BlueSky, July 2024: a Janus Month

July 2024 was one of those months where looking at the posts in reverse chronological order is completely disorienting. If this post is read for historical purposes, it will be important to read it from the bottom up.

It started with the presidential race assumed to be between Biden and Trump. Coverage of the execrable. Operation 2025 continued apace. Mid-month was consequential: the Supreme Court ruled that presidents are essentially kings, with almost complete immunity. An under-qualified, Trump-appointed judge threw out an open-and-shut case against him by overturning settled precedent. Democrats were tearing themselves apart over whether Biden should drop out of the race or not. A 20-year-old Republican man shot at Trump in Pennsylvania, killing one rally attendee and wounding others, while slightly injuring Trump's ear. A few days later, the Republican National Convention took place in Milwaukee with Trump flaunting an oversized bandage. J.D. Vance was named his vice presidential running mate, then Trump gave a 90-minute speech that showed how much he shouldn't be president.

Just a few days later, on Sunday after the convention, Biden announced he was withdrawing from the race. Almost immediately, Democrats consolidated around Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate.

As July ends, millions of dollars have been raised for the Harris campaign from small donors, much of it from first-timers. Harris is about to name her VP candidate. And Republicans have finally been labeled what they are: weird. They never got their post-convention "bump" and they seem angry and confused. Trump finished out the month at the National Association of Black Journalists decreeing that Harris is not Black.

Everything below the line is quoted from the attributed account and is in reverse chronological order, except some of the images, which I move up or down to get better visual balance.

___

Roughly 80% of white evangelicals are going to vote for the racist guy, then spend the next four years complaining about how so many people are walking away from organized religion.
Hemant Mehta

Their bigotry is so intense, I don't think Trump/MAGA are capable of viewing migrants as people. Trump asked if migrants could be shot as they tried to cross the border. After the corrupt Republicans on SCOTUS gave him immunity, what do you think he'll suggest, if elected?
Lover of cat ladies @snausageofdoom.bsky.social

Police have been on a work slowdown for 5 straight years, with the direct impact of deadlier roads and a softer impact of reactionaries screaming that crime is up because of policies they don't like, rather than police work stoppages.
Kelsey Atherton

Anyway, white people telling black people they don’t count as black is actually pretty weird. Imo.
Adam Serwer

i did not set out to draw hams. sometimes hams just happen:


maggie schreiter @squishythings.bsky.social

Genuine question: Did any pundits predict the handover to Harris would go as well as it did?
Michael Hobbes

Good insight on why Trump & Co seem to be floundering against Harris. " . . . a huge amount of modern Republican campaigns are based on wearing down a Democratic politician over months and years in the right-wing echo chamber."
Chris Miller @iamcurious.bsky.social

Undocumented immigrants often pay higher income taxes than workers with similar incomes because they are unable to claim tax credits like the Child Tax Credit, the Earned Income Tax Credit or Minnesota’s Working Family Credit.
max nesterak

It’s continually baffling to me that institutions so often refuse to understand that it’s in *their own* interest to allow low-impact expressions of dissent.
Cris (without an H) @ambignostic.bsky.social

Chalking is benign! Informal, ad hoc communication is vital to campus life! Wholesome transgression of norms is inherent to student identity!
Angus Johnston

Every so often I'm reminded how odd it is to have an meteorology forecast app on my phone called "Weather Underground." Like having a transit route finder named "Shining Path"
Anders @derzquist.bsky.social

Another lie falls into dust: Study says undocumented immigrants paid almost $100 billion in taxes
dogzilla @dogzilla.masto.deluma.biz.ap.brid.gy

Welp, "weird" had its day but now I guess it's back to "racist piece of shit."
Frank Conniff

Israel assassinates Hamas’ top political leader in Iran, risking an all out regional war, on the same day the UN issues a report saying Israel has been torturing Palestinian detainees since Oct. 7.
Ciarán Fahey

Trump got his start questioning the identity of the first black president, it’s just not at all surprising that he’d engage in neo birtherism about Harris.
Adam Serwer

Good weird is wearing quirky clothes. Bad weird is favoring a nationwide regime of menstrual surveillance. Hope this helps!

