We have her to thank for Obamacare. When our present leaders have anything comparable, I’ll consider the possibility that they are not just gutless mediocrities admiring virtues they will never possess.
We have her to thank for Obamacare. When our present leaders have anything comparable, I’ll consider the possibility that they are not just gutless mediocrities admiring virtues they will never possess.
I think it would also have been wonderful to spend summer 2020 making a huge effort to upgrade school HVAC systems to include serious filtration.
Co-sign. I have seen some pitiful Democratic leaders in my time, but absolutely none come close to this bunch.
So much for the right to peaceably assemble …
Judge Breyer's injunction, if it ever goes into effect, would bar Trump from using the National Guard or any military troops in California to engage in "arrests, apprehensions, searches, seizures, security patrols, traffic control, crowd control, riot control," and other similar tasks.
I forgot to share this earlier today!
Everything @sbagen.bsky.social writes is worth reading.
“Christian Osborne has been itching to serve his country since he was discharged from the Marines after refusing the coronavirus vaccine.” Apparently he’s not SO keen on serving his country that he’s willing to put aside his misinformation and follow orders…
I think that in the US you also need to consider the absolute insanity surrounding masks and lockdowns, which is only partially explained by evangelicals’ having been told for ages that at some point the government would try to close down all churches.
The party of limited government strikes again.
"All that stuff about a True Volk and out-of-touch-elites; I think a lot of the centrist crowd actually believe of themselves that they are elites, who are out of touch, who are somehow less Real than others." sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2025/07/comp...
Promises made. Promises kept.
9 CDC Directors going back to 1977 speak out. What RFK Jr has done to our nation’s public health system "should alarm every American." It "is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...
I have an opinion piece in the New York Times today on how the labor movement has failed to step up to the moment in countering Trump, even as Trump unilaterally strips public sector workers of collective bargaining. Labor will die as a movement if this continues. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...
If we had real journalists in the press he could never get away such outrageous lies
Judge Sooknanan and her team have been working for almost 22 hours straight now. I imagine they will stay up till the last child has been returned (2 more hrs?). That puts them at 24 hours straight defending the rule of law & protecting the children. #DOJ #ICE
Thread.
Fifty-one of the 85 Federalist papers were written by a guy born in Nevis.
Wild Pallas cat family living in the grasslands of Quinghi province China. From the baby animals community on Reddit.
This is so, so sad. (Though of course completely understandable.)
Thank heavens. Less ignorance.
New Mexico has issued a public health order that removes federal restrictions to COVID-19 vaccine access so that pharmacies in New Mexico can vaccinate people of all ages and risk profiles. Every state need to do this!
True, though iirc Korsgaard goes on to say: note that while Kant talks about repaying them for their long service, we do not think the same applies to a dying vacuum cleaner that has served us well for decades. (Pretty sure she did not use a vacuum cleaner, though. But some sort of trusty tool.)
Good for the vets who are doing this.
I'm sure everything about this will turn out to be extremely normal
I have, on occasion, had to tell students that Kant does not think it's wrong to treat ANYTHING as a mere means. (It's OK to use your toothbrush as a mere means of cleaning your teeth!) I don't think any of them advertised their mistake on an entire car, though.
Aren't there penalties for lying to the Court?
Kristi Noem: "I do know that LA wouldn't be standing today if President Trump hadn't taken action."
I am old enough to remember when Wonder Bread was almost all you could get at the grocery store. Whole wheat bread was a revelation. But sourdough rocked my world.
A 17th C. poison case disguised as a book. As if books weren't dangerous enough
If you had told me in 2012 that Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign manager would be posting like this 13 years later i would not have believed you
And so, so much more. That is, supposing they survived childhood.
Start packing your bags now for your upcoming "Trump Touristic Riviera and Islands" trip -- in Gaza.
Also, as you say, various kinds of insects.
Also, the days when so much about your bread depended on the skills of your miller, who would probably not produce a flour consistent with "fluffiness".
I miss the days when you'd leave some flour and water out, hoping that some traveling yeast would decide to settle down and stay awhile, and hope that its leavening properties etc. were to your taste.
The extent to which ICE is ignoring all civil rights and due process is astounding — and indicative of a culture where they’ve been told they can do literally no wrong. Agency and admin leaders must face sanctions and legal consequences.
The event that defined the presidency of George W Bush, along with the invasion of Iraq predicated on sheer lies.
Someone needs to read up on the history of bread.
This “explicit” is a weird editorial choice. The constitution gives the president no power over this at all. It’s not ambiguous.
Hebrew has no present tense of ‘to be’. I spent the better part of a year believing it had no past tense of ‘to be’ either, while using its past tense consistently.
And yet one of my friends in grad school used it in conversation, and I was stunned.
Autocorrect REALLY did not want to let me write that.
I was more ‘seeg.’
How would that tell you to pronounce the final two letters, though?
For me it was ‘segue.’
If you’re going to get huffy when people tell you you’re using words wrong, you should probably figure out the difference between ‘ascribe’ and ‘subscribe.’
I think there’s an excerpt from one here, though it’s about Mme. du Barry, Louis XV’s mistress. I read about them in a different Darnton book.
Hey friends, Defend Public Health has a new campaign if you’d like to join in. Write your elected reps about ensuring that COVID19 vaccines are available this Fall!
Thread. Co-sign.
Very confusing to philosophers.
ICE forcing firefighters to stop battling a wildfire and make them all show their papers, then arresting some active firefighters and pulling them off the line shows there's no bottom. As @aselrod.bsky.social pointedly argues, it's nothing less than an "active assault on virtue wherever it exists."
Good morning from the burrowing owls!
