"I should be even clearer: Schickler points out that US’s comparatively decentralized institutions and *decentralized civil society* (firms, unions, universities, guilds like lawyers, etc) were assumed to be hard to take over. Trump II took over both"

Important piece on how we got here. Brownstone raised millions to undermine COVID prevention policies. Now at least 8 people with ties to Brownstone hold senior positions at federal health agencies, where they are restricting vaccines and cutting science funding.

Intuit is integrating ChatGPT into their TurboTax, QuickBooks, Credit Karma, & Mailchimp services, & vice versa. Which is to say, I think a SHIT TON of people are about to get audited. They also claiming no bleedover btwn your financial data & ChatGPT, which… okayy… 😬 www.cnbc.com/2025/11/18/i...

The UN Security Council voted to adopt a US-drafted resolution endorsing President Trump's plan to end the war in Gaza and authorizing an international stabilization force for the Palestinian enclave reut.rs/3JQLj2n

The future. apple.news/AaWUDEtusSfu...

Worth pointing out that researchers say there's no concrete evidence of an actual organization or cartel by that name. www.france24.com/en/live-news...

I Am a Drug Historian. Trump Is Wrong About Fentanyl in Almost Every Way. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/o...

A worthwhile read.

if you are food insecure for both the humans and pets in your household there is a tool called Pet Help Finder that can help locate pet food banks nearby and other free or reduced price assistance and supplies for pets. no one, ABSOLUTELY NO ONE, should have to give up their pet bc of this.

"Watson had a very particular view of science—as built on the intuition of individual (white male) geniuses— and you can't see why that was wrong without talking about how he was awful (not just how he was great.)"

The gift of life is something I’ll never take for granted or forget

Criminal organization attempting to conceal evidence bsky.app/profile/brad...

Reports across the Middle East that Syria has given the US an airbase outside of Damascus and has given the Trump organization exclusive rights to build a new hotel there. www.reuters.com/world/middle...

It’s because we all signed the filmworkers for Palestine pledge that we oppose genocide and are participating in a boycott. Which, oh no, whatever shall I do to not work for the MAGA corporation that has stripped CBS News down to parts and install Bari Weiss: newrepublic.com/article/2022...

“This is the latest embarrassment for the United States. This reinforces the idea that the United States does not care about human rights, that all it cares about is itself, and that, from its point of view, what applies to others does not apply to it.”

I remain absolutely confused that people *ever* thought screwing with the abyssal sea floor would "get better" after mining.

French painter Suzanne Valadon, The Sacred Heart from the garden of the Rue Cortot, 1920 #WomensArt

Representatives of Germany's Nazi Party, now known as the Alternative für Deutschland or AfD, are now routinely in Washington for interaction with their counterparts in the GOP, seeking pointers on how to further develop their movement into a governing party... and to raise funds.

This film shows the actual results of USAID's funding cuts. Its very difficult to watch, but its important to amplify this message/how devastating these results have been in just a few months, and how they'll be exponentially worse in the near future.

This disinformation campaign rivals that of Philip Morris, Brown & Williamson and Altria in service of tobacco companies.

If you're a policymaker in a low- or middle-income country, the contrasting economic and geopolitical risks of relying on oil imports instead of cheap Chinese solar and EVs seems pretty stark. Better to not fall into the "the people are angry about gas prices" trap!

Truly an era defined by legal bad faith

Latest Trump comments on nuclear testing from CBS suggest he's latched onto the zero-yield controversy; State Department compliance reports in 2021 accused Russia of conducting "experiments" that generated "nuclear yield" (not so for China) www.cbsnews.com/news/read-fu...

Link to the 2021 compliance report: 2021-2025.state.gov/2021-adheren...

FWIW, some technical experts at the US national labs who work on this stuff believe the Russians carry out non-zero-yield tests because they are more difficult and expensive (and annoying) to properly instrument and conduct.

By way of background, the US did conduct hydronuclear experimentation of this kind during the '58-'61 moratorium to ascertain one-point safety standards. See here: www.osti.gov/biblio/6646692 bsky.app/profile/did:...

I'm also skeptical that this "solution" will be satisfactory for Trump; hell, I don't think you could even successfully brief him on why this is a supposed "solution" to the problem he's conjured here. bsky.app/profile/nktp...

Citing a Trump order about “restoring biological truth,” the VA is making it more difficult for male veterans with breast cancer to get their care covered by the government. The disease is deadlier than for women and “notably higher among veterans,” research shows. By @ericumansky.bsky.social

The USDA sent an email to grocery stores telling them they are prohibited from offering special discounts to customers affected by the SNAP funding lapse. I'm aware of at least 2 stores that had offered struggling customers a discount, then withdrew it after receiving this email

One woman's painful, near decade long experience drowning on government assistance. "Over the near-decade that I depended on these benefits to survive, I started to see that the fear of losing them was part of the point." SNAP Benefits Are Running Out. The Cruelty Is the Point. - TIME

The United States was the leading destination for top scientists from all over the world. That is ending. Politicians ended it. It will cripple our future competitiveness. And it’s such a bitter tragedy. Almost no Americans, Conservative or Liberal, grasp what is now being stolen from them.

Julia Lucey, contemporary US printmaker who uses traditional etching and aquatint techniques to explore nature, wildness, wilderness #womensart

The White House Military Office Navy aide was on “Football” duty for Trump’s departure today from Tokyo for Busan, South Korea. The ~45-pound satchel accompanies Trump 24/7, enabling him alone to authorize the use of any of our ~1,770 deployed nuclear weapons—up to 900 on alert—at any time.

Whoever could have imagined there would be negative downstream consequences professionally for making a corrupt deal with the Trump admin….

Exclusive: The White House has fired all six members of the Commission of Fine Arts, an independent federal agency that was expected to review some of President Trump’s construction projects, including his planned triumphal arch in Washington.

Our wonderful gardener, who is in Jamaica on his honeymoon, texted us yesterday morning to say he couldn't make it to our house this week because all flights out of Jamaica are cancelled, and I said "good lord, man. don't worry, just stay safe". Melissa is the best metaphor yet for our timeline.

Is the Trump the fuse who will detonate the "house of dynamite?" We should understand just how real the risk is. My latest. www.thedailybeast.com/is-trump-the...

Salvador Dali The Land Come to Life, 1968.

“Infected and aggressive” rhesus monkeys escaped after a truck which was transporting them overturned in southern Mississippi. All but one of the primates “eliminated.” https://www.wapt.com/article/monkeys-on-the-loose-near-heidelberg-mississippi/69181629

With President Trump in Tokyo, the US and Japan release a "framework" document on securing rare earth minerals. www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-...

Amazon announces they are laying off the largest amount of workers ever in the company’s history. 30,000+ workers will lose their jobs.

🚨BIG changes happening -- ICE leadership is being purged tonight. The old guard, which prioritized targeted enforcement operations aimed at people with criminal records, is being replaced with Border Patrol and Gregory Bovino's "Midway Blitz" style. Think things are bad now? It'll get worse.

Also, note that the person making all these decisions is not Secretary Noem; it's Corey Lewandowski, who is still a "special government employee" (and by many reports sleeping with Noem and running the agency while she does mostly TV), as well as Gregory Bovino himself.

While it's too soon to tell exactly how this will change ICE operationally, suffice to say that, when you combine this with the massive surge in new recruits, the institutional culture of the agency may be forever changed towards a far more aggressive, militarized posture.

Guillermo del Toro on wealth: "a wealthy man is a man who has enough, not a man that needs more. If you have enough to invite someone for a beer? You're rich. If you have a yacht, planes, islands, and you still need more? You're not rich."