BlueSky August 2024: Forward!

After that topsy-turvy July 2024, then there was August. 

It started with the veepstakes, which turned into Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as the candidate. Republican weirdness continued apace, with J.D. Vance putting his foot in it right and…right and even more rightward about "the females." The Trump campaign's emails were hacked and the media didn't seem to care at all... gee, how weird! 

Mid-month or so, the Democratic National Convention was a roaring success in Chicago. There was some less than factual fact-checking after it ended. At the very end of the month, Trump and his people made a commercial at Arlington National Cemetery after bulling their way past an Army official who was trying to do her job. Among other disgraces!

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

___

We’ve been coddling Trump voters for far too long, asking them what they want. We know what they want, and it sucks.
Victor Catano

Brazil nuts, almost unique in our food supply, are not cultivated, but are collected in the wilds of the Amazon forest. Communities of indigenous nut harvesters maintain intact forests necessary for the trees. When you eat Brazil nuts, you are contributing to the conservation of Amazon forests:


Tom Kimmerer, PhD

Visited Montreal this week — giving their metro an 11 out of 10. Simple network, clean stations, reliable, super fast, frequent (2-6 min headways), open gangway, easy to decipher the fare situation, kids ride free. It’s surprisingly breezy too? I would never need a hair dryer if I lived there.
Stinamo

When local newspapers close, corruption rises, consistently and measurably. Really fascinating new study for those interested in the degradation of the fourth estate
Maria Bustillos

It's been instantly and forcibly forgotten, but us regular people don't have to forget that our news media chose to print hacked campaign materials when it would hurt a Democratic candidate and have chosen  to keep it secret when it is a Republican candidate.
En Buen Ora

i am reasonably sure that you could comb through the archives of any given “manosphere” podcast and find jd vance going on about how women with autonomy and independence are  miserable
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

Stories about the waste generated by energy technologies are really interesting—and I've written my fair share of them. But part of me wants to make a law that this image has to be the top of every single one to put this all in context:


Casey Crownhart

Some rough numbers to keep in mind:
Every living thing on Earth put together: 1 trillion tons
All the stuff we’ve built or made: 1 trillion tons
Total CO2 we emitted: 2.5 trillion tons
Kate Marvel @drkatemarvel.bsky.social

So much of what is important and real is ignored, and so much of what is focused upon is unimportant and not real. It is exhausting.
Leah McElrath

1st confirmed authors to live fully off book sales were early 1700s: Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau. Before that one lived off the bag of gold one got for dedicating the book to a duke etc. Book sales income freed authors to be more radical and criticize power in new ways. Book money = thought! freedom! Democracy!
Ada Palmer

“If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions.” —Molly Ivins, who died of breast cancer at the age of just 62. She should have been 80 years old today.


Stacey Burns @wentrogue.bsky.social

No, NYT, you do not need to even pretend that "mass deportations" is an affordable housing strategy from Trump. FFS.
Jonathan Cohn

People confused by Trumpist populism don't seem to grasp that blood and soil nationalism is an extreme form of welfare chauvinism: the state will care for its people but it gets to decide who 'the people' are and violently exclude/persecute others. Every lynching has led to property redistribution
ApocalypticaNow

The New York Times treating mass deportation as a routine, normal, acceptable policy option really convinces me that if mass deportations of whatever brown and black people take place, the news media will cover it as routine, normal and acceptable. If you’re wondering how Nazism “happened.”
Fatima Ayub @thecynicist.bsky.social

"Through the forced removal of millions of minorities he has denounced as 'vermin,' Mr. Trump promises to provide Real Americans with additional 'living space,' a classic concept known in German as 'lebensraum.'"
Kevin M. Kruse

We asked the candidates to summarize their housing policy. Harris sent us a PDF with 6000 words. Trump summarised his in just fourteen.
Pwnallthethings

Solar panels do not stop farming on the land. They help retain water and provide shelter for livestock:


Peter Sturdgess

unbelievable. a right-wing donor and member of the board of visitors has basically pressured the University of Virginia into suspending the University Guide Service, a highly-regarded student org that runs tours, because it tells prospective students and their parents that Jefferson was a slaveholder.
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

it’s always been interesting to me that the side that wants to acknowledge and talk about stuff like this is derided for feeling guilt by the side that wants it buried so people don’t learn about it
andy™ @andylevy.net

like many, i was a little flummoxed by how 2016 went down: had hillary clinton positioned herself to be especially vulnerable, did the media just REALLY care about email security? but what happened over the following 8 years led me to the truth. The media likes Republicans and wants them to win.
Michael Tae Sweeney @mtsw.bsky.social

