Summing up the days news: Most recent additions to "List of ways the US govt us going to kill us" include eliminating vaccine mandates, fumbling an ebola outbreak, unleashingly escalation-prone AI war bots, and extrajudicial assassination should you attempt to flee by boat. What a time to be alive
I had no idea. "Almost all of the AI models showed a preference to escalate aggressively, use firepower indiscriminately and turn crises into shooting wars — even to the point of launching nuclear weapons. " www.politico.com/news/magazin...
I can't stress enough that this is a real video commissioned by the White House. They've got an AI-generated John Adams saying "facts don't care about your feelings" like he's a right-wing troll. gizmodo.com/trumps-new-h...
If the U.S. military isn't going to release details on the justification for killing 11 civilians in a civilian boat who weren't posing a threat to anyone, then we have to conclude the "justification" is: the U.S. military is willing to kill civilians to give Trump social media content.
New, from me: The EPA is breaking. *About 1 in 4 employees out *Core research unit closed down *Employees suspended and fired for writing letter for dissent *Trump judicial appointees OK'd cancelling of $20 billion climate change program donmoynihan.substack.com/p/your-gover...
Don't feel like doing a repost that puts the murder video on the timeline yet again but do feel like repeating the point that the president just straight-up assassinated 11 people for supposedly doing something that wouldn't be a death-penalty crime if they were caught and convicted
HUGE. The 5th Circuit joins many other federal courts in holding that Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act was unlawful. The judges emphasize that the law is fundamentally about *war* and about military actions; not illegal immigration or drug trafficking.
Lethal force against a civilian vessel in international waters is a war crime if not in self-defense. If not in self-defense, only non-lethal actions, such as warning shots or disabling fire, are allowed. "Not yielding to pursuers" or "suspected of carrying drugs" doesn't carry a death sentence.
Appalling.
Remember, kids: A real big goal of "AI" is to entirely sever capital from labor, and no, there will be no universal basic income, you can all just starve and die, thanks www.axios.com/2025/08/26/a...
"'This is a moment that is going to test all of us,' Lopez said. 'You can be afraid and hide, or you can be afraid and still stand up. We chose to stand up.'" ❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥
Kern County may be oilfields and MAGA and Kevin McCarthy. But Kern County is also Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, and The Grapes of Wrath. Sending love, strength, protection, and appreciation to those fighting the good fight in my homeland ✊️❤️🔥
Everything cited or claimed in this is an outright lie or misleading False claim about manufacturing jobs and tariffs cepr.org/voxeu/column... Lie about Trump's tax cuts and their primary benefits to the wealthy www.nbcnews.com/politics/con... www.whitehouse.gov/videos/press...
Looks like a fun read. I taught English in Bangkok in my 20s. Water taxis and walking the khlongs helped keep me grounded in an otherwise overwhelming city.
The artist is Ernesto Yerena Montejano: www.instagram.com/ernestoyeren...
Important thread 👇
"Trump and his ilk aren’t only keeping immigrants out, they’re setting up a new social hierarchy that places the most predatory, bloody-fanged among us at the top and seeks to subordinate caution and compassion wherever they’re found." www.liberalcurrents.com/let-it-burn-...
"To millionaire elites, many of whom already had an apocalyptic bent, a depopulated world is not a tragedy but an opportunity -- and certainly easier to manage as they insulate themselves from the ravages of a literally scorched earth." --HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT (2020)
"They want the country to collapse. A depopulated, partitioned US is easier to exploit and control. To them, the state is just something to sell. They do not care if the buyers are foreign or domestic." -- THEY KNEW (2022)
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...
The extent to which these companies assume by default that they are unimpeachable and can do this stuff without any fear of meaningful consequences is reaching truly impressive heights. Here is a Meta product lead just casually creating a sex bot out of the likeness of the most famous singer alive
If you are okay with this, if you think this is justified, if you think people living on the street have brought this upon themselves, if you think this is good leadership, you may be able to fool yourself that you care about others but you don’t fool me
The average American simply has no idea how quickly the infrastructure that keeps us safe and healthy is collapsing. These systems run in the background thanks to government employees who quietly do critical work. Those employees are being purged and systems are being destroyed.
"You have to build the apparatus for change, even if no one else shows up. If you don’t build the movement, it won’t be there when the day for action comes. It’s thankless. People live their entire lives building something they may never see succeed. And you do it anyway.” ❤️🔥
“If you believe in a better world, you need to get right with the fact that you may never see it.” At this point, he sniffles. “And now I’m going to cry a little. I can do that because I’ve had a lot of therapy.” This is the kind of masculinity the world needs 🥲
(Captions have been edited. The original line is, "Why would a man need more than one woman?)
Watching greedy billionaires and loser tech bros obsess over hoarding wealth and extending their life and uploading their consciousness to a computer always makes me think of this scene from Moonstruck.
www.technologyreview.com/2025/06/30/1...
"New acting CDC director Jim O'Neill is a longtime biz partner of Peter Thiel & says the US would be healthier with weaker drug regulations & if people could buy & sell body organs & live in undemocratic floating cities on the ocean to receive experimental longevity treatments."
