Another good time to remind people that “tear gas” is a term of copaganda that police, the military, and its manufacturers use to obscure that it is a dangerous chemical weapon internationally banned for use even in warfare.

I mean, yes. both. address books were a thing. but if you dialed a number often enough, you memorized it without thinking. your brain is handy like that.

I am once again wishing that the left were as organized and well-funded as the right makes out.

It's time again as a notable Italian-American to note Christopher Columbus was an absolute piece of shit human who didn't land anywhere near this actual country so why the fuck should he stop the mail for the whole day Anyway, Happy Indigenous People's Day, y'all

"Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God's children." —MLK Jr.

wait they made a movie? of my video game that I like?

WTF: "An Education Department staffer told USA TODAY the agency laid off just about every employee who works to administer funding for IDEA, the primary federal law supporting students with disabilities. He was unsure how those programs will exist moving forward." www.usatoday.com/story/news/e...

How much money do you think DHS has expended so far on punishing this one man

hey it's that video I always associate with @artemispickle.bsky.social

Derek, the menswear guy Garak - a plain, simple tailor All I'm saying is you've never seen them in the same room together

"To be a Republican in 2025 represents a clear public confession that you either don't know the difference between good and evil and you're so morally empty that you can't be bothered to begin to try, or that you do know the difference, and you prefer evil." Great essay from @juliusgoat.bsky.social

We had Angela Davis speak at my university a couple of years back. One of the many insightful things she said - protest in the way that aligns with your passion. If that’s poetry do poetry or music etc. Because then you will be able to sustain it. If naked bike rides are your passion, 100% do that.

Always a great guy in my interactions with him, tireless advocate for the gaming community. It's a heartbreak.

A key reason why it’s been so awful to see fascists destroying the FAA is that aviation safety regulators have historically been *extremely good* at avoiding the dangerous human fallacy of “this bad thing hasn’t happened yet, it’s just nearly happened, so it’s totally safe to keep doing it”

There's always an xkcd

Mods are asleep post brassicas

It’s impossible to overstate how much “abolish ice” is the normie position now here in chicago — just countless random moms at toddler soccer on a park district field asking me where I bought my anti-ice t-shirt. average people don’t like our neighborhoods being terrorized.

one thing perhaps worth emphasizing is that under federal law an escaped enslaved person was a criminal. an "illegal," you might say.

a key thing about vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society

THREAD. Did you know that at about 1/3 of all stranger homicides in the U.S. are perpetrated by police? But there's something hidden here that is important to understand in this authoritarian moment.

move fast and break everything

It's hard to help Americans left behind because so much of US identity is rooted in individualism. The average American conservative holds all three positions at once: — Virtue signals about supporting US manufacturing — Against raising the minimum wage — Buys foreign imports because they're cheap

Ultimately, the death of US manufacturing is about this attitude. It's easy to say "buy american or stfu" because virtue signaling is free. But it's hard to actually sustain a business because many Americans simply don't want to pay what it costs to produce things ethically in this country

I interviewed one of these factory workers in Los Angeles. She gets paid three cents to sew a zipper, five cents for a collar, and seven cents to prepare the top part of a skirt. This is how fast fashion brands like Fashion Nova can put "Made in USA" tags on dress shirts that retail for only $25

sometimes I like to imagine a universe in which my thing was buying and wearing/using all the stuff named "Sophie"

If you remember the Iraq war, you will remember The Surge: massing troops into key cities to establish control. Trump is describing American cities as if they are Baghdad in 2007. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/purge-merg...

Every day that passes I am more convinced of two things: 1) This regime’s attempt to consolidate and hold power is going to collapse in truly spectacular fashion 2) That collapse is going to be astoundingly dangerous and destructive

If we all decided to stop pushing “optimizing value” as a concept, we would all be better off.

Vought is at war with large swaths of the population, with the very idea of a society defined by democratic pluralism. If you have correctly identified that this guy is now in a really powerful position, that people like him are in control of the government, how is that not the main story?

Russell Vought embodies the radicalization of the conservative movement; his example captures how far removed from democratic politics the Trumpist Right is. Vought is convinced to be fighting a noble war against a vast leftist conspiracy that has supposedly taken over the country.

The overriding goal of too many journalists is to provide “balanced” coverage from a “neutral” position in equidistance to both sides. That framework is much easier to justify if you pretend to be dealing with “normal” politicians – as opposed to committed ideologues pursuing an extreme project.

I've used this analogy before. When you're about to drive off the road, it isn't enough to just straighten the wheel, you have to steer in the opposite direction until you're no longer going off the road, or you're still going to crash.

IT DOES NOT MATTER IF YOUR MEDICAL EMERGENCY IS DUE TO DRUG ADDICTION. IT'S A MEDICAL EMERGENCY YOU FUCKING GHOULS. This is part and parcel of what's keeping us from having universal health care: they really believe that some ppl deserve medical care and some don't.

I don’t care if it’s cringe, suck it up and put on the fucking frog suit

This Halloween I’m going as the scariest thing of all, emotional intimacy!!! ha ha just kidding I’m prion disease

About a month ago, the Trump administration got rid of the de minimis exemption, whereby packages valued under $800 could slide in without import duties. Now there's a backlog as the government can't process all of this paperwork, leading to UPS just destroying packages

OOOPS! UPDATE: Two HHS officials tell me that disease detectives, measles response officers, global health officials and the MMWR staff were laid off by mistake and will be reinstated. But Washington office is still RIFed

The "cognitive decline and brain damage from repeat COVID infections" and "easy to use robot that makes slop and melts your critical thinking skills" is a hell of a combo in a post-fact media ecosystem

There is one fundamental truth about mutual aid, and it always shocks people: YOU MUST BREAK THE LAW IN ORDER TO ACTUALLY HELP PEOPLE. This truth alone should radicalize you. The more you work on scale, branding, recognition, institutional funding, the harder it becomes to actually help people.

If I were actively trying to destroy the United States from within, going after and dismantling its public health would be like the first thing I’d do. Just pointing that out. This is beyond dangerous. It’s leaving us vulnerable in a way we can’t really fathom until it’s too late.

Only people interested in weakening the United States would make such a decision. The real “enemies within” are part of this administration.

This is 100% unacceptable. 1) No one should ever be expected to perform their job under the unwelcomed watch of an unknown gunman, much less make their art. 2) No means no. Period.

Reminder that one of the punkest acts of resistance against fascism is putting a mask on in shared air. It immediately marks you as a brave and safe person for disabled folks. It’s not easy to stick out, yeah. So imagine how we feel.

an incontestable fact of the second trump administration is it is actively trying to sicken and kill as many americans as it can

They're talking about killing leftist activists. They're talking about murdering people organizing in defense of immigrant communities, doing mutual aid work, and protesting their violence. They are talking about murdering people like me and my friends. We must do more than acknowledge it's fascism.

Deep dive into the surge in US pedestrian deaths: "It’s not that more pedestrians are getting hit by vehicles; it’s that the ones that are getting hit are more likely to die." "[That] seems like fairly strong evidence for the theory that the rise in large SUVs is behind the uptick in ped deaths."

when i say this, i am not saying these collaborations are bad or unnecessary (i have been calling for them myself). i am saying they cannot fill many of the gaps CDC would typically cover. please read what i write and not what i don’t write