the operative word in "dirtbag leftist" is "dirtbag"

I need to step aways from Here for a bit. All the nuance-free yelling bores into my brain until I'm spending sleepless nights shadowboxing with complete strangers who wouldn't know me if they stepped over me in the street. I dunno, man, this can't be good for any of us. I'll come back eventually.

A 3-year study published in Pediatrics examined newborns in Norway. It found a clear benefit for the baby when mom gets a COVID vaccination during pregnancy. n.pr/4uXOx6X

I thought I'd look up the ad, just to make sure this was an accurate characterization. And ohgod, it's worse than described. Like that's the entire 15s ad: Big Pharma is closing your hospital. This thing makes my fucking skin crawl. RFK Jr levels of incoherence + conspiracizing.

A lot of ppl on this site show way, way too much tolerance for insane conspiracy theorizing. It *inevitably* leads to just about every nasty bigotry you can think of. It *inevitably* bends politics towards authoritarian or totalitarian tyranny. It *inevitably* degrades every social institution.

If you go to Goodreads and look at the 1-star reviews of NIGHT, you will see this conspiracy theory echoed time and again. It shocked me when I was researching Holocaust narrative novels.

It's freeing how this administration goes to the ends of the earth to make clear that it is totally solipsistic. You do not really exist to it. It will do whatever it wants, however it wants, & no warning or shelter will save you. We may all sit on the porch, sip a beer, & watch the storm

Oh man, if I thought being put on every "turbolib" abusive list was bad these past few days, I'm going to be put on some 𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙨 if I skeet about watching the new HP series. Look, y'all can always count on me to vote and vote correctly, but I make no vows of moral purity, now or ever.

After missing its recruitment goals, the U.S. Army is now raising its max enlistment age to 42 and removing its waiver requirement for a single marijuana possession. Gosh... if only thousands of highly qualified trans soldiers hadn't been kicked out last year for no good reason.

I saw a post in r/crochet where the poster crocheted a HP blanket for a friend's daughter and was asking for opinions about the colors and people were giving her shit about it. No one made any money there except the yarn store, but some people love to have license to yell at Internet randos.

"If you like Harry Potter you're a bad person, because JK Rowling is a bigot" Folks, I don't know how to tell you this but do you have any idea how many great authors and artists were bigots? How much antisemitism pervades the Western canon? But Rowling is alive and this makes her money!

I am not saying that all you reflexive Dem-haters are mindless cogs in an ongoing GOP-Russian op designed to empower fascism. Occam’s razor is the one saying that.

Today’s Daily Cartoon, by Ivan Ehlers.

The inevitable result of this would be the creation of a permanent underclass of exploitable people, who grew up in this country, know no other, and have no education so are more vulnerable than ever before; a serf class for the rich and powerful.

BREAKING: Delta is suspending its special service desk for members of Congress until TSA is fully funded, per @ajc.com. Delta says members of Congress will now be treated like all other flying customers. www.ajc.com/politics/202...

Yep. Since November, hundreds of thousands of people have had their applications simply put on total pause; no movement whatsoever. Even though they paid thousands of dollars to the government to adjudicate their cases.

removing the real, faltering trump from the news and replacing him with an imaginary trump of their own invention. more he falters, the more the imaginary reasonable trump shows up in the stories and especially the headlines

hope you don’t need anything that comes in [checks notes] plastic packaging

Got tagged in some discourse on the hellsite and let me tell you: 2010s Jezebel, when Lindy worked there, was the preeminent place for beating the shit out of Republicans passing abortion restrictions and for warning that Roe was at risk. They did it alongside everything else

Plants. PLANTS!! The living things that famously need LIGHT to LIVE!!!! Did RFKJr not take 9th grade biology?!?!?!?

I am struggling to understand the extremely muted international response to this. whatever you think of the regime, it is not the regime that is suffering. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

given that there are thousands and thousands of memoirs about shitty monogamous relationships, I don't think we can judge polyamorous relationships by the half-dozen or so memoirs about shitty polyamorous relationships

honestly it makes sense that all the platnerheads want to talk about is whether he’s truly a Nazi in his heart of hearts because the other important discussion is whether he’s as dumb as a post

THERE IS NO OUTCOME AT ALL UNTIL THE VOTES ARE COUNTED

We need to do one last thing before we get rid of civil forfeiture.

