Interesting maybe to US Democrats - one of the two majority parties (SPD) looks like they barely scratched 5% following a time of being spectacularly useless as opposition to the other majority party (CDU)

The Anthropic versus Pentagon conflict is at least three questions which the media skipped asking 1. Should a computer be able to kill people? 2. What’s an acceptable error rate for that computer given LLMs 5% hallucination rate? 3. Can the government force you to sell them your tech to kill?

Just saw Cirque du Soleil's "Echo" in Marymoor park, and it was astounding. I thought I had seen my share of shows, but this one defied every expectation and continuously subverted expectations in the best possible way. Outstanding performance. images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5...

GOOD NEWS! Researchers at Stanford University have developed a UNIVERSAL vaccine known as GLA-3M-052-LS+OVA, that protects against a wide range of respiratory viruses, bacteria AND even allergens. The vaccine is delivered intranasally AND provides broad protection in the lungs for several MONTHS.

Congrats to everyone who voted for Trump and a Republican Congress "for the economy." This is what you get, a sputtering job creation engine that can't make progress like before and keeps rolling backwards. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

have noted this before but want to again emphasize that us Tattoo Havers can tell you only certain shops would have totenkopfs and they are going to be surrounded by other nazi symbols that you will in fact easily recognize

ICE arrested an Oregon shop owner who had her green card in her pocket: ‘They didn’t care’ Juanita Avila later helped expose ICE’s ‘arrest first, justify later’ tactics in a lawsuit that won a major victory for immigrants’ rights ...

157 Democratic members of the House just voted yea for a resolution that confirms they agree with the Trump administration's reasoning for starting with a war with Iran. It passes 372-53-2

Congress could, and should, ban this. Impose the same rule nationwide as some states already have: if an incumbent doesn't file for reelection by the deadline, the window to file gets extended a week or two.

👇👇

There's no reason for Iran to attack NATO nation Turkey—but a drone did. Iran denies sending it. There's no reason for Iran to attack a UK base in Cyprus—but a drone did. Iran denies sending it. Now Azerbaijan has been attacked. Iran denies involvement. I think this is Israel.

Kristi Noem has done a stunning amount of damage and it’s good she’s gone. But this doesn’t change the fact that we need a complete overhaul of DHS, impartial investigations into the killings of two American citizens, and information on children that were taken from Minnesota.

This piece by Admiral Stavridis is a sobering read: “.. Iran .. has been planning a Strait of Hormuz closure operation for decades and probably has more than 5,000 mines; just one hit can severely damage a thin-skinned tanker.” @opinion.bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

WHOA. Camp East Montana in El Paso opened in August and quickly became the deadliest ICE facility, with infamously terrible conditions. Now ICE is closing it, just as they plan to open up a detention camp nearly three times larger in a converted warehouse just outside El Paso.

The perversion of reversing the constitutional order such that it takes a supermajority in Congress to NOT go to war.

IMHO this is why it's beyond important to vote in every primary - we're seeing how the GOP gets their Trojan donkeys into the Democratic party.

It’s looking increasingly likely that Kristi Noem and Lewandowski funneled almost 200 million in government money to a company that is run by her friend and that nobody can give an address for. Oh, and it was 8 days old when it was awarded the contract.

One surprising side effect of the US war in Iran: American farmers are staring down soaring fertilizer prices at the worst possible time. From @mollytaft.com

A US submarine sinking a lonely, dinky Iranian surface ship an ocean away from the theater of the main conflict—and 9000 miles from North America—makes it pretty clear the US is fighting a general war, without the declaration required by the Constitution. www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...

A cartoon from the 1950’s that’s more relevant than ever 💔

What just happened in Dallas County is one of the most blatant voter suppression operations I've ever seen—and it happened in a *primary*. In March. Imagine November. I broke it down here: open.substack.com/pub/objectio...

