Great thread about Thomas Paine, the most correct man of his day, unfairly tarred at times a libertarian caricature

Rewatching Close Encounters and I'd forgotten the U.S. government puts responsibility for depopulating 200 square miles of U.S. territory for an alien cover-up in the hands of an Army Major

I wouldn't kill a man for the United States, but I'd kill a man for a Fruitopia.

that no power in this country can or cares to stop gas stations from selling dangerous highly potent narcotics the same way they do candy. I think that's beautiful, in a way

A second lorazepam has hit my brain and I am no longer bothered by the fireworks

This week I finished my July 4th Trifecta: -Read the book Alpha, about Eddie Gallagher the Navy SEAL war crimes guy -Read The Fort Bragg Cartel about the giant drug cartel run by Delta and other sof guys -watched the 2012 propaganda film Act of Valor, starring a bunch of real Navy SEAL it hits

Oh my fucking god

Disturbing example of how easily libertarian motifs ala Rand can combine with anti-democratic and racist sentiments

I think the question of "Would Native Americans have been better off without the American Revolution?" is a complicated one, because it is completely true that London usually preferred to limit expansionary policies in favor of stability in the colonies, but also that they usually *failed* to do so.

oh poor Ben, we all knew the leopards would come for you one day. his problem is always that he had an actual shred- just a shred- of integrity, you saw it in his Breitbart departure. not very much at all, but enough that he was never quite gonna follow the others to their obvious end goals

Hi hello I was going to do a full thread on the Great American State Fair later but it seems I'm starting early: why in the fuck are PragerU, Patriot Academy, and other far right groups the ENTIRETY of the Department of Education booth

you can always tell who was raised proper

Did the writers do anything to establish they were friends before this? Because I was blindsided seeing him there, tbh

it’s so funny to imagine a silicon valley striver getting invited to a top-secret “ideas conference” ready to learn the Secrets of the Elites only to get trapped on an understuffed hotel chair for eight hours while a very sweaty billionaire rants about how the Actual Devil lives inside chinese RAM

The Great American State Fair has closed until 5 pm due to extreme heat.

how are you defining Stalinism and is it "they made fun of me"?

I give The Funniest Thing permission to happen.

It's out! The full "Handbook on Authoritarianism in the Arab World" is available open access here: www.bloomsburycollections.com/encyclopedia...

The U.S. Justice Department and 17 states have reached settlement agreements with three major egg producers over allegations of that the companies illegally colluded in a multiyear scheme to raises prices.

Updated count: Over the last 8 days, I'm counting 15 Democratic incumbents who have lost to, or for the CO races are now trailing, a challenger to their left. —3 congressmembers (2 NY, 1 CO) —4 state senators (2 in NY, 2 in MD) —8 state house members (5 in NY, 1 in MD, 2 CO) (Will update tomorrow)

Not a great economy alert! Wall Street Bets users think Palantir spiked today because The Onion story titled “Palantir Acquires Pentagon for $800 Billion” hit their front page. They’re guessing trading bots indexed the top post on the subreddit reddit not understanding source.

Is the Tatmadaw actually winning in Myanmar or is Washington misreading a stalemate as a victory? warontherocks.com/misreading-m...

Three firefighters – Emily Barker, 38; Nick Hutcherson, 27; and Sydney Watson, 27 – died battling a wildfire in Colorado, according to the US Department of Interior. https://cnn.it/4g7VNbj

I need y'all to understand that I teach high school and there are teenagers already planning to leave the U.S. to because they will be studying science or medicine. They are SO serious about it - saving money, learning extra languages, and looking to see if there are familial connections abroad.

Admiral McRaven: Confirmed Discordian

Alright KATU maybe we don't call someone a "heat dome survivor", that's getting kinda ridiculous katu.com/news/local/2...

ah good, the Republican Project 2025 was a playbook for rolling out Christofascism and the Democrats have responded with Project 2029, a plan for permanent electoral irrelevance

Ryan was a really good person, I hate to hear this. So it goes.

important CIDRAP editorial: "Call it what it is—the US has lost its hold on measles elimination" www.cidrap.umn.edu/measles/cidr...

Posting this is the worst thing John Hinckley has ever done

NEW: Workers say their bosses are becoming obsessed with AI and essentially turning the entire workplace into an exercise in AI psychosis -- making absurd pivots, communicating only in AI slop, and even asking ChatGPT who to fire futurism.com/artificial-i...

A Japanese guy winning Invincible Vs at Evo with secret tech is already funny but finding out it's the same dude who hid tech and won BBTAG at Evo is even awesomer. He also changes his tag for every game. Fucked up and evil guy lol

perhaps this is a niche opinion but the most fun cyberpunk stories have characters who embody each of those archetypes

We have Slaughter and Cook. By a 6–3 vote, SCOTUS overturns Humphrey's Executor and lets Trump fire heads of independent agencies. But by a 5–4 vote, it refuses to let him fire Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p... www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

scenes without mommy’s face in them are unnecessary in movies. it does nothing to advance the story of where did mommy go

not directly rewarding slop on your platform seems like it would result in less slop, and a healthier ecosystem generally (and more users jumping from your competitors). will be interesting to see if it plays out that way for tidal www.404media.co/tidal-says-i...

This was by design of course. www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/...

Man, I look at the sort of stuff people post in right wing spaces like most recently, that movie Citizen Vigilante, and get really worried that there's not really a meaningful way to deescalate with people who've gotten this warped, and I don't think there's a reasonable plan to deal with them

This is my biggest issue with several otherwise-beloved films, like Patch Adams

For my 250th birthday, I hope they make a much bigger arch

"i have 100 times the output i did before" somehow never seems to show up in actual profits or sales or anything, it's more a measurement of how people feel based on the number of emails they have a bot send

The fact that this movie has a 50% casualty rate among Hemsworths is all the more tragic when you realize only a tiny fraction of hatchling Hemsworths survive the journey from the beach where their eggs were laid to the sea. The bulk are devoured by seagulls.

From: sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2025/08/woke...

I decided to chase this by watching The Land of Bad, a much better film despite the fact that it features a character in the movie showing off the title of the movie tattooed on his own body I don't think it was meant as a joke

I especially love this diagram.

I'm watching Acts of Valor, a propaganda movie made by the Navy SEALS and a Hallmark-grade team from Hollywood. The bad guy appears to be a Russian cartel gangster who was childhood best friends with a Chechen jihadist. He operates out of the Costa Rican jungle.

America: Great Again