17yo daughter has an important friend visiting from out of state, so we’re commencing to show off a little. Crab cakes, remoulade, cornbread, all from scratch.

From today’s Black Lavender Healing Symposium at UMass Amherst 💜✨

We had the massive good luck to get tickets to the Amy Sherald portrait exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Blown away. Did not realize the heroic size of her work!

Here you go, the most horrible graph you’ll see today. I don’t know how to look at this and not feel despair about what we’ve become. (Via @mollyruhlman.bsky.social )

We decided to let our Washington Post subscription lapse, and it feels pretty weird. But I really can’t see my way to paying them a single cent, and neither can my more-moderate husband.

Ombre French tip feathers? She's a couture bird, for sure

This cup of tea is going to fix everything that’s wrong with me, I just know it. But if it falls short, the cookies are there for backup.

I mean, they correctly assumed that under Trump, laws would be “for thee but not for me.” Their mistake was thinking that their political loyalty would matter more than their race.

“2026 is the year of the horse” The horse:

My 20yo studies civil engineering technology at community college. As homework, she has to research a local issue and attend a relevant public city meeting. It’s one of the best school assignments a kid of mine has gotten. (1/3) #baltimore

First New Cocktail Experiment in a long while, because on a whim I bought my first bottle of Cynar. This is an Italian Gentleman: bourbon, Aperol, and Cynar with an orange twist. It’s complex, boozy, and delicious. (Recipe from @tammylc.bsky.social )

She's running to replace Dick Durbin and, uh, to say this is a welcome change in tone and attitude would be a hell of an understatement.

It’s fun being a woman playing a complex strategy board game online. I’m currently beating a guy by 40 points and he just corrected one of my gameplay decisions. Kept up with more “helpful advice” after I brushed it off, too.

“We’re going to sing this like Germans pronouncing Latin, not like Americans who have been trained to imitate Italians pronouncing Latin.” - our director Also, you will never convince me that Mahler 8 doesn’t have a substantial chorus fatality rate.

There were a bunch of Epstein victims sitting a couple of rows behind her, listening to her say that no one should care that they were raped and trafficked because the stock market is up.

Apparently Grand Juries will indict a ham sandwich, but draw the line at bologna.

Likely-historic photo by NBC News of all the Epstein victims asked to raise their hands if they've not yet been asked to meet with the DOJ as Bondi testifies in foreground

MACBETH: Bring me no more reports; let them fly all: Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane, I cannot taint with fear.

Huh, I never thought of this comparison but it sure is illuminating.

At a 50th birthday dinner where we are getting hammered on weird cocktails, discussing historical theories of gender and relating them to the K-nearest-neighbors concept in data science.

Here’s one of the news stories about the walkout my 16yo helped organize! It was beautifully planned and executed and the kids feel justly proud. “I heard a lot of people say this was their first protest,” she told us. “…Which is bizarre to me, y’know, growing up in this family.”

My 16yo is helping organize an ICE walkout at school today. The kids have a designated safety officer in a reflective vest (he’s on the wrestling team). Borrowed bullhorns and other gear from the hospitality workers’ union - they’ve been in coalition for a while. Press release dropped at 5am.(1/2)

First rehearsal for Mahler 8, the “Symphony of a Thousand” (a nickname he apparently despised). This is supposed to be the kind of choral experience that changes you as a person. Hopefully in a good way?

“Southern California Wants to be Western New York” by Dar Williams (whom I am seeing on FRIDAY!!)

It’s 2026. There is a measles outbreak in the prison for babies

I will simply never recover from reading this sentence: "Since Georgia implemented work requirements in 2020, they have spent twice as much on Deloitte consultants and administrative costs as on healthcare for people."

Ian Austin, an Army veteran, was arrested for protesting ICE in Minneapolis. But he’s continued protesting. Senior reporter @julialurie.bsky.social spoke to him. “When they say, ‘Why would you be out here?’ How the fuck could I not be out here?” he says. “My nation is under attack."

Deleting Signal now that I know it’s compromised Add me to your MySpace top 8

Josh Marshall has good commentary: “often in a modern political argument it’s not really necessary to have a response that makes any sense. You just need to have a response. […] When a movement fed on extreme propaganda suddenly finds itself with nothing to say, things can move very fast.”

Super helpful context for that Henry Mance skeet that’s going around.

Those poor bastards. They don’t understand the difference between “capacity to inflict violence” and “strength.”

Papers could be written and likely have about the party that hates women being suspicious of "mom" energy in society. Is everyone warm, are we all fed, is everyone safe? They are literally some of the least suspicious concerns in the world, but the right is terrified by them.

I'm not going to post screenshots for obvious reasons but I have been alerted that a bunch of the top posts in r/MassiveCock are anti-ICE now and anyone who defends ICE in comments is getting yelled down lol

Let us all have the courage displayed by the residents of Minneapolis.

Think about how although Pretti was a gunowner, when he saw someone being attacked his first response wasn't to use the gun but to help them up and ask them if they're ok. It wasn't even on his mind that a gun would be useful. Compare that to the paranoia of rightwing gun culture.

Really hard to look at this and all the other examples of bravery and kindness from ordinary people in this moment not think also of the tremendous cowardice exhibited over the past year by some of the richest, most well-protected people in business, media and politics

I've been studying the history of US, and indeed, global policing my whole career and I can't make it more clear to law makers that this isn't a bastardization of policing, it is its purest form and logical conclusion. The impunity, militarization, deference, legitimacy, racial targeting, etc.

"I am a children's entertainer who specializes in face painting," writes a woman now in hiding from the federal government for witnessing a state-sanctioned street execution

Damn, that’s my senator!!

The guy that runs the Reddit where people post about patting their cat on the butt like bongos has put his foot down

/5 This will not be the last death. The people of MN are unbowed, and that will further enrage the Gestapo. The administration will escalate. They want violence. They WANT to murder people who disagree with them. They are empty without it.

Wise words from WEB DuBois to gird us today: "It would be shame and cowardice to surrender this glorious land and its opportunities for civilization and humanity to the thugs and lynchers, the mobs and profiteers, the monopolists & gamblers who today choke its soul and steal its resources."

"Oh my gosh, it was so nice to see you! Have a lovely day, fuck ICE!" "Oh you too hon! Stay safe in that traffic, fuck ICE!' - two older Minnesota ladies, bidding farewell after the protest

I’ve been so proud to see my minister friends answering the call to go to Minneapolis and provide support! One of them has my name - and at least a hundred others - written on the inside of her stole.

“According to the disclosure, the memo has not been formally distributed among ICE personnel but has been shown to some DHS supervisors who have passed it on to some employees to read and return.” Definitely a sign that a policy has a firm legal footing. wapo.st/49Q6gn5 (gift link)

Memo to myself: You don’t have the time or the obligation to wade in to strangers’ Bluesky threads just because they’re wrong about your area of expertise. (Posting because you might also need this reminder.)

"History will not look kindly upon______" Damn history ... i don't look kindly upon it... we aint gotta wait

Trump’s foreign policy is “…much like a teenage boy approaches sex. He has zero impulse control. He has no thought of long-term consequences. He will say anything to get what he wants. […] He puts the tip of our military in for a little and tries to pull out before he gets in trouble.”

I can’t express how healing it was to spend an hour this evening listening to someone who cares deeply about the history and future of the place we live. Someone thoughtfully imagining a better world.

The voice of moral clarity.