morning

NGL, I'm captivated by these new shirts at temu

Helluva 2026 pic by Megan Varner.

I don't know how to speak about being Jewish right now. michaelianblack.substack.com/p/my-only-pr...

🧵 by @ilangoldenberg.bsky.social:

It’s crystal clear now that Trump has lost control of this war. He badly misjudged Iran’s ability to retaliate. The region is on fire. 1/ I’m going to explain to you in this🧵what I’ve learned - in part from closed door briefings - about the four biggest current crises.

Chemistry in current events: the connections between fertilizer, the Haber-Bosch process, and the Persian Gulf. Read this and your knowledge will exceed that of most of our current political leadership after only a few minutes of light work:

I'm no fancy political consultant, but, hey, if you're in Dem comms, you should notice that Fox News panicked over Trump wearing a cheap Trump merch baseball cap to receive the bodies of soldiers he got killed for no reason he can articulate, and you should absolutely lean into that.

things every single republican president of your lifetime has done - started a war in the middle east - completely destroyed the economy

Updated:

This one hits hard.

Reducing human value to what we can be trained to do is straight up technofascism. Every fascism has its suhumans. To technofascists, humans are the subhumans.

kind of amazing that everything trump does can be understood through the lens of narcissism and it's related needs (e.g., self aggrandizement, revenge, domination, grievance validation). i don't think any character has been so one-dimensional, not even wile e coyote or scrooge mcduck

😕🇺🇸

The NY Times dutifully reporting that the Supreme Court sided with Trump only 42% of the time and with Biden 54% of the time sort of leaves out the necessary context that Biden was doing normal, completely legal presidential stuff, and Trump was doing insane crimes

So. A globally disruptive, economically unsound, and whim-driven tariff policy turns out to be unconstitutional. Huh.

i wasn’t sure if they did this because she’s female or brown or progressive and then i realized the answer is “yes”

AOC’s biggest problem if she runs for president is that the white men who control our media ecosystem will not so much put a finger on the scale to stop her as an entire hand it can be done (see: Zohran) but it’s going to be blatant and it’s going to be infuriating

I knew I saw this somewhere before. Funny that it’s almost exactly what’s actually happening now.

Happy birthday to one of my favourite haters, Charles Darwin

straight up Gestapo shit

My operating assumption is that he tried to do a hasty coup in 2020 that failed, and so everything he does in his second term should be understood as laying the groundwork for a second coup to succeed.

I hope that Democrats realize what’s happening in Minnesota is also a dry run for what the regime has planned for the midterms.

Tomorrow’s front page of the Minnesota Star Tribune: Jan. 23, 2026

Kind of weird being at the center of what might be a world-historical event. I can’t say I like it, but here we are, I guess. Your life is defined by making the most of the random circumstances in which you find yourself.

This isn’t immigration policy. It’s a business model. ICE keeps growing, not because it makes America safer, but because corporations are raking in billions off cages, bodies, and suffering. ICE’s existence is a massive revenue stream.

Pew Research Institute (2023): • Red State Texas has about 2.1 million undocumented immigrants • Red State Florida has 1.6 M undocumented immigrants • Blue State Minnesota has 130,000. And yet only Minnesota is being occupied by masked thugs over "immigration." It's *not* about immigration.

Democrats need to realize ICE isn’t just—or even primarily—a mass deportation force. ICE is also Trump’s most loyal internal security force which will be used to attack regime opponents and try to steal the election. They should defund his authoritarian capabilities.

The message from the White House this morning is that, once again, it falls on ordinary American citizens to remain calm and professional when dealing with the heavily armed agents of the government because they are very emotional and might fly off into a murderous rage at the slightest insult.

Only flag officers who are loyal to Trump will be left. In my opinion, it’s a purge to prepare the way for a coup should 2028 not go their way.

Your regular reminder that the entire global economy is subject to the whipsaw whims of a person who doesn’t understand how the global economy works

Pedro Pascal reshares video which says the U.S. has become a police state A state where there is no higher authority

More in No, Other People: New poll: “America would be better off if more people worked in manufacturing.” • 80% of Americans agree • 20% disagree “I would be better off if I worked in a factory.” • 25% of Americans agree • 73% disagree • 2% currently work in a factory

Jewish people are being used as human shields for fascist bigots seeking the legal right to arrest and disappear anybody whose beliefs they disagree with or find inconvenient. There’s nothing more dangerous for Jews than a state that makes personal beliefs illegal. We can’t be such easy marks.

Remember SignalGate? (One of Trump's superpowers is being involved in so many scandals all the time that very few of them end up having staying power beyond a news cycle or two.)

Those trying to understand the tariffs as economic policy are dangerously naive. No, the tariffs are a tool to collapse our democracy. A means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief. 1/ A 🧵 to explain his plan and how we fight back.

A friend of my compared gutting of federal agencies to a wrecking a car: if you remove 30% of the parts of the car, it does not go 30% slower. It stops working.

It's annoying how clearly this is going to play out. They gut the FAA. Therefore, the FAA can't do its job well because it was gutted. Therefore, they say "The FAA sucks, we have to privatize it." which is what Project 2025 wants to do. They're manufacturing the crises for their end goal.

JD Vance - If you believe any of the multiple federal courts that have ruled against you so far are exceeding their statutory or Constitutional authority, your recourse is to appeal. You don’t get to rage-quit the Republic just because you are losing. That’s tyranny.

A long post about what’s happening to the science funding agencies in the US and why. As mentioned, this one just kept getting longer even as I kept stripping curse words from it. www.science.org/content/blog...

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Thinking about this chicken wing joint where I used to live called “Lord of the Wings." They had a sign in the window that said "Fry, you fools!" and they closed years ago but their top notch food punnery lives forever through me.