A lot of education discourse is at root an inability to decide whether the purpose of our education system is to 1) teach material and measure learning 2) reward students who work hard 3) separate the smart kids (destined for smart guy jobs) from the dumb kids (destined to serve the smart guys)

Every single shitty aspect of America’s turbocharged sports gambling boom/metastasis was completely predictable from the start—all of it already had happened in other countries! But because it’s yet another business built around privatizing profit and socializing cost, no one cared.

The important thing is not whether the Trump performing sexual favors for Bill Clinton thing is true. The important thing is that we all pretend it’s true, and that someone asks Trump about it every day.

Between this and Ben Shapiro buying a single plank at Home Depot (and putting a plastic bag on the end), I would love to see a show where a bunch of these masculinity podcast bros compete to assemble an ikea bookshelf fastest

I know people say they want less money in politics, but they keep voting for politicians and judges who deliver the opposite

THEN YOU PURCHASE THEM AND DO NOT USE THE PROPERTY OF OTHERS

Federal Hemp Ban Threatens Local Guy’s Whole Deal https://theonion.com/federal-hemp-ban-threatens-local-guys-whole-deal/

This is incredible, a whole new level of grifting. We truly live in an iron pyrite age!

Mafia governance in action "the only offer on the table was that I needed to resign by 5pm that day or the DOJ would basically rain hell on UVA... If I did not resign that day, I was told that the DOJ would extract/block hundreds of millions of dollars from UVA before they would even negotiate."

I don't think we talk enough about the fact that what underpins their belief is a corruption of the bible - prosperity gospel. They think because they are rich , they are blessed by god. also for people who are going to say, I'm saying they aren't really christian - I'm not. /1

Psychopaths are in charge, everywhere you look

NBC gave her so much money for such little work, one of the great Bag Securers of our era

What are we even doing, here?

Getting paid Atlantic-level dollars to write about the same petty cultural grievance over and over and over, this is the dream

pedophilia is the president's worst issue

Imagine nodding along to this bsky.app/profile/acco...

It reminds me of this quote from the person who called every single person in Maxwell’s black book: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Epstein was obviously the story of the day but it’s wild that we got confirmation the CIA was engaged in biological warfare in Afghanistan for at least a decade

We're in the "raping young teenage girls isn't pedophilia" part of the cope from MAGA. These people are evil.

The whole war on “woke” and “cancel culture” was contrived to protect the worst people in our society and make it possible for them to keep doing despicable things to other people.

Something absolutely perfect about Larry Summers riffing about the scourge of woke cancel culture being unfair to predatory men in a friendly email to his pal JEFFREY EPSTEIN.

I will never forget attending a congressional hearing about college athletes getting paid and seeing GOP members absolutely fawn over Ken F’ing Starr—who, not coincidentally, was smarmily anti-athlete

Important to understand the Epstein stuff and the fascism and the corruption are, in a lot of ways, really all the same story from different angles: powerful men who can and do abuse vulnerable people around them because they can, and because systems of elite accountability catastrophically failed

TV conspiracies: we’ve hacked their computers but they’ve perfectly cleaned up the evidence! Real conspiracies: To: conspirator From: famous person Attachment: evidence.png

pretty funny in retrospect that QAnon hinged on the idea that powerful elites at the highest levels of government were smart enough to talk in code when sending emails to each other about their despicable crimes

just opening up the new Epstein docs at random:

Here’s what is interesting about this answer: It is not a “no.” bsky.app/profile/just...

They planned to do crimes so first they fired the lawyers that would tell them no.

When you KNOW you’re doing crimes. wapo.st/3Xmy78q

New from 404 Media: ICE plans to spend as much as $180 million on bounty hunters to physically locate and stalk immigrants. I spoke to multiple private investigators/skip tracers. Some horrified. Others said they will do this work. "Money is money." www.404media.co/ice-plans-to...

The thing to understand about this is that this catastrophe in the UK has redounded to the political benefit of the very same people and political movement that pushed for it! Extremely perverse.

Business rent is way too high on Mag (not Miracle) Mile so companies are just shuffling around. H&M moved two blocks down the road to save cash. He's blaming "murder and crime" in one of the safest parts of the city because the real problem is "landlords." Almost like that's the whole gambit.

this is literally never not accurate

Washington Wizards have more fight than the Washington Democrats

Trying to find the right imagery to describe the caving Dem senators and I’m stuck somewhere between “landed fish flopping on a boat deck” and “guys tidying up the ballroom as the Titanic sinks”

scenes from a victory lap zeteo.com/p/senate-dem...

It’s important to achieve bipartisanship with Republicans so they can arrest Barack Obama for something they read on the Epoch Times’ Facebook page written by a Chinese cult member in 2019.

if i were part of a dying publishing industry i would simply not discourage people from reading in public

The most relevant historical analogy is Senate Dems giving up their filibuster of Alito and other Bush nominees in exchange for a vague and unenforceable promise that Republicans wouldn't abuse the filibuster, a promise that needless to say they never even pretended to honor when they lost in 2026

ME AS A CHILD: i cant wait till im an adult, then i can finally Do Things ME AS AN ADULT: the spectre of Things To Do haunts me from sunup to sundown, and beyond

American politics makes a lot more sense when you realize that the GOP is afraid of pissing off the GOP base, and the Dems are afraid of pissing off the GOP base, but neither party is afraid of pissing off the Dem base.

The big lesson from the right wing capture of centrist media (eg the Washington Post), is that the quality of the product gets worse and the audience they are trying to appease are not going to tune in.

Yikes

New levels of Democrat-ing

This thread is why time travel fantasies have never held any appeal to me—I’ll stick with hot showers and toothpaste, thanks!

incredible that these guys have a massive hard on for a country that, if it were a state, would rank behind kansas in terms of wealth and which would be a total backwater if it weren’t economically integrated with more functional countries

what star wars really need is a HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER style submarine thriller

Starting to think the Fox-ification of WaPo op-ed section could make for an interesting Washingtonian feature story

every time you think the new WaPo editorial board can't embarrass itself any more, they manage to find a way. Left: 'Texas gerrymandering is no big deal!', from August. Right: 'Maryland gerrymandering is an affront to Western civilization!', from today.

Excellent observation