Does it count as a white Christmas if the (shady) back yard has snow cover, but the (sunny) front yard is bare?

As a Jew, it’s fun watching the administration post Christian nationalist messages while also saying they are doing everything they can to curb antisemitism.

A small (personal) example of this book’s intellectual dishonesty: My father-in-law is reading In Covid’s Wake, and excitedly told me he found a passage where I’m quoted. The quote in question is me saying the FBI worked to censor speech on social media. Huh? When did I say that?!

Wow. Genuinely shocked, and a hugely consequential decision. Importantly, this is a case where @martylederman.bsky.social's amicus brief appears to have made a MAJOR impact. Before he wrote it, courts were sidestepping the "regular forces" issue entirely. And that's what the Trump admin lost on.

Trump has revoked legal status for at least 1.6 million immigrants over the past year by cancelling programs like TPS and student visas. Remember: these are people who entered the country legally. Trump never cared about “legal immigration" — just inflicting cruelty.

For the last few months, I've been working on a story about January's crash near Washington, D.C. What I learned was that it was simply an accident waiting to happen. Special Report: The night everything at DCA finally went wrong (via @theaircurrent.com) theaircurrent.com/aviation-saf...

if tumblr dies I need this video to make it's seasonal rotation here instead just in case, Happy holidays 🎄

Unbelievable. This would be a terrible blow to American science, writ large. It would decimate not only climate research, but also the kind of weather, wildfire, and disaster research that has underpinned half a century of progress in prediction, early warning, and increased resilience.

The malicious compliance aspect of this is that students can apparently now submit a complaint against every professor in the university and shut the whole place down indefinitely.

Also, a reminder that the last time that justices appointed by Democratic presents were a majority of the US Supreme Court was May 14, 1969, the moment before Abe Fortas resigned, which was two months before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.

This. This was the formative event of my generation & our entire politics in 🇺🇸. The structural break after which we were no longer a full democracy, when 5 Wizards In Robes decided they were a super-legislature & counting all the actual votes didn’t matter. The rest has been 25 years of commentary.

So: every day, in one of the most common adult activities, we tell people that the law is optional and they don’t have to follow it if it inconveniences them. Completely coincidentally, after doing the above for decades, we have an entire party dedicated to the notion that the law is optional.

It’s illegal to go 26 in a 25 We don’t enforce until you go 36 in a 25 Voila, we’ve created a situation where every car driver thinks just a little bit of illegalit is fine! Who doesn’t commit a little bit of light illegality every day.

It starts with knowing the truth. Don’t allow yourselves to be gaslit into believing this is a real question.

I do not believe this is true. There is just too much history, and too much law, against it. I do not rule it out entirely. But it’s very unlikely. If they were to rule in his favor, it would be a level of infamy as terrible as Dred Scott and would tear the country apart for generations.

In @bloomberg.com, I argued that traffic lights are a street safety solution that’s hiding in plain sight At minimal cost, cities can adjust them to slow speeders, protect pedestrians, and avoid dangerous turns. Pushback from drivers is rare; they may not even notice.

Simply amazing that the Supreme Court declared an end to legal race discrimination in the affirmative action case two years ago and now allows overt racism in both immigration arrests and redistricting. Using race to help minorities? Bad. Using it to discriminate against them? Very, very good.

this really isn’t an exaggeration

The foreign-born fraction of the US population was 15% in 1890, and in 1910. America thrived. That fraction is 16% now. The difference is that in 1890/1910, >96% of immigrants were from Europe or Canada. Today that's less than 10%. It's best to be honest about one one is actually afraid of.

"Never spread the lie in the headline" should be a hard rule of 21st century journalism. Research shows that repeating lies helps to spread them, and people read headlines more than they read stories.

Introduce yourself with 5 animals you’ve seen or heard in the wild: Bobcat Takahē Barred Owl Yellow-bellied marmot Marbled godwit

In case you’re wondering why Pete Hegseth is freaking out about a congressional video reminding the military not to participate in illegal orders:

If you want to know why Hegseth is panicking about reminders that there is accountably for giving or carrying out illegal orders, it’s likely because he knows he has given illegal orders to murder people.

So this happened in Oslo yesterday. Four articulated buses got stuck in a roundabout.