Dan Munz

I am a single-issue voter and that issue is "never having to think about or listen to Donald Trump ever again for the rest of my life."
Ward Q. Normal

my main question for people who think kamala harris can't call herself "black" because her father was Jamaican is whether they think colin powell was black.
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

Someone on another microblogging platform posted "OUR GRANDPARENTS COULD’VE BUILT US TRAINS BUT INSTEAD THEY GAVE US PARKING LOTS" and I think that may be the most succinct history of postwar American urban planning I have ever read.
Max Dubler

vance spent the better part of three years publicly ingratiating himself with the biggest freaks in politics and it is all going to come spilling out over the next weeks and months.
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

also so insane how much more oppo there is to dump on him and he's already burnt to a crisp. like, they haven't even touched the Thiel stuff yet! there is just a treasure trove of shit on the guy.
Popular Front 2024 @maxberger.bsky.social

"They regard joy as an eminent danger because it contradicts their depiction of the country’s status as dire, with barbarians at the gate, heathens in the temple and predators on the prowl in every kindergarten classroom."
Anne Lutz Fernandez

I've read hundreds, maybe thousands of Heritage Foundation reports. They've done a good job of preserving their old documents back to the 1970s. They did not used to be this insane. Super-conservative? Veiled racism? Absolutely. But inside the realm of normal human behavior. Trump changed them.
E.J. Fagan

As someone who is an old-school weirdo, I feel like anyone who can’t parse the difference between weird (neat) and weird (gross) is just being weird (willfully obtuse).
Darusha Wehm @darusha.ca

Every software company and his brother gunking up their apps with superfluous generative AI means that computer boot-up times are back to 1998 levels and all that new processing power is just getting wasted on said superfluous generative AI.
Andrew Reeves @andrewsshi.bsky.social

When pundits say calling trumpalos "weird" will be offputting to working class voters but then don't think calling harris a "DEI hire" is worthy of comment, that sort of says a bit about who folks think are important for elections, and which people the commentator thinks can be safely alienated
Pwnallthethings

The Venn diagram of those who use the pejorative "DEI hire" and who wouldn't last 10 minutes in a true meritocracy is a circle
Thomas Kiehne

We should be protecting kids from easily preventable deadly childhood diseases like measles with vaccines. Not wanting to do that is bad and also, yes, weird.
Costa Samaras

This makes me feel very old, but I remember in 2004 when "flip-flopper" was a main GOP line of attack against John Kerry. Does a party whose VP candidate once called Trump "Hitler" get to accuse anyone of flip-flopping?
Lydia Polgreen

You know, while we're talking about how weird and creepy Trump and Vance are, it might be worth revisiting the fact that Trump apparently smells like "arm pits, ketchup, makeup, and ass."
Naomi Kritzer

Fascinating: when AIs train on AI material, they quickly spiral into gibberish. Suggesting (to me, anyway) that the more AI output is out there, the worse it will grow—the LLMs constantly risk poisoning their own ecosystems. (Nature article)
Charles C. Mann

it has been genuinely crazy-making to see harris raise nearly a quarter of a *billion* dollars from tens of thousands of small donations and then go read pundits pouting that democratic enthusiasm for the harris campaign is "fake" or a "sugar high"
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

Basically, people who don’t mind being called weird are “good weird.” People who get mad when they’re called weird are “bad weird.”
Sean Thomason

the political lesson of this week is that Hillary’s biggest error was saying “deplorables” and not “weird freaks”
Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social

It is true that there are many more white guys in politics than Black women to choose from, but in my experience that just makes the Black women who managed to get to the top all the more remarkable. It is also an argument for vastly increasing the pipeline. Requires a breathtaking lack of self awareness to be totally cool with "Kamala has to pick a white man" and horrified at "Biden had to pick a Black woman." The presumption is that the she will pick among inherently worthy white men, but that a Black woman could not be considered inherently worthy.
Lydia Polgreen

Remember, if you write about this or talk about it: the UK government (and multiple US states, and and and) are not banning the use of puberty blockers in children. They're banning the use of puberty blockers for *trans* children. It's perfectly acceptable to delay puberty in *cis* children.
rahaeli

"American suburbs are full of ugly, empty, liminal spaces: spaces you are not meant to linger in or enjoy. They’re the creepy hallways of the built environment, and you can’t feel comfortable traversing them unless you’re zooming past them in a car":


Lili Saintcrow

One data point among many: Biden won voters making under $50K 55-44 in 2020. They were about as blue as New Mexico. Cannot be emphasized enough that the Democrats don't have an issue in getting support with the working class as a class. They have an issue winning white people.
Joe Katz @joekatz45.bsky.social

The percentage of American workers earning under $15 an hour has dropped from 32% to 13% in just two years.
Ada Palmer

Daily Wire host goes on strange sexist rant: “The central purpose of every society is to figure out the distribution of women ... Women cannot take care of themselves”
Media Matters for America

i think a big part of why the “these guys are weird” message is satisfying is that they’ve had an unchallenged lock on “we represent mainstream middle america” as a brand for decades even as the stuff they were talking about got wildly outside of the mainstream and now it’s finally being challenged
dan solomon

More pedestrians and bicyclists are getting killed on American streets than at any time in the past 45 years. And the root cause lies with the folks who design roads and intersections without taking into account driver behavior and vehicle characteristics.
The Conversation U.S.

