Interesting set of opinions from the Washington Supreme Court last week, so I dusted off the old blog and wrote it up. The Court cited its own internal rules and procedures (!) to justify providing a short per curiam explaining the 4-4-1 split. Helpful! ziffblog.wordpress.com/2025/09/29/t...

this business model should be flatly illegal taking on a bunch of debt to buy a company and then burning the company to the ground to service that debt while paying yourselves huge fees is a purely destructive practice that has never once had a positive outcome ban it completely

A federal judge in Washington ordered the Trump administration on Monday to pause the layoffs of hundreds of employees from the agency that owns the U.S. news service Voice of America, adding that government officials had shown "concerning disrespect" for the court's directives.

"Israel is ... years into its genocide of the Palestinian people. Israeli forces have systematically targeted hospitals, turned life-saving [aid] sites into killing fields, turned all of Gaza's institutions of higher learning into dust, and forcibly displaced and murdered hundreds of thousands."

🧵I'm an American-Israeli subject matter expert on Israel/Palestine, have lived under Netanyahu's premiership, am currently living under Trump 2.0, & I believe neither of them. I do believe the author of this essay. "For weeks now, the Israeli military has been issuing forced displacement orders >>

When we train people to use AI, we're "training people to explain away the inconsistencies of Large Language Models, and to assume individual responsibility for what is an innate flaw in how large language models work." Fantastic essay: www.wheresyoured.at/the-case-aga...

Media and Dems are still getting this badly wrong: Trump is deeply unpopular! Recent approval numbers: 38-54 (Quinnipiac) 39-60 (AP) 40-56 (Gallup) 41-58 (Reuters) 39-56 (Economist) On the pod, @lakshya.splitticket.org explains these numbers brilliantly. Listen: newrepublic.com/article/2010...

Their whole point is to smash up functioning government and use the spoils to terrorize everyone, while installing a state based on mafia-style patronage. Don't give them more tools. Don't fund the terror.

Most EU members now recognise Palestine; unless their declarations are paired with tangible actions, though, it will be easy for Israelis to dismiss them as mere symbolism econ.st/3Kn84uv Photo: Getty Images

Pritzker: “Over the weekend, we received numerous confirmed reports of federal agents…abusing their power, intimidating innocent civilians, and waging war on our people…What I’ve been warning of is now being realized.”

U.S. Attorney Sigal Chattah in Nevada has asked the FBI to investigate debunked Republican claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election, a probe she hopes will influence congressional races and ensnare Democrats, @sarahnlynch.bsky.social reports. www.reuters.com/world/nevada...

“The details both of tenure and of an idea like academic freedom, which is so closely related to tenure, are largely dependent on the university’s willingness to constrain themselves when they need not necessarily do so legally.” www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

US government to shut down within hours if no funding deal agreed – US politics live

More than 150,000 federal employees will leave the U.S. government payroll this week after accepting buyouts - the largest single-year exodus of civil servants in nearly 80 years, triggering what unions and governance experts warn is a damaging loss of institutional expertise.

DUCKS!!!!🎉🎉🎉

For your #FollowFriday consideration, a random list of folks whose posts my dev @davidcolarusso.com has found interesting: @profsteed.bsky.social @tiffanycli.bsky.social @elienyc.bsky.social @mikewhelanjr.bsky.social @lifewinning.com @neorsd.org @profmmurray.bsky.social @bunkum.us

glorifying violence for its own sake, extolling hypermasculinity, and sowing chaos and fear is a distinctly fascist combo, even if the person doing it hasn’t consciously or explicitly embraced fascism

One of the arguments for Dems caving is that the GOP will use a shutdown as an excuse for cutting spending and... buddy, what are you even talking about? For months now the Trump admin has simply disregarded the law, ripping everything apart and stealing personal data. It's already happening.

(CNBC) - Seasonal hiring in the retail industry is poised to fall to its lowest level since the 2009 recession, an early warning sign that the holiday shopping season could be softer than expected .. @cnbc.com www.cnbc.com/2025/09/24/s...

President of Slovenia: “We didn't stop the Holocaust, we didn't stop the genocide in Rwanda, the genocide in Srebrenica. We must stop the genocide in Gaza. No excuses"

Weirdly, she didn't seem concerned about the guy who sprayed the CDC with 500 rounds and killed the police officer there. We know the motive was right wing anti-vax conspiracy theories. But whatever.

