The English: I can tell how you were brought up, where you went to school, and your parents' average household income within a thousand pounds within three seconds of hearing you speak Elon Musk: as you can see, it is the complete sameness of the culture that makes them stand together

This story is so notable for all the Oregon Republicans who dodged simple questions from reporters at the Capitol when they could not simply ignore our emails. Fabulous and illuminating reporting from @shaanthx.bsky.social oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2026/02/16/a...

My reaction to losing an election and the world subsequently going to hell has been to fill every waking moment of my life with Activity and Distraction, and, shockingly, my body is not thrilled with this. Rude, honestly.

These Olympic drones are terrible and they improve nothing.

I get the spirit but I feel like anyone in public school at the time of "Born This Way" knows at least half a dozen guys who literally came out because of Lady Gaga. Living through the period of "Born This Way" (2011) -> Obergefell (2015) was a whirl wind in how public opinion can radically change.

"Our Democratic Party should have nothing to do with a pro-Trump-billionaire-funded organization that demands absolute fealty to positions that are outside the mainstream of the American pro-Israel community, and then smears those who don't fall into line."

People who give prescriptive advice on how to win elections should at least be descriptively accurate about what people who are doing the actual work of trying to win elections are already doing.

I would point out it was the liberals, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris who ran for President on "Trump is a scary authoritarian" while leftists derided them for not reaching out to his supporters and claimed there'd be no big difference between them and Trump.

A video of Alex Pretti reading out the final salute of an unnamed veteran he cared for until the end of his life in the ICU, posted to Facebook by his son.

you don't become a martyr because you were a saint, you become a saint because you were martyred

The last Men's World Cup was built on the backs of literal slave labor and the deaths of 1,000+ enslaved people. FIFA is not going to mount some virtuous boycott here.

ICE is now responsible for 66% of the homicides in Minneapolis this year.

CNN: DHS officials have come to FEMA staff and told them to limit the use of the word ice…they are worried that by posting something like, watch out for the ice, that it's going to become a meme….

Being in a religious environment where this is *not* happening is honestly profoundly demoralizing.

My org @immcouncil.org represents those two gay men. They had been arrested on charges of sodomy by Iranian moral police, and fled the country seeking asylum. They face the death penalty if returned, yet the Trump admin denied their asylum claims in a kangaroo court process. They are terrified.

Surveys from @pewresearch.org using random samples show no clear evidence of a religious revival among young adults. www.pewresearch.org/religion/202...

Online opt-in polls suggest a young adult religious resurgence in the US. Based on their opt-in polls, Barna says, "Regular church attendance is on the rise for all young adults." Their chart is below. www.barna.com/trends/churc... But surveys using random samples do not support this narrative.

Federal immigration agents arrested and detained a Gresham, Oregon family, including a 7-year-old child, outside a Portland hospital last week as the girl’s parents sought emergency medical care for her. www.oregonlive.com/portland/202...

shoving someone's face directly in unfairness and telling them the rules they have built their lives around don't matter because you're in charge and they aren't triggers fury on the lizard brain level and it's a huge contributor to how autocracies fail

Expanding on this: I once listened to this climate activist talking about what years of research on effective climate change messaging has taught us. It turns out dooming was actually WORSE than underselling in terms of causing people to act. It made people decide it was too hard/impossible.

People can say they didn’t vote for this but people are liars

Mark Carney's speech is now only the second most acute analysis of where the world is at right now:

People are waving around 50/50 polling on abolish ICE and in the same poll Trump’s is like 30 points under water on affordability. It’s not at all crazy for professional politicians to think there’s a bigger advantage in talking about the latter!

FWIW, Democrats can't force full-fledged government shutdown over ICE because Congress has passed 9 out of 12 of its spending bills. And both parties deliberately tied Defense, DHS and HHS spending bills so they both get what they want.