The flop sweat vibes from the GOP right now are great. "Uhhh he didn't mean what he said about not voting, it's nothing" "no no, I've never heard of my own agenda, I renounce it" "I've got nothing against cats and I never fucked that couch!"
Hemry, Local Bartender

Trump ranting about Hannibal Lecter for 19 minutes gets written up as "vigorous Trump trades barbs" while Harris saying "I think what defund the police protesters are actually saying is," gets written up as "Kamala is gonna drop the rapists off at your kids school"
Michael Tae Sweeney

It’s fascinating how Vance’s political and religious conversions transformed him from a humble, empathetic guy to an asshole who confidently tells other people how to live their lives. And all in service of a deeply immoral man who cheated on all three of his wives.
Radley Balko

the convicted felon is gonna run against the career prosecutor with "SOFT ON CRIME" ads and the press will play along and clap like seals (because 'soft on crime' is code for anti-black racism and has little to do with crime)
Michael Tae Sweeney

trump is a poor person's idea of a rich person. jd vance is a rich person's idea of a poor person
beccadagoo @silly.bsky.social

This removes a safe free place for kids. The law is around obscene materials in libraries in Idaho. That includes anything a patron finds objectionable. If the material isn't removed or put in an adult only area then library workers can be sued. This is the solution:


Meridith Bolster

What kind of weirdo thinks people between the ages of 18 and 30 should be treated the same as minors?
ApocalypticaNow

Bizarrely the same kind of person that thinks 12 year olds should work in factories and be forced to give birth. Really just awful people!
Ned @thewesterhazys.bsky.social

"Across the 50 years preceding Biden’s tenure in office, the U.S. economy enjoyed only 25 *total* months with an unemployment rate below 4 percent. Biden did it for 27 consecutive months"
ryan cooper

Just paid my rent. This month marks two years in my place in Minneapolis. In that time, my rent has stayed the same. Also in that time, my neighborhood has added about 670 units of housing. A further 620 are under construction. Housing abundance is the best rent control policy.
wpb003

Angry, frightened, white Boomers witnessing the sunset of their unquestioned privilege in real time + the electoral college. That's how. And for my part, I'm still stunned Brexit happened. But it probably has similar DNA. We don't have the market cornered on myopic, easily-manipulated old bigots.
Iron Spike

Many of my overseas friends think Americans are nuts and incredibly stupid for electing Trump the first time. They cannot understand how this is a close election.
I live here and don't understand it either.
VoteBlue4ever

we still haven't really called it out just how weird one has to be to hate the dang library. The library! Other things that are weird to hate:
- Voting
- Free school lunch for kids
- Solar power
- The U.S. mail system?
Costa Samaras

some editor needs to commission me to write an op ed about how tradwife content is just fetish content for men that draws on a shallow version of christian-right submissiveness fantasies
Talia Lavin @swordsjew.bsky.social

Have you ever noticed that the people who complain new apartment buildings are going to create a lot of traffic and make the neighborhood unlivable are always the same people who fight against mass transit and cycling initiatives?
Wendy N. Wagner

Really wish the Parks Board was half as interested in access to parks as they are people's ability to drive through them without stopping
@premiumfrye.bsky.social

I’ll be honest, given our collective ignorance about and contempt for disability rights issues, I’m not sure this revelation about Trump saying that disabled people should die because they cost too much to keep alive is actually going to move anyone to vote against him.
Laughingrat

It’s notable to me Kamala’s husband’s ex-wife has more earnestly loving things to say about her than literally anyone in Trump’s life has to say about him
Grudgie the Whale

Look, I'm from Wisconsin. When you folks say Hot Brat Summer I am reading it entirely differently.
"Recently Juiced" Garak Tailor (She/They) $35/$500 @comfortingmoo.online

AI is like being told your company is hiring an assistant for you, but then you find out the assistant is a bitey chaos raccoon and so most of your time is just cleaning up after the raccoon and trying not to get bitten.
Chuck Wendig

rule of thumb for the next few months: be optimistic but not complacent
Tom Tomorrow

"NOT GOING BACK!" is the perfect Harris chant. It's about abortion rights, it's about culture-war reactionaries more generally, it's about a second Trump presidency, and it's about generational change within the Democratic Party.
Angus Johnston

Apparently back in 2020 Kamala Harris got asked what she'd do if she were debating Trump and he did the bullshit he did with Hillary, walking around behind her on the stage, and she said, "I'd turn around and say, 'why are you acting so weird?'"
Naomi Kritzer

We got tricked by science fiction into thinking a futuristic city is all about flying cars and crystal towers and hologram billboards but what it really looks like is nice apartment blocks, good mass transit, pedestrian zones with shade trees and safe bike lanes.
Katie Mack @astrokatie.com

Most people are generally aware that U.S. immigration policy was built on racist fundamentals, but it's still a trip to see people's faces when you tell them that things like "Chinese Exclusion Act" and "Operation Wetback" were the actual, official names for federal government policy
Felipe De La Hoz

