I'm coming up on ten years in the US and I finally for the first time today got summoned for jury duty! Genuinely excited, though I don't expect anything exciting

I know I've made it because sometimes I just throw away the dregs of the ketchup

I've not really been around here in six months. My mental health has been Extremely Poor, and a social media break was part of trying to get better (along with inpatient and outpatient treatment). Last week a dear friend died of suicide. I'm back on social media again. It's a relapse.

I think most of who have worked in writing or entertainment know that piracy is a fact of life, and has been for a long time now. But there’s a difference between a broke student downloading a PDF of your book, and a multibillion dollar company stealing your work for its own bullshit purposes.

I think this is like not being able to get over stick shift cars — and i totally get both

I would move to Wales for Only Connect

This says way more about Rahm Emanual than trans people

It just hit me that across every dimension Trump is destroying a full century of human progress. Free trade, the norm against aggression, vaccines and public health, desegregation, victory against fascism and ethno-nationalism. All onto the bonfire. One of the greatest criminals in history.

Have any Republicans anywhere condemned the Nazi salutes by Musk and at CPAC?

How’s this WSJ take aging

The latest episode of @socialistdogmom.bsky.social's "Weird Little Guys" podcast, "They Got What They Wanted", is far from stand-alone, but I think it can be listened to that way - and it's timely and important and sad. www.iheart.com/podcast/1119...

If you didn't know, anhedonia is fun. Or not. I can't tell.

As a legal/formal matter, of course this is true. But I think the criticism here -- and of Musk's takeover of twitter -- is about the destruction of what was once a valuable forum. The elimination of spaces for impactful and open discussion is, IMO, an issue for free speech (with no legal valence).

we don’t talk enough about this aspect of our current moment: the sadness and grief of losing institutions that were once so important to us, because they proved unworthy of our support. and it is real grief, because we lose what those institution might have been, if only they had been better.

The Australian Financial Review put it best nearly eleven years ago: world is fukt (image source mumbrella.com.au/afr-apologis...)

perhaps the statement from an independent press association in response to an authoritarian government restricting the press should be an announcement that the members of that association will no longer be covering and reprinting the regime's misinformation events as they have been doing since day 1

Reporter: If you could speak directly to Elon Musk, what would you say? Rep. Jasmine Crockett: Fuck off.

I doubt people think this carefully about it. They think DEI is forcing teaching to be a certain way, but they do not even consider the mechanism

"There's so much fraud, waste, and abuse." "Can you give us an example?" "Oh ho ... trust us, there's so much fraud, waste and abuse, you wouldn't believe it." "Try me! Just one." "Sorry, there's too much fraud, waste, and abuse. I can't pick out just one instance of fraud, waste, and abuse."

JUDGE COLLEEN KOLLAR-KOTELLY: Is there an administrator of DOGE at the present time? GOVERNMENT COUNSEL: I don’t know the answer to that

cis people go into hysterics if they get a pronoun wrong because they think the trans person is going to call them the devil and explode on them and whatever else meanwhile the trans person is basically always like "alright yeah i use this one instead thanks". mfers think we're doing Gotcha Gender

The Question Trump Keeps Asking That Zelensky Refuses To Answer

Evergreen Onion theonion.com/every-member...

It's almost like they're two different classes of people with divergent interests. I wonder if anyone has written anything about that.

recent scholarship agrees that the invention of shredded cheese was a collaborative effort, a history that runs contrary to the claims by some proponents of the so called "grate man theory"

The planet is burning. Watch for his signal.

As someone who scored ridiculously well on standardized testing, I am confident that being really proficient at taking standardized tests is nothing to brag about. In fact, bragging about it strongly correlates with being an awful person.

Never forget, if there's hope, it must lie in the proles

Controversial I know, but if it sticks the landing (i.e. ends well), I think Yellowjackets is better than Breaking Bad.

i get the sentiment but the entire social construct of mental illness is poisonous and we need something new for everything, not a fence around autism and adhd

When we talk about business acumen, we normally mean expertise in management. In the platonic ideal of venture capital, they want to fund good managers. But it turns out for getting 1% of your investments to a 100x exit, what really matters is hype. So now charlatans are considered good at business.

this is an act of unspeakable violence. it benefits no one, it doesn’t move a number on a balance sheet. it only guarantees that every one of these incarcerated transgender people will be tortured.

This is the most wretched campaign of deliberate, explicit persecution the United States has perpetrated against a minority group in decades. Many of the most important people in politics and journalism are busying themselves trying to figure out how little to say or do about it.

By accepting Trump’s anti-Black premise and regurgitating the narrative that equates anything Black as DEI, the NY Times has become part of the propaganda machine

Interesting thing for the President to say about a person who, according the government’s lawyers, “has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself” and “only has the ability to advise the President, or communicate the President’s directives.”

Coming around to the view that a certain kind of narcissist simply needs Musk to be a genius rather than a fraud, because they want to believe there’s a hereditary Brahmin class of accomplished, beautiful minds—and that they’re a part of that class.

I love Andor, and it gives me so much hope, despite the (in-universe, but also irl) horrors

Andor just keeps being too real.

Let me take this format for a spin

the basic belief that underlies these fascists' policies is that they think straight white cis men are actually better than everyone else and that anyone who is not a white cis man doing jobs that they think white cis men should be doing is a drain on the system. because they are white supremacists

I think about this passage all the time. We're surrounded by meta-debates about the most effective and savvy forms of resistance but moral clarity has its own purpose.

A lesson in how claims of meritocracy as justification for opposing DEI are often cover for the demand that we return to a system of preference for white men - whatever their qualifications. Fire a qualified Black man. Hire a statutorily unqualified white man. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Of the Chiefs of Staff, vice chiefs of staff, and judge advocates general of the three branches, Trump fired all the women and Black people.

Ladies and gentlemen... the weekend. (also: you are important and are not alone 🧡)