A Facebook scammer took a close relative's entire life's savings away from them. Seven decades, poof, gone. Mark Zuckerberg did that to my family on purpose to make money for himself.

Government is shut down. Chaos in airports. 42 million going hungry. 24 million face skyrocketing healthcare costs. Economy in turmoil. And the president of the United States is in the Fox broadcast booth calling plays for a football game.

If you need a reason to visit Scranton ⬇️🤩🐦📬

A running theme throughout the Bible—Hebrew and Christian—is "Don't fall into the trap of thinking you're *better* than your neighbor just because you're *better off* than your neighbor." It's incredible how universal that error is, and how universally ignored the corrective tends to be.

Back in 2017, Trump revealed, in a friendly interview with the NYT, that he literally did not understand how health insurance works. The NYT editors bailed him out instead of following up. I wrote about it then, and I still think about it all the time: www.commonwealmagazine.org/man-who-knew...

The sense of entitlement Rich Business Guys have is just mind-boggling

Access to the sacraments is the tip of the iceberg. They won't allow clergy access bc they aren't running a proper detention facility. The scandal that religious protests are highlighting is not that the detainees' religious rights are being violated, but that ALL their rights are being violated.

A man collapsed in the Oval Office yesterday. The internet got the story wrong. My experience struggling to correct the record — including on Bluesky! — and the warning signs as AI, aggregation, and social media increasingly drive our news consumption.

This story comes out the same day the architect of this monstrous policy gets approval for a near-trillion-dollar payout from his government-subsidized company. Utterly despicable.

Perhaps the most striking upsets outside New York City on Tuesday came at the little-watched county level, where Democrats flipped two legislatures long held by Republicans and picked up seats in other red-leaning areas.

There's a flash of personality, and anger, in paragraph 14 of "Dilexi Te," where Pope Leo rejects the idea that poor people are lazy, and adds: "Of course, among the poor there are also those who do not want to work, perhaps because their ancestors, who worked all their lives, died poor." 🔥🔥🔥

This, in particular, is spectacularly hideous. It's like something you'd see on the wall of a car dealership where they put pictures of their top salespeople every month

Previously they only paid attention to Mamdani when he was patiently responding to bad-faith questions about his support for Palestinian rights, so it sounded like a shift to them

The NYT can give Ross Douthat space to highlight the views and arguments of the most reactionary degenerates on the right, but no one, my friends, no one can make you read it.

One of the things I learned teaching search literacy is that search sucks because the world wide web doesn't exist anymore. The blogs that held it together with links are paywalled, big publishers paywall and don't link, the platforms users post to don't link. You're left with reddit and Wikipedia.

The way all of these people convinced themselves that Mamdani is antisemitic is a subject far more worthy of media examination than any of the ‘groupthink on campuses!’ thinkpieces we’ve been subjected to

Rewatching Zohran's victory speech bit by bit and it's hard not to be emotional about it - it's an appeal to hope and courage but also to the fundamental idea of living in society, together. Feels like we've been starved, often deliberately, of that kind of thinking

Update on today's field trip: ya girl got a plenary indulgence AND a cute tee; excellent pilgrimage opportunity, IMO! cabrinishrinenyc.org

The real issue for these people is their credibility as speaking for the Church as an institution is further collapsing. Their main saving grace is right dominance (so far) of the influencer sphere.

"Oh the pope doesn't know what's really happening in Chicago" is much harder to pull off when he sounds like this! But normie Catholics have been selectively ignoring what the pope says for many generations now, so they can keep it up, with maybe just a little bit more cognitive dissonance

we can chalk it up to youth and inexperience but the biggest mistake the mamdani campaign made was winning by 8.8% and not 1.5%, which is the margin needed for the media to say it’s a total mandate

The New York Times quickly sending out Douthat to argue that Mamdani’s victory doesn’t really matter is so predictable it borders on self-parody. Remember, folks: Every time the Right wins an election, it’s an undeniable expression of the will of the people. If a lefty wins, it’s just a blip.

Went to the Cabrini Shrine in Washington Heights to let Mother know the city is safely in immigrant hands. (Ok, I am chaperoning a field trip, but good timing, right?) Deo gratias!

This is great because it works for Cuomo OR Eric Adams (who—trivia alert!—is actually the mayor of NYC *right now*!)

