I think the fundamental gap here is that non-creative people think that creative people make things for the end product, when in fact it’s the act of creation and not the end point that makes it worthwhile.

I have lived and worked in and around Chicago for 27 years and I have been assaulted less often than Sen Paul has been in his own back yard.

I genuinely think part of the current political dynamic is that a lot of Dems -- especially your typical educated, affluent city-dwellers -- simply can't believe what's going on. Even though it's right there on the TV, right there in the streets, it's hard to shake the feeling of unreality.

NEW: Kristi Noem, while governor of South Dakota, supplemented her roughly $130,000 salary by secretly accepting $80,000 donated to a political nonprofit she was affiliated with, records show. She never disclosed this income on federal ethics forms.

The energy provisions in the Republicans' One Big Horrible Bill are truly so bad! Who wants this? The country's automakers don't want it. Electric utilities don't want it. Data center developers don't want it. Manufacturers in energy intensive industries don't want it. 🔌💡

MERZ: Tomorrow is the D Day anniversary, when the Americans ended a war in Europe TRUMP: That was not a pleasant day for you? This is not a great day MERZ: This was the liberation of my country from Nazi dictatorship

Sarah Huckabee Sanders was once politely asked to leave a restaurant and it generated 100x as much handwringing from the media as this will

say it again: 4 million people work in higher ed, the largest employer in 10 states, second largest employer in 10 more, and in 60 of the 100 biggest cities ROI for NIH and NSF for local economies is conservatively 4x, often close to 10x demolishing higher education is economic sabotage

My politics in a headline:

The problem with forcing countries to create a new world without you is that once they've done so, they aren't going back

I’m gonna say something that is going to sound crazy, but when has that ever stopped me from saying something publicly: there is a way in which the U.S. chucking its position in the world could actually fast-track energy transition. A few things that have me thinking this way 🧵

Never forget that the chief complaint against Biden was “the economy is terrible.” You utter imbeciles

At this rate MAGA will only be able to afford to rent the libs.

Good day to remember that DOGE has already lost the US government at least half a trillion dollars this year alone. And likely more.

Many, many Americans simply have no idea how the government/economy actually function, much less its many small agencies. They vote based on id and gut and vibes, most of which they absorb in simplistic signals from a predatory media. Vital to change this if we want democracy to continue.

Petabytes of critical government research that is marked for possible deletion cannot be archived because of technical and legal restrictions, meaning it is very likely to be lost forever: www.404media.co/nih-archives...

“institutions with a high capacity for deploying physical force can be checked by individuals and organizations who produce nothing but messages.” www.liberalcurrents.com/forming-an-o...

"What is needed, right now, today, is not particularly intellectual. Indeed, it is...more an exercise of social power than of academic virtue...an adversarial media bloc that is large and loud enough to credibly challenge the administration’s ability to act." www.liberalcurrents.com/forming-an-o...

Jeffrey Goldberg thinking he was being pranked and then realizing he was actually just in the war plans group chat is such a good microcosm of how it feels to be alive right now, everything seems fake until you realize it’s actually real and incredibly stupid

this stuff is happening across the country and even more intensively downstream of the veterans admin but it's happening in so many places at once and without any public notification that it's still only barely emerging in the news

In architecture circles we generally frown upon buildings that are glued together. It’s made me wonder how many other cars’ body panels are slapped on with just a “structural adhesive” (i.e. glue) versus being mechanically fastened. www.reuters.com/business/aut...

Who would shut down pediatric brain cancer research? Someone w/o our country’s best interests at heart. People making decisions for reasons other than their constituent well being. Country needs to wake up: it’s not JUST science, it’s how what’s happening to science portends broad authoritarian rule

Been doing a lot of reading and thinking lately and based on everything I've looked at this logic is where I'm at with things. The movement back towards sanity should be wrapped in the flag. 🇺🇸 www.liberalcurrents.com/roadmap-to-a...

X + exodus means site slowly becomes more like Gab or Truth Social, a place where rightwing folks preach to choir. It’s a dynamic that’s been observed in cults and analogized to “evaporative cooling.” (Thanks to @ciphergoth.org for introducing me to the idea!) 3/ www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9cw...