Here’s a photo of Trump this morning, snapped by pool photographer at AFP
They had soap back then. That's not how they proved germ theory.
Context, this is a particularly glaring attack on Senate advice and consent: Monarez was the more acceptable choice after they effectively rejected his first nominee (withdrawn), an antivax ex-congressman. This after Congress in 2023 changed the law to make CDC Dir. subject to Senate confirmation.
Tulsi Gabbard is doing at the intel community more or less the same thing that RFKJr is doing at CDC. “Gabbard didn’t know the CIA officer had been working undercover when she ID’d and stripped the 20-year veteran of security clearance…” www.wsj.com/politics/nat...
Good morning! MAGA/MAHA dude Jay Bhattacharya will forever be remembered as RFK Jr’s biggest champion (he campaigned for him/spoke at his rallies) & the NIH director who presided over the destruction of US health research—including childhood brain cancer research 🤬 www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/w...
Important to note that Christopher Caldwell is widely seen as one of the most respectable / least unserious intellectual representatives of the Right. And he really is! Which only hammers home how much of a radical consensus there is on the Right that pluralistic democracy needs to be abolished.
Gift link. Read it for the sheer stupidity of our President's reasons for wrecking our relationship with India, not to mention a chunk of their export trade.
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/u... Gift link!
A Maine ballot measure restricting mail voting could have an outsize effect on older folks. “We’re not even a voting rights advocacy organization, but we’ve had to become one,” says the director of the Maine Council on Aging.
Exactly right, @jwvizzard.bsky.social. The reason our military take their oath to the Constitution was to explicitly put loyalty to the nation above state loyalty — it’s the supremacy clause section. That was well known in 1861.
Right now, your ability to get access to a COVID vaccine this fall is in jeopardy, whether or not you fit the new, restricted eligiblity criteria. Please send a letter to your member of Congress here. And spread the word. @defendpublichealth.bsky.social actionnetwork.org/letters/writ...
Trump was spotted this morning in a white polo, MAGA hat and black pants as he heads to a golf course in Virginia, per pool
Details emerge on how Israel carried out its highly effective decapitation campaign against the leadership of Iran's clerical IRGC regime.
IHE / Generation Lab survey of 1047 college students reports that 85% used GenAI for coursework last year. But, for whatever reason, there is surprisingly little cynicism about the value of college. www.insidehighered.com/news/student...
From @markhertling.bsky.social — retired Three Star General, veteran of our modern wars. www.thebulwark.com/p/honoring-a...
The fact that we must differentiate the First from the Second Defenestration of Prague remains an all time flex of that lovely city
NEW: SSA chief data officer and whistleblower Charles Borges resigned today—but his resignation email quickly disappeared from recipients' inboxes, sources tell @wired.com. @makenakelly.bsky.social and @davidgilbert.bsky.social report: www.wired.com/story/charle...
"Her patient had signs of what could be a cancer or could be an unusual infection — diagnoses that would require completely different treatment. Ordinarily, she would confirm an infection after sending a sample to the CDC for testing ...the CDC no longer has the capacity to do that"
Jesus Christ.
I assume this is illegal, right?
I saw this earlier, posted by someone who is probably trustworthy, but I don’t know. But Laura is trustworthy.
Whee! fortune.com/2025/08/28/t...
IT ME
Thread
Tea Leaves Are There for Reading talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/tea-l...
Why this danger is not widely understood is beyond me.
Trump’s tariffs ruled illegal.
Good. Leaving aside everything else, having government agents refuse to identify themselves invites random kidnappers impersonating them.
big news out of Missouri
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...
Super important piece on how states can help fill the gaps created by RFK's anti-vax policies. We desperately need RFK out of the job, where he's doing immense damage to public health, but Dem Governors can take effective steps here if they want to. (So can R Governors! Not sure they'll want to.)
I mean when Democrats keep overperforming in special elections in Iowa by 24 points, Republicans running for the hills is expected. It won't wash out the "we're all going to die" energy of Iowa Republicans
They aren't David Brooks' own six people. Judge them for yourself: antoaesthetics.substack.com/p/how-to-fal...
People are often surprised to learn that Lee was an officer who never made it past colonel. The purported promotion to general was awarded by a treasonous cabal calling itself the "confederate states of america" which was put down by force by the Union army, which also had superior generals.
ICE just released updated detention statistics. As of August 24, ICE is holding 61,226 people at authorized facilities around the United States and its Territories. www.ice.gov/detain/deten...
It's the people he quotes who interest me.
True, but I'm not interested in anything HE says today; just the column, which I would not have read at all had the NYT put his name next to it in its Opinion section website.
I mean: this had genuinely not occurred to me a a possibility.
How could falling in love NOT be about the person you fall in love with, and yourself only secondarily if at all? And yet for the people who gave these answers, apparently it is. I am so confused.
For me (at least adult me; teenage crushes were more like being seized by an alien force and dragged about), falling in love is all about the other person. It's as though they slowly come up over the horizon of my world and suddenly illuminate everything in a whole new way, and I am amazed.
Amazingly, I agree with David Brooks today. He quotes these answers to the question "How do you fall in love?", and before I read on I thought: but these are all about how someone sees you, and that's all wrong.
Assumes facts not in evidence ("reasoning.")
Imho, most things have multiple causes working together. I cannot imagine why anyone would need to choose between ideas and material conditions.
I had a student who seemed to really want to get the French Enlightenment, but couldn't connect somehow, until I brought up Instagram. SUDDENLY EVERYTHING CLICKED.
Someone can make themselves miserable, and go deep into debt, creating the Instagram fiction of a life of casual dinners in Greek tavernas or on yachts somewhere, and never realize what exactly is so horribly wrong with what they are doing.