The IRS wants Americans to weigh in on Direct File, the agency's free tax filing program. We already know Direct File has been widely popular and successful. The program could save Americans billions annually between filing fees and time costs. www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs...
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
Aside from the running, my parents and their friends also liked to point out the examples of British classism and....everything-ism, and of Presbyterians being no fun. Mostly it taught me that "amateurism" is gatekeeping, and kicked off my loathing of the song "Jerusalem"
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
I had to watch this movie multiple times with a lot of Runner adults- and the real Liddell was famous for being ungainly www.runnersworld.com/runners-stor...
Federal agents in DC have been starting dangerous car cases for small stuff like tinted windows. The chases violate DC police policy. Out of 10 cases, six ended in a crash. One car had a minor in back. www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
I was going to defend this person with a post about how unintuitive it is to park Smart cars (their turning radius is very small, which takes getting used to; you basically need to back straight toward the curb and then straighten out), but then I watched the video
Crime Festers in Republican States While Their Troops Patrol Washington www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/u...
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
Virginia, notably, already has a stringent anti-mask law that was designed to target the KKK
ICE took 2 firefighters OFF THE FUCKING FIRE LINE!?
Here’s a clip of marines refusing to shoot at Taliban using women and children as human shields if you think it’s really difficult to follow LOAC (which Lew seems to be implying)
Trump and his DOGE minions didn’t just make it harder for people to access their Social Security benefits — they also compromised sensitive data for millions. They took a chainsaw to the Social Security Administration and Americans are paying the price.
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
Crumbl is also one of the most obviously Mormon business ventures in the world
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
This is the way. It's genuinely better than the English track. They also subtitle the French in French in the English subtitles, which I appreciated but not everyone will
For the EU, this should be a very urgent matter of national security. All EU member states should build on Denmark's wise strategy to phase out Microsoft products
Filled with blubber, a beluga’s melon is squishy with good bounce. They can make different shapes and movements with these fat stores, and scientists documented how different wiggles are used for communication. #ThrowbackThursday to possibly my favorite comic. hakaimagazine.com/videos-visua...
Video of a scary scene in Adams Morgan last night is making the rounds on DC listservs. The feds (presumably ICE) seemed to be making immigration/traffic stops. When protesters started shouting, one pointed his Taser at them until other protesters tried to deescalate things...
ICE body slams man's head hard into pavement—for eating crabs in public. Agents shove him into ground with arms twisted behind his back—bleeding severely from his forehead. "My head! You're breaking my arm!" he cries out. "Why are you doing this? I was just eating crabs!" Washington, D.C.
On the left: Nate Cavanagh, a 28-year-old DOGE staffer and college dropout. On the right: Mohammad Halimi, a 53-year-old exiled Afghan scholar. This is the story of how DOGE targeted Halimi on social media. Then the Taliban took his family. 🧵
NEW: After DOGE outed Mohammad Halimi on social media, Taliban intelligence agents blindfolded and took three of his family members to a remote prison. They were repeatedly beaten and questioned about Halimi and his recently publicized work for the United States.
I, for one, am shocked that giving people money when they don’t have money solves the problems caused by them not having money
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“Defend the District” protest and Go-Go concert against Trump’s takeover at 14th and U St:
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
"back at you," maybe? Or "bless you"?
Texas state Rep. Nicole Collier is suing over "illegal confinement" after Republicans locked her in the state Capitol for refusing police surveillance www.sacurrent.com/news/democra...
RFK is on the scene. #Satire prospect.org/health/2025-...
Hey everybody! @drjuliawester.bsky.social and I have a new paper! We surveyed over 800 scientists, science communicators, and science educators who use social media. Conclusion: Scientists no longer find Twitter useful or pleasant, and many have switched to Bluesky! 🧪🌎🦑 doi.org/10.1093/icb/...
"When will I ever use Algebra?" well trying to figure out how much your washing machine costs apparently
I assume you’ve seen this? arstechnica.com/ai/2025/07/s...
