It’s crazy to me that the Georgian (Dmanisi) erectus skulls are from so early in the timeline (~1.8 mya).

it is a very strange moment when the US Treasury department is celebrating people demanding a higher return on investments in US debt.

Today in extremely Berkeley headlines

Hydrogen for Transportation Didn’t Fail Just Once in 2025. It Failed Everywhere. - CleanTechnica cleantechnica.com/2025/12/22/h...

The people who held up signs saying "Mass deportations now!" at the Republican convention are getting what they wanted.

a suicide note whose existence and content federal authorities appear to have concealed for years while conspiracy theories about Epstein’s death in their custody raged out of control

Real fixed investment in US factories inched down further in data released today as CHIPS ACT projects complete & tariffs weigh on the manufacturing industry. Construction activity is now down more than 8% from the mid-2024 record highs

One email in the Epstein files dump says Trump was listed as a passenger on at least eight flights on Epstein’s private jet between 1993 and 1996, including four flights with Ghislaine Maxwell.

More Trump in the Epstein files, more Trump wanting his own name on massive, unneeded battleships, more Trump removing 30 ambassadors, more & more humans taken without due process…the grotesquerie of America’s mistake showcased day after day. So much work ahead to repair the damage.

Yes, CECOT is a concentration camp in the guise of a prison. The Venezuelans were the first people to *ever* be released from CECOT since Bukele opened the prison in January 2023. Seriously. The first.

The thing where Trump names everything after himself isn’t a funny little quirk but an incredibly reliable indicator that a leader is in fact a dictator. It doesn’t happen in any democratic society, no sane leader does it

really cannot be emphasized enough that bari weiss has literally never done journalism. i don’t mean that in the pejorative sense. i mean that in the “has never performed the job she was hired to do” sense

How it started/How it's going

Musk, an immigrant to America, called an American mayor a “traitor” for supporting other immigrants to America. Just an unmitigated asshole.

every day we draw closer to this becoming reality

Just an observation that culture treats listening to rap as a bad influence on young black men, but does not afford nearly the same disdain for country music on young white men. I WONDER WHY THAT IS (I don’t actually wonder)

Bill Clinton releasing a statement saying 'release the Epstein files, you cowards' was not on my bingo list.

as far as I can tell, the only piece of evidence that "Democrats would be center-right in Europe" is that Democrats mostly don't want to nationalize big chunks of the economy and there are some countries in Europe where major parties on the left still at least pretend to want it

this does not change the fact that the Democratic Party in 2025 is, at least on social issues, *without question* the most liberal major political party that has ever existed anywhere in the world

The Japanese Maritime Self-Defense force working on railguns instead of modular gold-plated hulls.

My favorite historical costume designer is Sandy Powell, and she has an amazing trick that it took me years to realize: Be conservative with color and lean into modern shapes with your hero, and put your villain in the most outrageously period-specific costume you can.

You might question her methods, but credit to Bari Weiss: her leadership has pushed 60 Minutes into new formats and attracted a bunch of new viewership outside the normal broadcast audience.

this is just to say I have loosed  the blood-dimmed tide that you were probably saving for the ceremony of innocence forgive me the best lack all conviction while the worst are so passionate and so intense

Chicago murder rate over the past ten years has been a wild ride

If you're having trouble watching other versions, here's an Internet Archive link for the 60 Minutes CECOT segment suppressed by Bari Weiss in the U.S.

Outside of Germany this mostly seems to be “where is your capital”

It's Trumpday22, the 22nd day of Trumpmonth12. Tomorrow will be Trumpday the 23rd.

If you quote or play tape of the president without context, you’re committing journalistic malpractice

one of the funniest things of the 2024 election was Trump's brief attempt to appeal to ADOS and the hotep vote. would have liked to have seen it go farther. e.g., "if elected president i will unseal the tunnel to Africa in the Grand Canyon"

i’ll just say that this isn’t the behavior of people who think their allies are on the verge of establishing a thousand year reich, much less holding control of the national legislature next year

bari weiss saw this and decided that she had to hide it from the american public

this just has me thinking about how so much of this government and the movement around it is purely a matter of aesthetics. is there a strategic reason for produce a new warship? maybe. but my hunch is that this is happening because the president thinks it will look cool.

What he seems to be saying here, filtered through his expired pudding cup of a brain, is that his administration's plan for addressing home prices is demand suppression while holding supply constant. Thus the mass deportations and trying to boost marriage rates.

BREAKING: Judge James Boasberg rules for those deported under the Alien Enemies Act on March 15 — certifying a class, finding the U.S. maintained constructive custody over them at CECOT, finding they were not given due process, and ordering return or that such process be given by Jan. 5, 2026.

Good news! I got a check for a cool Glorantha project! Bad news. It's a kill fee because the project is cancelled. It's a Lunar Tarsh sourcebook set 20 years before the official timeline, so it would have a been something a mismatch in the RQ line. 1/2

This has been made available, so for purposes of commenting on Bari Weiss's decision to spike the story, here's a live-post of that segment. It begins with a "you may recall" summary of the deportation to el Salvador. Describes the admin's claim that it could deport the men without due process

Canadians: you don't need an app, the CECOT 60 Minutes story is streaming on their website right now. watch.globaltv.com/series/2893d...

Detainee they are interviewing was a college student in Columbia. Waited in Mexico until he had a 2024 immigration interview in CA - a scheduled appointment - where he was told he was a danger to society. Claims he has no criminal record, never even got a traffic ticket. Was immediately detained

I’m sure your shocked that Trump is announcing really stupid (in this case warship design)

So I assume - let me rephrase - I hope to God this idea is something they're going to announce, give a name to and then never actually, like, build. Because it is extremely dumb. And dumb in ways that will offend all sides of the carrier-drone-missile-wars.

It's just objectively true that what's happening in the West Bank is colonization. Language about Israel can go too far, but this ain't it.

Local realtor Eric Gellerman has a good monthly newsletter...

Interesting. $250k/unit may be a cheaper way to get non-profit housing than building new, depending on how much deferred maintenance costs are. But as I think @jwbee.bsky.social pointed out, these deals take the properties off the tax rolls.

Latest SF office leasing news. The change in the second half of 2025 is pretty dramatic.