a constant in American politics is that voters prefer candidates who do things, even if they might be the wrong things, over those who do nothing

Yeah, people read Trump's return as "America has swung hard right!" and not "Americans don't pay particularly close attention to politics!" Which seemed like an insane reading a year ago and has been repudiated by pretty much everything that has happened since.

The Star Tribune has 11 staff photographers, f-t videographer and 3 photo editors. The Washington Post just ditched every staff photographer, many of their graphics people, and the editor responsible for all the visuals–photos, video, graphics, data, and design. She is a legend. Now out of work.

i'm a big fan of magazines, investigative reporting, and longform, all of which requires staff and institutions, but the really really dire thing that indie media can't replace? the fucking wire services

Civil rights are a kitchen-table issue.

Yes, I realize I’m reskeeting a bunch on the same subject tonight. That’s because this is emergency-level Yes It’s Really Fascist shit and if you’re still hemming and hawing and second-guessing about that, maybe just fuck off into the sun.

There's so much going on that we're stuck in reactive, defensive mode. So we get caught out by bullshit like this. Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Non-binary people are non-binary people. And Kansas Republicans are assholes.

Seeing some "fuck Kansas" replies/QTs and while I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment behind the statement, I think a better response would be "fuck, we need to help the people of Kansas" If anyone knows a good way to do that, please put it in the comments and I will amplify

To do this, anti-trans lawmakers in Kansas moved fast to change the law, overrode the governor’s veto, and pushed for the legal changes to go into effect nearly immediately. That kind of power—to void gender on official documents, to compel gender conformity—is terrifying and it will not stop here.

it took an expensive, coordinated effort & a lot of people saying “this doesn’t matter” to get from a bathroom ban costing one state $400 million & a gubernatorial race to “trans people must turn in their documents which become invalid in a few hours or face fines & potential jail time” in 10 years.

To any Democrat who ever said about any issue, "Maybe if we agree with Republicans just this far, they'll stop there," remember that you were wrong, it was obvious at the time, and you really should never believe that again about any issue, ever.

Oh hey, this sounds familiar encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/t...

Because of the National driver register, since their licenses are suspended, trans folks cannot move to another state and get a new license until they remove the suspension on their existing Kansas license. They can't even escape this by moving to another state.

it’s legitimately a huge fucking scandal that the FBI director has fucked up at least two major investigations because he uses the FBI’s planes as private planes and has actively failed to even bother with one of the highest profile abductions since the lindburgh baby

everyone needs an inner Michael Hobbes, there would be way more bike lanes

“But they’re the more ethical choice” was always such horseshit.

Instead of SOTU I'm watching Mycroft T Cat's epic attempts to dig the last few treats out of his puzzle toy, and based on the watch-and-post, he's by far the smarter and more entertaining one to watch. Also, probably has a more solid grasp on international trade policy.

Of all Presidementia's prior State-of-the-Unions I've not watched in the past, tonight's State-of-the-Union is the State-of-the-Union I'm not watching the most. 🍊🚫

There is simply no part of Youthful Me's experience of Public Enemy that could have predicted this element of the 21st century.

U.S. men's hockey with Curt-Schilling-in-Boston levels of good will squandering. A 25-mile lead in the good will marathon and they tripped on their dicks right at the finish line.

Enough can’t be said about how “machine-learning” simply reiterates the anti-blackness of tech bros and their ilk. And that includes the violence of disregard: “oh, we didn’t anticipate that as a possible problem.” That’s racist too.

at last, we have invented retrophenology from the classic Discworld text Don’t Invent Retrophenology

I often think this is the man who destroyed an opponent with suspicions related to the crime of using home email at work

It’s great (derogatory) that you can work very hard to find out something incredibly important, and the main response you will get is a derisive “Gee, I’m shocked.” Somebody has to ACTUALLY DO THIS WORK! You can’t pursue justice by going “Your honor: I mean, duh.”