Now, why would a bunch of midwit rich people, many of them fail children, nervous about their prestige and societal power waning, disproportionately white, products of elite institutions, prefer Donald Trump and want him to win? It's a mystery for the ages
@swolecialism.bsky.social

The email thing being a scandal because classified material *could have* leaked while we know for a fact Trump had classified documents in his toilet and showed them to KID ROCK and he can still run for president is one of those things if I think about too long, I would become The Joker.
Razor @sugarazor.bsky.social

Huh. This may be the saddest thing I've ever seen a grown man post. "Me and my pals are superheroes!"


D Lavoie @djlavoie.bsky.social

Immigration is America’s super power
Adam Miller @ajm6792.bsky.social

The tone of coverage of the Harris/Walz interview—the whole vibe of "This is a crucial test of whether this mysterious hitherto unknown black woman can put two sentences together"—is unbelievably offensive and very telling.
Mark Harris

It makes me feel like I'm on crazy pills listening to pundits talk about the "high stakes" of tonite's interview for Harris when her opponent is desecrating Arlington Cemetery and amplifying disgusting misogyny on social media. Voting for Trump is a profoundly ugly choice that should not be normalized
Aaron Rupar

I preferred America before it was overrun with Republican goons and thugs.
Steve Silberman

The US's one trick might be that the officer class really does believe in the Constitution as the thing that they are loyal to. Not the man in office. For 9 years, Trump has tried desperately to gain their undying loyalty and failed. That they publicly rebuke him is significant.
Christopher Deutsch @drchrisdeutsch.bsky.social

One of the things that I admired most about the US when I first arrived, is that one could be earnest. Coming from a part of the world where public life was covered in lies, the fact that people here could say what they thought and others would believe it, seemed incredible. That's gone...
Paulina Ochoa Espejo @pochoaespejo.bsky.social

What makes the YIMBY agenda, among many other things, an anti-corruption agenda... If you make local development rules simple, transparent, and consistent, you limit the opportunities for local officials to line their pockets by accepting bribes from developers.
Ned Resnikoff

so the day after jd vance said the trump campaign did not film an ad at a gravesite, the trump campaign released the ad they filmed at the gravesite
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

Finally the future liberals really want: rampaging hordes of wax moths and mutant fungi battling each other to devour humanity's plastic waste:
Ada Palmer

Ah yes, the shattered political norms, they're back again:


Benjamin Dreyer

To describe this is as breaking a “political norm” isn’t even literally accurate. It’s not a political norm, it’s a basic social norm. It’s not like it’s a politicians-only thing, it’s an any functional adult in public thing.
Andy Craig

Would love to see an in-depth look at how many election positions MAGA has taken over because the normal people who used to take those positions out of a sense of civic duty don't want to deal with the harassment and death threats.
Radley Balko



Jaana Nystrom @jaanagolf.bsky.social
 
economics: racism won't happen under capitalism because it produces sub-optimal outcomes for racism practitioners
owner of 5 car dealerships: i don't let the blacks in my buildings
economics: but that's not in your rational self-interest
owner of 5 car dealerships: not too fond of the jews either
eva @eva.computer

so funny to be like "under capitalism, discrimination isn't real!" meanwhile for decades in order to buy a car you had to walk past a bunch of pamphlets warning of the dangers of the International Jew
sego dreancas @impemboganecue.bsky.social

“it is racial discrimination to be attentive to the legacy of past racial discrimination” is a recipe for resegregating much of american life, which is the point of these lawsuits
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

The villain:


Tom Flood

Electoral College abolition is the single most common aim of constitutional amendments in US history, with at least 800 proposals since 1800.
Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social

People who stan for the Electoral College sound as stupid as crypto fanboys.
Suds Terkel

I’d also point out that it’s weird to try to privilege rural voters as a minority group and not e.g. people of color or LGBT people. There’s no credible argument for why only rural voters should get an outsized say in our government.
rudbeckiahirta.bsky.social

if like, aaron burr had tried a january 6 in 1801, there would have been no compunction about having him tried and executed
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

The treason clause has since been interpreted to basically only cover foreign enemies we're at war with, but that came later. At the time the Framers would have absolutely considered this, and what Trump did, to be literal treason covered under the constitutional definition. Not even a close call.
Andy Craig

Twin Cities police use physical force at rates well above national average:


Minnesota Reformer

Adult catholic convert JD Vance: It's creepy to teach if u don't have kids
Nuns: Put your hands flat on the desk and say it again to my face u little bitch
Erin Fogg @criminalerin.bsky.social

My grandmother got fired from being a teacher when she had my mother. American teachers weren't *allowed* to have children for most of the history of the profession.
Laura Seay @texasinafrica.bsky.social

Which is more amenable to change:
How the economy works or how the climate does?
The roles of "consumers" and "producers" or the fundamental needs of humans?
National boundaries or the boundary between earth and the vacuum of space?
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social

Dahlia genetics continue to fascinate me. Every once in a while a plant just busts out with something like this even though all the other flowers on the plant are true to their variety. Dahlia jazz hands!


Angela @antiangie.bsky.social

Swedish is like Linux. It's quite obvious how the language works, and you can make your own words.
French is Apple. Try to make your own modifications and they will SEND YOU TO JAIL.
English is your grandparents' PC. We have no idea how it works. Where did all these weird plug-in words come from??
Loukas

if you're old enough to remember the month-long news cycle about reverend wright and the speech obama had to give about whether he co-signed everything he ever said by attending wright's church, [Trump retweeting Nazis and worse] really is something
dan solomon

Overbaked satire, or just the most valuable automaker in the world? Coming up on 8 years of Tesla selling a "general solution to self-driving," and the cars still can't drive themselves in a one-way, controlled-access tunnel with literally no other traffic.
e.w. niedermeyer

I love that liberals invented "JD Vance has sex with couches" and all conservatives come up with is "Tim Walz has pet multiple dogs"
aciebell.bsky.social

Just occurred to me that the deeper implication of Vance's "childless people don't care about the future" thing is that he genuinely doesn't understand that it is possible to feel compassion and concern for people who are not blood relatives.
Ned Resnikoff

The future they gave us vs what we wanted:


Alex @mplsalex.bsky.social

in a better political culture we would see a view like [Vance's about women] as totally disqualifying for public office
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò

It has been my experience that whenever someone criticizes a book for having a "Mary Sue" protagonist that their real beef is the fact that it has a female protagonist written by a female author.
Annalee Newitz

I feel like I keep seeing people struggling to come up with explanations for JD Vance while ignoring the obvious one that feminism has already provided, and it’s a little frustrating to be reminded again how many putatively progressive men are unfamiliar with basic tenets of feminism. JD Vance is not some special freak with a weird fetish for childbearing. He is an unabashed adherent to the fundamental belief that women should not have the freedom to determine their own lives! That is not a niche ideology. It is patriarchy and it is pervasive!
Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social

Two statements that demonstrate when someone has no empathy and therefore assumes that nobody has empathy:
"If you don't have children, you have no stake in the future."
"If you don't believe in god, you have no motivation to be a good person."
Ward Q. Normal

Over HALF the world's shipping is just moving fossil fuels around
OVER HALF
And then we burn it for a measly 25-40% return on the energy
For trillions of dollars
madness
RJD Landscapes @robdickinson.bsky.social

happy first day of classes:


Matt Gabriele @profgabriele.com

"superman is basically a god" is a take I see more and more these days and it only makes sense if your entire conception of a god is "can smash shit when he wants"
Shiv Ramdas @nameshiv.bsky.social

"when this person imagines power, do they start describing a toddler?" is a political litmus test I find myself applying more and more these days
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò

watching this new HBO documentary on the oklahoma city bombing and i’m always struck by how many people could just not believe that the perpetrator was a white american.
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

1906: Exhibit with replica of Minnesota State Capitol constructed of onions, St. Paul Growers Association, Minnesota State Fair:


Gary Hornseth

Gym yesterday – 2 guys discussing cash "always use cash" tin hat brigade, convo swiftly moved on to how much they've made on crypto (they haven't).
LunaBelle Mollster

It might be true that many MAGA voters accurately perceive themselves as financially troubled or “worse-off” or see their opportunities dwindling or homeownership out of reach, but this is not separable from the racism and hate — the core fascistic promise is “we will make you whole by punishing *them*”
@sababausa.bsky.social

It’s telling that Walz is “redefining” American masculinity. The guy’s a stereotypical macho man — veteran, hunter and football coach — but the fact that he’s also a nice dude makes it a paradigm shift. He isn’t known for his knitting skills. We’ve just come to associate masculinity with being a dick.
Joshua Holland