It's becoming almost impossible to not sound like a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist when simply stating out loud the specific ways in which the people in charge are completely fucking insane.
Jim O’Neill is a tech investor, former CEO of the Thiel Foundation, and co-founder with Peter Thiel of the Thiel fellowship. He has no direct medical education or experience. It’s hard to get away from the feeling that they really are trying to kill us.
"RFK Jr. is perhaps the most confidently wrong person in public life today... What can be done with someone so disdainful of actual expertise, so assured of his own infallible correctness that he will gleefully undermine decades of vaccine and public health progress?"
"The president was never supposed to have a personal militia... If we allow this expansion of power to go unchecked, we risk a future in which those federal agents can be turned against any one of us."
"If you think the assault on higher education is about anti-semitism, or that the purge of the federal government is about DEI, or that taking over Democratic cities is about crime, you are helping perpetuate Trump’s rationales for undermining democracy." - @donmoyn.bsky.social
A former CDC staffer adds: “This is the work of a death cult.”
Robert F. Kennedy is "an existential threat to public health": www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Reps and Dems are living in different societies... Report linked in comments.
The mental health benefits of not knowing any history right now must be massive. Moving through your day with total equanimity. What happens next? Who knows? Maybe something good
Oh look, it's the thing every fascist government says about the opposition party before they dissolve them and turn the country into a one party state.
As with most things in life, there's also a Simpsons quote for that.
In these tired times it’s important to remind myself that no, not every single thing is fucked. There’s open pushback & backlash against this lawless administration & its cronies.
Anyway, I believe that we can defeat our opponents over time. I'm committed to doing my part.
Or how the most derogatory characterization of him was that he was "boring"
Words cannot adequately describe what a colossal disappointment our mainstream media has been during our slow descent into authoritarianism.
Today’s Executive Order creating a *nationwide* military “quick reaction force” and setting up an online portal to permit random fascist vigilantes to join soldiers is one of the scariest things I’ve seen in U.S. politics in my adult life. Why is it not getting more attention?
"One could say that Trump has blown through the nation’s constitutional and political guardrails, but a more accurate assessment is that both Congress and the Supreme Court... removed those guardrails helpfully in advance."
The leaked memo “suggests that DHS is anticipating many more uses of the military in urban centers, noting that L.A.-style operations may be needed ‘for years to come.’” americasvoicecnn.substack.com/p/trump-says...
So horrifically cruel and unjust
TRUMP: “A lot of people are saying maybe we’d like a dictator.” He’s saying it. Are you listening? 🇺🇸
Look. I have written a book about how Nazis took over and guess what—this is how they take over: Claim there is an invasion of immigrants. Use it to create an authoritarian state. Shut down any objection or protest with excessive force. I have receipts. I will talk to press. It’s right here, now.
Referring to a mediocre breakfast restaurant as your culture and heritage is one of the whitest things I've ever read.
Louisiana has to build three new natural gas power plants to accommodate the "AI" data center that Meta just crammed through because said center will use *Three Times* as much electricity (and, thus, attendant resources) as the *Entire City Of New Orleans*, every year. Y'all this isn't sustainable.
This just in, only way to save the planet is to ask the tree burning miracle box what to do next. Experts predict the answer may cost us upwards of 3 rainforests.
the thing that's driving me slightly mad is that suddenly deploying the national guard to help with "law enforcement" is normal. the speed with which that framing has been accepted is truly stunning.
People need to understand what's happening today: Trump sent the FBI to investigate one of his most prominent critics, and then threatened to military occupy multiple US cities. He's trying to become a full dictator who makes it illegal to oppose him.
Today, the president threatened to militarily occupy numerous American cities without authorization or rationale. He was also praised by a notorious child sex trafficker, with whom he obviously cut a deal, to cover up evidence he sexually abused kids. The GOP is united behind him. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
a first step to organizing people to do anything right now is just bringing people together for anything—to vent. to eat together. to make art. to remind people we have each other. to ask what we can do together. to keep the despair at bay.
“Here’s the problem with being awash in data and inferences: It never stays limited to any innocent or well-intentioned purpose. It almost immediately becomes a tempting weapon for those who want to wield power over a society, with or without consent from the people in that society.”
First They Came for Black History hyperallergic.com/1035834/firs...
The people dominating our political landscape, culture, and economy are just so stupid and full of shit it's almost impossible to describe
When the AI bubble pops it will destroy your 401k *and* the obscenely wealthy people responsible for it will get a huge bailout with your money. They spent more money this year on the plagiarism machine than consumers spent. Over a third of the stock market is handcuffed to the plagiarism machine
Analysts show that capital expenditures on AI were so big over the last 6 months they added more to the GDP than *all consumer spending*. That growth is offsetting pain from the tariffs and slow job growth. So the AI bubble may be propping up the whole US economy. What happens if and when it pops?
If the AI bubble really is bursting, please take this lesson from it: Nothing marketed to you this relentlessly is ever worth it. If it was, they wouldn’t need to beg you.
🤞🤞
July 14: we are building several multi-gigawatt compute clusters, the first is called Prometheus (cool myth, no lesson there) August 20: AI hiring freeze. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/meta...