Any american who is doing anything EXCEPT encouraging our overseas friends & cousins to avoid this land HAS to be treated like they're a danger. No matter how much we'd like to see our beloveds, the United States is not safe and we'd rather those we love be safe and far away than here and in danger.

Brooklyn 8:37 PM

This is non-fiction but lands as visceral (as per author's point) social horror. Only it's entirely real. And that some, even many, won't understand, intuit, or feel any sense of the horror at all, will only see cause to celebrate and wonder what the big deal is, is part of the horror itself.

The real scandal of the Epstein saga is not that a billionaire cabal that pulls the strings of all world decisions. It's that there's a billionaire class with infinite resources. It's a network, not an organization that orders up wars and earthquakes on demand.

as far as i can tell “bio hacking” is just a goofy term for giving yourself some combination of an eating disorder and a drug addiction

“Great Man” theories of history may have been wrong but “That F*ing Guy” theory looks increasingly plausible.

It's been so much fun to watch the Hockey team! And then the Men's Hockey on top of that!

Written English has barely changed in 300 years. If you can read Harry Potter, you can read Robinson Crusoe (1719).

Else the Puck a liar call.

That's the most important part of this all: that these are things that people will wear and relate to and that fascism is defeated by us forming community and making art and appreciating beauty and love and the colors you want, whatever those colors are. All the colors. That's us.

"But if you give free college and health care to all those kids, people will be mad" cool we can give everyone free college and health care, too, I'm not mad about that

One of your relatives was brutalized on the street? you should get US citizenship Had to run from ICE agents? you should get US citizenship

Had to spend a month in lockdown because you were in fear of getting abducted by masked goons? cool, you should get US citizenship Went to an immigration interview as required by law and were afraid you'd be disappeared right then and there? guess what you should get US citizenship

Here is what I think. TPS status revoked? cool, you should get US citizenship Spent any time in Dilley or Whipple? cool, you should get US citizenship Someone took your bunny hat? cool, you should get US citizenship

stolen from somewhere

Truck is full of gas, I am full of cheeseburger. A raven landed nearby so I tweeted the whistle I bought from @mostlybree.kitrocha.com and tossed it a French fry. I will train every corvid in Susanville to come to the sound of community defense whistles.

I appreciate all of these detailed analysis of what’s wrong with the policy, but the crucial thing to keep in mind here is that Donald Trump sincerely, literally does not understand what a tariff is and when that is your starting point, nothing beyond it really matters.

Logistics Guy also can't account for the fact that an ever-growing group of distributed makers can both pick up demand outside of big focal points, and recruit more people just by existing.

a lot of Logistics Guys just don't think a handful of cranky book nerd ladies can be kicking their ass this hard at logistics and like, sorry, but we are. 🤣

1/n On Doomerism/Mansplaining/Helpful Hints: This morning, I was still trying to understand a man who felt some compulsion to explain to the whistle goblins how they could do it better. Never mind that they’ve been doing this for MONTHS already and already tried his “better” method and

And this is why they're afraid of the "professional grade logistics" of women making food and whistles. Amazing work.

people love the boom-bust parts of the hype cycle, it makes for great entertainment, but the "slope of enlightenment" where the new technology finds real (and often unexpected!) use cases is the actually interesting part

I don't know anybody on "the left" broadly defined who isn't excited about technology – you know, actual technology: incredibly cheap photovoltaics, grid-level storage, ebikes, 3D printing... what leftists generally have no excitement for are financial scams draped in software

Romance novelists who are loudly anti-AI are also currently 3D printing hundreds of thousands of whistles for ICE resistance, so anyone throwing around terms like Luddite without context can go hang out in the sea.

I'm going to highlight a few of our printer wishlists tonight! (As always, if you hate amazon, please visit linktr.ee/WhistleWishl... for different ways to help!) This first wishlist belongs to a printer in Minnesota AND has protopasta on it, so win/win??? www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/...