NEWS: Judge Dolly Gee denied DOJ’s request to terminate the Flores settlement — a 1997 settlement that provides court oversight of gov’t treatment of migrant children subject to detention until a final rule is in effect. The settlement will remain: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Come on guys! Get out of Mommy's basement!
D.C. A.G. Schwalb says not so fast, A.G. Bondi. "It is my opinion that the Bondi Order is unlawful, and that you [MPD Chief Smith] are not legally obligated to follow it."
Vladeck: There’s one video showing a DEA officer telling a D.C. resident he couldn’t drink alcohol on his porch—D.C. law says exactly the opposite. It also highlights how these officers aren’t even trained in the laws they’re purportedly enforcing.
We had a near-perfect national regulatory system for sportsbooks. Then Chris Christie asked SCOTUS to blow it up for his casino buddies in 2018. Now we have this.
Illinois stands up for the hard-won advances made for workers. The Pullman Strikes. The Haymarket Affair. It has been the people of this state who have led the charge for progress, not just for Illinois, but for the nation. We are ready to do it again — whatever it takes.
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social)
Jury Duty is one of the best ways you can serve your country. Before you're called, you should read up on jury nullification: www.law.cornell.edu/wex/jury_nul... Juries can refuse to indict and refuse to convict, even in the face of evidence, if they object to the law or charges
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social)
Go go gadget DC Jurors
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
Black Sox 2: Electric Boogaloo
Happy birthday, Social Security. Unless Congress acts, full benefits end in 7 years.
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
...or get a job at an airport, parking garage, or taxi depot in Washington, D.C
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
The best way to learn Amharic is to get involved with an Ethiopian church
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
I've never lived in NYC, but I have a lot of family there, and what's always stood out to me is how people can come from anywhere in the world, build a little bubble of people from Home, and then rarely leave it. Most cities aren't big enough for that many bubbles.
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
I grew up in the DC area, and live in Baltimore now. DC now is very safe if you're aware of your surroundings; I'm much more worried about reckless drivers speeding through residential areas than of anyone walking around.
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
I genuinely like BWI. ATX is good at non-rush times, but hopelessly understaffed during the holidays. BOS is very conveniently located now that they fixed the planes-overshooting-the-runway-into-the-water problem. ROC is the calmest airport I've ever been to.
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
If anything they over-explain the background, you don't need to pre-research it. My favorite part of S3 has been Troy Kotsur, personally, the rest of the plot drags (but that's also why I wasn't a big fan of the books)
A class dedicated to a plain reading of the Federalist Papers would be interpreted by the Trump regime as an all-out assault on it
Now if only the huge outlets would stop unquestioningly reposting ai company press releases, we might actually get somewhere. Way too many people believe the sales pitch, believe that there's actual intelligence under the hood. arstechnica.com/ai/2025/08/r...
As a DC resident I do feel that the city has been overrun by "violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals" and I would like them to leave the White House and stop destroying the federal government.
Washington D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb says Metropolitan Police Department officers must follow local policies that govern their policing, even as President Trump vows to crack down on crime.
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
Texans like to blame Californians, but I think it's mostly a rural -people-in-concrete-mazes problem. And in fairness, the Houston tangle of freeway-ring road- underpass-overpass-oddly-spaced-exit-signs is very confusing to navigate
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
It's actually a decent biking city if you can handle the heat, being buzzed by pickups, and people expecting you to be able to meet them 30+ miles away on short notice
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
Austin has truly horrible traffic patterns, on top of the unpredictable drivers and the flash flooding any time it rains.
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
The most unsafe polite driving I've seen, though, was in St. Paul, MN, where someone nearly caused an accident by stopping on a multi-lane road, to let me out of a Taco Bell parking lot.
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
I think a lot about the time a truck in Austin pulled into the bike lane to.... thank me for using hand signals. In contrast to the other truck drivers that yelled at me to "get out of the road" when there was an unsafe bike lane.
