There was literally nothing in Kash Patel’s background to indicate he was going to be a good FBI director.

I don't know how to convey to people that POLICING in the US is experienced by countless Black and brown people in the way that ICE is currently acting towards people.

This notion spreads far beyond the wellness industry - it goes back to America's puritan roots, to the plague that is Prosperity Gospel. It's enmeshed with the thinking that the well off & successful are morally and spiritually superior to the impoverished & suffering; the fascist gospel of wealth.

Noem's thugs arrest several unhoused Oglala Sioux (beyond irony)...when asked to identify them, DHS refuses unless the tribe agrees to a cooperation scheme with ICE www.twincities.com/2026/01/13/i...

ive seen more articles this week about how the phrase “abolish ice” could hurt dems in the midterms than ive seen articles about how paramilitary death squads terrorizing cities will hurt republicans in the midterms

Keep clicking throughhhhhhh

Breaking NYT: The Pentagon used a secret aircraft painted to look like a civilian plane in its first boat attack, according to officials briefed on the matter. The laws of armed conflict forbid combatants from feigning civilian status. That is a war crime called "perfidy."

semi-regular reminder that ICE was only created in 2003 when you are asked to imagine a world without ICE, you're basically being asked to remember where you were when Lilo & Stitch came out

evergreen

Nested quote-posts

"Whenever a king is enraged at a lesser man, / even if he should swallow his wrath for the moment / he will nurse his grievance until he can take revenge." Sounds about right.

you can really tell the actual Trek fans from the fakes bc one major through line is that Federation culture wholeheartedly REJECTED eugenics and genetic tinkering in the pursuit of "perfection" Roddenberry's ideology was "infinite diversity in infinite combinations"

I enjoy when folks get tetchy about the term "sequential art" and claim it's just a pretentious word for "comics", because when I point out they're overlapping but non-identical mediums, they always demand an example of one that isn't the other, and I get to hit them with "PowerPoint presentations".

Unpopular opinion: I wish we'd be as mad at Actual Trump Voters as some of us are about third party and non-voters. Actual Trump Voters got us here but I feel they get a pass in the discourse. "You're not going to move them" doesn't mean that they are not the #1 guilty parties responsible.

In case you missed it last night: No, it is definitively not defamation to call Jonathan Ross a murderer, and people who say it is are liars or ignorant or both.

ICE killed a Black man, Keith Porter, 7 days before Renee Good, and I hadn't heard about it until today. His vigils went unnoticed. His life came and gone and America forgot to blink. Two Americas.

Tandoori chicken marinating for tikka masala with grilled cheese tomorrow. Chicken thighs dry brining for roasting on Saturday. A mess of nachos in my lap tonight. Remember to take some time to enjoy being in your body, friends. A nice cup of tea, a warm bath, dance, music, sex. Bread & roses.

"finished that up, let me just open bluesky and WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED NOW" - me, six times a day

per my point about the mercator projection being the root of this whole thing

Exceptionally good both in that it makes its point and that it is very funny while doing so

People mag

it's unfortunate that we've ceded everything that uses machine learning to the "AI" category. A pen with a mic that connects to your phone and can do automatic translation, record and transcribe meetings is NOT the same thing as a chatbot tech bros think they can turn into God.

The “prosecute the former regime at every level” candidate has my vote in 2028.

I come from the philosophical school of LeVar Burton’s Reading Rainbow. Literacy is connected to freedom and it’s connected to an inner dignity. I want everyone to have that. This is not about who reads the most books or whatever else. This is about extending the possibility of freedom.

I wouldn't have been aware of how many people were becoming ungovernable if Interior hadn't felt compelled to set this policy. And I feel better for knowing that.

what u have to understand is that working on my novel, answering dms, and answering emails all cost 1 spell slot but posting? Posting is a cantrip

“Neo-royalism says that the state, the country, is not the key actor. It’s groups of elites that are organized around political leaders. That system doesn’t play by the same rules.” If that sounds like a return to the era of kings, you’re on the right track.

one takeaway from the grok noncon porn thing is that much of the media just isn't interested in an issue they can't pretend has two sides or that doesn't give them an opportunity to shit on the left. Also it would be uncomfortable to justify remaining on twitter after acknowledging it

Saw a post theorizing you now encounter more people listening to things on speakers in public spaces because Apple banning the headphone jack did not result in people switching to Bluetooth headphones, it resulted in people abandoning headphones. I'm on an airplane RN and. Thinking about that. Hard.

Timely, again

the entire contradiction at the heart of the last 15 years of dem dysfunction has been simultaneously insisting the only mechanism for punishing republican malfeasance is the vote while also adopting a posture of bipartisan comity with those very politicians voters are supposed to be disciplining.

babe wake up, they're doing insider trading on war crimes

So, Trump's mentioning that the ballroom would be "for the inauguration" and praising Ukraine for not having elections in wartime.... feels bad

Congress can impeach him and then march down Pennsylvania Avenue to drag him out of the White House before sunrise, if they choose to

Why Elon Musk and JD Vance are obsessed with you having more babies

there are endless headlines about "grok apologizes" or "grok says it will be fixed" after it generated CSAM using pictures of minors and zero headlines about "grok being shut down" or "musk and xAI in big legal trouble" and I think something fundamental has broken here

Added a reading tracker to my personal discord bullet journal, because I looked at everyone posting how many books they read this year and went "???" at myself. Currently reading City of Bones by Martha Wells, which has some FASCINATING worldbuilding.

It used to take an entire legacy news corporation to wag the dog. Now if you can make one viral reel that’s racist enough, you dictate domestic and foreign policy

Can't schedule the furnace repair until I sign off on the quote. Can't sign the quote until they email it to me. Was told last Tuesday I'd have it by end-of-day. But then it sorta got lost in Xmas. Poked them about it today. They said I'd have it by end-of-day. But we're going into NYE/D...

Took apart a piece of furniture for repair and learned where Spinch has been hiding all the kneaded erasers she’s stolen.

Whose inauguration?

meanwhile the critique of popularism is "your own base will hate you for betraying them, people who really believe in this stuff will go full fash rather than support your half measures, and the waverers will take your capitulation as proof the fash are right" bearing out pretty well so far

I used to manage wine programs for movie theaters and I am in the extremely unique position to say with professional certainty that the answer here is a crisp Albariño.

The drawback to living in a spooky patch of forest is periodically a delivery driver looks at the street and says NOPE, marks the package as undeliverable due to "no such address", and I have to spend a week fighting to verify that my house... exists? And pay second postage and wait another week.

We had congressional hearings when parents just suspected heavy metal was leading some kids to suicide.

A nice thread in which an actual expert patiently explains why the Secretary of Health and Human Service is not simply a liar, but an especially stupid one.

I don’t know man if capitalism has just resulted in a small network of pedophiles destroying all life on earth then perhaps we should consider that it is a complete and utter failure as a system

This whole fucking thread, man...

We didn't survive and thrive as a species because we had warriors or hunters - pretty much every omnivore can manage that. We did so because we developed Grandmothers, and domesticated Dogs. Community is what defines us as a species, and every "self-reliant" libertarian shitweasel be damned.