Would Trump really just pardon a potential criminal for the lolz? the answer is a resounding yes

Sounds likely. We are a long way from creating a healthier nation; but after Trump leaves for health reasons the GOP Senate may be less tractable.

Possible: 1. Midterms go badly*. Senate trial no longer inconceivable 2. Trump resigns for medical incapacity 3. Vance pardons Trump but is focused on 2028. Does not pardon Hegseth etc. * They are 10 American generations away.

We are at the point of the story where the citadel is rubble and the buffoons are dancing by the bonfires wearing the robes of the fallen

The festering mess of the NYT is winning no friends.

Someone* should create a Bluesky tag for folks aligned with “Andy” and a feed for following the tag. Start a discussion that’s is of interest and perhaps utility. * Not me. Needs cred. #aistabilization

I like “Shamelessness is a virtue; hypocrisy is a feature.” No rights reserved.

How does it feel to be a senior editor at the NYT and be humiliated weekly by some white-haired* lady historian living in a rough hewn cabin in icy Maine? heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-2... * yeah, I made up the hair and cabin.

Once you have blown up their boat in the middle of the pacific, leaving the dying wounded to more or less slowly expire is not much of a kindness. But killing them quickly does draw attention and questions about the policy…

Many folks On Here -- myself included -- complain about congressional passivity in the face of the Trump administration's myriad sins. But this story is a good example of how, sometimes, congressional resistance matters even when it is not directly observable. www.politico.com/news/2025/12...

"The requirement to refuse to comply with orders to commit law of war violations applies to orders to perform conduct that is clearly illegal or orders that the subordinate knows...are illegal. For example, 𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐮𝐩𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩𝐰𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐜𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐥." -DoD Law of War manual

As Putin and Trump try to carve up the world beyond China does Cuba wonder about Russia’s future support? Or maybe that support is already gone?

Core values enumerated. When memory (and learning?) is added a culture will emerge. Ethnography opportunity. (Which I’m doing with @void.comind.network for a undergrad paper.)

Older chart. I’m basically on the positive Y axis, maybe a bit to the left at least in the near term.

FACT: If you Invested $12,500 in Melania Trump's memecoin scheme 11 months ago at its peak, you now have $118. Congrats for getting scammed by the First Family.

Those relying on Trump’s pardons should consider what happens if Trump dies of old age in the next 1-2y. Vance would need to do the pardons even as he runs for GOP nominee.

Another 3h spent working around Apple bugs and maybe a service outage. Sometime in the next few months the world will realize Apple's software is truly broken. I'd like to think this will impact the share price but it probably won't.

Hey kids, if your family has an Apple TV be sure to look through Dad’s photos…

As I have long said, David Sacks is the biggest and most conflicted piggy at the trough: Silicon Valley’s Man in the White House Is Benefiting Himself and His Friends www.nytimes.com/2025/11/30/t...

As I wrote a few months ago: when powerful AI is in the hands of a billion people, a lot of things are going to happen at once. A lot of things are already happening at once. There are few aspects of society that are not seeing early impact from AI. www.oneusefulthing.org/p/mass-intel...

Applies across multiple domains now. As Castle America slowly collapses into the sea

Good discussion

Walz is my governor. A good one.

I respect Noem's honesty here. "We comply with federal orders that we like".

It's oddly gratifying to see topics I've gone on about for roughly 17y go mainstream. In this case the "$140K minimum" and the "consequences of ai" themes. I marked the moment into a blog post: notes.kateva.org/2025/11/ai-f...

I’ve said 70-90 for an individual. For a couple probably 110-120. With children and tuition — yeah 120-140. Call it MCL threshold- middle class living. Healthcare, education, security, transportation, mobile data, etc. The global crisis is 50% 19yo can’t *ever* get to MCL. “Wrong” talents.

Those surprised by Trump’s attacks on compliant legacy media need a refresher on how protection rackets work.

Josh Marshall comments on widespread hostility to ai in polls despite heavy use: bsky.app/profile/josh... I think the polls are correctly capturing the zeitgeist…

“partnership with a dozen publishing companies championed by disgraced former President Yoon Suk Yeol in June of 2023.” This is mostly a story of old school fraud and corruption. The ai bit is the hook.

Why not Bluesky?

We were always going to open the box.

Wait, is this the Professor Watchlist, but for media … and instead of being posted on an independent group’s website it’s on the official website of the people who control armed men with badges and a distinct disregard for the Constitution?

“For the Kremlin, the Miami talks were the culmination of a strategy, hatched before Trump’s inauguration, to bypass the traditional U.S. national security apparatus and convince the administration to view Russia not as a military threat but as a land of… opportunity” www.wsj.com/world/russia...

This gentleman knows the territory. Thorough thread with references.

Imagine if the Mexican govt blew up US fishing boats merely because they suspected them of smuggling guns into country. The US would go to war. Trump thinks he’s allowed to do anything he wants to other countries, but they must not dare to even think of doing the same to the US. That’s imperialism!

Sec of war confesses to war crimes while trying to dunk on the MSM

I wish I could turn off autocorrect when using Bluesky. Autocorrect in the absence of editing is worse than nothing at all. Also iOS autocorrect substitutions seem (to me) much worse than they were 5y ago.

One of the uncomfortable truths known very well by physicians is that our best treatments can kill. Unexpected anaphylaxis to a common med. Extreme chemo. A weird surgical outcome. Polio vaccine (older, oral) that causes a polio like syndrome…

How to induce depression

Feels important

I cannot even begin to express my rage at this lie reading this through me back into my pandemic EMT life, attempting to resuscitate a child experiencing a cardiac arrest secondary to COVID while a father says “we heard that the vaccine was riskier than COVID for kids” and a mother wails in agony

In Bizarro world the WSJ is a champion of freedom, the NYT is a tacit collaborator, and WaPo is Pravda.

“prefrontal cortex dynamically utilized shared tuning neurons to ensure generalization, while engaging disjoint and spatially shifted neurons to minimize interference”

If you fail then all there is no tuition. It is an odd form of strike. Paging journalist-anthropologist.

Northwestern bent the knee, choosing to give in to extortion at the expense of academic freedom. Among the provisions: -Pay a big bribe -Give the govt data on students -Validate BS about "fighting antisemitism" -Be cruel to trans students What to do about Vichy universities (now, later, or both)?

The way around the Trump pardons coming for his entire Cabinet is to pass a treaty (killing the filibuster in the process) to join the international criminal court and send Hegseth to The Hague where he belongs.

The star-nosed mole (Condylura cristata) is an evolutionary wonder with "stars for eyes". They're exceptional in so many ways: they're the fastest-eating mammals, they're just as comfortable in water as (under) the land, have exceptional nerve conduction & senses you don't have access to.

Just gonna leave this here. open.substack.com/pub/danieldr...

After the pardons can Hagueseth and his co-conspirators be tried in a state court? Certainly Venezuela can try him and request extradition via Interpol.

Trump says the drug kingpin he just pardoned “has been, according to many people that I greatly respect, treated very harshly and unfairly.” In other words, Trump has no idea who this guy is. It seems possible, though, that someone’s beak got dampened.