European students discussing their extra funding per pupil in struggling neighborhoods scoffed when I said property tax school district funding is based on house prices and my rich district voted to spend on private investigators to follow children home to catch them trying to attend a better school. They scoffed because they were in disbelief and said they thought I was lying or exaggerating to make America look bad because it was clearly wrong and the exact opposite of good policy, not because they felt superior, and I felt that in my soul
originalist.bsky.social

NEA total money per year is 210+ million (all of USA) while funding for the arts in Berlin (just a city...) is 600 million pounds.
sparrowflybynight.bsky.social

Once my German friend asked what creative people do without arts grants and other support in the US and I felt like a parent trying to explain to their kid that the puppies can die sometimes
Amy A @lolennui.bsky.social

This goes hard:


Andrew Blum

Musk could’ve made a $20,000 electric hot hatchback and a $300 ebike for everybody and just loved his kids unconditionally and we all would’ve laughed at all of his stale jokes and memes. Instead, destined for the cybertruck of history.
Costa Samaras

I know that most of the calls for a contested convention are bad-faith trolling by people who want Trump to win, but I can't get over how bad the argument is. "Democrats will be in a stronger position if they spend the next month campaigning against each other instead of Trump." Do you hear yourself?
Micah @rincewind.run

Quiet, quiet, everyone, the former host of Celebrity Apprentice and pitchman for mail-order steaks and the kid who wrote a memoir at age 32 and turned it into 18 unproductive months in the Senate have deep thoughts about who's "qualified" to run for the presidency.
Kevin M. Kruse

the Biden swap-out really illustrates how much better a parliamentary system is. trivial to replace a PM who has lost the confidence of the majority party coalition, but we have to resort to this jerry-rigged nonsense
ryan cooper

A woman at the top of the ticket with a post-Dobbs electorate
A Black woman vs a white supremacist
A former prosecutor vs a current felon
A coherent young person vs an incoherent old person
Now we have a contrast, a contest, some new doors are open lfg
@audrelawdamercy.bsky.social

Y’all are joking with the dooming and glooming right? Harris has somehow kept herself clean, locked down her team, and is almost certainly aware of what she’s being asked to do. We are about to have a woman at the top of the ticket in a post-Dobbs electorate. Stop crying and buck the fuck up!
@gothamgirlblue.com

we have now officially branched from the parable of a sower timeline
Stephen Kearse

I think most people don't understand federal funding of higher ed? "Why are rich private universities like Stanford getting billions in grants?" To do the sort of research that has made the US (and US higher ed) very successful.
Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social

Note that government gives academia those grants with a paperwork burden they would never give to a private contractor.
Squire Boone @isomorphism.net


Marion @mawinon.bsky.social

There is no bigger indictment of the failed American political system than that there are only two political parties and one of them is running a convicted felon and the other doesn’t know who the fuck they’re running
Jason Bailey @jasondashbailey.bsky.social

It’s not a real fantasy novel until a character pulls a hunk of cheese from their rucksack
Sarah Margaret @sarahmargs.bsky.social

Every leftists I know: It should be Kamala today fuck it I don't like her but fuck it she can win against this old fascist bitch. Every democrat with power: 16 round tournament, 3 wild card play-ins, cumulative points against total, winner determined on November 10th.
Luke O'Neil @lukeoneil47.bsky.social

We have lost track of the founding principle of the Internet, which is that centralization is inherently failure prone. What’s to blame for the CrowdStrike mess? Our drive for efficiency.
Annemarie Bridy

Trump has always called for unity. Once everyone unfit has been removed from society, those that remain will be united. It is the unity of the tyrant.
David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social

People are really underestimating the chances of the Calvinball Court ruling the entire election illegitimate on some fake-ass technicality. The fact that people are even talking about a completely new ticket is insane. Giving up every last shred of incumbency advantage and removing your ability to talk about the achievements of the last administration just so you can run Gavin Fucking Newsom, what are we doing here.
Michael Hobbes

During her speech to the RNC, Kimberly Guilfoyle called out the "heroes who stormed Normandy and faced down communism." If there's one thing that today's Republican Party will avoid at any cost, it's criticizing Nazis.
Middle Age Riot

There’s a very *specific* vibe of being cornered by an old powerful man just absolutely going on and on and not really know what to do or say to bring it to a close that that Trump speech *perfectly* recreated for the whole country.
Chris Hayes

11,778 acres of Chippewa National Forest land will be transferred back to the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe:


Terijian

This shit is boring AF. Is that how they’re planning on hiding Project 2025? Boring us so much we can’t keep our eyes open to read the PDF? This is so boring, so disengaged and so incoherent that I don’t think anyone can spin this. This is not an acceptable performance from a president. It looks and feels like a dead end cult.
@gothamgirlblue.com