I honestly still can’t believe we have a Constitutional Amendment written for the exact purpose of making it very clear people who try coups from office are subsequently ineligible and SCOTUS said “let’s pretend we don’t.”
Grudgie the Whale

A thing about anti vaxxers, like Kennedy, is they are deeply concerned about the profit motive distortions in one of the few industries that is regulated for safety and efficacy
Adam Miller @ajm6792.bsky.social

Bathroom design by Ving Smith featured in a 1970s Krylon spray paint advert:


Wendy O'Rourke

Think slavery doesn't matter today? Wrong. Current Congress members whose families owned 16+ enslaved people now have $4 million more than members who did not own slaves. Slave owning = 2024 money and influence. [Peer-reviewed study.]
Josh Fischman

Trump and Vance are battling the “weird” label and they just brought on a guy with a brain worm who ate a dog and dumped a bear carcass in Central Park.
Daniel Gilmore

Which is more pathetic, the campaign that crusades to make kids sick or the campaign that celebrates being endorsed by it?
Adam Miller @ajm6792.bsky.social

The grift never ends: "Between his three presidential campaigns, Trump and associated political groups have funneled more than $28 million in campaign donations to his businesses – helping convert the enthusiasm of his political supporters into personal profit."
Brendan Nyhan

Oklahoma board of education has revoked the license of a teacher who gave her students a QR code for the Brooklyn Public Library’s catalogue of banned books.
Gabriel Malor

The fascist impulse to crush empathy and sincerity comes from a real tactical understanding that a population with both will defend its most vulnerable.
Madeline Ashby

So, I get that this is basically all politics all the time, right now, but I still feel the need to brag that I got a Blue Ribbon at the Minnesota State Fair for this!  It is the Princess Shawl, pattern by Sharon Miller, and it took me three years to finish:


@lydy.bsky.social

The people who live in the single-family homes next to the lot that's slated to be turned into an affordable housing complex will always turn out to the community engagement meeting. The people who don't yet live in the affordable housing complex obviously won't. We have to change this system.
Doug Gordon @brooklynspoke.bsky.social

As RFK Jr.'s campaign skids to its ignominous end, let us take more than a minute to point and laugh at all of the Silicon Valley airheads who saw a president in that kook.
Rob Pegoraro

Worth noting: "It's invasive to ask me what pronouns I use" in one article, followed by "I demand to analyze your DNA." There's clearly two sets of rules. Nobody should ever inconvenience these fascists, who demand the right to rifle through your medical records if they suspect you're trans.
Mike Schnier

Trump fell into a rage spiral last night, rattling off 50 deranged posts before calling in to Fox and Newsmax and making everyone uncomfortable. Losing to a black woman, in front of the entire world, is going to drive him mad. Savor these moments.
Radley Balko

the message throughout the week [of the DNC] that you don’t have to agree with her on everything, she’ll be there for you — is a direct and deliberate contrast to trump’s idea that you must agree with him on everything, no matter how debased and/or ridiculous, and he owes you nothing
Philip Gourevitch


@texaninnyc.bsky.social

whew lucky thing for trump that "are you old" suddenly stopped being a major campaign issue a month ago after dominating the headlines for weeks
Michael Tae Sweeney @mtsw.bsky.social

Little known fact: Both the state name *and* the motto/tagline on Minnesota license plates are based on Dakota words or phrases. "Minnesota" has the concept of sky-tinted water. And from some research I did a couple years ago, "10,000 Lakes" was a 1910s tourism board concept also derived from Dakota
Chris Steller

"more jobs added under jimmy carter than under any Republican President except Reagan" is one of those verifiably true facts that DC people will get very mad at you if you observe:


Michael Tae Sweeney @mtsw.bsky.social

The attacks you’re seeing on the Harris and Walz families from the online right are reflective of a different ideological orientation towards family as mere objects that are meant to reflect the greatness of the husband and father, not people with their own lives and emotions.
Adam Serwer

If you start with the assumption that women and children are property, as they were for a long time in America, a lot of conservative rhetoric and policies make a bit more sense.
Tory Brown @downtowntbrown.bsky.social

A son’s affection for, pride in, and love of his father would on paper seem to be something you’d expect conservatives to be pleased to witness.
Angus Johnston

The Walz Family are like a trap for conservatives, because they represent everything normal people love that hateful freaks can't understand.
Brendon @brendonbouzard.bsky.social

It is truly insane that we use methane gas in our homes
J. Mijin Cha @jmijin.bsky.social

