Extensively drug-resistant Salmonella outbreak linked to moringa powder. MAHA and FOX News, among others, have promoted moringa as a "natural" medicine. content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USF...

this is what we folks here in the twin cities metro & across MN would really like you to understand — 1. they’re still here harming & destabilizing our communities 2. the reverberations will be felt for a very long time 3. even if they all left right now, there’s still a huge crisis to address

I've been reading about (and prepping to teach about) the phenomenon of men who sat in the study hall and learned all day and who earned money with a variety of "rented" spiritual labor- including standing in and saying kaddish for a year for ppl without children or who otherwise had no one to do it

Fabulous conversation at P&T Textile and Book Store to celebrate Michael Kimmel's new book about American toys and Jewish history, PLAYMAKERS

Mendel Cohen, born in Jerusalem 1895 to parents from Belarus. Ottoman military translator during World War I. Personal carpenter for King Abdallah, the Emir of Transjordan (1937-1947). #theArabAshkenazi

Bezalel Smotrich: the next government must "encourage voluntary migration" of Palestinian from the West Bank - there is no other solution. "We must complete the revolution". This is what the Israeli right is working towards: not Apartheid, but mass expulsion. www.haaretz.co.il/news/politic...

They raided the jailed children to steal their letters. The problem, in federal officials' minds, wasn't confining children in prison-camp conditions; it was that the children could tell the public about it.

I'm always struck by how this is framed as the responsibility of other American Jews, and not of Israel to change its policies dramatically.

"Ever since Belgium chose to firmly condemn all violations of international law, some Israeli leaders have pursued a campaign of amalgamation, deliberately conflating our principled legal positions with antisemitism. That narrative is false."

Belgian deputy prime minister (who is also the foreign minister) confirms today in a rebuke of the Israeli foreign minister that the Kingdom of Belgium has suspended all consular services to Belgian citizens who have chosen to live in occupied Palestinian territory as settlers.

Read this sentence slowly: “Gov. Gavin Newsom, crypto executives and business leaders are ramping up efforts this week to stop the proposed wealth tax...” gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/u...

ra ra Raspoutine icon of Quebec cuisine

Curious as to whether or not AIPAC genuinely thinks this line of attack will work

Here's a photo of the late Robert Duvall wearing cue cards on his body so that co-star Marlon Brando could see his lines during the filming of The Godfather.

Pathetic. But, you know, good job Bari, i guess 🤪

Recent CBS News news: 1. Anderson Cooper leaves 60 Minutes after two decades 2. Stephen Colbert reveals network won’t let him air interview with Dem 3. Producer says politics dictating what airs 4. Owner’s bid for CNN parent back on the table. 5. Not firing Epstein pal.

Tapper has spent the better part of two and a half years legitimizing this kind of rhetoric with how he's used his cable television news slot but wants to act like Fine is now suddenly beyond the pale. Remember that Tapper *made up a quote* from Tlaib but has never said anything on CNN about Fine.

If you take my everyday ashkenazi magic classes, you find out why we need our multiple verb shadings for covering in spit. Saliva is one of our most powerful magical substances! 😏💦💦💦

Tonight’s dumb napkin cartoon…

Everything else is commentary

Worth thinking about how John Fetterman's position polls at 5% among Democratic primary voters and AOC's polls at 75%

If you are wondering what words the all-male Congress found so "blasphemous" that they felt compelled to literally scrape them off the monument, they were: ''Woman, first denied a soul, then called mindless, now arisen, declared herself an entity to be reckoned.''

This is just open, unabashed white nationalist rhetoric at this point.

Americans are campaigning for European right wing Russian supporters. Russian media is loving every minute.

A child dying of cancer spent her final days fighting to free her wrongfully detained father from ICE custody.   This comes just weeks after a mother from Maryland was denied the right to be at her son’s side as he died from cancer.   Not one dime for this cruelty. www.cbsnews.com/amp/chicago/...

*mötley crüe voice*:

Can’t believe we are still doing this

#fungifriends #mushrooms #mycology #nature #fungi #biology #photography Particularly gloopy Jelly Ears (Auricularia auricula-judae) last week.

My next book? 😆

#TheVictorianBookoftheDead #WinterOlympics #MilanoCortina Death and the Tobogganer, etching by Swain, 1862 wellcomecollection.org/works/kxghsvfb

What Peter Thiel Saw In Jeffrey Epstein "Both believed that civilization was collapsing and that democratic norms were failing. And both did their part to help bring about these apocalyptic fantasies." "Both men saw crypto as a weapon." www.thenation.com/article/soci...

hey cool man while you were deep in research or whatever you might want to catch up on some other stuff that has happened in the world in the past year

Leon Botstein, president of @bardcollege.bsky.social, has repeatedly made public statements about his relationship with the pedophile sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein that have turned out to be misleading, incomplete, or untrue. I'm going to make a thread to compile them all here.

1000% 🎯

I think it’s bad that the major American Jewish organizations that claim to speak for the community have decided that college student protesters are a bigger danger to Jews than the actual US government supporting a German far-right that wants to stop Holocaust remembrance.

This message from the US State Department about "not wanting allies to be shackled by guilt and shame" is a pretty direct call-out to the German far-right argument that Germany has spent too long feeling guilty about the Holocaust, and needs to move on and stop doing remembrance.

This post quite clearly shows the links between the European far-right’s efforts to erase complicity in the Holocaust, and the American right’s efforts to erase the history of slavery and Jim Crow. Which is part of why supporting DEI in the US should be seen as a Jewish issue.

In case you were wondering what one of the major lines of attack on AOC will be in 2028, it won't be about Taiwan or populism but about her belief that Israel isn't entitled to free and unlimited military assistance from the US

One of the morals of the Epstein story is that when governments stop funding research, foreign aid, and the arts, the void is filled with billionaires who use nonprofits as vehicles for political intrigue.

had a very respectful chat about theology tonight

Many people have said this before, but this is the sort of thing that in the ancient world would have gotten you cursed by the gods for five generations

The story of our current political moment will be written in retrospect as one of elites creating alternative information environments for themselves and then freaking out because of them. It’s like telling exaggerated ghost stories at a sleepover and then everyone not sleeping.

A lot of people have convinced themselves that the most cosmopolitan liberal-socialist ever elected to prominent office in the history of the United States is a raging Hitlerite because he refuses to recognize the "right" of another country to define itself first and foremost by ethnic citizenship.

Happy Valentine’s Day! 💕 Based on a painting of Yael by Artemisia Gentileschi

Happy Birthday to Frederick Douglass who didn’t know his birthday because he was born into slavery so he chose February 14 as his birthday.

Yes it’s Valentine’s Day. But it’s also the chosen birthday of Frederick Douglass who was born in 1818 on a plantation in Talbot County, Maryland. He escaped from slavery & rose to become the most eloquent and forceful voice for the abolition of slavery & for Black voting rights in the U.S.

From the Valentine's archive: www.tabletmag.com/sections/com...

I'm working on a project featuring a lot of mushroom imagery (can't say anything more than that for the moment) and that work is bringing new layers to my encounters with fungi. Bluesky is really good with serving up tons of wonderful mushroom pics.

It's not a new observation at this point but that wild Noem/Lewandowski story in WSJ really brings home the extent to which all the Trump 2 cabinet-level goblins see their jobs as flying private, doing short-form video, and screaming at underlings. They all hate each other and none of them can read.

Another example of how Epstein indulged his targets' fantasies even when they weren't sexual. He paid to put on a performance of a play about the exploits of his friends Rod-Larsen and Mona Juul during the Oslo Accords.