Probably not the most dangerous thing for Turkeys to do today, but crossing Mass Ave in front of the 96 bus (at Waterhouse St) probably isn't the best move.

The US 28 point plan and the EU 24 point plan have in common that neither was properly edited for idiomatic English usage by a native English speaker.

Insane but true fact: making US roads as safe as Canadian, Australian, or European roads would save more lives than eliminating murder from the US.

No, they can’t, yes, they are doing it anyway.

John Roberts once promised to be like an umpire. He charmed both senators and the media, and for 20 years, was portrayed as a moderate institutionalist. But today, it's become clear that the promise was a lie. We are watching a rigged game, and Roberts set it up.

Trump appointed Harmeet Dhillon to the Justice Department so she could own the libs and sue DEI out of existence. But she is a bad lawyer! And her utter incompetence is the main reason why a conservative Trump judge just struck down the racist Texas gerrymander. slate.com/news-and-pol...

this would have been a month-long scandal in 2011

These is a troubling quote because this is not how it’s supposed to work. Fire safety rules are supposed to balance cost and benefit, not just push for any possible risk reduction no matter the cost.

This is so so disturbing. Trump is now pardoning January 6th rioters for unrelated crimes, just to reward them for their violence to keep him in power. The Republican Party is in the full time business of endorsing and incentivizing political violence. So scary.

The judge who oversaw the initial challenge to Trump’s attempt to use the Alien Enemies Act to quickly remove people from the country will soon have the authority to continue any contempt proceedings over whether the admin violated his first orders in the case on March 15. I explain:

Update on the wild #polio discovery in Germany: The virus was found in wastewater in Hamburg. @rki.de, the German public health agency, says the virus sequence is very similar to some isolated in Afghanistan, so the likely source was an infected human. (page 10 here: www.rki.de/DE/Aktuelles...)

Aurora Forecast Update for 2025-11-12T02:04:01Z Additional Details Here.

A Sharon Begley byline, almost 5 years after her death. Upon hearing the news James Watson had died, a STAT reporter said in our Slack, "I wish I could read what Sharon would have written." Incredible news: Sharon in fact did pre-write a Watson obit. And it is masterful and excoriating. 🧪🧬🧫

Trying to figure out what #SCOTUS just did with #SNAP, and why Justice Jackson temporarily froze the district court's ruling? Via "One First," me on what's going on—and why I think Jackson's move was savvy, notwithstanding the awful circumstances that forced it: www.stevevladeck.com/p/190-snap-wtf

people hate hearing this but it's 100% true, creating a huge pay gap between political leaders, their staffs, and other elites is a recipe for corruption. of course the flip side of that is taxes on the rich should be jacked way the hell up

CARTOON OF THE DAY (From @mluckovichajc)

SNAP has existed for 60 years. Benefits have gone out every single month over those six decades, including during government shutdowns. Until now. Make no mistake: The money is available to fund SNAP during this shutdown. Trump is making a choice to withhold it. Don’t forget this.

The irony is that a century ago, the exact same kind of religious bigotry that Cuomo’s embraced down the stretch — we can’t elect someone from that faith or they’ll impose it on all of us! — was aimed squarely at Catholics like Cuomo.

“we will not comply with court orders demanding we spend the money congress has allocated to feed the hungry” is quite the message when you’re trying to get congress to come back and allocate money

This may be the most insane of these videos I’ve ever seen. There is no other way to describe what happened here other than that they hit a law-abiding citizen’s car and then arrested her because they were frustrated by other people and she was Hispanic.

Holy smokes www.msnbc.com/msnbc/news/t...

Following Cheney's death, the oldest members of the set of current/former US presidents/VPs are Biden and Trump. The others are all younger: G. W. Bush, Clinton, Quayle, Gore, Pence, Obama, Harris, and Vance (in that order by age).

China, but with every province name translated literally

So Dems just need to Make More City. And luckily, they have the power to do that! They govern almost all the cities, so they can pass policies to infill, build up, add transit, add multi-modal transportation, etc. etc. Where they govern states, they can pass state-level laws to upzone everywhere.

So, ok, that's the premise: denser areas vote bluer, less dense areas vote redder. And it's pretty much a linear, one-to-one correlation: denser = bluer. All right, so, we don't know much about how to make more Dems, but we know this: more dense areas, more Dems.