Oh my god. (Credit my BF for making this connection. Charles Schulz knew his people.):


@raflw.bsky.social

Calling Tim Walz an “inexperienced political figure” when he was a U.S. congressman for 12 years and is currently governor of a state is so fucking funny. Those words don’t mean what you think they mean just because you’d never heard of him until recently.
Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social

JD Vance is constantly on some kind of TV show or podcast or some shit and that for reporters these days unfortunately count as political experience. Not actual lawmaking that is no longer interesting to them but showing up on some broadcast and talk even if heinous shit like everything Vance says.
Stefan D. @s3rp86.bsky.social

"clue" originally meant "a ball of string" (spelt clew). since Theseus used a ball of string to find his way out of the Minotaur's labyrinth, "clue/clew" became a metaphor for "thing that helps you solve a puzzle" or "thing that points you in the right direction":


McKinley Valentine @mckinleaf.bsky.social

it's wild how just having normal human beings who are like, we want to improve society somewhat, is so fucking transformative when the traveling snake oil and carny grift show of the Trump family and hangers on has been looming so large for so long
Tom Tomorrow

pundit skepticism of walz is on its face evidence that you can’t trust the political instincts of these people!
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

Absolutely INSANE to watch Democrats get football in the national divorce over the past year!!
Molly Knight

Got a dream shot today. Yellow-shafted Northern Flicker landing on dogwood just in time his reservation at Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary, Chicago:


Stephen Boisvert @srboisvert.bsky.social

i’ve been writing about differing conceptions of freedom for years now at the NYT and it feels is very vindicating to see this kind of language in a national campaign. and democrats are right — the only freedom republicans offer is the freedom to dominate and the freedom of the grave
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

NYT times fact-checkers activating: ummm excuse me there is no proof of what Trump will do if elected because the future is inherently unknowable
Tom Tomorrow [note: he wrote this and then they or the Washington Post did exactly that]

Motion to have Monica Lewinsky talk in Bill’s place from here on out.
Courtney Milan

I love that today’s hard-nosed fact checkin’ men are all basically Amelia Bedelia.
Bill Corbett

It's wild how much Jan 6 gets memory-holed in media. Trump's role as an insurrectionist who egged on the attempted assassination of his VP and members of Congress should be mentioned in every article about him.
Jonathan Cohn

Women know a confidently wrong blowhard when they see one:


Ian Coldwater @lookitup.baby

Bennie Thompson’s father never voted because of Jim Crow. One generation ago.
Adam Miller @ajm6792.bsky.social

The professional opinion-haver class doesn't want a united and confident Democratic Party. They want a party that constantly worries what the opinion-havers will think.
ApocalypticaNow

Yesterday a Trump-appointed judge halted the FTC's ban on noncompete clauses — which trap workers in jobs and stifle wages. A plaintiff who sued to reverse the ban is a Trump tax adviser. It's clear who the MAGA movement works for — and it sure as hell isn't the working class.
Robert Reich

the attacks on Ella Emhoff (as well as Lin Yu-ting and Imane Khalif) are part of what trans people have correctly warned about for a long time: the rise in transphobia will target cis women too.
BeijingPalmer

And not to diminish that message in any way, attacks on ‘immigrants’ will target anyone a different color. Attacks on poor people, attacks on non-neurotypical … they’re all feet in the door to start othering and dividing the power of the majority against these freaks. Trying to claw back the rightful gains of the lgbtq community, racial minorities, Unions! Reproductive rights—their attacks are always there to get to the next target. Never appease. and it represents the shifting goalposts as clear as anything. the 'nightmare' picture is of her in a dress! she's not even doing anything not heteronormative in the picture! doesn't matter, its enough that she *looks* like she would tell them to fuck off. because its about control and that's it.
@bnr-keynes.bsky.social

conservatives literally obsess over gender while going over photos with a Sharpie while yelling THAT SHADOW IS HIDING AN ADAM’S APPLE I FOUND ONE I FOUND ONE
born miserable

I keep thinking about that screen shot from some POS Republican saying that Ella Emhoff was a parent's "worst nightmare" if they have a daughter. Looking at Ella, I see someone who could be a friend of one of my kids. Legit uncurated Zoomer personality. I find Ella delightful.
Naomi Kritzer

“trump’s a scab” is a great chant
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

“there is no scientific evidence racism is stored in the bones of the body” -wapo fact checker just here to help with the relevant points of the story


darth™️ @darthbluesky.bsky.social

how did we manage to make fact-checking bad. fact checking should not be pretending we don't know what someone is saying
Gerry Doyle @mgerrydoyle.bsky.social

Laying off all the people who actually fact check articles and paying a guy $200,000 a year to write: "This is misleading: while the president is very hungry, it is unlikely that he could eat an entire horse."
Ned Resnikoff

Okay, well I guess if he pinky swears he’ll stop doing the thing he’s done again and again, we’ll just have to trust him.


