Well this broke my heart.

A university that does this but has not activated its extremely wealthy + powerful alumni network against the government starving it of resources is *doing* austerity politics, not just being *subject* to them Those who say that would be improper are also doing politics, not advocating "neutrality"

Trump's fly-by — A cartoon by Nick Anderson

I'm from the government and I'm here to return life expectancy at birth to pre-1900 levels

Leaked internal documents show that Amazon's goal is to automate 75% of its operations by 2033, negating the need to hire 600,000 workers over that timespan. They also plan to avoid using terms like AI and automation and instead use "advanced technology" and "cobot." No mention of any UBI lobbying.

Starting at the wrong time of year. No visible staging for materials to weatherproof. No staging of materials/machines to begin a foundation. This was not planned this was a tantrum after the No King rallies.

felt very old talking to college students about the AWS outage, where i learned that basically everything — from your textbooks, to your class materials, to your professors' contact info and office hours — is housed on the cloud these days:

Really provocative, interesting argument from @wertwhile.bsky.social on what it would look like to really regulate the platforms. www.theargumentmag.com/p/treat-big-...

"According to reporting by [the AP], the project went ahead despite not being formally approved by the National Capital Planning Commission, the federal agency that oversees such operations, which is currently closed due to a nationwide government shutdown." www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10...

From @gregolear.bsky.social today. I strongly recommend reading the piece in its delightful entirety. Oh were the gods ready to smile upon us and bring it all to fruition.

MAGA dimwit Chip Roy raged that No Kings protesters are godless terrorists. But in his red district, ordinary Americans turned out in force, bucking MAGA slurs with a powerful display of patriotism. On the pod, @anamariecox.bsky.social describes the scene. Wrenching: newrepublic.com/article/2020...

The fact that they couldn’t even preserve anything or even remove the windows but they just take the back hoe to the White House is the most appalling part.

In some ways, the regime half-assedly tearing off part of the White House without regard for construction protocols might have more of an impact on the offline folks than the past ten months.

The Democrats need to get a hell of a lot of cameras on the White House and plaster the photos everywhere. It's not just the brazen symbol of a megalomaniac destroying national heritage; it's happening during a government shutdown when ordinary people aren't getting paid. Make every American see it.

Just receieved this today from Florida Blue. This is for a Bronze plan. Our monthly premiums are going from $333 (2025) to $2300 in 2026.

New poll shows @amyactonoh.bsky.social with the highest net favorability of any Ohio public figure. Vivek is, of course, underwater.

America is being run by people whose social media presence would see them getting fired from a part time job stacking shelves. If you worked at Aldi and posted a video of you pouring shit all over Aldi customers, you wouldn't work at Aldi.

She was legally declared a victim of a crime in a court of law, she was not an "accuser," she was a VICTIM

An artillery shell fired during 250th anniversary celebration of the Marine Corps at Camp Pendleton on Saturday detonated prematurely over Interstate 5, damaging a California Highway Patrol vehicle on JD Vance's security detail www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/u...

A YouGov poll of Ohio's upcoming Senate race: Sherrod Brown, the former Democratic senator: 49% Jon Husted, the appointed GOP senator: 48%. scholarworks.bgsu.edu/depo/14/

Folks demanding political / ideological purity fail to see that this is no longer a movement belonging to the left / liberals. This is an opposition against fascism. By definition it must be big tent. Failure to grasp this: see divided oppositions in Eastern Europe as your failed examples.

seems that RFK is clearing the path for his CDC to do tuskegee syphillis experiments as a matter of course. in other news, RFK is a genuine monster who relishes in the pain and suffering of those he feels he has control or dominion over

Authoritarianism doesn't happen in a vacuum. It requires enablers. When a leader posts fantasies of monarchical rule, and his entire party looks the other way, they become complicit. The issue isn't just Trump's posts; it's the institutional decay of a party that refuses to be a check on his power.

if the president does something so awful it would be indecent to describe and ask about then you very obviously need to describe and ask about it, thats the entire job

It really doesn't matter much. It mattered in 2016, when there were no paywalls and there was still a media monoculture and at the least, you could analyze the propaganda. It somewhat mattered in 2020. It does not matter in 2025. These are dinosaur institutions that wore out their utility for all.

Imagine being so bent out of shape by one woman with a sign that you feel the need to confront her, call the cops and threaten her. Nice job, Kendra. Sorry about your neighbors. Good grief.

Hero’s of the day - In a small town of Beckley, WV, Kendra Sullivan staged a one-woman No Kings protest. She was confronted, had the police called on her, but stood her ground. She was physically threatened. Police came more than once and protected her right to protest. This is how we do it.

Nothing that any elected Democrat has ever said about Republican voters is ever as crass or as cruel as what Trump says about Democratic constituencies every single day, and the media just treats it as background noise.

Also too: literally any one of the hundreds of awesome photos I've seen from #NoKings marches would have more visual interest and be more newsworthy and sell more papers than another shot of a dead-eyed Mike Johnson standing at a podium.

as someone who lives in a country that unfortunately has a king, the US is correct no kings means no fucking kings

Probably be good right now if the President and the Vice President weren't on the record "joking" about killing fishermen.

"I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright." ~ Henry David Thoreau The Wooded Lane 🎨 Claude Monet (1876)

Los Angeles County has more Americans in it than the ten smallest states but these folks would never consider someone living in the Valley as a typical American.

🐸 Go Portland

In social movement studies, we talk about how marches and protests expand the threshold of acceptable risk so that people take more and bigger social risks IN PUBLIC, EN MASSE. This is extremely important for the bourgeois white folks holding signs and building social rapport.

Notably: every single rally (including in the small towns) was bigger than the surrounding police force available. That kind of image event is VERY IMPORTANT if you're, I dunno, demonstrating social coherence AGAINST a fascist government and it's makeshift gestapo.

Amazing that “No kings and no Nazis” is suddenly a controversial slogan and up for debate in 2025. These are the two most basic creeds of American history.

all these people protesting today in groups of a few dozen on the main streets of small towns in deep red Trump country - where they will absolutely take shit from their neighbors about it at church tomorrow or at work on Monday or next time they go to the grocery store - are braver than the Marines

🙌

I don't think folks have any conception of how radicalized a lot of moms are becoming as they go through shit like "will my babysitter get kidnapped" and "will my child be able to get the measles vaccine"

I just keep thinking about the first guy to put on the frog costume reading the news today and seeing frogs literally all over the world what a fucking thing, man that 25 year old did more for the country in a week than most of the NYT op-ed section in a lifetime

“The Purdue student newspaper owns its own presses” is the sound of engines revving

#nokings Portland frog brigade

This is the sign that moved me most today. The simple message. The homemade lettering. She seemed tired, but resolute. Saw so many people from that generation today. People whose parents lived through WWII, who know what fascism looks like, and who may not be around to see us get out of this.

when i say that i yelped in shock at this kid’s sign

No Kings in Lexington, KY with my mom. Two former Republicans who once believed the lie that the GOP is the Christian party. Indoctrination is a helluva drug but so glad we woke up. Now we stand against Christian nationalism & MAGA because it's the opposite of Jesus' teachings.

It's official. Nearly 7 million people. Today is the single largest day of protest in American history. Americans from all corners of the country are standing up and saying #NoKings. This is what peaceful, patriotic protest looks like.

A stable, functioning democracy is often unassuming, boring even. Easy to take for granted. But this - millions coming together in a shared public space to insist on their rights as democratic citizens - is a mighty reminder that a proper democracy is something quite incredible and inspiring.