Re crime in DC, I used to live in DC and I went down to the fish market in SW once, and got a little lost off the metro. Two kids on BMX bikes asked if I wanted to buy any crack and I said “no thanks but can you tell me where the fish market is?” and they said of course and gave me good directions.
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
is that even illegal in DC?
DC statehood was in sight in 2021, as I wrote at the time. It was explicitly discussed as a response to Trump's disregard for home rule www.businessinsider.com/capitol-viol...
Crime rates in all three cities have gone down, and in Baltimore at astounding levels, in part by treating crime as a public health crisis, rather than a "need more cops" crisis. popular.info/p/the-secret...
The UK is about to ban access to Wikipedia, just remember this bill was originally pitched as a means to protect kids from accessing porn.
President calls the US capital "one of the most dangerous cities" in world despite 30-year low in violent crime this year. The Democratic mayor of Washington, Muriel Bowser, pushed back on Trump’s claims, saying the city is “not experiencing a crime spike”.
david rose grew up in our community. his mom was an icu nurse at emory. his wife is pregnant and he had two kids. please share this & help if you can.
Someone forgot to take down this webpage: www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/v...
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF7_...
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
A lot of Dahl is Revenge Fantasies for Children, which I think is a logical outcome of exposure to the British boarding school system
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
People have a lot of issues with Roald Dahl these days, but I've always appreciated the intentional *direction* of the meanspiritedness in his books. Everyone knows exactly what they're doing to who, and usually why.HP has a lot of chaotic horribleness and injustice that characters shrug and accept.
“the labor movement has coasted on the easier public sector membership, and failed to invest and fight to maintain or grow private sector membership. This is, quite simply, an abject failure of the labor movement.”
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
Closer to you youtu.be/h2ZbuYk0qLQ?...
NEW: The FDA may yank Pfizer's under-5 Covid vaccine this fall. Pfizer has the only pediatric vaccines for all kids over six months, not just those with health conditions. My latest: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Can’t say why exactly, but the phrase “once again refused a pierogi” made me laugh out loud.
Trump destroys everything he touches. Everything. ***** abcnews.go.com/Business/wir...
Yet another helpful explainer to counter the ignorant disinformation spouted by the unqualified extremist who is currently destroying the HHS
"They've warned that a single lawsuit raised by three authors over Anthropic's AI training now threatens to "financially ruin" the entire AI industry if up to 7 million claimants end up joining the litigation and forcing a settlement." Good. Let them.
Just spitballing here, but cryptobros throwing sex toys at WNBA players on the court and other cryptobros and male sports commentators calling it funny and telling the women and their coaches to 'lighten up' both explains the 'male loneliness epidemic' and why I don't care about it.
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
For a family with kids that's an upper middle class household income in most of the US, and a middle class household income in the high cost of living cities. For a single person with no dependents it'd be a very comfortable salary, maybe heading towards "rich" with the right investments
Again, you cannot unplug 1/4-1/5 of an R1 university's budget & expect the same quantity or quality of "things" on campus. The math simply doesn't work. And pretending it does & we can uphold our "core values," & not talking loudly & publicly about how it doesn't, is not a strategy. It's madness.
arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...
🚨ALERT🚨 A group of about 10 Secret Service, ICE HSI, and DHS police have been spotted across various locations around Adams Morgan, the Columbia Heights metro, the triangle park at Harvard and 16th St NW in Mount Pleasant, and at the Ft. Totten metro between 8 and 9 PM today (8/8). 1/
A police officer was killed Friday while responding to a shooting near the CDC in Atlanta, officials said. Mayor Andre Dickens said it was too soon to tell whether the agency had been targeted.
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
Which restaurant sells Värmlandskorv?
there’s an election for Cat Mayor currently happening in Somerville, Mass. and every cat deserves to win
Right-to-repair laws have now either passed or been introduced in all 50 states, forcing private equity–backed firms to allow DIY fixes.
