Republican governors have sent National Guard troops to Democratic-led Washington, D.C., even though cities in their states all have higher rates of violent crime than the nation’s capital. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/u...
Delta husband. Garden Guy. Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize - for writing on the legacies of slavery “with extraordinary moral clarity.”
2,867 followers 122 following 880 posts
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Republican governors have sent National Guard troops to Democratic-led Washington, D.C., even though cities in their states all have higher rates of violent crime than the nation’s capital. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/u...
Monday Backyard #1 7:31 A.M.
As a “retired” MI6 Agent
A once-forgotten African American cemetery in Jacksonville, the Historic St. Nicholas Bethel Cemetery, a resting place for WWII veterans and others, was dedicated, marking a powerful and emotional milestone for the community and the families of those buried there. www.news4jax.com/news/local/2...
Aug 29th 1997 - Skynet become self aware. 📽️📅 Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Until the day that eight times eight times eight is four/
“Ghassemi and her MIT colleagues found that AI systems were more likely to leave female patients untreated.”
there is no question in my mind that rfk jr is the most dangerous person in this administration and that his eugenicist ideology threatens the lives of millions of people www.advocate.com/politics/dem...
What a cursed sentence (gift link) “The A.I. companies selected to oversee the program would have a strong financial incentive to deny claims. Medicare plans to pay them a share of the savings generated from rejections.”
NEWS: CVS, the largest pharmacy chain in the country, is currently not offering Covid vaccines in 16 states and DC — even to people who meet the new FDA criteria — because the CDC hasn't signed off and isn't expected to do so (if it does so) for at least three weeks.
Trump admin planning to change student visas from lasting for duration of academic program to fixed 4-yr term, and then much harder to renew Could destroy US ability to attract global talent, particularly those seeking advanced degrees in STEM. The median time to complete a PhD is 5.7 yrs per NSF.
You should see mine!
@adriancarrasquillo.bsky.social: "Trump’s deployment of 2,300 National Guard troops and 500 federal law enforcement agents has hurt foot traffic, chilled business, and made people cancel trips and nights out. It is slowly choking the life out of Washington, D.C." www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-is-s...
The New Yorker Sept 1
Also huge - like dessert plates
Wednesday Backyard #4
Fall, is that you, playah?
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Wednesday Backyard #1
Thank you, Tim Miller, for teaching me a new word: “Cankles”
“Here, My Dear” - Marvin Gaye
Tacos in NYC: The New Yorker food critic Helen Rosner never fails to make me hungry. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
Ms. Swift has no doubt improved his skin care.
Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate
How the Second Trump White House Overtly Welcomed Racists www.nytimes.com/2025/08/23/u...
Stripping a publication of critics leaves it voiceless - and indistinguishable - in a crowded, cacophonous marketplace
This hits right on time… My wife and I had the great privilege of visiting the African-American Museum in DC, and let me just tell you if you have not been…It is a masterpiece—go.
Monday Backyard #1
“The study authors asked GPT 4o-mini to evaluate the quality of 217 papers. The tool didn’t mention in any of the reports that the papers being analyzed had been retracted or had validity issues. In 190 cases, GPT described the papers as world leading, internationally excellent, or close to that”
At a time when other publications are eliminating critics, The New Yorker created this stunning portfolio of portraits of our critics, photographed by Richard Renaldi. Critics can be stars if you believe in what they do. Looking good, my friends and colleagues! www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Days after FBI agents raided Bolton's home, Trump threatens to use government power against another critic, suggesting that he would open a new investigation into Chris Christie in response to criticism on television earlier in the day. truthsocial.com/@realDonaldT...
Again:Journalists are not stenographers. We are to get information, report and verify the facts, and then report the reality not the talking point. What Trump is doing in DC and threatening in cities is NOT a crime crack down because he says it is. Don’t regurgitate. Report the truth not propaganda.
Saints, preserve us
Remembering today when pro-GOP media erupted with outrage over Kamala Harris' warning that Trump had plans to militarize the national guard and deploy them on the streets of US cities. Indeed, he had such plans. And now he's implementing them.
This lame response would be laughable were the situation not so dire. A reminder that giants (e.g Barbara Jordan of Texas) once strode the now-impoverished halls of Congress.
Preach
Sunday Farmers Market #2 (Squash Blossoms)
Sunday Farmers Market #1
@tressiemcphd.bsky.social you are subjected to industrial-strength obtuseness on this AI nonsense
In many ways my argument is the same that the review is making. LLMs are not the universe of AI but excepting the handful of very good medical cases and some coding efficiencies for things that *may* contribute economic value to society, what is called AI today does not and cannot live up to hype
Saturday Backyard #1!!!