As I get blocked by more and more people today who appear to be subscribed to insane Bsky blocklists, it strikes me as genuinely harmful that I can't view the lists *I am on* if the creator blocks me. @safety.bsky.app

Exactly 5 minutes BEFORE Trump announced a 5-day delay in bombing Iranian power plants, someone purchased $1.5 billion worth of S&P futures in a single trade. Someone also sold $192 million in oil futures. Trump and/or his cronies are engaging in market manipulation and insider trading.

There was ONE ATC in the tower at LGA during last night's crash. ONE ATC, at LGA!, dealing w ALL air and ground traffic, including a plane filling w a strange smell and no gate to return to. The Pentagon wants $200B for a vanity war, but our ATC towers are empty. Budgets are moral documents.

That "Sign of the Times" scene is going to get Sandra Hüller her Oscar nom, check back with me in 11 months to see if I'm right (I'm right) #ProjectHailMary

It's very Jewish, but my answer to most of these is, it depends! Death penalty can be wrong for a dicey case & right for Julius Streicher. Gambling can be wrong when it's slots & not a moral issue when it's a friendly NCAA bracket. MAID can be wrong when people aren't terminal & right when they are.

I think it's worth considering that some amount of dooming may be an excuse for executive function collapse as in "if the government has sent their jackbooted thugs to end democracy, I can't be expected to feel like I need to accomplish anything today" it's certainly been *my* attitude in the past

picture, thousan words, etc etc

My BFF's sister was born on a US base abroad to 2 citizen parents bc their dad served in Vietnam. Now apparently there's trouble with the feds because she "wasn't born in America"??? I told them to call her Congressman & scream bloody murder — I don't know any other feds who can be reasoned with!!

Apropos of nothing, the antinatalist line of “it’s immoral to bring children into this fallen world to suffer” is enraging horseshit, especially coming from comfortable Americans whose primary idea of suffering is vicarious through doomscrolling.

I now have a new way of introducing myself at parties, thank you

Very funny that one of the members of the Senate “Fight Club” whose whole thing is that they are cool and anti establishment and only they will REALLY fight Trump is endorsing Trump’s terrible new DHS appointment because he’s a buddy

If you spot ICE agents at an airport in the coming days, I want to hear from you. Reach me via Signal at marisakabas.04

This one has the great advantage of being true. This may be my first rude-but-not-slanderous list inclusion!

It is being reported on the ground in Cuba that everyone on a ventilator at this hospital died overnight. As a Cuban, I'm devastated.

You can do this thread (read the whole thing) for just about any small group in the US, and even some of the larger ones. This entire country is held together by liberalism. There was no other way to create this country in the first place. There is no America without it.

every once in a while you'll see people like Rufo encounter the monster they've created and it's always a bittersweet feeling this is what feeding leopards gets you

This is going to be the biggest, dumbest wave of antisemitism in the US since the 1920s Klan and just like back then a bunch of ppl who know better will help it along for edgelord clout and ample grifting opportunities.

Oh. So they want Obama’s nuclear deal minus Obama’s signature. Got it.

the same way eliminating car dealers, realtors and other parasitic right-wing industries needs to be a goal of the left for its own survival, eliminating chriorpactors, the supplements industry and other quack medicine needs to be on the agenda too

My grandfather did all kinds of jobs after getting home from WWII just trying to keep his family afloat. He was extremely serious about his kids and especially grandkids going to college, because "you can either make your living with your body or your mind, and your body gives out a lot faster."

Gonna use this one a lot

not to sound like an old-school conservative but it turns out Chesterton was fucking right about that fence Edmund Burke would have hated "move fast and break things" too

This is such a small thing about #ProjectHailMary, but around the midpoint, one of the main characters sings karaoke (being vague on purpose), and I'm pretty sure that the production didn't tune their voice. I could be wrong (I'd need to plot the pitches), but it sounded natural, which was great.

actually I am shading that entire category of practitioners