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
The article did contain a link to this systematic review www.hsrd.research.va.gov/publications... , and some other linked research, but the linked content wasn't obvious from the hyperlinks. I think that's more of an editorial/style choice than anything else
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
Here's a systematic review to get you started pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28490266/ in early stages, low dose radiation therapy can reduce/slow the contracture
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
There's real research on low-dose radiation therapy for Dupuytren's contracture, if you're interested. I don't know about anything else.
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
And people who are use /x/ in other contexts don't usually apply it to Greek loanwords unless they're making a point about speaking Greek
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
Greek X in general usually gets pronounced as 'k'/"kai" in US English, I assume for reasons of how schools that taught Classical Greek went about doing so for the past century or two. It's particularly noticeable in college fraternity names.
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
...this has got me thinking of where /x/ contrasts with /h/ vs /k/ in English as people actually pronounce things; language of origin/orthography definitely matter but I think it's mostly beginning of the word people are most likely to interchange with /h/, end of the word with /k/
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
In some loanwords that are widely used, yes (i.e. loch, challah, chutzpah, etc) , but in the US only a pedant would expect people to apply that to epoch. I guess I've heard /ipɔx/, but /ipɔk/ or /ɛpɔk/ are more common
behold the "HTML bomb" It's a counterattack for AI companies that persistently scrape and rescrape your web site, even when you tell them not to when a scraper grabs it, it becomes a 10-gig HTML page and 💣 goes the scraper Item #6 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter: buttondown.com/clivethompso...
The Neuroscience Dept at American University is hiring for a tenure-track position at the Assistant level with expertise in Computational Neuroscience. Apply by Sep 15: american.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/AU/job/Main-... #FacultyJobs #AcademicJob #Neuroscience #CompNeuro #AI #ComputationalPsychiatry
“The conventional wisdom among non-experts has long been that there are limited data” on gender-affirming pediatric care, the authors wrote. “However, results from our exhaustive literature searches have led us to the opposite conclusion.”
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
I think if you include South Asians and Polynesians the comedy trend doesn't hold up, though. If anything I think it's harder for South Asians to be taken seriously as funny people in Hollywood
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
On the other other hand: Lou Diamond Phillips
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
I think having comedy chops makes it easier for people to be cast in a more "race-blind" way. And it's usually what they're looking for in male supporting actor roles
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
I don't think of BD Wong as a comedian, either, and there was a period where he was probably the best known male Chinese-American actor
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
I've only seen Hoon Lee in serious roles, too, although he sometimes makes jokes. And the funniest I've seen Steven Yeun is in Nope. Maybe there's a Korean-American exception.
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
Asian-American, maybe; I feel like action movies lead overall, even in Hollywood. And then there's Daniel Dae Kim, who I can't remember making any jokes in anything.
There is something delightfully anachronistic about *texting* the local historic horse-drawn produce vendor to stop for you when you hear the jingle of their cart passing by. www.mdhumanities.org/2016/09/old-...
A group of former lawyers from the U.S. Justice Department and major law firms launched a new nonprofit on Monday to take on cases for free opposing actions by the Trump administration @davidjthomas.bsky.social reut.rs/4lgJTLc
Important details from this story: 1) Yet another news-break by student journalists (this time @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social) www.thecrimson.com/article/2025... 2) Harvard saying "see you in court," not "let's make a deal." 3) Per Garber, WH/MAGA leaked news of a "deal." NYT then ran with it.
“.. Within about three minutes of the crash, the Model S uploaded a “collision snapshot”—video, CAN‑bus streams, EDR data, etc.—to Tesla’s servers .. The vehicle then deleted its local copy, resulting in Tesla being the only entity having access.” @electrek.co $TSLA electrek.co/2025/08/04/t...
eridowd.bsky.social (@eridowd.bsky.social) reply parent
All of the other contenders are also nightshades. A+ vegetable family