For the sake of popular BlueSky discourse, from the same archive I offer you the thoughts of an old leftist (born '31) on the importance of votes in the US electoral system in the wake of GW's first victory and the importance of laying the groundwork for third-party candidates to have success.

Someone has sure already made this observation but the fact they can convert all those empty warehouses into prison camps means they could have converted them into housing, community centers, job training centers or, hell, libraries or schools all along. It’s always a matter of will not resources.

Cause that's what heroes do.

Hey, so, I don’t do civil litigation, is it generally considered good when the judge does this? storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

It's not just the women and girls we know of. It's all their future work, and everything they could have been, and how we build structures that shelter their abusers. It's how a man's future has always been worth more than my past, present, and future combined.

If you’re helping to provide food to neighbors who are avoiding going out because of ICE, reminder that some of them will be observing Ramadan soon and providing them with nourishing and festive foods or at least a quality/fancy box of dates on top of what you’re already doing would be A+

Fascism wants you to believe that you are alone. That you are isolated. That the feelings you have are yours and nobody else has them because everybody is too afraid to speak. But love is stronger than fascism. Community is stronger than fascism.

I'm worried that the broader public isn't really understanding the Epstein Files. The problem isn't that everyone in the files is a secret pedophile, it's that all the people are corresponding with him because they *don't care that he's a pedophile*. It's a story of elite impunity.

Listen. The average person just doesn’t need training to know that it’s wrong to kill people. This is not some big complex problem that requires expertise to get right. If ICE is killing people, it’s from a lack of morality, not a lack of knowledge.

We did not properly punish the confederates. We did not properly punish the insurrectionists on January 6th. We have to punish ICE. They can’t be allowed to slink back into their communities quietly. Expose them. Arrest them. Convict them. Imprison them.

"CBP’s arrest and misconduct rate is 5 TIMES higher than other federal law enforcement agencies — and, in fact, if you look over the last decade, the arrest rate of CBP officers and Border Patrol agents (.5%) has been HIGHER than the arrest rate of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. (.4%)."

You don’t know your role yet maybe, but we are all finding out just what we have to offer. In Minneapolis, one man knew immediately what he could offer and said “Bring me your clothing”.

semi-regular reminder that ICE was only created in 2003 when you are asked to imagine a world without ICE, you're basically being asked to remember where you were when Lilo & Stitch came out

Trump is cutting the state off from federal funding - daycare, health care, food, and more cuts coming. For why? A punishment. An attack. It's indiscriminate and it's on all of us. We are under attack. This is the language we need journalists to use. Minnesota is under attack.

For folks still struggling with the math: There are ~345 million US citizens. There are ~245 million white US citizens. This is what they mean by "Peaceful ethnic cleansing." Their plan ends with deporting all non-white people. Not "undocumented criminals." Not even "all undocumented people."

A mistake in three acts

Daily reminder that guns are the leading cause of death of American kids

In 2025, I fixed my heart. Literally. Here is an ECG from late 2024. The orange circles show times my heart was dropping beats. My doctor said this was normal aging and not the kind of bad heart rhythm that would cause issues in the future but I could feel it being wonky and it bothered me.

Pope Leo said in a Christmas Eve sermon that the story of Jesus being born in a stable because there was no room at an inn should remind Christians that refusing to help the poor and strangers today is tantamount to rejecting God himself. For @reuters.com

It’s the “season of love and giving”…but this year, doesn’t it seem more like a “season of fear and taking”? Like many of you, I’ve been saddened by the human impact of draconian government budget cuts and how angry many housed Americans are at unhoused Americans. 🧵 1 of 9

Muting a Black woman to claim the vote was unanimous is so incredibly on the nose

Do not under any circumstances copy the transcript of Ken Paxton’s impeachment into the snitch line

I'm not sure if people realize the murder strikes are taking place across a large region. It's quite staggering. www.newsweek.com/map-us-strik...

1/3

In honour of Rob Reiner, have David Moore's thread on the best sword fight in movie history and exactly how nerdy it is.

