Attention, my Washington peeps!

When we’re in the mysterious room.

half of all tech news lately is some variation of "the computer company has discontinued their well known product, the computer"

To keep people up to date: six people who exercised their first amendment rights had their lives overturned and were forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorneys fees because of clear prosecutorial misconduct.

This is right. The government didn’t “settle” this case. Trump brought a frivolous case and voluntarily withdrew it, and then the Justice Department said they’d agreed to set up this insane slush fund for him. It has no legal connection to the case, and there’s no legal authorization for it at all.

what do you call it when the president steals an unfathomable amount of wealth from the treasury and then declares it illegal to investigate him

This is insane. The terms of DOJ's slush fund appear to transfer control of $1.8 billion beyond US government entirely. Unless I'm misreading this, that would circumvent Congress *entirely* and put the money outside of *any* constitutional and/or legal constraints ofany kind. Straight up theft.

It is pretty crazy that this one is now satirical for how soon it predicts light rail will come to Ballard, not for how long it will take: bsky.app/profile/then...

“.. We spotted nine Polymarket accounts .. who made collectively $2.4 million betting almost exclusively on U.S. Military operations. .. “.. Now, here is the crazy part. 98% win rates.” @mediaite.com www.mediaite.com/media/news/6...

I’m a broken record, but it’s facially insane that the SCOTUS’s position is that the interest of a political party—an entity with no special constitutional protection—in gerrymandering is more important than black people’s right to vote, which we have several constitutional amendments addressing

Shaming the rich actually worked for once. Let’s keep that pressure on

What an insane thing to say about the profession you claim to work in. I wonder what they'd said if someone said "Leadership doesn't mean leaders" when it comes to running the paper. I can't wait to see what it's like to find out that "Readership doesn't mean having readers" #Journalism #AI

and this little diddy, which I created to explain how I personally view my domestic political priorities

what makes the SCOTUS Gang of Six acting as an unaccountable super-legislature especially intolerable is that they are not just setting up unfavorable rules, they are playing Calvinball where they selectively apply the rules case-by-case exclusively to help Republicans. A judicial dictatorship

Yes. The text of the 14th and 15th Amendments explicitly gives the power to decide how to enforce these amendments to Congress. The Civil Rights Movement was an attempt to enforce the Reconstruction amendments. By undoing the work of the movement, you are undoing the results of the Civil War.

just overheard a 4th grader telling her friend, "if you ever need to distract some boys, literally just draw an X in the dirt. they'll stop to dig it up, they can't help it" which is the only gender metric I'll be using, moving forward

i have been whining about platner for about five months now, and intend to continue whining about him, but now that we are both whining about the same thing, should i expect the slightest hint of introspection from the people whose candidates i have dutifully punched the button for for twenty years?

“As if it’s not enough that she’s riding high in her personal electric limo for herself and her Transit Riders Union posse, she’s also demanding it have its own dedicated lane of traffic painted red with the blood of her sworn enemies.”

This is a cold civil war. There is no more territory to expand as a release valve, there’s no Kansas-Nebraska Acts and more Indians to force onto reservations; the only frontiers are inward and slave power is forcing its hand to tilt the scales while it still can.

As a US taxpayer, I fear I am probably complicit in what is by far the largest Malign Foreign Talent Recruitment Program in human history.

It's not hyperbole in the least to say Musk purchased a six-month shadow presidency for $280 million and used the power of that shadow presidency to 1. Steal the government’s data, 2. Permanently damage the state’s ability to regulate his businesses, and 3, kill non-white people.

Yes, I think the enormity of Elon Musk racking up Pol-Pot levels of mass killing is so hideous to contemplate that many people just….aren’t.

the fascists have been lying, cheating and changing the rules to their benefit for years. turnabout isn't just fair play, it's the only way to maintain some semblance of a civil society.