Referring to Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense program, Trump just said, "They just called it Star Ship, Space Ship." Let's see if the NYT harps on this mistake for weeks on end.
He literally just threatened a war then said there will be no wars under him.
Greg Pak

To reiterate, the UK has just jailed five climate protesters for *discussing* a climate protest. As I've said elsewhere, this isn't just a victory for the fossil fuel industries, but for the most extreme authoritarianism.
Dave Vetter

I'm going to start with this: "Sometimes we are blessed with being able to choose the time, and the arena, and the manner of our revolution, but more usually we must do battle where we are standing." –Audre Lorde, "Sister Outsider and Other Essays"
Dr. Johnathan Flowers @shengokai.bsky.social

The problem with J.D. Vance's pitch about how the Rust Belt is being left behind is that his running mate was president for four years.
Philip Bump

On the day that Donald Trump blew kisses to Hulk Hogan at the RNC, climate scientists reported that the earth's plants and soils absorbed no CO2 in 2023. Yes, you read that right. No Co2 was absorbed in 2023. We need to stop using fossil fuels right now.

Dr. Genevieve Guenther @doctorvive.bsky.social

I was a "It Couldn't Happen Here" person. Back in 2016 , I thought MAGA was dangerous, but also probably just the last death rattle of reactionary white resentment politics as that view got less and less relevant with the country's changing demographics. Goddamn, was I naive.
Radley Balko

I’m seeing enough people talking about the impracticality of “mass deportation” — tens of millions of people! — that I feel the need to point out that the numbers are a bit of a red herring here. What Trump et al. are signaling with the word “mass” isn’t scale; it’s arbitrariness. They might arrest, incarcerate, and/or deport millions of people or only (“only”) a few thousand. The point is to mark a huge class of people — immigrants (legal or not) and those who can be mistaken for them — as deportable regardless of their individual circumstances.
Hannah Walser @hkpmw.bsky.social

If you want to see the effects of not having birthright citizenship, go to European countries have developed, more or less, a permanent underclass of disaffected residents. The U.S. does (or did) one thing legitimately better than any other advanced industrialized country: assimilate immigrants.
Dan Nexon

I've seen a lot of one-offs of people holding these signs, but what is truly chilling is a sea of these being held up by delegates:


Gravel Influencer

As a Jew and someone who has read more than one history book, this is what I would call uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh bad
Josie Sunrider

This research has come up several times at a big climate conference: A huge majority of people are worried about climate change and want governments to do more to control the crisis. BUT they think they are in a tiny minority and nobody else cares. Everybody (almost) cares! You are not alone.
Laura Helmuth

Immigrants are good for America in every way and it's not even close but even if they weren't, which, as we've established, they are, but even if they weren't they are people and that's enough, or at least it should be
Costa Samaras

I saw a good explainer video on what a Trump victory and Project 2025 will mean for transportation in U.S. cities. (Spoiler alert: every transportation dollar will go for highway expansions and subsidizing driving and none will go to mass transit and safer streets.)
The War on Cars

I'm old enough to remember a media that in 1992 treated the defining story of the whole RNC as being the terrifying extremism of Pat Buchanan, who was not the nominee or VP nominee but GHWB's defeated rival. And that was for a level of extremism that Trump or Vance tweet out before breakfast.
Jacob T. Levy

This news is incredible. 100 days this year CA's used 100% renewables to power the entire grid, & through a heat wave, there's been no significant disruption (cough *Texas*). Energy analysts are seeing a "phase-change" of the grid with the addition of 5 nuclear plants worth of battery storage, wow
Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social


Maya Media

They have such winning ideas like “why don’t we charge people who want to know if that tornado is gonna hit their house.”
Kashana

Just a reminder: Trump inherited the lowest homicide rate of any president in 50 years. He was the first president in 30 years to leave office with a higher homicide rate than when he entered. And the rate has dropped every year since he left.
Radley Balko

Remember in 2016 when there was a lot of pressure for Trump to divest from his private business because it's unethical for a president to make money off the presidency especially while in office, but then he just refused to do it and now people don't even really care anymore?
Aaron Rupar

Crazy how white people violently rejected being asked to some basic empathy
Adam Miller @ajm6792.bsky.social

time to dust this one off. amen:


Microplastics Sommelier @leastactionhero.bsky.social

Trump-Vance isn't designed to win over more voters, but ensure the next coup attempt proceeds more smoothly
ApocalypticaNow

