Under Xi, China emerges as a global model for the big brother surveillance state. Its deployment of technology to spy on its own people knows no equal in the world. www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/1...

A huge part of the Christo-fascist takeover of America is the mainstream media's take that religion is just kind of cute. Nothing to worry about.

At Harvard, deep ties to Jeffrey Epstein present no obstacle to rising high in the system, including to oversight positions.

Rupert Murdoch TV continues its relentless policy of justifying war crimes. Is this also actionable? Yes.

A very bright comedy podcaster while mocking an objectively terrible xtian movie: "I wanted to go out of my way to say...I respect people having that faith. And I admire it about people...that religious faith is something that I have a lot of respect for it. And that I think is very beautiful.”

Accept Vladimir Putin's special invitation to travel to Russia on an "anti-woke" visa, and you, too can be whisked straight to the Ukraine front to serve the interests of the Russian army's meat grinder. www.thetimes.com/world/europe...

In six countries you can be legally executed for leaving the Islamic faith. Egypt is not one of them, but a recent poll showed 80% of Egyptians agree apostasy deserves the death penalty. Religion is poison. Excellent episode of "A Little Bit Culty."

The horrible way Catholics were treated in America until the last few decades has made negative reporting of religion on pretty much anything except for child molestation radioactive. And even the child rape is barely covered. Kinda like how we don't talk about population because of eugenics.

Biology is so much weirder than any doctrinaire religion—especially ancient ones created in total ignorance—can possibly comprehend. This includes gender and reproductive biology. (See next post.)

A language is not a dictionary, a language is a living thing existing among those who speak it. A religion is not a holy book, a religion is a living thing existing among those who practice it. The variety of incompatible beliefs among Christians pretty much debunks any idea of coherence.

No president has ever raked in billions like this. Money keeps flowing to Trump and his family, often coming from entities that stand to benefit when Trump, as president, treats them favorably. That includes Trump's businesses but also his presidential library, the White House ballroom and more.

Now we have a much clearer understanding of why Hegseth, with Trump's support, fired all the T-JAGs.

Despite all the violations of court orders that have occurred in the last eleven months, amost all with malign intent, there hasn't been one use of criminal contempt. The courts have failed to stand up to the Trump administration. The bully will continue to steal their lunch money. They are losing.

MA is a strongly blue state, so this violation of child labor laws is being prosecuted. But if it had happened in Arkansas or Missouri...

Lecturing on Watergate this morning and trying to decide how to communicate "no, Congress used to care when presidents did crimes!" without derailing the lecture and/or sobbing

"In May of this year, the Supreme Court ended the hope that an Oklahoma Catholic charter school would be first in the nation to shatter the wall between religion and public schools. Now two schools are poised to challenge the notion that a public charter school must be non-sectarian."

We all should start saying that Trump is an illegitimate president due to the 14th Amendment’s plain text and his pardons are null and void

Kaja Kallas @kajakallas.bsky.social: It is clear that Russia does not want peace and therefore we need to make Ukraine as strong as possible in order to them to be ready to stand up for themselves in this very, very difficult time. It could be a pivotal week for diplomacy.

On November 30, airspace over Vilnius airport has been closed for about eight hours due to about 60 hot air balloons flying into Lithuania from Belarus. They were launched every 30 minutes to maximize disruption - LRT media

We’re a disgusting, lost nation, and I am embarrassed to be stuck here. And whether we like it or not, we’re all collectively to blame for it. We’ve let this MAGA cancer metastasize for too long. You won, MAGGATS. I finally *do* hate America. The one we let you build, … mastodon.social/@glei...

One of the ONLY people I've seen seriously tackle the legal & political questions about how to handle Trump's pardons (w/out simply shrugging & saying, "nothing we can do") is @cjsprigman.bsky.social. THANK YOU, Chris! We need WAY more legal bold legal thinkers like you! bsky.app/profile/cjsp...

Imagining that the climate battle is about *information* -- that those who have good information will act; that those who aren't acting must be lacking information -- has been utterly disastrous for decades now, but advocates & pols can't seem to break out of it.

Naturally I think you should listen to all Volts pods, but I particularly recommend this one. I tried to wrap up a lot of current developments into a coherent narrative & a direction forward.

