If you want a fun science (🧪) article to read this weekend, make it this one: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #Stradivarius #Dendrochronology

NEW: since last year, a pair of "highly trained" feds have been involved in an array of incidents attacking crowds with chemical weapons. We used public records and open source analysis to identify Edgar Vazquez and Michael Sveum, alongside some other members of their tactical team. Read more:

🚨🚨" Some leaders have chosen to hunt them down and deport them through operations that are both unlawful and cruel. My government has chosen a different way: a fast and simple path to regularize their immigration status." Spanish PM Pedro #Sanchez on why #migrants are essential for Western society:

free them all

The public made noise for Liam Ramos and it got him released from Dilley. Now we must make noise for 7 year old Diana Crespo. Her parents were taking her for emergency medical care when ICE grabbed them, and she’s rotting in the camp sick and exposed to measles. Get them out!

in a democratic republic (and really in all times and places) the slavish hunger to be in the thrall of a strongman or a king is the ultimate moral degeneracy.

Jeff Bezos is right. There is no need to have correspondents reporting in Europe when you can get all that information from Russia. They'll even pay YOU. by Benny Johnson and Tim Pool

@wyden.senate.gov's record of warning that there is deep and constitutionally-serious dirt being done by the intelligence agencies in secret is unblemished. The vaguer he is, the filthier the dirt is. This is the vaguest I've ever seen him

I love writing about geeky science that has real-world implications. In this case, a new NOAA index does a more solid job of classifying El Niño and La Niña—and that helps explain some recent puzzling events. @climateconnections.bsky.social yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/02/a-ne...

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again. #Pinks #ProudBlue

Most of the footage you see from ICE observers in Minnesota comes from the core cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. I talked to observers in the northern suburbs, who say they're taking on the same mission in very different conditions. (1) share.google/ei9giIFLsuEJ...

All the smartest, best people I know are broke and losing their jobs, while the stupidest, meanest, most vicious and violent people are thriving. It’s awful, and of course it’s just one part of the terrible times we’re in. If you feel as hopeless as I do, go read a story, poem, or essay today.

Don’t know how many more examples it’s going to take for people to realize that billionaires are an existential threat to democracy and its institutions.

Absolutely not trying to make the terrible news of the closure of Washington Post's Books coverage about me or anything, but I cannot stress how bad this is for books. The biggest divide between Big 5 and independent/nonprofit press books is not quality--it's the marketing spend.

one thing the trump era has made clear, i think, is that the american people themselves are far more committed to the values of our founding documents than our elites

Not true. Elon is in there. And Melania.

ICE tear gassed a bunch of children on Saturday. This was a massive escalation of force. They were shooting tear gas at the back of the crowd, it took these unmasked people maybe 3-5 minutes in the cloud of tear gas to escape in without trampling. www.theverge.com/policy/87278...

What I found today in The Epstein Files open.substack.com/pub/jkbjourn...

I think about strategic nonviolence like this: you are trying to defeat the greatest chess grandmaster in world history. The good news is you get to pick the game. Don’t pick chess.

ATTN: great things are again happening in China, ice level 🇨🇳

Definitely seems like they destroyed the country on purpose.

re the kennedy center thing it occurs to me that for trump tearing down beloved buildings and replacing them with gaudy crap with his name on it serves roughly the same role playing a familiar song on the piano does for other dementia patients

The woke scolds are trying to make this about racism. But Musk is right. It's about historical and scientific integrity. When the God of Thunder disguises himself as a swan to seduce and fuck a queen and the resulting baby hatches from an egg, *of course* the baby will be white. It's just science.

“There is not a single Sudanese family, from east to west, north to south who has not been affected by the war, one way or the other.” @ikushkush.bsky.social  joins @mutasima.bsky.social  & @kayliwewe.bsky.social  on Global Insights on The Lede. Listen to the full episode: https://shorturl.at/igydd

JUST IN: Democrats flip a red seat in the Texas Senate. Taylor Rehmet wins against Leigh Wambsganss, a conservative activist who helped lead right-wing efforts to take over TX school boards. With all early vote, and 95% of precincts, in, Dem up 57/43. Trump won this seat by 17% in Tarrant County.

JD Vance in 2021:

we said all along that they wanted Gawker dead not because we embarrassed a pro wrestler but because the Epstein story is one Gawker was covering a decade before most other people caught up & was just one of many stories exposing powerful people and their misdeeds

Even now, we still may be underestimating the extent to which elite-peddled 'woke' and 'gender' backlash was an intentional, high-$$$ strategy to block further exposure of an elite American rape club that every last one of them was in.

Seeing that photo of Obama putting the Medal of Freedom on Tom Homan circulate again. It's fake. Homan did get a civil service award during the Obama administration, but it wasn't the Medal of Freedom, it wasn't a medal (it was a certificate), and Obama didn't present it to him in person.

lol wait what holy shit that’s … alright gang you know what I’m gonna say it’s with a heavy heart we must call and *thank* our reps for doing the job they’re supposed to do

It is no coincidence that we’re seeing a rise in fascism about fifty years after integration of elite universities. That’s how long it took for that initial fraternity cohort to gain access to the most powerful roles in our society.

This is genuinely important. The White House seems MOST concerned with suppressing any evidence that Melania fucked Epstein before he passed her to Donald. They could have redacted ALL women as a way to suppress that.

COLBERT: “.. Do not compare ICE or the border patrol to the Nazis. .. The Nazis were willing to show their faces.” @colbertlateshow.bsky.social

friend of mine is an undocumented immigrant and has been hiding in Melania theaters bc he knows people assume no one is in there

Trump: "I don't want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people who own homes."

"Every good thing you have in your life is the product of someone else's struggle."

More than a year in this has mostly gone as I feared, and in some ways has been worse. But there have been two contrasting surprises: -- The speed and breadth of institutional capitulation -- The courage, ferocity, and resolution of regular people Our strength isn't our institutions. It's us.

New at Can We Still Govern: Here is one thing I wish more people understood about government. There is a lot of rent-seeking by private vendors in our social safety net. Trump's policies will make this worse. @lukef.bsky.social breaks it down. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-means-...

god bless none of this is true for the vast, vast majority of Chinese workers.

me, emotionally writing an essay on the use of force by federal agents: ok but what if i packaged this in the most insane way possible www.theverge.com/policy/86857...

Lower income whites with no post-high school education slowly come to the realization that Donald Trump is not their friend. This is the core of the MAGA movement.

Recent ICE goon pepper spraying someone in the face up close reminded me of this from Occupy at UC Davis. School chancellor Linda Katehi only faced repercussions years later for spending resources to try and get this scrubbed from the internet.

Once again, I ask how the math of other currencies replacing the dollar is going to go so long as neither 🇪🇺 nor 🇨🇳 is willing to do any of the things required to actually replace the dollar: bsky.app/profile/mcop...

we've got Schumer calling for Miller's head, folks we're dragging them kicking and screaming in the right direction, keep it up

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free

the heartening silver lining in this awful situation is that the urban school district at the center of the SC county where most of these measles cases are occuring has not been affected because most district 7 schools are 95% immunized. the firewall is holding!

Ill-hands Omar

For anyone so inclined, my advice is that it's time to start a whip list of Senate Dems demanding that Miller go.

Just started doing new data analysis and I know I keep saying this, but: I really, really don't think people appreciate how much this moral panic was a deliberate and extremely expensive invention.