From @ylepidemiologist.bsky.social: “If you’re under 65 and not high risk, the window to get a Covid-19 vaccine is right now—before the FDA label changes (possibly this Friday). Once it happens, access will be limited immediately.”
"Every dollar spent relitigating the disproven vaccine-autism link is a dollar stolen from research that could actually help people with autism — studies on support services, educational interventions, employment programs & other factors behind autism."
My attempts to protect my (college-educated) parents & sibling by debunking misinfo & exposing obvious grifts have taught me that the appeal of magical products that promise to diagnose and cure any ailment is very difficult to combat with facts. How can we repair trust in science and expertise?
"Being autistic, to me, means a lot of different things, but one of the best things is that I can be so happy, so enraptured about things no one else understands and so wrapped up in my own joy that, not only does it not matter that no one else shares it, but it can become contagious." 💖🥲
Ditto to Paper Moon!
It's Only a Paper Moon (DS9) It's got everything. The culmination of a major arc for someone who started out as a minor, unlikable character. A rat-packy holographic guardian angel. A realistic portrayal of PTSD.
People really believe generative AI is inevitable even though the companies behind it have never turned a profit, have no path to turning a profit and can only operate with mind blowing corporate and state subsidies (and consumer subsidies in the form of rising utility bills and stolen IP)
In case you wondered whether ICE has fully transitioned to a tool of a fascist regime: This is not something any federal agent should shout at a member of the public.
My take: They’re dismantling every agency that provides public info about the climate crisis (NOAA, NASA, FEMA, NSF, EPA) & data-sharing by gov satellites, so they can: 1. Control the narrative 2. Monetize forecasts $$$ 3. Pick winners & losers in this new market www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-a...
“What you have is this desire to get people to buy into the fun of sadism." “What they’re offering people is not health insurance or economic security... They’re offering them delight in the torture of others.”
Every day under fascist rule, the needle of preventable mass death inches ever closer to total annihilation.
A useful WaPo map of where Trump Storm Troops are actually operating in DC. www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202... If you know DC, what this map tell you is: They're making the gaudy show of strength in areas where it matters least and will do least good. Except for sheer spectacle.
This is what I mean when I say their ultimate goal is mocking and intimidating DC's actual residents. Similar to DOGE they want to "traumatize" the federal workforce until more people just leave
During normal times, it would not be considered a threat to the president if a member of his cabinet wanted to run for president at the end of his second term…
By any metric this is fucking mental
A number of people who have read "Let This Radicalize You" are unaware that we made numerous resources and tools to accompany the book. You can find all of them here including a workbook, discussion guide, zines and more. www.interruptingcriminalization.com/resources-al...
An automated AI program, written by an undergrad recruited into DOGE, that will review federal regulations & suggest regs to be eliminated. Wrap your mind around the fact that the country is being run by people who think this is a good idea.
One of the most disappointing parts of the current moment is to recognize how many people actually don't mind fascism at all.
💔💔💔
$297,880 of your taxpayer dollars on the vehicles alone. Here are the purchase orders.
ICE used your taxpayer dollars to trick out a bunch of trucks in new livery, all painted black with "ICE" and a logo printed in gold on the side (and Trump's name in gold on the back window), then shoot a rap video in DC to post on social media. I am not making this up.
Self-deprecating. Auto correct fail ☹️
Some people working on DC statehood who could use your support rn: @freedcproject.bsky.social @51stdc.bsky.social And Free DC has wearable ways to show support:
Thinning out now. DC police the only ones left, and they're packing up too. Locals mobilized quickly out here, with handwritten signs warning drivers to avoid this block, lined up ready to protest what's happening. People shouting down from apartments too. "You should be fucking ashamed!"
People loudly jeering these unidentified federal agents. "You're not helping anyone!" "How much overtime are you getting paid to do nothing!" "Boooo!"
Also this 😂 What we lack in weird, we make up for with self-depreciating humor.
I think the bravery needed to imagine is the same bravery needed to feel grief and anger. To not just *wish* a better world was possible, but really believe it and act from it, you have to acknowledge that what is true and painful about the present is also *unnecessary*. And that HURTS!
Authoritarian regimes are notorious for making people think what they perceive to be reality is not actually real. Sometimes this is called creating "unreality" sometimes "gas-lighting." It doesn't matter which label is used, the goal is the same: make people doubt what they see with their own eyes.
Hey, as a librarian I need to tell you: Our funding depends on usage. So go ahead and check out that book even if you don't think you'll finish it. No one will know. Check out that DVD even though you might not like it. Get ambitious in your quest for knowledge.
We’re in the phase where Americans, press included, should be considering all news originating with the government as propaganda first. Its institutional tendency is to evade good-faith dialogue with the public.
Want to learn about how climate change and water scarcity could affect you? Check out this podcast I did with @scholars.org! #climatechange #water #disasters #justice
Charlie Kirk calls for ‘full military occupation’ of American cities ‘once we liberate DC’
Bowser: "I think I speak for all Americans -- we don't believe it's legal to use the American military against American citizens on American soil."
