Put it in the papers - America persists because 700k civil servants have no quit in them.

Great visual metaphor, no notes

we are not having a lot of luck with institutional pushback - everyone who does is fired and replaced we are definitely not having any luck with “norms” what we are having luck with is ordinary people looking at the incompetent bullshit put in front of them and going “absolutely not”

chatGPT just hallucinated an article with a title that's my own working title for a project and attributed it to a random person in 2023, so that's fun.

The reason a lot of white people can operate in the privilege of a comment like “we used to be able to have dissenting opinions & now they break friendships” is because the people of color in the room had to be silent in order to remain in the room safely.

Well, this is delightful news. 📚 bookriot.com/new-host-of-...

There is a difference between righteous anger, directed at injustice, and hateful anger, directed at those who are different. Authoritarian regimes deliberately conflate the two to silence criticism and create false equivalence. It's important we don't let those in power succeed in this endeavor.

Having read the full Coates/Klein transcript now, it's striking how much Klein seems to want One Weird Trick to fix things. I think Coates has the right idea here.

of all the things about ta-nehisi coates’s philosophy i wish people would internalize the main one is: sometimes you lose

This is Rubicon crossed. Never has elected official or appointee interfered with drug oversight like this. It has implications for public health, national security, and economic implications. They’re not good. You can’t invest in something when you think FDA is drafting policy from tweets.

There’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for people to build on the rubble of what’s being destroyed before our eyes. Private corporations bending over to forcefeed everyone government-approved speech is evil and amoral, but more than anything this creates boring, inauthentic, unwatchable shit.

Cringing in class because someone behind me is coughing/congested. Then I turn around and see their KN95. Public health classes ftw

praise for Kirk from liberal pundits is one of the clearest distillations of how ill-equipped they are for this fascist moment, & how devoted they are to a West Wing fantasy of a respectable right/conservative movement that does not exist, and which - like Kirk - almost never operates in good faith

It turns out that protecting hate speech did not create the conditions to protect other kinds of speech; instead, it protected hate and allowed hate movements to take over all the institutions of that might have defended the rest of us.

politics is conflictual; a reality you cannot poll, focus group, or message your way out of.

Mississippi banned abortion and refused to expand Medicaid. This isn't complicated. This is a policy choice. 'Pro-life' politicians would rather babies die than their mothers receive health care. www.waaytv.com/news/nation-...

Laura is one of the most brilliant brains in journalism these days, and I honestly can't think of a more essential article. This is a set of LEGAL and reasonable things you can do to keep the entire country from escalating into the police state that it's becoming in so many places.

Power is power.

The road to authoritarianism is littered with people telling you you’re overreacting.

Democratic supporting money folks spend all their money on policy and messaging and Republicans have been relentlessly focused for 30 *years* on owning every piece of information architecture or bullying it into submission and that's why we are here.

Sir this is an Arby's

I analyzed more than 100 extremist manifestos: Misogyny was the common thread theconversation.com/i-analyzed-m... by @karmvirpadda.bsky.social "What emerges is a chilling picture of how deep-seated misogyny, disguised as grievance and moral outrage, can escalate ideological violence."

women aren't foregoing motherhood because they were hoodwinked into believing it's something it's not. They were told the truth about what it is-- a relentless, thankless job that is mostly pretty boring, pays zero dollars, and, without serious support, undermines/stunts your personal development

Picard civics tip: If there is one truth, one constant that history shows us over and over, it is that resistance is never futile.

Part of my answer to "how'd we get here?" is an elite, institutional culture deeply opposed to calling bullshit. To do so is uncouth, uncivil, biased. Stated rationales must be taken at face value. There's no such thing as bad faith. Questioning motives is wrong. It's just debate, have some respect.

This is, to me, the defining dyamic of everything the last six months. Any game theory notion of deterrence or the shoe being on the other foot ever is entirely gone. Either 1) They don't think they'll ever lose power again or 2) they're confident Democrats won't ever do the same things back to them

Anyone who believes there's any appetite for bipartisan cooperation under Trump need only look as far as the admin's demands for partisan budgeting or the failure to address political assassinations in a serious way to understand it's not going to happen. www.deseret.com/utah/2025/07...

Tapping the sign that says “NSF, NIH, and public investment into basic research are the real engines of US innovation”

"A top Trump adviser posted a tweet seemingly advocating the genocide of all Hispanics in the United States. There simply isn’t a middle ground between this worldview and a liberal belief in human rights."

"The fundamental argument for IVF and abortion access is the same." This Viewpoint discusses the ethical inconsistency in US policies that support in vitro fertilization (IVF) but not abortion. https://ja.ma/44ftaCP

Vaccination schedules on the CDC website have already started changing under RFK Jr. So we published a guide to the evidence-based vaccine recommendations in place *before* all 17 members of the advisory panel were abruptly dismissed by the new admin. www.scientificamerican.com/article/see-... 🧪

To be really clear: The reason members of Congress can't just walk right in is because of the guns. Armed DHS personnel won't allow entry. In other words, DHS is using armed force to *break* laws. Democrats need to wrap their minds around that. Accept that the frog is boiled.

I've seen deeper crowds at local 5k races.

the great-man theory combined with arron sorkin have convinced white liberals that the solution to these societal tensions is be a well-delivered speech, reminding the bad actors "who we are". and, it just so happens, this is the solution that allows them to retain their comforts and privileges

The thing almost all Democrats have never learned two decades into social media is that you don't make attention, you free-ride on it. You take what the attention is on, and make it about your thing. This is virality 101, and the fact they don't get it is mind blowing.

The Trump administration is engaging on an all-out assault on the institutions, workers and standards that make learning and knowledge production possible, in the hopes of securing political dominance forever. (Gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Three things made the US a rich and powerful nation: the rule of law, its science & innovation system, and openness to foreign talent. Remarkable how Trump has taken a sledgehammer to all three. No enemy of this country could do more.

Straight-up misogyny is the explanation for 2024 that accords best with the actual vote shifts. But for some reason if you mention it a ton of people rush out of the woodwork to go “no no no! it’s inflation and Harris’s policy choices! Which for some reason only men cared about!”

There was an old tweet that stuck with me: "If you can easily walk to the coffee shop but your barista has a one hour commute, you don't live in a walkable 15 minute city; you live in a theme park"

My daughter’s speech therapist went out of business because Medicaid reimbursement rates were too low. We do not have Medicaid. I’m going to keep posting this until people understand that when Medicaid gets cut *everyone* loses services.

at least some of what’s fueled “ai” is the assumption that anyone *should* be able to write professionally. It’s obviously not true, but the work seems easy when you don’t know what goes into it. It’s specific to writing—no one thinks it’s a problem that they’re not getting a tryout for the Mets!

just so we’re all clear: the reason they keep using dolls as their example is because they’re trying to frame caring about material stuff as feminine and thus inherently shameful

tbh, the Issue With Young Men right now is just a broader issue of having built a modern society that lacks meaning outside of consumerism

Toxicologist here! This will improve the health of zero Americans. Current synthetic food dyes are not causing health problems, and are often times used because they are actually safer than natural food dyes. Reminder that guns are the #1 cause of death of children but we are going to ban food dyes.

Women aren't useful to this administration beyond their reproductive years.

Two headlines in the New York Times today.

I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked.

important context about the concentration camps in el salvador:

There is in fact no way to make a case for a moral or political obligation to have children that does not degrade the status and dignity of women by claiming ownership their bodies as instruments for collective use.