Former Treasury official saying “everybody uses the dollar, like everybody speaks English” says a lot.

We gotta bring back the productive kind of national shame. Not the throwing up your hands and going “what can you do, we suck” kind but the “I’ll be GODDAMNED if I let the fucking FRENCH have better TRAINS” kind

I did not see this becoming the new Keep Calm and Carry On

I think the opposition party widely expected to make historic gains in the next election(s) has an obligation to explain how they'll stop this and prevent it from happening again or it's reasonable to conclude they don't plan on doing those things, which raises more uncomfortable questions

Gotta admit that I didn't expect the first U.S. president to say the words "Praise be to Allah" to be Donald Trump,

the Artemis II crew just posted a new photo. what the fuck

Being a cultural superpower has huge drawbacks and this is one of them: because we can go to McDonalds in any major city on the planet we forget that other cultures aren't like us Those other cultures? Yeah, they can go to McDonalds in any major city. They watch our movies. They get us just fine

beware of geeks bearing grifts

on a more fundamental level, there is an aspect of psychic terror that comes from acknowledging that something too big to fail (the US presidency) is failing, waking up every morning knowing it is failing

*astronaut meme* wait without Henry it was all just yahooism?

Good night, sweet prince

The big epistemological problem economics has, which is a problem faced by few other sciences, is that nowhere near as many people are interested in paying a geologist big money to get an incorrect and self-serving answer to a question about rocks.

A lot depends on who we’re sending there and whether there are any plans to bring them back.

Something worth considering: it is incredibly radicalizing to hear the media lie about something you personally saw 9 million people are at home right now going "what the fuck, tens of thousands of people marched in my city alone" Some percentage are gonna wonder what else the media is lying about

re the shocking displays of incompetence, venality, prideful ignorance, brutality, belligerence, violence etc. of almost our entire elite class: one wonders whether this is just an indictment of how most people are when they find out there are no rules, or whether these are uniquely terrible people

>10,000 STEM PhDs have left federal service over the past year (including 30% of the federal colleagues with whom I’ve worked closely). Those still left are holding federal science together with duct tape. What an extraordinary act of sabotage against the American people.

I just resigned from NASA. It breaks my heart to leave, but I’ve become convinced the best path forward is to do the best science I can, and that can’t be here anymore. I’m still in love with the promise of those four magic letters. Ad astra per aspera, and remember: Earth is the only good planet.

What if this is the single biggest lever we as a society have over elected officials. What if the airlines are the heroes we need instead of the ones we want. If we could get the major airlines to unite and tie this to DC statehood and court packing we'd have 51 stars and 17 justices in six weeks.

Nothing says “this is getting serious” like the Financial Times explaining Earth’s energy imbalance. www.ft.com/content/e839...

Update: The US has now also invented dying in a mass shooting because the ambulance en route to save you was blocked in by a robot car

The old world is not just dying- we were all fundamentally wrong about the world. Even if you never trusted the system, you probably didn’t believe that the CIA would just let themselves be gutted or capital would be willing to destroy the world economy but here we are. And it broke us.

It is being reported on the ground in Cuba that everyone on a ventilator at this hospital died overnight. As a Cuban, I'm devastated.

lack of physical danger imo the old joke about who are the best generals in the american army? general atlantic and general pacific

It’s amazing how many people are going to suffer because some people got bored of a broadly functional, affluent society, and decided making crises was more exciting.

This is now the LOST generation for all doctoral research, from engineering to public health, from literature to psychology, from religion to economics. Some programs will suffer more than others, but this is a tremendous loss to the future. This is ALL on #RussellVought #DonaldTrump #JDVance.

Extremely important. Having applied and been on admissions committees, it’s so clear to me that many VERY qualified people aren’t admitted for reasons that have nothing to do with their qualifications. # of spaces, advisor fit, committee makeup, and sheer dumb luck all play a role.

From an essay titled, “God Is A Comedian” substack.com/home/post/p-...

"Get in the fucking robot Mulder"

There's a reason I wrote WereCage, about Nic Cage biting a guy who then becomes Nic Cage.

Nic Cage does the kind of weird shit that I can get behind a wealthy person doing

there are probably like 4 or 5 people in the world who went all in on the metaverse and now will have to emerge from it like platos cave and find having legs incredibly disorienting

this absolute infant that also has brain damage has skipped along through life without ever experiencing a single consequence. then you let him surround himself with enablers and lickspittles, and cede all levers of government to him. weird that iran now has to take adult responsibility for this

*glancing briefly at the feed during a frantic work day* what do you mean Trump is instituting The Purge, isn't that something congress is supposed to do

Hegemonic suicide

Poll: Nearly 1 In 10 Adults Have Postponed Retirement Due To Healthcare Costs https://theonion.com/poll-nearly-1-in-10-adults-have-postponed-retirement-due-to-healthcare-costs/

NSF Update through March 13, 2026 1/2

The formatting of this Beckett quote does still represent resilience and determination, just of a very different sort.

I hope I'm wrong but I've settled on the idea that unless the next Democratic president is a generational talent with a sharp focus and an iron will we can pack this whole thing up and go home

I hate traveling but anytime I can go somewhere on the train all I think is "Oh at least it's on the train." More trains!

autoerotic defenestration

Heat Pegseth would be a great name for a queer coded pro wrestler

So why don’t these guys just order a pair of well-fitting Dear Leader shoes from Zappos or whatever? The fact that they don’t suggests that they are 1) real stupid, 2) real cheap, or 3) real afraid that Trump actually knows the shoes he orders don’t fit, and checks, because it’s a degradation ritual

“Piracy is the most effective form of artistic distribution these days. So be it.” -Werner Herzog on NPR just now 🔥

Once again when this question comes up in every single conversation about raising the minimum wage I find myself having only one single response which is never appropriately answered: why the fuck not, asshole

Mr. Trump, sir, it was that bad BiBi and bad Lindsey that convinced you to do this dumb thing, time for some revenge