Regardless of shooter ideology (though shooters often share a stated ideology that gets overlooked by initial reporting), mass shootings have an ideological form, which is that agency belongs to those willing to do violence, that the dead deserve their fates, that this is the point of gun power.

Stop calling them Plantations or 'wedding venues' and start calling them what they actually were: forced labor farms no different in kind or brutality than Dachau or Buchenwald. Ferocious evils occurred in these places. Call things by their proper names. And when these places burn, let them burn.

Dr. Toni Morrison diagnosing the disease. I really miss her living voice and am so grateful that she left behind such a volume of novels, stories, essays, and interviews for us to follow.

You may be fearing your 401k is no longer enough for you to retire. But with all the cuts to NIH and Medicare you also won't live as long. So the policies are integrated.

It seems almost unavoidable at this point that we are headed for a deep, deep recession. Just based on 200K+ federal firings & pullback of contracts, the March employment report (to be released April 4) seems certain to show bigger job losses than any month ever outside of a few in 2008-9 and 2020.

New — The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) was told this week by DOJ that they'd lose their funding if the org didn't remove any mentions of LGBTQIA+ issues from their public materials, I've learned. Staff were told they need to deadname trans kids in their reports to comply.

The world's richest man is taking food and medicine from the world's poorest children www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/o...

There appear to be at least three separately operating heel factions breaking things within the government in wholly different ways right now. There's the Miller-headed immigration one, the DOGE/Elon one, and a Project 2025 OMB one. This dynamic hasn't showed up in mainstream reporting at all.

President inflicts 25% tax on US consumers who buy coffee and cut flowers.

THIS.

People in CancerLand also are reporting that ongoing scheduled cancer trial treatments at NCI suddenly have been canceled, leaving desperately ill people with no alternatives. People will die from this, and years of human trial data will be ruined from this.

Two things I’m hearing nothing about today: Leonard Peltier and Palestinian prisoners reunited with their families.

Great point. Akamai and Oracle are betraying in futures here, and banking on Trump’s extralegal capacity. Obeying in advance, in so many words.

That’s a wrap.

in a world of Donald Trumps, be a Jimmy Carter

As of yesterday booksellers at The Strand are on strike. Solidarity with them. Don’t cross the picket line, even virtually.

It’s time to start paying attention to the end of the Ba’athist regime in Syria. Assad apparently has fled. Rebels are moving into Damascus, the prison gates have opened, and the Syrian military is reported to have stood down and gone home.

I see what he did there.

The Nazis were HUGE on pseudoscience. And they definitely leaned into charlatans and randos that had no business in politics or power positions. The specifics differ slightly but it’s the same playbook. This is an interesting interview that covers some of it. science.thewire.in/society/hist...

Starter Pack of follows from elections/polls/data twitter. an attempt to reproduce the "Numbers Peeps" list I curate at Twitter. go.bsky.app/UN6Atu7

What I love about this Officially Verified Bluesky Press Lists is it includes a real mix of people at major legacy media outlets, independent organizations, and freelancers. We can promote a diverse media when billionaires don't control what you see. Let's keep it growing! go.bsky.app/U9juDW4

Our paper quantifying the negative effects of urban freeways on local neighborhood quality of life appears in the September issue of REStat. doi.org/10.1162/rest...

Holy crap this is an astounding piece of historical research Will post ungated link later today unless someone beats me to it www.nber.org/system/files...

Discussing Bluesky migration in terms of liberal flight misses the simple fact that most people use social media for fun not influence and this platform, unlike X and cruddified Facebook, doesn’t feel like you’re wading through shit to reach your friends. It’s not that deep.