The US built the greatest talent magnet ever, attracting the smart, skilled, and striving. They’d come to study, then stay and build things here, or leave with positive impressions and fruitful connections. Helped make the US wealthy and powerful. Then America chose to throw it away. And for what?

Every single day of this administration, I have thought of my late professor Joe Nye and his work on soft power. Every single day of this administration, Trump finds a new way to hemorrhage soft power from a country that once had more to spare than any in the world.

Change of address postcard (Offending the Powers That Be), Chicago (1909) Image: Alfred Holzman / Chicago History Museum

Not only are you not alone if you believe things don't have to be this way. In fact you are part of a powerful American majority, one with the power to decide our future.

If Trump dies in office, expect Vance and Miller to cite "stability," "national security," and other bullshit excuses to go on an authoritarian bender that makes Minneapolis and the Charlie Kirk purges seem quaint.

Possibly the pettiest loser government in the world. The US has withdrawn Iran’s allocation of World Cup tickets for supporters days before the tournament starts, Iran’s football federation said.

As of late I’m favoring knife-only painting for plein air. That’ll probably last a couple of months; I still “go through phases”. This one is a 6”x8”.

Probably shouldn't have let a handful of weird business perverts unwind the cultural miracle of American research universities

Can any Googler help a Xoogler out with just a wee peek at memegen right now? 😅👀

This entire administration and the billionaires supporting it should be properly seen as an attack on democracy with intent to kill it forever

So a bunch of men are going to tell a bunch of women who is a woman and who isn't. Sounds about right.

When you dehumanize people, then round them up in response to the dehumanizing propaganda, the mistreatment is inevitable. These are human beings, just like you or me. Imagine yourself in a detention center, crowded far worse than any prison, bad food, cruel racist MAGA guards...

Look if you've got a better way to run a country than "putting an illiterate octogenarian bigot on TV every few days to free associate and complain, and then everyone tries to figure out if it means we're about to start a war or not" I'd love to hear it. But the constitution says this is it.

Every splashy New York Times profile of a right wing influencer.

Albert Einstein passed away #OTD in 1955 due to complications from a ruptured abdominal aneurysm. Doctors recommended surgical intervention but Einstein declined, saying “I have done my share; it is time to go. I will do it elegantly." Here is his office as he left it. 🧪 ⚛️ Image: R. Morse/LIFE

The Dream Team failed. Total shock. We sent two of our most mediocre real estate developers and a fraud. Who could’ve guessed this outcome?

War crimes in our name.

This is powerful, if true. More of this. Refuse. Stand on principle.

this is the chaplain btw. wonder why he was fired.

finally, Wendell Berry's standards for technological innovation--truly as relevant now as they were in 1987 #othernetworks

Very sorry to hear that Glen Baxter has died. He lived in John Ruskin Street when Coracle Press was in Camberwell, and often around. I first saw his work in the late 1970s and bought his books at Compendium; this battered NYC-published one from 1977 still going strong, great bw drawings and texts.

I did ask this lady if I could photograph her #NoKings sign because I enjoyed it 😄

This is what the collapse of the rule of law looks like.

This is FIRE

The ancient scrolls tell us that, in the Before Time, a president's admission that his administration had not considered the obvious likelihood of the war widening when they first attacked Iran would lead to immediate congressional hearings.

This is Trump's America.

Am I a Cubs fan? Yes. Do I love the team? Yes. Do I like the team? Rarely. Do I hate the team? Frequently. Please enjoy this picture of Jack White that really resonates with me.

If there is one thing I’ve learned is that if a project is struggling, adding a bunch of new trainees always helps, especially if they’re being paid and you’re not, and they’re the reason you’re not being paid

All this was a choice. I can’t get over how all of this was a choice. A plurality of American voters saw corruption, bigotry, pandemic, economic crisis, coup attempt, and criminal conviction, then opted for more.

✋ Former USG war crimes lawyer here. Apropos of SecDef's remarks this morning: Denial of quarter—even the declaration of no quarter—is a war crime. And recognized as such by the US Government. From DoD's Manual for Military Commissions.

A grim BBC report from Havana filed 4 days ago. The Trump Administration is deliberately causing the worst humanitarian crisis of my lifetime in the western hemisphere and the US prestige press can't be bothered to cover it. Please shame them into reporting on this crisis before people start dying.

This is the company the UK government has embedded in the nation’s services. Seriously, fuck everyone who is excusing this.

the stink of gender resentment coming off Silicon Valley has been obvious for a while. these men hate women because they hate being told no.

Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei • More hardline than father • He’s the IRGC candidate • Relatively young: 56 • Avoids public • Trusted by father, clerics • Was in military during Iraq-Iran war • His wife, Zahra, killed in Israeli airstrike w his father

This is the kind of thing a rich CEO says at the beginning of a science fiction movie to establish for the audience that he is a sociopath and the villain.

NEW: Read this terrific piece @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social for @thenerve.news in which she unpicks Edge.org, the hugely influential 'salon' funded by Epstein & threaded through with race science & eugenics. 1/ www.thenerve.news/p/epstein-bi...

Definitely seems like they destroyed the country on purpose.

Race as a construct is so powerful that only now are many people saying ‘they are killing us’. They have been killing us. We have all been us the whole time.

New — I wrote about ChongLy Scott Thao, the elderly Hmong American wrongly arrested and forced out of his home by ICE in his underwear during the punishing Minnesota winter, what witnesses saw, and DHS's racist claim that he fit the description of another Asian man they were looking for. My story:

This is what happened in our neighborhood yesterday. ICE snatched a human being off of our streets, roughed them up badly, and then pepper sprayed legal observers as they documented it all. This is a daily occurrence happening all throughout Minnesota right now.

“I have asked the clergy of the diocese to make sure their affairs are in order and they have written their wills.,not the time for statements. It is time to put our bodies between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable”. Rob Hirschfeld, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire

Never forget. 🇺🇸

He was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.

NEW: www.theatlantic.com/national-sec...

no different to a U boat sinking a ship then surfacing to machine gun survivors in the water no different