Amen, good brother, amen
When the landlords cashed in: “ Racial Capitalism” - and the real reason the South Bronx went up in flames. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
I absolutely cannot fathom living my life in such a way that leads me to have strong feelings about the Cracker Barrel logo.
Friday Backyard #1
Sad
it’s all about the Benjamins, brohamm
they desperately want footage of soldiers shooting americans
When I choose among hotels, the best gym wins
Agreed
Ditto
Are we not men?
The past is never past
It was Ethan Hunt - wearing a prosthetic mask
U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, also a frequent target of the deranged right, wrote: “Forcing elected officials to sign ‘permission slips’ and take police escorts to leave? That’s not procedure. That’s some old Jim Crow playbook.”
Wednesday Backyard #2
Why coffee has gotten so expensive (and will probably be getting… more expensive) ☕️ 😱 #inflation #tariffs #brazil #coffee
Wednesday Backyard #1
‘Parks are the new lunch counters": Boston leaders warn of Black history erasure www.masslive.com/politics/202...
Political group 314 Action—dedicated to helping Democrats with science backgrounds win local, state, and federal elections—says more than 150 doctors have reached out about running for office in nearly three dozen states. Who knew RFK Jr. could do that?
Timely: The story of the mass imprisonment of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans during World War II.
Light in August, Brooklyn Heights
Tuesday Backyard #1
look what happens when you actually speak to the people living in these neighborhoods instead of ventriloquizing them to make an ideological point: you get a good story www.nytimes.com/2025/08/16/u...
i have said before that the fracas at UVA is a product, in large part, of a set of alumni who believe that the university was at its greatest when it was a segregated finishing school for white men. i was not exaggerating, as you can see here in this letter from Scott Douglas Gerber
“A heat wave at 50 degrees is not a scenario of science fiction." That's 122 degrees F. In Paris. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/w...
Roger Allam comes thru similarly in the “Endeavor Morse” series
Sunday Backyard #1
The Trump administration announced Saturday that it had paused approvals of visitor visas for people from Gaza, a key pathway for those seeking medical care in the U.S.
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Ciao, Ravello!
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Saints, preserve us
The Grifter-in-Chief rakes it in: The New Yorker’s David Kirkpatrick documents the biggest presidential grift ever seen. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Firing and demoralizing feminized jobs as enemies of the state while brazenly bribing men with violent jobs that almost instantly puts them into the middle of middle class is very basic gendered warfare. Fulfilling the manosphere’s promise.
Republicans in N.C. have a long history of trying to suppress the vote statewide, as @joycewhitevance.bsky.social illustrates. They gerrymandered the state long ago because they can’t win on their merits.
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Morning music www.youtube.com/watch?v=06gA...
As is your right as an American
While Democrats Panicked Over Mamdani, Obama Got Him on the Phone. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/o...
I will never stop saying that our preeminent African American museum, with generations of precious artifacts and collective knowledge, should have always been privately funded and controlled, fully independent of the same government that enslaved and brutalized our ancestors.
Re-read the 20th Century here: Maya Angelou, Mary McLeod Bethune, Stokely Carmichael, Ralph Bunche, Horace Mann Bond, Casely-Hayford, JB Danquah, Kenyatta, Aimé Césaire, Ho Chi Minh, Cecil Rhodes, Churchill, Truman, Baldwin, A. Phillip Randolph, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X (lots of both).
I leave that to the pros
I am right handed - so that was probably the deciding factor
Tuesday Backyard #1
The point is to justify repression by instigating “civic unrest”
Well, I believe the point is for civil servants to be made temporarily employed temps…Iike the private sector. They don’t want federal employees to expect stability. I don’t believe this is about functioning. It’s about disciplining labor. They don’t care if they break the government.
Strong agree
Israeli strike kills five journalists, including four from Al Jazeera. Israel says it targeted one of the journalists whom it accused of being a Hamas fighter, an allegation the journalist and Al Jazeera had previously denied. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/w...
Groans from the parishioners “many of them homeowners”
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The writer makes an important point: Foreigner travelers know that, if they come to the U.S., they are vulnerable to detention and government-issued violence “without recourse”
- sayeth Mr. William Munny
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Insightful, Karen; a lot to think about in this essay.
“Unforgiven”