Discworld QOTD, from The Wee Free Men

The follies of the bureaucracy, wherein a single misstep occasions onerous rules that strangle everyone going forward, show that we can't legislate a Trump away from corruption by responses, one by one, to each of his transgressions. The founders assumed a basic good faith in officeholders.

The vulnerability of the U.S. government to criminal exploitation is just staggering. I mean, I can't wrap my head around how we can prevent the "sue federal government, friends and allies in the Department of Justice settle" racket.

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com “Partisanship makes hypocrites of us all,” David French writes. “I know it made a hypocrite of me on my worst partisan days. The approach that Pope Leo takes, by contrast, puts virtue outside and above politics.”

I think this is true but it’s also even worse than this: by doing this I think what elites have inadvertently selected for is malicious low cunning and the willingness to use it as a weapon.

If you are not in academia, you might not know this, but job interviews used to be held at conferences IN HOTEL ROOMS. Women candidates in a hotel room alone with often all-male committees. People sitting on beds! The horror stories I've heard.

DHS is diverting money appropriated to fighting terrorism and child trafficking to deportations. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/16/u...

if a machine ever told me I was 'goated with the sauce' I would start the Butlerian Jihad.

It’s kinda wild the President is openly corrupt, Nazi sympathizing, and very likely a pedophile—and most Republicans in Congress are still willing to ignore the Constitution whenever he asks.

/2 The article and headline don’t arise in a vacuum, they arise on the front page of the New York Times, which has selected a very specific way to approach moral and political issues, characterized by detachment, both-sidesism, and trolling.

BRENNAN: Do you regret your confirmation vote for Secretary Kennedy? CASSIDY: You live life forward. Again, you just do. Let the day's own troubles be sufficient for the day. BRENNAN: That sounds like yes

Yes, I will throw money at artists to draw my ridiculous commissions because I’m never owning a house and if I live to 50 it will be a surprise.

the whole point of having any sort of insurance system, whether private sector driven or public, is so individual consumers trying to navigate preventative care or chronic conditions or medical emergencies *aren’t* on their own buying every service à la carte out of pocket.

Readers reply: Why do we feel nostalgia?

Amazing, no notes, I do not desire to learn anything else about this story, for it would only detract from the perfection on this headline.

some notable things in this excellent Bloomberg story - www.bloomberg.com/features/202... how much of it connects through Harvard, and how many of these people are now in the AI field.

Ever since starmer took over i think people have internalized his profound cynicism about britain. Nothing can ever get better and everything is making sure someone else gets even less than you. This isnt an immutable part of the british character! Its a response to behaviour from the top!

when I hear Starmer speak about immigration and race he's spitting in the face of the Labour voters I knew growing up in Manchester, who put themselves on the line against the National Front - and often the police - in the 1970s and 1980s.

It makes me angry to the bone for somebody to be given the responsibility of leader of a party with a noble history and to betray every value it should stand for - not even for something he believes in himself, but for a false and cynical vision of his own electorate.

Carlitos Yamamoto stopped his home from being robbed this summer while the Dodgers were on the road and dad was away. He snacc He protecc www.nbclosangeles.com/news/sports/...

new shirt idea tell me what you think

Why are Democrats so intent on saving Trump from himself and the consequences of his own actions?

This is the digital version of thinking everyone should work a service job for at least six months, and I couldn't agree more. You learn SO MUCH dealing with the general public, and you'll never look at the people doing the work the same way again.

A few weeks ago I was talking politics with a local, highly straight, bartender. All the sudden he said: “Well, I think a big part of the problem is that so many of the people who would’ve been our progressive leaders died of AIDS & can’t help us now.” And I’ve thought about that every day since.

I think we lost something when way fewer people online as a proportion of the whole started to have direct personal experience of moderating a forum or online community - though at least Reddit still exists

forum culture is a great introduction to the internet because it teaches you both to be humble, and that no matter how well you think you've designed rules for a community to be fair and transparent, you always need a "no assholes/no bad vibes" exception because someone WILL test every clause

strongly suspect this is correct. a big part of MAGA’s coherence & ideology is downstream of the impulse to “own” some nebulous enemy, when they lose easy access to that enemy it makes sense they’d turn on whoever they do have access to, which is each other

If Americans cared about stopping fascism they would be gathering in the dark, quietly, using offline channels I am not invited to and cannot perceive

this is actually a really common way of understanding the world among pundits where events can only be classified if they fit a strict definition and if they don’t fit that definition then they cannot be classified in that way. it is as if they see definitions as structuring reality.

US Bishops have responded to attacks by Border Czar Tom Homan: “The bishops of the United States have spoken together and in unity with Pope Leo XIV.”

still thinking about this. we need to fund the arts more. i want to go to more symphonies.

Some of you may remember that MasterCard’s AI fraud system considers VTubers as a high fraud risk. This may be a strange instance of my reporting revealing a platform later used to target * me* bsky.app/profile/acva...

there's a reason that in some states, we keep hearing that X is the first Black officeholder of x office *since Reconstruction*

5 headlines tonight on Charlotte Observer’s homepage: “Manolo's Bakery closes to protect customers” “Church members flee as federal agents arrive” “Super G executive describes agents dragging out teen employee” “Border Patrol questions people at Walmart” “Border Patrol sweep sparks fear”

Border Patrol and ICE are currently arresting and stealing our community members off the streets in Charlotte. Donald Trump is single-handedly responsible for this heinous actions. PLEASE report any activity you see. And know that our party stand with ALL immigrant communities.

Struck this morning by how the win wasn’t from the UC system itself pushing back—it was its worker power through *unions* and aligned groups like @aaup.org defending UC interests, even though admin itself wasn’t. There’s some kind of lesson here

"New disclosures posted Saturday...show that Trump’s purchases of at least $82 million include bonds from Netflix Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc., Boeing Co., Meta Platforms Inc., Home Depot Inc., Broadcom Inc. and Intel Corp., of which the US government acquired a stake under his administration."

As Bovino and masked DHS officers sweep another Home Depot looking to round up day laborers, a reminder of the meeting in May when Stephen Miller screamed at ICE to stop doing targeted enforcement, start hitting Home Depots and 7/11s and “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens.”

Full house

When people say "fuck the South", they hardly ever mean barbecue or SEC football or Southern hospitality. They mean this evil that permeates so much of what could otherwise be so much better.

“straight up giving the president a bar of gold” is where we’re at now on the “corruption isn’t real” scale good work, John Roberts

Hey if you live in NC Hendricks (the car dealership) sold ICE a shitton of vehicles

the reason you don’t chase reactionaries is they’ll demand you make your platform worse and then vote for someone even worse than that anyway, the best you can ask is that they stay home the people who want to leave the cult, those you can give a cookie and a trans rights manifesto

places that keep him around are going to be sending a pretty strong signal that they value complicity with powerful men more than they value women.

I’ll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy.

Here’s a story for every national news outlet: In N.C., churchgoers are literally running into the woods as federal agents descend on the property. “Inside the church, women and children sobbed as they wondered whether their loved ones had been taken.” www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politic...

this fucking dipshit is just like "i am accepting orders to censor a TV show 🫡" because somehow it is more important to him to tell his boss that he's engaging in tyranny than to actually win a fucking case

I'm proud to be an American, where I eat my donuts three

Video of a daycare raid in Chicago went viral last week, showing armed federal agents dragging a teacher from Rayito de Sol Spanish Immersion Early Learning Center as children watched in terror. To the families at the daycare, the scene was a show of force that shattered their sense of safety.