1. For at least 10 years, Pepsi has conspired with Walmart to force up grocery prices. That’s the shocking evidence made public today in an unsealed FTC lawsuit. The suit was abandoned in May by the Trump FTC just before it was to be un-redacted. We went to court to get it unsealed & won.

In an effort at something good on the internet today: A thread on Mr KJC, gingerbread architect of the early 21st century. Mr KJC got his beginnings like so many gingerbread architects: with a kit house for the kids. Kind of fun but the premade pieces are dry and nasty, only technically edible.

12 dead at a mass shooting at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach.💔 A 43-year-old father of two, Ahmed al Ahmed, snuck up & tackled a gunman to disarm him. Ahmed was shot twice. Both Jewish & Muslim faiths teach that “to save one life is to save all humanity.” Let us hold fast to our humanity.❤️

I think it’s also true that loneliness among women has historically been treated as an individual problem, while loneliness among men is treated as a societal problem. That, in turn, comes from an assumption that women are supposed to earn the company of others while men are entitled to it.

My grandpa was born in the US to German parents. He had younger cousins who were in Hitler youth in Germany. Decades later I talked with some of them about it (with the ruthless candor of youth). Why did you do that? What were you thinking? What they described was a lot like this.

Nutcracker 2025 show 11 The baby mice are required to hold their tails up when not onstage. They are not required use them to fence with other baby mice. Yet here we are. Then you have the one kid who is chasing her tail because she doesn’t know how else to reach it.

i’m not crying you’re crying xkcd: Fifteen Years

A friend who teaches theology shared with me a post about CS Lewis's Mere Christianity, which discusses foundational Christian logic across denominations. It reminded me of Dale's tweet below, and I wanted to share some thoughts here regarding modesty and respectability, which are often hot topics.

For the Aussies, the zoologists and the architects out there. 💩🧊🧪 By @chazhutton.com

Important to understand the Epstein stuff and the fascism and the corruption are, in a lot of ways, really all the same story from different angles: powerful men who can and do abuse vulnerable people around them because they can, and because systems of elite accountability catastrophically failed

Another thing this email trove has convinced me of is that NYT has been actively and consciously helping Trump since 2015. It wasn't just casual sexism, double standards, and political reporting Kayfabe. They were doing catch and kill

*** 11th ANNUAL BULL CITY FOODRAISER FUNDRAISING THREAD *** It's that time again! 🦃 For the 11th year in a row, we need your help providing groceries to 5,100+ schoolkids! ➡️ GoFundMe: www.gofundme.com/f/11th-annua... ➡️ PPGF: www.paypal.com/US/fundraise... (Plus other donation options in thread!)

The average SNAP benefit per month is $177 a person. The average ACA benefit per month is up to $550 a person. People want us to hold the line for a reason. This is not a matter of appealing to a base. It’s about people’s lives. And working people want leaders whose word means something to them.

“woke” is when you acknowledge that black people have contributed to the united states

Without question, one of the hardest things I’ve taken on.

If you are tempted to avoid jury service because it's inconvenient or difficult, please remember this case and the others that have found citizens targeted by this administration not guilty. Jury service is public service and your participation absolutely matters.

Andrew Cuomo gave more money in taxpayer subsidies to Elon Musk than the entire cost of Zohran Mamdani’s free bus plan. It’s not unreasonable or radical to want our tax dollars to go to programs that help us, instead of as giveaways to billionaires.

Vote copper; show Ea Nasir how appreciated it is when it's pure.

15 million Americans are going to lose their health care.

I work in accounting at a non-profit nursing home. Most of our residents are on Medicaid. They just brought up $175 in cash that they'd collected and asked if we could arrange to donate it to our local food bank. Yes. Yes, we can. And yes, now I'm crying at my desk.

JD Vance claims that diversity weakens unions, as people end up distrusting each other and not organizing. Let me tell you two menswear stories related to this claim. 🧵

Was putting my face on and missed a call from my dad. Saw this text and called him back. (This is a nice story. Also his name is not Bob. That’s what the grandkids call him. Long and unrelated story.)

If I were running the DNC, there would be Democratic Party sponsored food relief banks across the country right now that specifically welcomed anyone regardless of party affiliation. Along with the food, there could be voter registration and links to runforsomething.net