a recibir montañas de dinero gracias al levantamiento de sanciones, control directo sobre el estrecho de Hormuz y mantiene su programa nuclear. A cambio, Estados Unidos consigue:

Que Trump se ha rendido, vamos. Pero del todo.

LOL last night Stephen Colbert spent an hour hosting public access "Only in Monroe"

Hace un mes, Stephen Colbert se abrió discretamente un canal de Youtube a su nombre. Y literalmente al día siguiente de despedirse del Late Show, colgó este programa en plan como si fuera un presentador de una tele local cutre como vacilada de despedida. www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJTX...

Hoy en Four Freedoms hablo sobre cómo la combinación entre purgas estúpidas y corrupción desaforada ha acabado por provocar una rebelión contra Trump dentro del partido republicano: La rebelión de los perdedores www.4freedoms.es/p/la-rebelio...

Hoy en Four Freedoms hablo sobre cómo la combinación entre purgas estúpidas y corrupción desaforada ha acabado por provocar una rebelión contra Trump dentro del partido republicano: La rebelión de los perdedores www.4freedoms.es/p/la-rebelio...

We are back at this idiocy

Amazing ad, chef's kiss no notes

the now-acting attorney general of the United States selected an individual, and targeted him for criminal prosecution because that individual was, through zero fault of his own, cause for embarrassment to Donald Trump

There is so much poetry in Stephen Colbert celebrating his finale on the exact stage where the Beatles changed culture in 1964. Singing "Hello Goodbye" surrounded by his family, band, and crew before Paul McCartney flipped the final power switch. The perfect full-circle goodbye!

Trump absolutely cratering in new Fox poll: 29-71 on economy 24-76 on inflation He's underwater among whites *and* rural voters (!) Among independents he's at 24 percent (!!) On the pod, @jamescdownie.bsky.social is good on the collapse of the Trump coalition: newrepublic.com/article/2108...

This World Cup is going to suck.

FLASH: GOP SENATORS LEAVING FOR RECESS WITHOUT VOTE ON BUDGET BILL AMID FUROR OVER $1776 MILLION DOJ FUND, BALLROOM

Hay algo que no entiendo del caso Zapatero: ¿Por qué un ciudadano privado no puede cobrar para ayudar a una empresa a pedir ayudas públicas? Es lo que hace un lobista. Pedir reuniones y llamar a políticos para defender o pedir algo no es delito. ¿Qué me estoy perdiendo?

In the post-Soviet space, “Dance of the Little Swans” is known as the unofficial soundtrack to the collapse of the USSR - it was repeatedly aired on Soviet television during the 1991 August coup and the final days of the Soviet Union. 📹: illustrative footage of the performance

During Putin’s visit to Beijing,Chinese military orchestra played “Dance of the Little Swans” On May 20,2026,as part of the musical program at the official banquet during the visit of the Russian delegation to China,the Chinese military orchestra performed this piece from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake

NEW on “Paper Trail”: Two @ctmirror.org reporters kept hearing about drivers having their cars towed and then sold — sometimes, in just 15 days. So they teamed up with ProPublica to find out: How was this legal? Who was profiting off of it? 🎧 Listen and subscribe:

SpaceX's total addressable market is... $28.5 trillion, larger than the real GDP of the United States, a mere $24.2 trillion. Sure thing, Elon! /3

People think "the public square" implies something dignified but I've actually been to Speaker's Corner and let me tell you, "dignity" isn't the word that comes to mind

Ok that was really really loud thunder and a very close lightning strike.

They really don’t give a flying fuck about any law.

as we all know you cant trust a wealthy guy to pursue an economically progressive agenda (to be fair, the record outside of the roosevelt family on this aint great, but still)

ProPublica used leaked tax returns to calculate that through complex tax avoidance schemes, Jeff Bezos pays a tax rate of 0.98% www.propublica.org/article/the-... So if we doubled the taxes he pays, that would mean he'd still be paying less than 2%.