Just driving through the town center of Barre, MA, and there's about 5 elderly folks collecting canned goods and shoveling while having a mini No Kings rally. The grocery push cart of signs tells me this is an ongoing thing. Love it

I hate how much this is me lol

What are everyone’s favorite “fantasy Jews”? I like the Al Bhed from Final Fantasy X. 1. Diaspora from a long-destroyed ancient “Home.” 2. Their own ethnic language 3. Deny the divinity of Yevon, use machina 4. Face discrimination for 3 5. Due to social exclusion, often merchants, live on margins

Trump got a call from his friend that he had to go through normal airport security like a common schmuck and it was the first Trump had heard about this and phoned Noem to scream at her

Every single element of life is either more deadly, more expensive or more inconvenient (often all three) today than it’s been in decades & it’s purely because our robber baron overlords decided to dedicate the entirety of the US apparatus to doing barbaric & culturally suicidal white nationalism

The NY Times dutifully reporting that the Supreme Court sided with Trump only 42% of the time and with Biden 54% of the time sort of leaves out the necessary context that Biden was doing normal, completely legal presidential stuff, and Trump was doing insane crimes

This is so logically pleasing and yet absurdly like a science fiction story

My most deeply held old fogey opinion is that every party needs to turn the music down so people can talk.

One good rule of thumb to avoid this: I being affirming, friendly and curious in my interactions or am I being nitpicky and obtuse (and expecting that that won’t come off as judgmental and negative)?

NJ lawmakers introduce the FUCK ICE Act. The bill "permits civil action for violations of US Constitution related to immigration enforcement."

My most deeply held old fogey opinion is that every party needs to turn the music down so people can talk.

These are the first words Kavanaugh uttered as a SCOTUS nominee. He stood in front of the American people and told an obvious, screaming lie intended solely for an audience of one. It was clear his first loyalty was to “the one,” not the truth or the Constitution.

Lutnick’s Son has literally been “shorting” the tarrifs.. buying companies rights to claw back tarrifs from the govt in this exact eventuality… thedeepdive.ca/howard-lutni...

Unfortunately consumers won’t be receiving any refunds and prices will likely stabilize at the current higher benchmark. Meanwhile corporations and billionaires will eventually reap windfall tariff refunds. If it wasn’t so awful it would be laughable.

so we paid the tariffs and now the corporations that passed the costs on to me and you are the ones that are going to be reimbursed, do i have that correct

The Supreme Court:

As nice as a win is, this fits right into the Trump I pattern SCOTUS followed of trying to patch its credibility by handing trump 1-2 high profile losses after letting him do it for like 8 months

the glorious constitutional principle of "the president can't fuck with Supreme Court justices' investment portfolios" stands strong

BREAKING: The Supreme Court STRIKES DOWN Trump's "emergency" tariffs. The vote is 6–3. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

My hospital, like one of the flagship ivory tower institutions instantly liquidated all DEI efforts at all levels the second the winds looked to be shifting. God forbid we use those lawyers for anything but union busting.

The bedrock of human civilization is a fundamental belief that random people on the street, let alone people in need of assistance, aren’t secretly trying to kill and/or kidnap you. ICE is undermining the basic principles of society, and they need to be held to account for it.

We use 'vice signalling' mainly to mean edgy posts or eating at Chick-fil-a etc., but really it means that to succeed in certain groups you *need* to show that you enjoy causing suffering. This is as true of the News of the World as it is of SS units or just groups of lads telling rape jokes.

the reason he wants to bomb iran is because its penis to bomb things and vagina to be against bombing things, i know its stupid but it really is that simple

The right hates gender studies because gender studies explains everything they do

this is a very cool study, but i have to confess I'm reposting it because I want you to see the illustrations of these no-thoughts-in-head chicken participants

My (pluralistic) Jewish high school had an exchange program with a Catholic school. They told us they had 1 hour of religion class a week, plus daily mass. We had 9+ hours, if you count Modern Hebrew as religious studies. And that's not including attendance at services.

