A lot of people have been talking about how Trump's way of commemorating the 250th is a pretty good encapsulation of everything that's wrong with the country right now, and they are not beating the accusations with this one.

I wrote about the Supreme Court's latest disgusting anti-trans ruling. I wrote about it because I refuse to act like taking away constitutional rights and allowing legal discrimination is okay just because it's happening to people who don't poll well in a diner in Ohio. In @thenation.com

A lot of people have been talking about how Trump's way of commemorating the 250th is a pretty good encapsulation of everything that's wrong with the country right now, and they are not beating the accusations with this one.

Ad Rock: you can disagree with the current All: POPE MCA: but if you push his buttons then you’re a All: DOPE Mike D: ordain yourself a bishop and you’re All: SCHISMATIC Ad Rock: excommunication is All: AUTOMATIC

I cannot express how angry shit like this makes me. And unfortunately, a lot of Well-Meaning Cis Liberals™ helped normalize this kind of argument.

This is one of those chicken-or-egg situations: Do chatbots make people more susceptible to conspiracies and myths or are conspiracy-minded people simply more likely to use chatbots? I suspect the latter but causation would not be easy to suss out (and it is likely a feedback loop).

This is a pretty good response to the SCOTUS decisions today, especially starting off with defending trans kids. Proud of my governor.

why is this like the Cybertruck of Arc de Triomphes

Today (well I guess technically yesterday now) I did something I've never done before: I spoke about being trans to a bunch of older Presbyterians. (Never would've had that on my bingo card.) It actually was pretty fun? I like doing outreach of sorts and this church (PCA) is very welcoming.

Absolutely incredible.

Is Mike Johnson actually making me like DSA? Because I have a hard time disagreeing with any of these points and some of them have been on my personal wishlist for years.

This whole story is wild (allowing this in work forums is utter malpractice for any employer, let alone a quasi-governmental org), but the idea of using "a Twitter thread of no less than *17 actual scientists*" as evidence that sex is binary is funny as hell. We need a Project Steve for this shit.

Centrist Democrats wanted us to cast some people aside in order to expand the tent and win? Great. We agreed. We choose to cast out ... them. They should just hold their nose and go along like they expected trans people to go along right? They know what to do with this play; they invented it.

The person I was responding to (who accused me both of being a "bot" and on Susan Collins' payroll, lol) has blocked me but I'm going to amplify this for good measure. If you're attacking someone for a medical condition they have, you're a piece of shit with no credibility on ethics, full stop.

I have a coworker on my current project who is originally from (North) Macedonia, and while we work remotely most of the time, we were together in person last week for meetings. After dinner one night, he introduced me to the idiom "the axe fell in the honey" and I absolutely love it.

A lot of people are dragging Harrison for this (probably justifiably), but to me this response is most interesting because it is very Strong Party in tone and we don't have strong parties in this country anymore. Harrison can opine about the party all he wants but it's what the voters choose.

This reply to someone claiming that LLMs could do better than "the average teacher" got me blocked and I am so fucking amused.

One thing that I utterly refuse to do is to let people with no actual expertise in education make wild, unsupported claims about how LLMs could replace significant parts of a teacher's job. I have yet to see anyone put forth any substantial evidence or argument to that effect.

It kind of cracks me up still that part of the denouement of the original Lilo & Stitch is predicated on the idea that an advanced alien civilization would be willing to contravene their own laws because a human claimed that they own a sentient lifeform. I know, suspension of disbelief, but still.

I finally got around to watching the season finale of Widow's Bay (it's been a week), and I don't want to brag, but I absolutely called the twist in the final episode. (In fact, the previous episode had me convinced that I was probably wrong, which is a sign of good suspense!)

On the other hand, when Jennicet Gutiérrez asked Obama to end the abuse of trans women in ICE detention and stop all deportations, while at a White House Pride event in 2015, Obama mocked her to her face and she was thrown out and briefly detained.

It is much easier to applaud risks other people take, when they don’t call your power into question.