The populist, working man ticket will be led by a Manhattan real estate mogul who owns a bunch of exclusive country clubs, and a Yale grad, ex-venture capitalist whose rise was funded by Bay Area billionaires.
Radley Balko

all these people gathered to try to elect a felon, rapist, insurrectionist. And all probably quite sincere! human brains are so fucking weird.
Tom Tomorrow

every Republican believes or pretends to believe unhinged shit about race, gender, religion, sexuality, trans people, the 2020 election, science itself, and so on, so it's kind of impressive that Trump found a VP who goes above and beyond in all the ways most likely to unnerve your grandma
@usspcrichardandson.bsky.social

the idea that [Judge Aileen] Cannon would be fair and impartial was always built on the idea that she was constrained and compelled by something greater than her. but what that is *exactly* is never stated, because it’s really just a stack of norms and myths so light they can blow away in the breeze. i think people shocked by this aren’t just misunderstanding the political moment but also the trial court system generally. there’s rarely an orderly march toward justice — that’s a mythic story we tell ourselves.
Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social

Trying to not spiral into a deep depression but what's getting in the way of that is EVERYTHING.
Frank Conniff

Bouquet of zinnias for you:


Liz @smithdrygoods.bsky.social

welp as always big thanks to Yale Law, Ron Howard, and everyone else who helped little J.D. Vance rise to the upper levels of fascist power.
Tom Tomorrow

If Democrats start backing off the "threat to democracy" rhetoric, tacitly conceding that it's an incitement to violence and that they bear some of the blame for what happened yesterday, I will seriously lose my shit.
Adam Kotsko

if you support unfettered access to ARs for everyone you shouldn't get to complain when one is misused
Tom Tomorrow

the "violence shook this previously peaceful white christian nationalist rally railing against the vermin tainting the blood of the country" stories are going to destroy me
geoffrey @parsnip.bsky.social

Hannah Arendt: "The practice of violence, like all action, changes the world--but the most probable change is to a more violent world."
Gillian Branstetter

This wouldn't have happened if Trump had been where he's supposed to be: prison. Just saying.
Frank Conniff

The only thing I know right now is that there are too many guns
Katie Mack @astrokatie.com

I always see it first as "Marxist Poll"
Chris Steller

In my opinion the party that doesn’t speak in explicit genocidal language would be preferable
Dave Levitan

This is one thing that irks me. My experience is that the people arguing Biden should stay are much more open to the idea that they’re wrong, and the people arguing Biden must go are like “you soup brained moron what are you thinking?”
The Fig Economy @figgityfigs.bsky.social

Robert Shaw and Bruce the Shark take a well-needed break during the filming of "Jaws":


Rolf Oldejans

Convicted felon Donald Trump was supposed to be sentenced today, before the Gang of Six on the stolen supreme court re-wrote the rules for him. There's no rule of law in the United States while the courts remain captured.
Michael Tae Sweeney

Driving is just the weirdest shit. You get in a box you can barely see out of, go a million miles an hour around a million people zooming about, every car has a thousand cameras but you can’t see shit because they’re all tanks, no one is paying attention, and everyone is super angry all of the time.
Alex @mplsalex.bsky.social

Yesterday I learned that northern Italy has its own hallucinogenic mushrooms and now I'm wondering whether there was more going on with early Christianity than I thought.
Charles C. Mann

Ever been behind an old car or truck that is just blowing pollution that you can see and smell? Remember how it feels in your lungs? Trump’s Project 2025 is like that.
Costa Samaras

One of my systems thinking teachers: the deeper into overshoot the more important it is to have a long-term perspective but the more pressured everyone is by short term emergencies. A Buddhist teacher friend: with our nervous systems overwhelmed by overlapping shocks we should be spending more time in contemplative practice, but most people are so busy coping they spend less. Yes these are emergencies. But they are the kind you need to slow down for. If you can. Where you can. When you can. May we gum up the works of destruction by slowing down to the speed of regeneration.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social

One thing that's clear from the Biden/age story is this: NYT knows how to crusade when it wants to. And NYT is crusading against Biden's mental unfitness for office in a way it's just not doing with Trump.
Greg Sargent

Former MN AG Mike Hatch was wrong about a lot of things. But one thing he was right about is that vertical integration in the healthcare “system” is horrible for patients and premium payers in almost every way (F@ck outta here with your “healthcare consumer” language)
Tinman contra la caste @bcmfietser.bsky.social

There's definitely a techbro follymath vibe with some of the court's recent conservative opinions. Only instead of pronouncing themselves experts after reading a few Wikipedia pages, it's after thumbing through a Claremont amicus brief.
Radley Balko

My recent USPS experiences: certified letter went awol. Also two attempts to mail something to a definitely correct address returned as undeliverable. Finally gave up on the latter and sent by fedex, got there no problem.
Tom Tomorrow

The North Carolina gubernatorial candidate who said his opponents should be murdered currently has a slight lead in the polls. At best it’s 50/50.
Radley Balko