Asylum seeker from Texas makes a short return to Mordor. "I suspect most Texans don’t know this, because I certainly didn’t until I got back, but living in Texas turns you into a psychopath. Everything in your daily life puts you in competition with every other person you encounter."

Like Jeanine Pirro, Alina Habba is the child of émigrés from the Middle East who would never have gotten into the country under Trump's new standards. The technical term for her rhetoric is hypocrisy. bsky.app/profile/atru...

The leading historian of conflict says the atrocities in Ukraine are rooted in a uniquely brutal mindset that can be traced back centuries. And Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump appear fully to embrace the Soviet perspective on official cruelty. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11...

He really truly is a pro-criminal president. As long as the crimes are major, and involve financial fraud or drug dealing.

Would the Supreme Court rule that taking a bribe for a pardon was an "official act" by the president and immune from prosecution? I'm serious. If Trump announced he was selling pardons for $1M a pop, could anyone do anything about it, short of impeachment? (Which carries no prison sentence.)

The New Deal wasn’t built on a promise that there would be “no ceiling” for the richest Americans. Quite the opposite, in fact. FDR knew its politics could only work if he singled out the rich as villains and knew that its policies could only work if the rich paid their fair share in taxes.

The president is a political cartoon of corruption come to life, a gaudy grifter who is selling off pardons and lining his pockets, building a golden ballroom and protecting his fellow sex predator elites, all the while regular Americans are suffering and struggling to make ends meet. Run on *that*

It’s almost like, as a matter of national interest, it’s extremely unwise to let other countries bribe your country’s leaders.

Russia is far too poor to make America as a whole substantially richer. But it’s definitely got enough to make the president and his friends richer.

The refusal to provide an alternative definition makes it clear that DHS is lobbying for “remigration” in the white supremacist sense: the ethnic cleansing of nonwhite Americans.

This immigrant who made his fortune off our tax money subsidies has views on proper citizenship.

In a scenario where humanity eventually reduces its greenhouse gas emissions and then goes "net negative," suddenly the Southern Ocean belches its accumulated heat, leading to a rate of planetary warming similar to what humanity is causing right now. This would continue for at least a century.

I take Wikipedia for granted. Reading this Jimmy Wales interview reminded me in our Fantasyland age what a remarkable and important creation it is. True pillar of civilization. Runs on only $200 million a year. Requires our support. So I’m finally donating. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/m...

An updated version of National Catholic Reporter on Leonard Leo and his extreme Catholic faith driven politics 2021-2024. open.substack.com/pub/thcarter...

White-collar criminal president frees yet another white-collar criminal www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/u...

This report sanitizes and normalizes the profound assaults on the FDA/CDC and the inevitable harmful impacts (morbidity and death) of antiscience. The first paragraphs are pure stenography devoid of context or critical analysis. This opening is as much a press release as it is a “scoop”. 3/

NYT occupies a central hub of the news ecosystem. With collapse of funding for journalism more media orgs rely on NYT reporting either by syndication or reporting “The NYTimes reports…”. Its failures are impactful. See how NYT is the head of an information centipede: NYT- Reuters-MSN 2/

Gentile's principal preoccupation for years was laundering money for the Cherney brothers, Russian oligarchs close to the Kremlin. bsky.app/profile/jswe...

A🧵 This is profoundly irresponsible by AGSulzberger’s NYT, @by-cjewett.bsky.social +eds. The normalization, “view-from-nowhere”, “born-yesterday”, stenography, “both-sides”, irresponsible headline are disgraceful. THE story is the CDC&FDA are being destroyed by antiscience & Americans will die. 1/n

This THREAD by @mediaanddemocracy.bsky.social nails it:

America has let itself be hollowed out by our enemies, Russia most prominent among them, for decades. It's unbelievable how little we did to defend ourselves against this.

“These are horrific and unbearable conditions. With no food, no water, no dog tags, no proper clothing. We are asking for help”. The families of Russian soldiers used as cannon fodder near Pokrovsk share the truth about Russia's "meat assaults".

This headline and story cannot be too widely shared. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/n...

South African sleaze: Silicon Valley’s Man in the White House Is Benefiting Himself and His Friends. David Sacks, the Trump administration’s AI and crypto czar, has helped formulate policies that aid his Silicon Valley friends and many of his own tech investments... when he's not working for Putin.

2025 and 2005