It's always amazing to see people criticizing specific Democrats for not doing what they clearly have done (attacking Trump for starting the war) and doing what they clearly haven't (attacking Trump from a hawkish, pro-war position). At some point it's just confirmation bias.

Apparently it is possible to trigger an emotional reaction simply by using "wherefore" to mean "where" and I can't say I'm terribly pleased about that.

The fact that Elon Musk is now one of history’s greatest mass-murderers, due to his total destruction of USAID, is still far too little-known. It’s on all of us to shout this from the rooftops. Never shut up about Elon Musk’s genocidal crimes.

Literal LOL for me.

going to laugh forever about the Knicks only losing the Trump Game immaculate scriptwriting, no notes

This skeet is how I found out Alfie Kohn is on BlueSky, and what a way to find out.

Your regular reminder that for transphobes the very existence of trans people (but let's be real, trans women) is tantamount to sexual assault. The innuendo and attempts at statistical deception is just a smokescreen for that core belief, which is why rebutting it does little good.

one of the hardest truths about cleaning up the mess is that it always takes so much longer to fix the things that are broken than it took to break them. just refilling all the government positions for the people who were fired/quit is going to take years

I’m at the bread and circuses. I’m at the damnatio memoriae. I’m at the combination bread and circuses damnatio memoriae

My brother-in-law is obsessed with one of these people (although not Vitaly, the "hunter" in this story) and I have always found it very, very disturbing.

I really enjoy EB White's take on New York and New Yorkers.

So here's a question I have (and I promise that it's not leading, I genuinely am conflicted): Let's say you're advising a politician who by all accounts has decent bona fides when it comes to trans rights. They're running a highly contested race somewhere that is not friendly to trans rights.

A kind of adorable thing: My wife just recently finished a book, and last Friday we were at the library to pick up some new books. I noticed that the book she had just finished was on an LGBTQ display for Pride month, and she reacted in mild surprise. This morning she went back to the library...

Absolutely true and it's good to remember, but unfortunately hypervigilance is always going to be tempting in situations where the probability of danger is low but the risk very high.

This is a comment that was clearly made by an editor who had had it Up To Here.

serial-wrecker consultant bros and their orbiters inventing an insult to deflect why everybody hates consultants onto women

It’s a shame no one has ever figured out how to vet a candidate ahead of time

I see a lot of people who tell me that trans people should arm themselves, and I've never bought that this would actually translate to safety. Stories like this prove otherwise.

Platner’s sexting scandal has been a bat-signal for misogyny among certain “progressive” men. Ken Kippenstein called his critics and other mainstream Democrats “smoothgroins.” Kyle Kulinski said Platner could sext his mother. I wrote about it all here: www.liberalcurrents.com/the-men-defe...

TERFs Get a Life Challenge

I promise it's not a spoiler for the latest episode of Widow's Bay, but Kate O'Flynn slapping cash on the gas station counter and yelling "Twenty on pump 3!" is one of the fucking funniest things I've ever seen in my life. (You have to see it in context. I was wheezing.) This show is incredible.

I waited so long that first year to find the "right time" to come out and I wish I hadn't waited so long because everything was fine. That doesn't mean it will be fine for everyone in every situation, but it's worth the risk, absolutely.

This whole thread is spot on. And unfortunately, as with so many things, it seems like the crisis is that because too many men are listening to people (mostly other men) telling them that the problem is not with them at all.

"Jungle primaries are a great idea!" said someone who's never seen a ballot like this before.

This is classic degendering, something that trans people are very familiar with.

Anyway this is your usual reminder to spend at least as much time promoting content you find insightful/informative as you do dunking on content you find bad. To do otherwise creates perverse incentives.

I read something recently (IIRC at the New Republic) that talked about this, and the more I think about it, the more I think that what is really happening is that we have created a world that so many ordinary people hate, and that gets focused through economic dissatisfaction.

Just 15 years ago Aaron Swartz died as a result of MIT's overzealous regard for the sanctity of their libraries. He'd be turning 40 this year.