Oh FUCK YOU New York Times

I had thought most of my naive idealism had been stomped out of me by now, but it’s amazing to me that this level of public animosity could be directed by Democratic leadership toward a sweet and personable young candidate of their own party seemingly exclusively because of his background.

Absolutely disgusting response from Turning Point USA's spokesperson here, who targeted some random teachers and rained hell on their lives because he couldn't fathom not trying to squeeze some more engagement bait out of his dead boss.

Driving through Yonkers today, I saw a campaign sign for Christine Sculti (Republican candidate for Westchester County Executive) that said "NO SANCTUARY." Imagine running on that after months of seeing what ICE has been doing in American cities—including in Yonkers, just yesterday. It's truly evil.

I still believe the day will come when people will get tired of posting screenshots of Matt Yglesias saying something smug and stupid just to say "Get a load of this dummy, wouldja?" But Lord, Lord, I want that day to come soon.

He’s just SO GOOD at this.

It's uncanny how Cuomo has been laser-focused at appealing to the absolute worst qualities in people - their insularity, their tribalism, and now their fear. A campaign monumental in its cynicism, a colossal bet by this man and his billionaire backers that people are basically bad.

More reasons to read Commonweal every day, folks.

This is the first post I saw when I opened Facebook just now. If you must show me posts from accounts I don't follow, you need to show them to me the day they are posted and not two days later. Time-sensitivity is your main selling point, and you ruined it! Your algorithm makes your product worse!

Things that are great: 1. Jane Krakowski 2. Cheyenne Jackson 3. 5 p.m. curtain on a Sunday 4. This show 5. The way all you people managed to talk constantly about this show for a year and a half without spoiling anything for me 6. The preshow playlist for "Oh, Mary!"

God knows how many times this has happened: Zero. Much like Vance lying about Haitian immigrants eating people's pets, this is 100% racist bullshit being spewed by an unabashed white nationalist. Congrats to everyone who patronizes the Nazi bar he runs.

their plainly stated goal is to starve forty million people until they get what they want, which is to rip health care away from millions more that this is too monstrous for most news organizations to tell the truth about does not change the facts

Trump literally said, in his first election cycle, "I won't golf at all when I'm president because I'll be so busy working," and then he broke that pledge immediately, repeatedly, publicly, flagrantly, and corruptly to boot...and they all just act like he didn't

i’m old enough to remember

I hope it’s not too late to hit you with this fun bit of Halloween whimsy from my kids' school party.

So there were some AI-generated videos that purported to show Black women ranting about SNAP benefits, and... Fox News is reporting on this like these are real people. They're not! They're AI! This is truly insane. Total unreality. www.foxnews.com/media/snap-b...

Homey literally said "touch mass"

Ross Douthat is bad-faith partisan punditry in an increasingly threadbare good-faith costume, and I'm tired of waiting for people to figure that out.

The other day I heard "Thriller" and said, "More pop musicians need to be making novelty Halloween songs that are also bangers." I can't believe I forgot about "Everybody's Gay" by Lizzo! Add it to your (adult) spooky season playlist! @lizzobeeating.bsky.social youtu.be/fxa45UfrqNg?...

They’ve added adorable little ghosts to the train-arrival boards in the New York subway and the most fun thing about them is knowing that if Sean Duffy saw them he’d piss himself and faint.

"In truth, to be wealthy does make people senseless and mad... They would have the earth too of gold, and walls of gold... Another, made after the image of God, is perishing of cold... Do you pay such honor to your excrements, as to receive them in silver?" —St. John Chrysostom

When I did hunger advocacy, people would sometimes say things to me like, “$400 a month? My family doesn’t spend $400 a month on groceries,” and I would think, “You don’t do your family’s grocery shopping.”

TIRED: “I alone can fix it.” WIRED: “Do something Democrats!!!”

The Venn diagram of <people who would consider voting for Andrew Cuomo> and <people who think it's disqualifying for an NYC mayoral candidate not to recognize "New York State of Mind"> has gotta be a circle, right?

Literally admitting that he's starving kids to put political pressure on his opponents.

Everybody who's like "I support immigration, but it has to be legal. You have to follow the rules" is going to be so embarrassed when they find out what the Trump administration really thinks about following laws and rules.