Project 2025's concerns about porn are less about protecting children from being sexually exploited than they are criminalizing adults who allow teens to read age-appropriate books about gender, sexuality, and sexual abuse/assault, which don't align with conservative ideology. If you're confused about what "pornography" teachers and librarians might be distributing to minors that would result in them being registered as sex offenders, take a look at Moms for Liberty's 111-page document on book ban guidance. Project 2025's policies don't make "the family" the centerpiece of American life. They make the right-wing Evangelical movement the centerpiece of every American's private life, placing the federal government squarely in your bed, your book shelf, your closet, your phone, and your doctor's office.
Cate Eland @romancingnope.bsky.social

Can I just say am I the only one who doesn't know who needs to hear this but this is your annual reminder that many skeet intro formats are tired and unnecessary?
Chris Steller

If your culture confuses leadership with the characteristics of the "strongman" don't be surprised if "I alone can fix it" guys keep finding their way to the centers of power. I myself prefer my leaders humble, open about their and other's fallibility, open to learning, truth tellers even when the truth is hard, and treating all that is fragile with care. They may speak softly and take frequent naps. I'm good with that too - good modeling I say.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social

Among other questions, I wonder how we got to the point where “separation of powers” means the judiciary can prohibit the executive from holding itself accountable.
Radley Balko

In a system that is growing exponentially and requiring sacrifice zones as a matter of "normal operations" eventually you will have to decide which side you are on — is everything a sacrifice zone or is nothing?
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social

My favorite part of the West Wing fantasies about replacing Biden is the idea that there wouldn’t immediately be a new fatal flaw with whoever replaced him.
Kevin M. Kruse

The discourse around biden needing more sleep is fully insane. Does no one remember "Executive Time," the thing Trump spent the majority(!) of his schedule on where he would just watch TV and tweet? Dude was categorically unable to fulfill any of the demands of the office and the press barely cared
Hemry, Local Bartender

i think Trump’s success in distancing himself from the policies of his own people is at least partially because there’s an authenticity to it: he really doesn’t give a shit about the right wing agenda, he’s just willing to trade it in exchange for power
Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social

Anywho, show up every day to do what you can with others and make sure that you're attending to people's material needs while doing so. That basic political engagement will put you in good stead. The rest is noise.
Prisonculture

Today, July 4th, most Americans will celebrate their independence by sitting in traffic on subsidized highways in cars they financed via high-interest loans from multinational banks and that they fueled with dinosaur juice imported from petrostates that hate the U.S.
The War on Cars

I'm old enough to remember when everyone agreed it would be unprofessional and unethical to diagnose Trump as a sociopath
J.M. Berger @intelwire.bsky.social

every time we get news about clarence thomas being deeply unserious i think about him lying for years about his sister being a welfare queen who was indoctrinating her children into welfare dependency and the entire time she was working two jobs and her kids were either employed or still in school
regular meghan @ruemcclammyhand.bsky.social

the first, second and third most important news stories this week are about the SCOTUS decision, and every columnist spending their time talking about biden old is telling you what they value. we don’t have to indulge them, though, stop your subs, stop clicking, stop talking about them.
GOLIKEHELLMACHINE

"Chapter 19 of this far-right blueprint attacks the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). First, the author calls for the elimination of funding for the FTA’s core programs, which provide critical funds to local transit authorities for essential maintenance work."
Doug Gordon @brooklynspoke.bsky.social

I couldn't bring myself to read most parts of Project 2025 so the first thing I read was Transportation and yeah it's bad. Basically all funding would just be for states to build more freeways
viktor shtrum

if trump decides you are an enemy of the state or a “threat to national security” and has you deported, citizenship or not, there’s nothing you can do to get home. he has full legal power to render you stateless.
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

Related, if trump is summarily deporting citizens under his new mass deportation regime, citizenship and an ability to appeal to the law isn’t going to get people back in the country. The executive runs border security
Avi @cricketmice.bsky.social

the world in which the president is throwing his opponents in jail is not a world where you can just ask a judge to let you out
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

oh, you might say, the president can’t issue corrupt pardons. ah. but john roberts says that not only can he issue corrupt pardons, but if he tells his staff they are corrupt in the course of issuing them, that evidence is inadmissible in the event that you could somehow prosecute the corruption
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

If the president tells federal workers to illegally imprison me and hands them all presidential pardons, they're all safe from prosecution but in theory maybe a judge can get me out eventually. Somehow. If I can even talk to a lawyer. But if the president instead tells federal workers to kill me...
Warren Terra

this entire crusade against diversity in hiring and admissions is based on the supposition that all white men are necessarily more qualified than any nonwhite person or woman who might be considered for the job. like, this lawsuit more or less states that outright.
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

So often see arguments against SCOTUS expansion like “but then Republicans will just add even more!” And I’m like, cool, then we come right out the gate with like 30 new Justices. Make it absurdly big. I’m with Elie Mystal on this one: MORE FROGS AND DOGS AND BEARS AND CHICKENS AND WHATEVER
Sunny Moraine @dynamicsymmetry.bsky.social

many things make me angry about the supreme court but one of the biggest things is just that none of those cowards in the gang of six will ever take real questions from the public
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