Gondorians hearing Isildur’s heir has returned:

Almost the entire Western United States is averaging more than 5°F warmer than the most recent 1991-2020 climate baseline so far in 2026, which is truly remarkable. Off the color scale here! Graphic from wrcc.dri.edu/my/

There is a certain, defined point of wealth at which due to compound interest it becomes basically mathematically impossible to actually lose money. Mackenzie Scott is proof that this amount of wealth is far below $38 billion. Elon is worth $811 billion, 21x more. Bezos, $257 billion, ~7x more

Beyond the masked thugs and goons to seize people, these spaces were built by contracted firms and workers, are staffed by people, serviced by utilities, catering/food delivery outfits, etc. And prosecution for these civil and human rights abuses needs to go after the whole system.

It's the 7th month of the US bombing random ships in Latin American waters they claim are drug smugglers (reminder that two survivors who were rescued were repatriated, not charged), and the death toll is 150+, and it barely gets discussed.

The woman being murdered in the video Trump posted was an immigrant. Her name was Nilufar Yasmin. She was from Bangladesh. Trump is weaponizing her death against communities like hers. Outstanding reporting from @pabloreports.bsky.social for Migrant Insider. migrantinsider.com/p/her-name-w...

Ten years ago today, in April 2016, the Boston Globe printed a satirical front page imagining a future Trump administration. The page was called "alarmist," "hyperbolic," "dystopian." But we’ve put up with so much since then it now looks like . . . a slow Thursday?

There’s a reason why we treat threats of violence as antisocial behavior, even if they’re not carried out. If someone threatens to kill me, that can do harm even if they never pull a weapon. And the same goes for the man who threatened genocide this morning. Impeach and remove him now.

just to be clear, everyone, when 8 pm EDT comes and goes, regardless of what does or does not happen, the president still threatened genocide and war crimes and we should still impeach, arrest, and try him

Given Trump’s Easter threats to carry out new war crimes in Iran, we should think one or two steps ahead about a coup attempt connected to the war. And then deter it. (1/17)

It is historically normal for terrorists to go after the moderates who might dampen a conflict.

not to downplay the severity of what's cominb but the entire fall campaign of just executing boats full of civilians in the caribbean was a screaming klaxon that illegality of the order is no obstacle for Hegseth's Department of Warcrimes

This is so, so well-articulated.

It's not just Flock, Axon (maker of tasers and police body cams) are also capitalist bastards turning your town into a total surveillance nightmare state.

"...one prominent western company, Axon — based in Arizona — is at the forefront of law enforcement’s 'AI era,' and is offering police departments financial incentives to get on board." Axon was once Taser International. Now, it's making body cams with integrated AI...

Happy Trans Day of Visibility. I know trans people and I know fascists who are making life difficult for trans people. The trans people are pretty cool and I'm glad I know them. The fascists can go fall down a deep dark hole.

This. The idea that an education must be exclusive in order to be good is one of the more destructive--destructive to the project of education itself--scams out there.

“No book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.” - George Orwell

This feels weird. A lot of reporting is sounding very much like "how long will this take to get back to normal" when there's no sign in the short term that normality will return at all It's like 2020 Covid reporting

This is what Idi Amin’s government did to Ugandan Asians applying for passports in the period preceding the expulsion. Amin then argued that they deserved to be expelled because so few had taken up Ugandan citizenship.

Under-appreciated report even by its own publication that hasn't posted it here: "9 of the 12 members of Axon’s ethics board resigned in 2022 after the company announced plans to develop armed drones for its clients. Of those that didn’t resign, one was former Seattle police chief Cameron Best."

"How does one hate a country, or love one?" Ursula Le Guin always out there expressing my exact feelings in trying times.

If your city is suspending or cancelling #Flock, remember that "switching to another #ALPR vendor" is NOT the solution. Dragnet bulk data collection is the core problem. #Flock is just one particularly egregious example. Mass #surveillance does not make any of us safer! 🚫

I'm old enough to remember that George W. Bush is the reason DHS and ICE and several of the secret warrant structures exist, that Obama did not fulfill his mandate of pulling back on abuses of executive power/murdering people in the Middle East, and to know there is a straight line from then to now