I honestly think one reason Millennials are so angry about all this is that many of us grew up during the brief period in American history where the official line was that we had won history *because* of our values, and most of us actually internalized that.

In many ways, believing that AI can only change things by replacing the exact human jobs is a form of techno pessimism, not optimism

"your heat pumps sound nice, travelling salesman. unfortunately i have an enchanted fireplace which has blazed with the blue flame of tharmad since my grandfather's time, which needs no fuel but the undying knucklebone of a shadow dragon. those are projected to outlast our sun"

Did you know that because roly polies are terrestrial crustaceans and not actual bugs they breathe through adapted gills even though they live out of water.

My neighborhood is a *river* right now. And I think I just saw lightning?

In standard American English, “liberal” means “left” and the more of one you are the more of the other you are, and if you’re unable to grasp this you’ll be unable to talk to normal people.

I know a Filipino-Canadian who checked "Hispanic", not "Asian" on a US college application form, though

I once processed a survey filled out by first graders. They had a really interesting range of answers for race, including "Ghana" and "Catholic".

I have mentioned how on old NYC birth and marriage records, greenhorn Jews often misunderstood "color" to be a question about hair colour...

I've been cursed with the knowledge that you can put date and bluecheese on celery but it will be even better with a sprinkle of cardamom. I don't know why.

Yes. The simplest and most plausible explanation for any choice Trump makes is that he enjoys hurting and killing people. It makes him feel good.

It's not a new observation at this point but that wild Noem/Lewandowski story in WSJ really brings home the extent to which all the Trump 2 cabinet-level goblins see their jobs as flying private, doing short-form video, and screaming at underlings. They all hate each other and none of them can read.

BTW the correct move re: federal judiciary to achieve both legitimacy and latitude for change is to immediately reorganize and expand the circuit courts (so as to dilute the evil ones) and immediately expand SCOTUS to the new size of the circuit (15-21, depending on what makes sense).

there are the obvious moral, ethical, legal and humanitarian problems here, but this is also a policy they simply do not have the capacity to enforce, they’re just trying to broaden the target base for more arrests, cruelty and mistreatment

When Tom Homan, Trump and other Republicans defend the masking of ICE agents, I can't help but think of Orson Welles announcing on his radio show his intention of identifying the South Carolina police officer who violently attacked and blinded the uniformed Black veteran Isaac Woodard in 1946.

the main reason to go after the rich is that if you don’t the entire structure of your society is predicated on the whims of people who are entirely disconnected from ordinary life billionaires are simply too dangerous to exist, and any budgetary stuff that comes out of it is just a bonus

NEW: Major, BFD action by blue states standing up to ICE. Maryland, on Tuesday, banned local law enforcement from being part of ICE's notorious 287(g) program.  That automatically forces *9* sheriffs out of their ICE contract! And New Mexico did the same last week:

Of all the things we are doing in MN, this one is just beyond. Imagine being released from hell alone in the cold. And a total stranger has waited all night with a blanket just to be ready to hug you and carry you home. Every job we do is crucial, but this one is what restores humanity and dignity.

what I want people to feel, when they look at South Korea and the UK and Brazil holding elites accountable, is that it's possible here too. Elect true leaders this year and in 28, empowered - but also driven by us, the people - to hold the criminals accountable for their crimes. It's possible.

I'm not saying that young democracies are always more vigorous than old ones, because they are certainly also less established and therefore more fragile, but I think America's democratic decline has been mostly, primarily, a result of complacency.

think that "epistemic pessimism" is a major and untheorized political ideology issue. many of us subscribe to largely implicit notion of US electorate and media as being beyond redemption

going full Democracy For Realists really helps here imo. people are often small minded and reactive, but sometimes they’ll get it right, even if by accident

I think masking in public is entirely reasonable. Asking for universal masking in Healthcare settings - makes total sense; I don't want to pick up something nasty just going to urgent care. But some people are like abstinence-only advocates: whatever people do, it's never enough.

All the DOGE talk about cutting the deficit in half. The richest man in the world cutting public services, leading to millions of deaths, to provide cover for a wealth transfer to other rich people