DEPLOY THE BOY

I used to work at Trader Joe's during holiday rushes, to stay sane, I played a game to see how many customers in a row I could get to start bagging their own groceries while I was ringing up by cheerfully and enthusiastically thanking the person before them in line for doing so. Personal best: 22

I had to go to Costco for an eye exam today and I had an item to return. I put the item on top of my purse last night so I would not forget it. And somehow. Here I am eating a Costco hot dog in my truck remembering I had an item to return and wondering how the fuck I left it at home.

A big budget biopic about Stagecoach Mary. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Fi...

Fuck the economy. People are dying in the DRC right now to mine the minerals for smartphones. Buy only when you need to and buy used. No one is paying you enough for you to give a damn about improving your productivity by a couple minutes a day. Certainly not at the cost of so many lives.

Movie pitch: elderly woman becomes so adept at evading her adult children's attempts to monitor her movements that she realizes she could evade police surveillance as well. Her social security income is about to get a boost from her new retirement hobby: crime.

tech bro: i have made Artificial General Intelligence programmer: you fucked up a perfectly good calculator is what you did. look at it. it's got anxiety

No notes. A perfect move, flawless.

We bought the puppy a bathrobe for after her baths and I have never made a better purchase.

You have to keep giving money to avoid collapse and if there’s collapse you have to give more money. It’s called the free market.

Watching a report on Target missing earnings calls and what they're doing about it. They're investing $5B - billion with a b - into prettifying their stores and stocking 20,000 new products. Nothing about the DEI boycott or affordability. Absolutely wild behavior.

Listen. In college, I could not afford a mattress and I did sleep on a stack of blankets on the floor for a year and it was fine because my bones were 19 years old and resilient. However. I would never have expected this to fly with a partner. And I UNDERSTOOD ALL OF IT NEEDED TO BE WASHED JFC

Our pup keeps trying to hump us now that she's in her "teen" era, so we decided to get her a big stuffed animal to try to redirect the behavior. It's a weird moment when you realize you're effectively buying a sex toy for a dog. Anyway here's the angry t rex we'll be subjecting to her. Sorry bud.

I need to start wearing contacts regularly because of the amount of physical stuff I'm doing and it just .... I've done it before, it gets to be fine, but I am so tired of having to change EVERYTHING so that I can change one big thing in my life.

The benefits were clear. They never needed explaining. No one involved with Square lied to the public, claiming the dongle/mobile POS could do things it couldn't do. And it worked out pretty well.

I think sometimes about the advent of Square's POS dongle. (This was before tap-to-pay.) Nobody had to tell anyone they had no choice, this was the new normal, get used to it. Nobody needed persuading this was THE FUTURE. The only complaints I remember were about being waitlisted for one.

I have finally figured out what tickles me so much about Mamdani rolling a 32 on a charisma check against Trump and it's that I can practically HEAR Brennan Lee Mulligan making a villain out of it. Not the moment, but the concept of a bad dude totally susceptible to any star power he encounters.

MAMDANI: And I just think that there are barriers, barricades, to helping Americans that we can break down TRUMP: Uh huh MAMDANI: And breaking down barriers? Reminds me of a certain Broadway show *smiling widely* where they worked together to break a barricade? TRUMP: *sitting bolt upright* Phantom

Mamdani just played Trump without sacrificing immigrants, Muslims, workers, or the LGBTQ. Trump did his transactional charm offensive, Mamdani countered without compromising. He won big and this is the man the Democratic Establishment still won't embrace. What more do people need to see?

... oh no. On the one hand, I hate AI. On the other hand, how can I respect the opinion of a man WHO PASSED ON MUPPET KNIVES OUT???

I closed social media for like three hours and the Pope threw a rave, MTG resigned, and Trump endorsed Mamdani before Chuck Schumer did? Now accepting bribes to close social media for all of next week

No one should have to do any work on a grey day. By law.