Now, a lot of Americans are extremely mad about Minneapolis. But the don't make up the majority of voters in the Trump-voting states we need this November. So, the national Democratic party is going to focus on issues where they come out on top in every battleground poll

As I wrote for Rolling Stone, this was the most dangerous bill for trans health care of the Trump 2.0 era because it would potentially include a Hyde amdt for trans care without the votes to kill it. That it’s not in the bill is a big deal and reveals it was a poison pill for Dems to fund the govt

I'm a red-blooded American MAN! I like my beer COLD, my wings HOT, and my Broadway musical which reimagines the six wives of Henry VIII as a modern girl group CAST BY CISGENDER WOMEN ONLY!

Honestly boycotting the World Cup would be the most effective and probably the least disruptive of all of the options available to Europe. I’m not sure how you can send teams and fans to contribute to a spectacle designed entirely to celebrate a guy trying to invade your territory.

Can't help but see divide between Democratic elites vs. Democratic voters on Kamala Harris as similar to the divide between Republican elites vs. voters on Donald Trump circa 2021-2022. The elites wanted Trump to go away. But voters loved him. Now he's president. www.axios.com/2026/01/19/k...

A very involved conservative parishoner quit this week for vague political reasons, while other very involved families are threatening to because the interim rector wants to go backwards on LGBTQ affirmation. I've been thinking about 3:16 a lot. Centrism for centrism's sake is not of Christ. ⚓

Also, “every decision I don’t like was forced on candidates by consultants” is a favorite assumption that is frequently wrong. So many arguments in 2022 all but begging candidates to just fucking say “abortion”…

Every "consultants are evil!" post On Here is like "My priors are perfect and every voter shares my views of the world and I have no interest in hearing otherwise. That's why my preferred party is out of power, but also why aren't they doing anything with the grand powers of the minority party?"

An underrated factor in "why don't people in wealthy societies have more kids" is changing societal norms that now expect even older kids to be chaperoned by an adult any time they are in public, and to be chauffeured by a parent as their only means of transportation

I am so close to muting the word "Democrats" on this site.

A helpful thing about this website is people will post things like "why aren't Democrats talking about ICE?" which is a very helpful shorthand for "I am not paying attention to anything that is actually happening in politics and value the left image more than the left political project"

Does anyone have a link to either the recording or the bulletin for the EPN/Minnesota prayer service last night? ⚓

so help me, I believe it fundamentally matters to try to understand what American people think about their country, regardless of the specific effectiveness of their opinions on any given topic

How is it still Monday?

Welcome to the Resistance, concept of “money”

As someone who went to an Episcopalian high school, I can’t express how crazy you have to act to get them to start with this sort of rhetoric

Second, and probably most importantly, it's tactically wrong. "No point discussing political opposition to fascism, there won't be elections anyway" cedes victory to your enemies. It's defeatism and nihilism.

The creators of these apps make choices. Grok was created with the production of deep-fake abuse imagery as an option and that was a choice. The fact that the app is still producing these images, for free, with no restrictions, for anyone who wants them, is also an ongoing choice by its creators.

My work life lives on Google Suite. Yesterday, the AI very helpfully wrote me an email reply offering times I was available for a meeting. It did not check my google calendar for conflict with those times first. So, so, helpful.

Mark and Melissa Hortman were devout Catholics. Renee Nicole Good was described as a devout Christian (perhaps Presbyterian given earlier mission work?) Yet only Charlie Kirk gets to be remembered as a “martyr”

FYI you yelling YOU MUST WATCH to any form of murder video or any violence to total strangers is a sign of your mental health deteriorating. We do not have to subject ourselves to trauma porn. Watching innocent people die on repeat will give you PTSD. Log off and call your therapist.

I would really caution anyone against implying that paywalling this feature is a legitimate response to public outcry. The paywall is an endorsement, not a restriction. Musk is saying "this thing you're all talking about is valuable. Pay me for it." The actual material effect is just monetization.

Vice President JD Vance’s comments justifying the death of Renee Good are a moral stain on the collective witness of our Catholic faith. His Catholicism seems to be little more than a political prop, a tool only for his career ambitions and desire for power. My latest for NCR.

A reminder that the Uvalde response was led by Border Patrol, which waited 77 minutes to confront an armed gunman in a school. But shooting unarmed civilians in split seconds, no problem for them at all www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/u...