Trump’s order to rebrand the Department of Defense as the “Department of War” this past summer will cost billions of dollars, a new report suggests. The switch requires changing signage, letterheads, employee badges, vast amounts of rewriting coding on websites and internal software, among others.

🎭 🎭 🎭

The Republican president is a pedophile who has doubled my healthcare costs and let scores of violent criminals out of jail. But a Democratic mayor-elect wants to make busses free in a city I don't live in. I have never felt more politically homeless.

As of this morning, Starbucks workers across the country are officially ON STRIKE. And we're prepared for this to become the biggest and longest ULP strike in Starbucks history. Say #NoContractNoCoffee with us: DON'T BUY STARBUCKS for the duration of our open-ended ULP strike! $SBUX

How to accomplish normal governmental business: after obtaining a superdupermajority of 101 senators you must hope against hope that the parliamentarian's whip doesn't invoke the heckler's veto. How to accomplish despotic acts of random cruelty: the president declares it and it's instantly done.

Good DC news: food and beverage workers at 9:30 Club, The Anthem, The Atlantis, and Lincoln Theater just won voluntary union recognition! Now, box office and production staff at the venues are fighting for union recognition too as separate bargaining units. Congrats to the workers!

In the century leading up to 1975, nearly 6000 freighters went down in the Great Lakes. The Edmund Fitzgerald was the last. The last. In 50 years, not a single commercial freighter has been lost in the Great Lakes. Why? It's NOAA. Of course it's NOAA.

It's irritating that they describe the effects of his racism as limited to causing controversy within science and reputational consequences for himself rather than giving an immeasurable boost, false veneer of legitimacy, and idiot-friendly prestige to modern scientific racism and eugenics.

Major win in Arlington County Public Schools, with pro-trans Moe Bryant dominating the election. Arlington County Public Schools has made headlines for defying the Trump admin on trans kids in bathrooms.

Woke up sick, masked up and voted at 6:30, back in bed by 6:35

YES YOU SHOULD VOTE IN LOCAL ELECTIONS TOMORROW EVEN IF MAMDANI IS NOT ON THE BALLOT WHERE YOU LIVE

My office is having a full-blown fight over whether the word "toboggan" is a sled or a hat. Haven't seen this kind of fisticuffs since The Dress.

It's that time of year #Halloween

sticker-motivated voter

I walked into my brother's house and my niece greeted me by immediately telling me what they got me for Christmas. Kids are so entertaining 😂

being a business owner in pokemon za sounds really fun bc one day you have a successful cafe and the next day your block is a wild zone and an alpha pokemon is using your customers as a chew toy

do we have a government that reflects the will of the people? no but do we have a government that is willing to make to tough choices that are in our long-term best interest even if they're not popular? also no

“Loneliness is painful, but only because we want to be with other people, not because we want to be disappeared further from the rest of the world.” www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Know something that’s never down due to AWS? A gosh dang newspaper.

Take it from us -- an organization that closely studies all the horrific ways people can die from common household items -- have the jelly donut.

New report: Many Arlingtonians increasingly priced out of county's housing market

I'm going to try to write the newsletter this week on my deep sense of commentary fatigue. A little ironic I suppose, but I feel we're spending too much effort trying to interpret and explain our time to one another and not enough effort accepting it and meeting the moment on it's own terms.

in recent years there's been this new attempt to portray being a soulless blogspam affiliate hack as something that requires serious effort and research in order to "find the best deals" (a ton of these are usually AI)

Every time someone talks to me about Amazon and I tell them I haven't bought anything on Amazon in ~ a decade they get so defensive about things they "have to" buy on Amazon because they can't afford not to and the things they "have to" buy are always, like, 4 backup Halloween costumes. Essential.

It's spoopy season 🎃🧟‍♂️🦇🕸️

It's theater season, baby! 🎭

We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.

Incidentally, something surprisingly hard with book reviews is classics? Like what the fuck are you supposed to say about Pride and Prejudice?

It's literally the phrase "defund the police" – not the actual concept behind it – that voters oppose.

Scientists rarely proclaim absolutes. Yet autism researchers are all but certain that there is no simple cause of the condition. Here's why the idea of finding a "smoking gun" for autism is so absurd. www.scientificamerican.com/article/auti... 🧪

trans people just want to be able to live their lives and cis people are like "due to this we need to do mandatory genital inspections to children playing sports". im sorry but the problem is cis people

These two beliefs are at odds with each other. It cannot both be the case that our only solution is to court Trump voters and also that people who abstain from voting because of policy mismatch can cost you the election.

It is the job of the Democratic party to sell and defend the policies that most Democratic voters want, not to present a candidate slate that is palatable to moderate Republicans who might switch if they hate their own candidate enough.

Sometimes it's nice to remember that even Marcus Aurelius was like "you don't have to comment on everything bro"

The Washington Post wrongly fired Opinions columnist Karen Attiah over her social media posts. The Post not only flagrantly disregarded standard disciplinary processes, it also undermined its own mandate to be a champion of free speech.

I just got a no-cost COVID vaccine at the Walgreens in Pentagon Row, no prescription required!! They're a hot mess in there but they got the job done.

I wrote my own Charlie Kirk obituary, and about valuing truth over manners: www.thenation.com/article/poli...

Turning Point USA made a literal watch list of professors, primarily women, queer folks and people of color, and made us targets of political violence. I’ve received hate mail and harassment and death threats off and on for nearly a decade in part due to that man’s organization so 🤷🏽‍♀️

An impulsive liar very obviously lied again and we’re going full CSI on his signature like he hasn’t been impulsively lying for literally decades.

I just got a no-cost COVID vaccine at the Walgreens in Pentagon Row, no prescription required!! They're a hot mess in there but they got the job done.

Book lovers don’t just love reading… they love riding Metro too! 🚇📚 Over 14,000 riders took Metro to the National Book Festival last Saturday, where they heard from best-selling authors and celebrated the joy of reading with other book enthusiasts.

Happy #NationalBookFestival Day!! 💙📚

PSA: RFK Jr is a eugenics-supporting piece of shit. He ALSO has spasmodic dysphonia, which is why his voice sounds the way it does. There are endless ways to express what a piece of shit he is WITHOUT mocking his disability. RFK Jr won’t see what you say about him, but other disabled people will

all the Trump death rumors are just proof that everyone is susceptible to misinformation, no matter their political affiliation

August reads! 💙📚

In 1933 the Nazi Party looted and destroyed the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sex Research) in Berlin, the first clinic for modern gender-affirmation surgeries in the world. The Institute's library and archives were publicly burned.

"This changes EVERYTHING!" - me to my meticulously organized TBR list as I bring home yet another fat stack of library books

some guy off the street: "yeah this is pretty fucking bad" most of our green room pundits: "ah but you see, trump has an advantage on crime so democrats should be careful not to sound too opposed"

Look what they did to Notepad. Shut the fuck up. This is Notepad. You are not welcome here. Oh yeah "Let me use Copilot for Notepad". "I'm going to sign into my account for Notepad". What the fuck are you talking about. It's Notepad.

Fun fact: trash cans were removed around the White House in 2013 and even though secure trash cans have been installed around the Pentagon, none have ever been put back in Lafayette Square. There’s easy solutions for these problems - NPS just needs funding and proper management.