Wheatpasted outside the Metro in #OccupiedDC

Possible that Bezos is in the files but remember that WaPo is run by an English guy now and the English are committed to the principle that there should be a class of rich people who simply cannot be held to account by their inferiors.

evergreen

An Oregon pilot program giving cash to homeless youths sees a staggering reduction in homelessness. The program gave participants $1,000 cash payments each month for two years, and at the end of the project's first phase, 91% of participants reported being in stable housing.

They lied about it. All of it. A thug cop shot an unarmed woman five times without justification, boasted about it to his colleagues, and then this administration tried cover it all up by arresting her and charging her with felonies.

Hey, I know things are tight, but if you have it, especially if you cancelled a sub to NYT or WaPo, please consider supporting independent journalism like Bolts with that extra cash 💜 We can build the media we deserve.

I just found out that my parents, who managed to buy a house in the Bay Area in 1999 for a mere $340,000, still owe $500,000 on it. I ... don't even know how to feel. Certainly a bit cranky at the lectures I have received from my mother over the years about responsible money management.

I'd like to add that REBUILD is currently connecting people of color who have been detained by ICE/DHS to FREE counseling/therapy. Please pass along the word: www.darknessrisingproject.org/help-me-find...

Private equity is looting our malls, doctors' offices, and nursing homes. Heck, you name it, and private equity has probably already bought it. Their scheme spares no one. I’m fighting to stop it.

Mood.

this is basically the most effective thing you as an individual can do to fuck with ICE and good on this dude for dedicating his retirement to fucking with them

Toni Morrison on US-style racism and fascism

I finally got up the will to go try a class at my community center and found the instructor so deeply annoying that I left halfway through. At least I went.

I am noticeably happier when I spend my days doing things instead of dissociating. However, I am then fully aware of how neglected and therefore exhausted my middle-aged body is. Clearly these two options are equally rife with downsides, says my brain.

In celebration of the 10th anniversary of WeRateDogs, let us remember one of the best Twitter exchanges of all time.

I need a shower before bed but then I will be cold and wet with damp hair and I do not want to.

What if they don't redact anything and instead add a bunch of AI-generated emails that say things like "lol of course all the times I talked about Trump I was just jokes, we all know that Trump was code for Hilary Clinton, actually. What japes we have!"

One of the more coherent breakdowns of what happened today with the Epstein bill, what's in it, and what can be done if the DOJ tries some chicanery with redactions.

Dems inexplicably cave on passing the budget with no ACA protection. Republicans inexplicably cave on releasing the Epstein files. Within, what, a week of each other? Look I don't want to give these motherfuckers too much credit but is it insane to think this may have been tit for tat?

Forget your hypocrisy YOU PASSED ON MUPPET KNIVES OUT????

I feel everyone is right to be skeptical of this sudden capitulation but also So far no one has put forward a theory for why they're suddenly on board that they couldn't have done before shutting the government down. Like, okay, maybe they redacted stuff? They could have done that in January.

I'm seeing people wonder why ICE is going after Charlotte. ICE has been at war with Charlotte's sheriff ever since he won in 2018. We'd covered this at Bolts back in the day; this quote is from that sheriff:

I can lie readily when I do not care if the person I am lying to perceives me accurately. Lying is just masking, saying what the person wants to hear. I am very uncomfortable lying when I do care how this person perceives me. It makes me feel like I am changing reality and I can't go back.

Some news: tomorrow at 9am, Ted Koppel + CBS Sunday Morning will air a two-part story on the devastating surge of full-time workers being pushed into homelessness. I'll be interviewed along with two families from There Is No Place for Us. It would mean a lot if you'd watch and help spread the word.

It was announced on October 16, 2025 that VIBE was "joining forces" with Rolling Stone. As a result, the majority of VIBE employees were laid off. If you have the means to give, this team could use the support! www.gofundme.com/f/support-vi...

Yeah so this is just the spiritual medium scam repackaged. "Sure sure gimme your money and I'll summon the spirit of your dead loved one."

This sounds awesome, feeling excellent about my new career choice.

At the same time the NY Times was hyping Hillary Clinton's emails, it had a reporter with emails from Jeffrey Epstein that were highly damaging to Trump. The more NYT apologists try to minimize this the clearer it becomes that they don't understand why much of the public doesn't trust legacy media.