My new litmus test is that any Democrat who lectures the party on how they should talk to “ordinary people” is unbelievably full of shit and doesn’t deserve your attention or your vote.

One of the most significant but largely immeasurable consequences of the last decade of fascism in America is that it is a form of civil, moral, and spiritual rot that debases all of us. We are all made that much cruder, insecure, and therefore crueler despite our best aspirations and efforts.

I am going to make a bot that just posts this in all the "what's up with Gen X" discussions.

Don't sleep with your employees. Don't sleep with people when you have the power to fire them. Don't sleep with young idealistic people who could face longterm career damage if they say no and you don't like it. If you do any of that, I will never think you can be trusted with power. Ever.

“He has several sexual assault accusations against him, but maybe they’re not true.” “He has a Nazi tattoo and racist Reddit posts, but maybe he’s not that bad.” Not how you build a passionate voter base. We Democrats need to do better than this shit.

When Swalwell says, “I made mistakes in my marriage in recent years”, he is admitting that he repeatedly had sex with subordinates in his campaigns/office. He is asking us to believe that they were consensual, as if that would be full exoneration. A boss like that should be fired, not promoted.

After Trump becomes the world's greatest mass murderer in history, I'm really excited to find out who was responsible: the liberals or the left. The suspense is killing me. We should get started on that debate now.

People in wheelchairs surrounded and barricaded two city buses over the course of two days, demanding wheelchair lifts and chanting, "We will ride."

Having an administration that’s very overtly in favor of performative war crimes is bad. But let’s not pretend this isn’t simply a reflection of American culture. Plenty of Americans reject the concept of war crimes and are enthusiastic about doing ANYTHING to enemies.

Ushering in the end of humanity because a bunch of “alpha” white men are too scared to stand up to a demented old man who’s caked in makeup.

Man, when I said Trump was hellbent on creating stagflation, I didn't expect him to engineer a global oil supply shock. This guy is better at destroying the USA than I thought.

Food policing poor families isn't a win for nutrition--it's a loss for dignity and joy. As Brea Perry and I find in our research (see reply), low-income parents buy food treats for their kids because they want their kids to feel happy and normal--and they can't afford to do so in bigger ways.

I’ve already seen people call the attack on Jewish ambulances a “false flag”, saying every Jew should personally come out and condemn Netanyahu if they don’t want consequences, that the ambulances only serve a “Jewish area” that is a segregated “mini Israel”, posting memes etc. Stop!

Making the Strait of Hormuz safe for energy shipments would be a remarkable accomplishment, one that the world has never seen since the beginning of the month.

If you’re now fighting to restore the status quo ante bellum in a war you began, you lost the war

Behold the insanity of today's world.

It is quite telling that since the horrific story of Cesar Chavez re: sexual abuse broke earlier this week and calls to change the names of schools and other public spaces named in his honor, not one conservative voice has stepped forward to object that this would be tantamount to erasing history.

so what has the pentagon failed at? DRONES. we're cracking off patriots at fucking shaheds? after FOUR YEARS of the war in ukraine? profound institutional sclerosis. "how do we not get our bases blown up by drones" is the kind of tactical problem military professionals ought to have been solving

this kinda thing sounds clever but idk I would worry more that he’s an actual Nazi

I wasn't sure I was ready to get up, so I checked my phone, ‘glanced’ at the news, and decided I'd prefer to return to the nightmare when I sleep than to the nightmare when I wake.

I get yelled at for saying this but for many hundreds of years people went to university not to get diplomas or be employable but because immersion in the humanities was considered foundational to a good life, and school must return to its original purpose: the joy of learning.

imagine what's it's like having the name gandalf. always the only little boy named gandalf, people looking at you funny, you feel like no one knows what it's like to be you. then you discover someone else named gandalf but it's always the same weird old guy with white hair.

It's as if Trump is doing everything possible to recreate stagflation. And we haven't yet seen most of the damage done last year. It's really quite remarkable that Trump is seemingly going down a checklist of "how to ruin the US". Politically, legally, economically, culturally. Toast.

Today's word, it's a good one, is: eigengrau Close your eyes and say it to yourself: 'eigengrau'.

Genuinely the most recent.

Has anyone done a version of Dante's visit to Hell, except that somewhere near the center, they encounter John of Patmos laughing wildly while he pulls his eyeballs from his eye sockets, forever, over and over, forever, from his eye sockets? While laughing? That seems right, somehow.

Okay: who's responsible for the fact that it is only literally just now that I learned of the Law of Jante, even though it explains, like, everything about my dad's family? Anyone? Who did it? Speak up. Well, crap.

Has anyone done a version of Dante's visit to Hell, except that somewhere near the center, they encounter John of Patmos laughing wildly while he pulls his eyeballs from his eye sockets, forever, over and over, forever, from his eye sockets? While laughing? That seems right, somehow.

Guy saying all this to you over voice chat on Fortnite

OVERHEAD ON THE SUBWAY: ‘I'm an irony machine, you're an associating machine: let's make beautiful music together and burn the fucking world to the ground.’

Funny thing: Trump is, all on his lonesome, a walking, talking advertisement for the nuclear armament of, well, everyone. (Nukes are, apparently, the only real deterrent to imperial force.) Not Great, Not Safe, and Not Healthy.

Taking another pass at this joke. www.kmellis.com/nightmoves/

In 1998, I took a position managing an ISP customer support staff and I was a good way into things before I realized they weren't doing any form of ticketing whatsoever. 🧵

Had an idea the other day. www.kmellis.com/swarm.html

engagement bait on X: boobs engagement bait on BlueSky: internecine politics

I'm eagerly awaiting a story told only in the form of someone adding to their blocklist.

What people think mattered: The Fairness Doctrine What actually mattered: The 1996 telecom act removing restrictions on cross-ownership

P-Funk youtu.be/ZyJzylk8d_M?...

There are far, far more Clowny Clown Clown videos on YouTube than I was expecting.

people less informed than me: foolish idiots people more informed than me: obsessive weirdos

Hello! I see you've decided to conflate a human being being an evil fascist apologist committing crimes and perpetuating fraud with (checks notes) being a woman. Perhaps you would like to not do this.

Yesterday, I saw this and my first reaction to some comments was that the Europeans were being a bit precious about privacy. But after reading the 354th American being obtuse, ignorant, and arrogant while dismissing these concerns, I have a little more insight into why we're assholes.

“In tonight's top story, President Trump said that he 'hates' mashed peas and 'needs to go to the bathroom'.”

To reject the US as a fundamentally American country with a deep shared history and commonality with the rest of the Americas, including that Spanish has long been our de facto national second language, is on a deep level anti-American. It's hating actual American culture and history and tradition.

The only things MAGA opposes about HBCUs are history, Black people, and colleges and universities.

and coming up next at the national prayer breakfast we have this golden calf that we’re all worshiping now, lets get those hands in the air for the golden calf everybody

NSF NRAO Selects New Mexico Firm to Design Next Generation Learning Center at the NSF Very Large Array The NRAO has selected NM–based MODULUS as the architectural firm for the Next Generation Learning Center (ngLC), a new STEM education facility. #Astronomy #RadioAstronomy #VeryLargeArray #ngLC