The lesson I am taking from the Epstein files is that if you have a mutually supportive network of a certain size and power, you can indeed affect the culture at large. Imagine if some folks who weren't among the worst that humanity has to offer did something similar?

THIS x1,000,000

His response to the studio when they tried to give him notes on that movie is one of my favorite Mel Brooks stories. He was determined to let Lynch cook.

Yup. This is also why I get annoyed when people start suggesting "golden age" science fiction titles to people who are new the genre and are asking for suggestions. You want to turn a modern 15-year-old off science fiction forever, recommend stories that were old when her grandparents were her age.

The closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time passes. Light, traveling as it does *at* C, doesn’t experience time. A photon is emitted from a distant star and absorbed by your eye in the same instant.

"Lefties have guns the way conservatives have abortions. We have them, we just don't talk about them." I don't know where the quote originated, but I lol'd.

Right after he gets those last kinks out of the Hyperloop…. 🙄

like do these people not hear chotiner’s words are dripping with sarcasm, or

When you set up your own bullshit win conditions and still utterly fail. www.reuters.com/business/us-...

Just saw that a candidate for my county sheriff was on the Epstein list. In fairness, I also saw a passing reference to a couple girls they buried in the desert somewhere near me, so I see why they might want to be close to local law enforcement. #ExpressingRageThroughUnderstatement

CHICAGOANS!!!! Voting is open for the annual snowplow naming contest. And “Abolish Ice” is one of the options. You know what to do (vote): chicagoshovels.org

Not just in our present distress, no one should run unopposed

Coming soon. Tell your friends and remind your enemies.

Honestly, I don't care much how he's polling. He's in the wrong. If 99% of the people like him or 99% hate him, it doesn't change that.

Trump is dispatching Border Czar Tom Homan to Minnesota to "manage operations on the ground." In case you missed it, here's our investigation into Homan and his relationships with government contractors/consultants cashing in on the deportation business:

There is a certain flavor of anger I get from people bullshitting me. This is a good comedic reframing of something I have a hard time addressing lightly. www.threads.com/@dvdcolumbo/...

I hate to be this guy, but maybe the youngs aren't in love with Harry Potter because those are OLD PEOPLE NOSTALGIA BOOKS now. This is like "New Generations Aren't Watching The Sound of Music Like I Did At Their Age, They Must Have Embraced Nazism."

… … … *¿¿¿liberalism???

He spent decades bringing the religious right to power. Now he's marching to undo it. Rev. Rob Schenck spent decades helping build the Religious Right—commingling church and state to advance conservative causes. Now, he says he must confront the damage he helped cause.

Here's a regular white guy (literally "Chad") not a protester. because, "It seemed pointless, or just a way for people to expiate their sense of guilt." Chad witnessed something shattering. And, that all changed in a moment. Excellent article!

I second everything John said here. I already knew Greg Ketter from DreamHaven Books was a good person so this really isn’t surprising, but at 70 he shouldn’t have to be walking through tear gas on a Minneapolis street to try to protect his neighbors. Abolish Ice.

“It is not yours to complete the work, but neither are you permitted to turn away from it.“

Video from Sen. Mark Kelly on the shooting today:

Not a novel comment but the fact that Bill freaking Kristol has more clarity on this than so many elected officials is damning.

Armed mask secret police abducting witnesses without jurisdiction and disappearing them into their secure facility, not great!

This is why as a Humanist I'm not an anti-theist. If the goal is to promote human flourishing, and these folk prefer religion as the framework to do so, I'm not just for it, I'll do what I can to protect it.

The legally-mandated release of the Epstein files is now more than one month overdue. There are still MILLIONS of pages DOJ has yet to release. What are Trump's personal lawyers at the DOJ trying to hide?

Another reason I didn’t get a Tesla

Sudden random impulse to run a Vampire: the Masquerade one-shot where the players are sent to confront the “Anarch King” who turns out to be a malkavian hanging out behind a Denny’s while all the other vampires ignore him.

Hi from your friendly gun violence researcher! Want to know one thing we did differently? Since 2022, we have approached firearm homicide (the most common type) not just as a crime problem, but also using all the tools of public health - education, environment change, etc.

I wasn't sure what to expect from a group of Democratic state AGs, but I definitely was not expecting a long monologue about Ruby Ridge and the Boston Massacre www.theverge.com/policy/86588...

“It was a simpler time then, back when all people wanted to talk about was the leader of the country molesting underage girls,” said Denver resident Scott Munoz

The double cognitive load of a) the President is deranged, and nobody in power acting he's deranged is stressful, and b) there are millions of Americans who get their news from media sanewashing the President, so they don't *know* he's deranged, so they think *we're* deranged, is ... fun.

Introduce yourself with 5 concerts you’ve seen: Leonard Cohen Pink Martini Cracker They Might Be Giants The Cranberries

American conservatives: A strong unitary executive is the best way to coordinate the challenges of a complex society. Also American conservative: Let’s give the keys to this chucklehead and see where the evening takes us.

fantastic piece from my colleague @polgreen.bsky.social that gets at something i have been thinking about. what, exactly, is the administration's strategic goal in minnesota? what does "victory" look like for trump and miller?

Cambridge Analytical was just a shot off the port bow. The level of behavioral manipulation we're seeing now will form the basis of millions of graduate degrees and doctoral theses for a hundred years or more.

Reading another psychology/human behavior book talking about the Milgram experiment and thought about what might happen now if universities were still allowed to conduct those studies and then realized that is effectively exactly what social media does. It's one big Milgram experiment.

and an interesting/helpful op-ed, it is 👇

Love it.

You know things are getting spicy when the financial journalists are writing articles about whether maybe bubbles are a good thing.

How goes the quest to monetize LLMs, you ask? We’re down to “sell ads.” www.wired.com/story/openai...

LLMs are a bad tool, and their greatest danger is management treating the bullshit engines like they’re HAL 9000

When you try to accomplish something difficult, surround yourself with friends. For more advice see my book Excellent Advice for Living amzn.to/3mQL4c4 #excellentadvice

This is not a paid advertisement. Subscribe at membership.theonion.com to receive the newspaper and see more print-exclusive content.

I swear, if I could wave a magic wand and make the idea that men have a limited window of time where they have to start dating and if they miss it, they’re fucked vanish, I would do it in a heartbeat. The self-imposed pressure and judgement from this attitude is immense and insane.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’ve been writing this story as often as I can without it feeling repetitive. This is an excellent thread, as all of Jamelle’s threads on this general topic today have been, and I hope folks are really taking this in.

I am legit curious how many people are getting jobs in ICE in order to sabotage it from within. $50k signup bonus and the access to undermine Steven Miller from within? You got to think someone's doing it.

Your brain is a hallucination engine. Feed it a steady diet of shit, and it will build you a shit world. So what happens when you change what you feed it? www.kameronhurley.com/were-fucked-...

If we're prepping Albuquerque to deal with oppressive government agents the same way as Iran. . . . . . I mean. All right, I guess, but damn.