Well at least there's one person in America who is allowed to sleep on a park bench
Luu @itsmeluu.bsky.social

if john roberts et al are going to cosplay as politicians then they should at least have to face the voters once a term
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

john roberts currently neck and neck with roger taney for worst chief justice in american history
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

I gotta say, you’ve got to be a real special piece of shit to honk a bunch at two little kids and their dad biking in front of you on a small neighborhood street, slowing you down slightly for half a block.
Alex @mplsalex.bsky.social

The lesson Roberts and Thomas draw from the unprecedented nature of Trump's indictments is not that he's a unique threat (as per all available evidence). The real threat to "liberty" is the possibility that, someday, the most powerful person on earth could, in theory, be unjustly accused of a crime.
Radley Balko

This often gets raised in the context of political retribution when the more obvious concern is civil society, protest groups, abortion providers, trans care providers, anyone "harboring" undocumented people. If you want to know how Trump will use DoJ just look to Ken Paxton in TX.
Gillian Branstetter

This Originalist™ court has effectively immunized both the president and all federal law enforcement officers from any meaningful accountability. Because if there are two things the Founders cherished, it's the power of a king-like executive and armed agents of the government to act with impunity.
Radley Balko

trump just called for liz cheney to be prosecuted for treason which, according to john roberts, is an official act and would not be subject to criminal sanction
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

Could Biden order Garland to prosecute Justices for corruption? That's an official act and long overdue.
@capitalistfool.bsky.social

When you didn't pay the book designer enough:


Chris Steller

African Americans will tell you that this country has never been fully a democracy, and white people are about to find out how the little democracy left is about to go up in a puff of smoke should Trump get back in the White House. I know no one "on here" thinks this but if you think that the man who said "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" won't use his power if he becomes president to kill a rival or even an annoyance.. just wait.
Anthea Butler

throughout the Trump immunity decision, the Court champions the idea of an unfettered, uninhibited President. the darkest part of the opinion isn’t that it paves the way for an authoritarian leader, it’s that it yearns for one
Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social

Doing nothing because you can't do everything, saying nothing because you aren't on CNN, that leaves you feeling small and powerless and misses opportunities to add droplets of change to a complex system. Paralysis and overwhelm don't disrupt dangerous systems. That's one reason I believe even little actions that disrupt domination patterns and support life-sustaining patterns are important.  Not because of their size but because of their direction.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social

old star trek definitely misled me about how easy it would be to make computers blow themselves up
Tom Tomorrow

Every time I get a text or a call inviting me to take part in a poll, I think “this is a scam” and ignore it, and I’m thinking (a) polls might overrepresent people who never have that thought in their lives, and (b) that might vastly benefit one candidate over another.
Tim Carvell

it feels like the whiteness of big political media spaces right now is having a big effect on how people are thinking about the debate. eg I have seen relatively little discussion of trump's "black jobs" comment, which immediately exploded on black twitter
Quinta Jurecic

Both the “black jobs” remark and using palestinian as a slur are hopefully clarifying as to actual Trump’s ideology and worldview, in contrast with the imaginary trump some people have built up in their heads as the memory of his administration has receded
Adam Serwer

It’s amazing but quite possible that the United States will not have a president born in the 1950s, the peak years of the “baby boom.” We’ve had four presidents born in the 1940s (Clinton, Bush, Trump, Biden) and one born in the 1960s (Obama). By 2028, someone born in 1959 will be nearing 70.
Larry Glickman

[Perplexed emoji]:


Shin Megami @jongraywb.bsky.social

I have not forgotten how Stacey Abrams and AOC were admired up until the second they didn't do exactly what online activists wanted them to do. Some of the people talking up Gretchen Whitmer these days will turn against her if she does run for president
ApocalypticaNow

The main vibe I get from U.S. politics is that white America is 100% determined to commit suicide.
Brooke Binkowski @brooklynmarie.bsky.social

Look, there was once a Black President; clearly, the only possible response is to engineer total civic collapse
@wattle.bsky.social

Under the current Biden climate policies, if we work hard on implementing them, we can get to an 80% clean electricity system by the end of the decade. If those policies go away, there is zero chance we will get there. Let’s work hard to get to 80% and also add more climate policy to get to 100%. 80% total clean is the top end of the DOE model for 2030. Lots of things need to work out. Let’s make them work out.
Costa Samaras

I have acquaintances (no longer friends) who didn’t support Trump in 2016 or 2020, but enthusiastically support him now. There’s no explanation for that trajectory that isn’t a damning indictment of your morality, ethics, and basic decency.
Radley Balko

More people voted for him in 2020 than 2016. MORE PEOPLE looked directly at those 4 years and said YES! We want to vote for him now. That makes me depressed every single day.
liberalvixen