The statue of Trump & Epstein (left) lasted 1 day on the National Mall, despite a permit that ran through Sunday. It was the 3d of 3 such temporary installations (apparently by the same anonymous artist). The White House criticized the 1st two, but they remained for the duration of their permits.

I am sad to report that I did not get raptured

🧑‍🌾 Here comes yet another Trump farmer bailout we have been talking about for almost a year — all because of his misguided trade war. (As they scream about “SocIAliSM”)

An important read about the background and possible motivation of the ICE shooter. His friends describe him as an extremely online edge lord, with no strong political leanings. www.kenklippenstein.com/p/the-ice-sh...

This is the study that showed that it was MAGA and the RIGHT that are more violent. This incompetent regime doesn't realize that the internet is FOREVER. web.archive.org/web/20250911...

We live in a personalist legal regime: One of Trump's former defense lawyers (Blanche) excuses a Trump ally taking a bag of cash in return for a promise to abuse his public office, while another (Halligan) was appointed to indict Trump's political enemies on the flimsiest of pretexts

This is your must read of the day. "The neurogeneticist Stanley Nelson once said, 'If you had 100 kids with autism, you could have 100 different genetic causes.' Researchers increasingly believe the search for a cause of a singular 'autism' is misguided. There are autisms, rather than just autism."

I’d seen the nutty excerpts of Miller’s speech at Kirk’s memorial, but hadn’t seen the whole thing. It’s easily the most unhinged, unapologetically fascist rhetoric I’ve ever seen from someone in US government. It’s more of a discount, Dwight Schrute Goebbels than Goebbels. But still.

NEW WIRED led the way in reporting on Elon Musk's efforts to dismantle the US government. My colleagues and I spoke to 100s of employees at dozens of agencies to understand what happened. This is the definitive story of DOGE as told by those who experienced it www.wired.com/story/oral-h...

THE DAILY: President Trump and his inner circle are making millions of $$ from agreements that intersect with America’s national security interests, a NYT investigation found. Eric Lipton explains why these conflicts of interest are unlike anything we’ve seen before www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/p...

Yep, of course; and the worst part is that by the time he made that post (9:03 AM), the fact that the people killed were not ICE officers was already known and reported. The VP *should* feel some a higher level of responsibility to wait for the facts to come in than me, a rando, but hey. 🤷‍♂️

Fascism can die in all kinds of different ways. Shame, ridicule, failure, regret… it’ll even die if enough people find a new sense of empathy. We should work so it dies in one of those peaceful ways. The damage will be less, the cleanup, easier.

Fascism in some ways has always been a sword wielded by a clown.

SCOTUS is just vibes now @skennedy2504.bsky.social in @ballsandstrikes.org "...Kavanaugh instinctively replicates the form & reasoning of early Marshall Court decisions: assumptions in search of authority, conclusions without argument, & outcomes he frames as self-evidently reasonable & correct."

This is right out of the Nazi playbook. “Our armed, government-backed stormtroopers who are disappearing people must be protected. The real violence is coming from our political opponents who hold no actual power.”

This is almost the same as saying “if you keep calling us Nazis the political violence will continue.”

I see lots of people pointing out that this is a lie and even Ted Cruz knew it was a lie and Trump already threatened ABC again, and yes, yes, yes... THAT'S WHAT THEY DO. They lie.

Ruin a band with a Supreme Court Justice The Dead Anthony Kennedys

What is happening to the Tigers gall durn it

Fleetwood MacReynolds

not sure I like this

Department of Justice wants Ohio's voter registration data and election information The DOJ seeks voter data from Ohio, sparking privacy concerns over the request for sensitive information. www.10tv.com/article/news...

Thomas doesn't fit it even using that definition. Like, I totally get and agree with using the broad historically grounded definition of "liberal," including that there are such things as liberal conservatives, market liberals, etc., not just left-liberal progressives. But Thomas is none of those.

Ruin a band with a Supreme Court Justice The John Roberts Stooges

i've been studying the right-wing for over a decade what is happening now in online right-wing spaces is fucking me up in ways that i'm currently unprepared for and don't know how to cope with

“just joking”

Ruin a band with a Supreme Court Justice Byron White Stripes

Researching a newsletter item about Tom Homan and it's remarkable how this story from just last year was tossed down the memory hole www.inquirer.com/opinion/comm...