Watch this. 19 minutes and $12 to get meds at a public Chinese hospital. Without insurance. As we slash Medicaid to start unnecessary wars and cut taxes for the rich. 🇺🇸 We should all be so much angrier than we are. It doesn’t have to be this way. #MedicareForAllNOW

BREAKING: The Texas Secretary of State DID NOT UPDATE the precinct maps on their website last December. MY GOD @msnowreports.bsky.social

1/9: In the New York redistricting case, Justice Alito's justification for why #SCOTUS even had *jurisdiction* to issue a stay is based upon a remarkably misleading portrayal of the state court proceedings. I realize this is technical, but I wanted to write a short thread to explain the shadiness:

EXCLUSIVE: At more than 30 installations, U.S. commanders told troops the war on Iran is a Christian war. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has been “inundated” with more than 110 complaints. One NCO said they were told the U.S. war is to bring about Armageddon and the return of Jesus…

This is a hard read, in part because the feds dropped the ball over and over again when victims tried to seek justice, going as far back as 1996. Had Epstein been stopped when the first complaint came in, this nation and the world would be a VERY different place. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/01/u...

That is substantially the model governments of all stripes have run for 25 years. Even achieving citizenship does cure the insecurities and uncertainties immigrants experience. So high immigration, when economically significant, is, by nature, creating a less integrated and more insecure class.

FWIW, this is sec. 2(c) of the War Powers Resolution:

things every single republican president of your lifetime has done - started a war in the middle east - completely destroyed the economy

One of the most American things you can do is to tell tyrants to pound sand That’s why this country exists in the first place

Bear with me if you can as I attempt to use HPV vaccines to demonstrate why many can’t see the danger of RFK Jr. TLDR: Disease prevention takes time and discipline. Not discipline of an individual, but the ability to invest in public health when the benefits may not be immediately clear.

IMHO there is no getting ahead. This year and in '28, we should all return ballots at the ballot box instead of mailing them, and even that might not be enough (Oops, it turns out those ballots were never delivered...)

The next time Democrats have to do a filibuster they should read selected portions of the Epstein files.

"All adults and some children on ICE flights are shackled at the wrists and ankles attached to a chain around their waists for the duration of the flight. Shackling for more than a few hours can cause fatal blood clots, permanent nerve damage, bruising, chafing, swelling and excruciating pain"

It's really fascinating - as a culture, we've been aware of the dangers of stated intention vs action and of miscommunication for thousands of years. As social beings, we project our values onto matrix multiplying text predictors and interact with them as if they were people.

Our latest paper shows that most aerosol sampling methods may underestimate infectious virus in air. We observed 100x more infectious flu virus and SARS-CoV-2 if it deposited directly on cells (more realistic) rather than in liquid first and then transferred to cells. pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10....

If we had a functioning DOJ, this would be instantly appealed, but we do not. www.politico.com/news/2026/02...

I sometimes think about the fact that the only consequences Trump faced from Jan 6th were having accounts suspended by banks and social media apps. Which he subsequently has sued or otherwise punished while pardoning all of the insurrectionists. This is how I feel every time I recall that.

Still blows my mind that my medication, Emgality, is like $1,000 with insurance but if I print out a special cheat code from the manufacturer's website its $35. And they don't automatically give this cheat code to people so that elderly and sick people end up accidentally paying full price.

A lot of people, including me, were wondering how an IRB could ever approve this study. The answer is that no IRB did. The person who “signed off” on approval from the only ethics board that reviewed it had resigned three years earlier. His signature was used without his knowledge.

This 53 year old man who lived in my neighborhood w/no criminal record & who had been in the US for 30 years, was detained and thrown into a cold cell for days, caught pneumonia and COVID there and deported. He finally died. I am so angry. www.kptv.com/2026/02/21/n...

This is great and I hate being this guy but @projectsaltbox.bsky.social noted this last Friday. projectsaltbox.substack.com/p/nternal-ic...

Pritzker demands a $1,700 refund per family for the people of Illinois after Trump's tariffs were ruled unconstitutional. Dems, pay attention. This is your midterms message.

In theory, we know this is true. But "struck down" doesn't quite capture it. These tariffs were obviously and transparently illegal. They were knowingly illegal. It is a stain on the Court that something so obviously illegal was allowed to stand for a year. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/scotus-...

SCOTUS says Trump can’t impose tariffs under the IEEPA. The breakdown’s a mess, but that’s the bottom line. Roberts with the liberals, Gorsuch, and Barrett…but the liberals get off the bus when Roberts goes Major Questions Doctrine. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

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

Last night, I was notified that another person has died in ICE custody. That’s 39 people who have died on ICE’s watch during Trump’s second term. We cannot grow numb to this. There must be immediate oversight and accountability.