Hardly an attitude unique to America of course, this refusal to comprehend its actions + their casual relationship to the actions of others. Russians love acting surprised at how eastern Europeans rush to NATO, Israelis love acting surprised that Levantine Arabs might court Iranian or Turkish money.

I don't think Raffaello and Raffaella Santonastaso were reading Hillbilly fucking Elegy when they fled the Mezzogiorno. I think they were just poor and optimistic, like millions before them and millions after them.

I'm gonna be limiting my bluesky usage to 20 minutes a day I this

Sorry but my favorite example of this was making the brain surgeon head of HUD. Just an all timer giveaway

there’s a strong case to be made that the sitcom is the greatest invention of the 20th century

happy valentimes

if I had known to do this when I was 25 I would have had an extra like....$35k in retirement savings 😵‍💫 which now isn't compounding 😔

Ladies, this Valentine's Day we are learning financial independence from MEN. If your job has a 401k, contribute to it to *at least* the employer match. Free money, lower taxes! Start now!!

slavery is one of the rare things historically where the more you learn about it the more you realize your initial assessment was correct and it was in fact one of the most evil things ever to occur

sometimes you'll learn that, like, Napoleon did legal reforms which are the basis for many countries legal systems today. with slavery you learn that men would rape people and enslave their own children

I just bought so much soap. Possibly unnecessarily

i’ll end this little brainstorm by just asking what it is, exactly, that the MAGA right likes about the United States, since it explicitly rejects those things that make this nation distinctive — its pluralism, its revolutionary heritage and egalitarian aspirations, and its republican institutions

Am I a Maggie Rogers fan?

[girl who has toured Oberlin voice] Ohio is a great place to be trans!

We're watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Only one of these weddings was queer, absolutely insufficient. In woke 2 there will be NO cishet weddings.

valentine's day isn't just for couples, it's also a day to celebrate love. for instance, i would love it if housing prices came down.

so a fun fact about me is that if you take me out to dinner with a Big Deal Scholar, the chances that I will discuss the fiqh of whether squirting breaks your wudu' are apparently very high... I love myself idc

Rubio has a personal interest in saying nice(ish) things to Europe; the Trump administration as a whole has a strong interest in Europe not acting on the rupture the White House has created. None of this means an actual change of direction in US foreign policy.

It's been clear for the whole of the last year (and before) that the Trump administration is focused on developing economic ties with Russia; supporting Russia's full rehabilitation; forcing Ukraine's capitulation; and preventing NATO/EU states acting as spoilers.

I am by no means a class first — let alone class only — leftist, but the older I get the more I think that the way you disrupt a lot of sexual violence and exploitation, including Epstein type shit, is by raising the floor with a massive social safety net and lowering the ceiling with taxes.

On the flip side, the people most vulnerable to exploitation are poor people. So many stories of trafficking are just poor people who are forced into sex work by family members or partners. The 17 yo who was abused by Matt Gaetz was… a poor teenager who turned to sex work to make money.

And realistically, power imbalances and financial insecurity are at the root of a lot of sexual exploitation. The Epstein story is a story of social circle where people were so wealthy and powerful that they could evade most accountability. No one should be rich enough to own an island!!!

The American right does not defend slavery because progressives say it was bad. They defend slavery because racial hierarchy has been an important and increasingly explicit component of their ideology for 70 years. Read a fucking book.

Calling it a “prediction” market rather than a “betting” market is a brilliant bit of advertising that the media has collectively been *far* too happy to go along with, to its shame.

Girls! The HU in New Haven in May!!!!!!

I mean, there's a lot of comped stuff on cruise ships that are paid for by everyone paying ticket prices, this is in a limited sense a welfare state

This is an insane sentence.

Look not every pretty woman who carries herself well is going to have good politics. That's just like life.

2016 was the first time a trans person addressed a National Convention to talk about being trans, her closing video included chants of "Black Lives Matter" its clear her vision was about America as a multiethnic nation coming together

no foreign foe has ever dreamed of being able to sack and pillaging this country the way Trump admin and its congressional and scotus enablers do every day.

If the Republican party was a party of patriots they would stop this tomorrow, sadly, the American people has a elected a Congress of cowards

I know I said I thought the last person was the one but I really think this one is the one

if you're an older person who finds words like mogg and maxxing annoying, just starting using them. people over the age of 30 have the superpower to end trends by simply adopting them

Admittedly that much protein w/o meat or dairy is hard (I do eat meat some days & dairy quite a few) and requires some focus but if you eat cottage cheese you can hit your protein numbers without trying

As someone who has been tracking his protein intake pretty closely for years, I feel like the added protein craze in foods is crossing over into fad/scam territory. I just don’t think *that* many Americans are protein deficient, especially American omnivores

“DHS is shutting down because it refuses to obey the law” is excellent framing

Why keep thousands of people alive when you can instead make one man feel safe and special?

I grew up on Paumanok but I did NOT grow up on Long Island

I don’t love using the term “blood libel” for anything other than the historical phenomenon, but if anything in modern politics resembles it, it is JD Vance lying that Haitian migrants eat pets. A totally baseless claim about the supposedly inhuman habits of a hated out-group, justifying violence.

My profile picture is now an actual human face. Yay

AOC: "I think we have to recognize that we are in a new day and in a new time. But that does not mean that the majority of Americans are ready to walk away from a rules-based order, and that we're ready to walk away from our commitment to democracy."

When you ask Americans to give you their thoughts on "immigration," you're getting *something* worth having. You're getting a reflection of their instincts & whatever stray factoids have lodged. You're getting, effectively, a vibe reading. But you learn *nothing* about the reality of immigration.

In other words, "what Americans think about immigration" is, if you take it literally, a null category. They don't think anything about the reality of immigration because they simply do not know the reality of immigration. They can not have opinions on things they do not know.

I bet if you just did a simple survey, not one American in 10K would be able to accurately tell you the current level of immigration to the US, whether that level is up or down from the previous decade, what countries are most represented among immigrants, or what current US immigration policy is.

I am disgustingly thirsty for this woman who is unfortunately too unwell to go on a date with me tonight. We have rescheduled

Can’t share IG here & Tiktok censored their lyrics, so I am sharing it like this. But @subradioband.bsky.social is amazing. I love this so much.

What would Saint Barbara look like as a pigeon

Rents are declining nationwide because the United States is building more housing. www.apartmentlist.com/research/nat...