Miranda Yaver

Another weird Trump inversion is how his digressions sometimes don't get covered. If a Normal Politician gives a 60-minute speech and has a weird off-script gaffe, the gaffe is the story. If Trump does it, mostly it's "Trump mostly stayed on message."
Dave Weigel

Going back and rereading the details of how Phil Donahue lost his MSNBC show because he questioned the Iraq War — like, spelled out explicitly in memos within the company—is enraging all over again.
Tim Carvell

Groucho Marx, circa 1975:


Gaijin Rando

I saw a USA Today editorial about Harris FINALLY offering up an economic plan. Bitch, she’s been running for like 3 weeks. Trump’s been running for 8 years and best he can do is “tarriffs!”
Wes Burdine

The "Kamala is a policy lightweight" people are the same ones who told us Paul Ryan is a wonk savant. Which suggests the Harris campaign can put this all to bed by getting chatgpt to produce a stack of white papers and a handful of charts. They won't understand a word but their minds will be blown.
Ned Resnikoff

The denial of medical treatment for trans individuals will be looked on with the same disgust as we now do with barbaric homophobic policies of the past which saw the likes of Alan Turing destroyed. That doesn't help the people being harmed by it now.
Daniel Sohege

He absolutely will not walk around this flowerpot:


Tom Astle @tjalamont.bsky.social

The reality is that trans people in sports is such a nontroversy that the transphobes had to make up fake trans people to harass.
Hunter Walker

College cost serves as justification for so many dubious trends: ballooning AP credit; rental ebook requirements; "practical" majors; shortened time-to-degree, jettisoning of remedial courses. I get it, but also these are stop-gap fixes that hollow out the very thing they're trying to prop up.
Anna E. Clark

The thing is, once somebody proposes restricting the freedom of women to travel from one state to another, we actually don’t have to care about their ideas about marginal tax brackets or international trade or whatever
Costa Samaras

Commodification [of child care] may be extremely unpleasant, but it represents progress out of feudal structures. Vance and his creepy ilk want to return us to those feudal bonds.
Joaquin Closets @silkscreenfiend.bsky.social

I think it’s beginning to settle just the tiniest bit on these people that they’re stuck yelling out the window at a raccoon to drop the rotisserie chicken:


kilgore trout

A key pillar of the trans panic has been that people’s “intuitive” reactions should govern how others are treated in public space and I think it’s important we reject this wholesale.
Nails Nathan @chadstanton.bsky.social

The "you don't fit *my* culture's beauty standard, therefore you must not really be a cis woman" people are just so fucking awful and WEIRD!
Isobel Carr

probably the most embarrassing thing on earth is having to answer questions from an electrician. “Where’s your emergency disconnect?” sir all i know is somehow we have put lightning inside the wires
Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social

Today, we released a report examining two policy pathways: Continued US leadership and Project 2025.
Our modeling finds that these future policy pathways result in stark differences for our health, pocketbooks, economy, and climate:


Energy Innovation

Trump flatly is not going to accept an election result that goes against him. He never has before; he never will. Everyone making plans for the post-election period should count on it. I don’t know what the value of all this pussyfooting language is.
southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social

Quick reminder: there is nothing inherently “left” about racial, gender or sexual identity equality. You are looking for a different word
Adam Miller @ajm6792.bsky.social

I'm beginning to think that stars, meteor showers and northern lights are all things you've made up to troll me.
Genevieve @gensibayan.bsky.social

The Republican Party exists to channel maximum public funding to their private interests while inflicting the most pain on everyone else. Every single time.
Tyler King

The Indigo Girls are now older than the Golden Girls.
Jack @wakeupangry.bsky.social

The performance of political neutrality destroys nuance. There is no way a person who takes themselves seriously can equate misinformation like “Hillary Clinton runs a child rape ring” and “immigrants are raping everybody” with a joke about sexual relations with a couch that everyone knows is a joke.
Sarah J. Jackson @sjjphd.bsky.social

I've said this before over there but decreasing climate change is only a wicked problem because we put the constraint that we don't want to change how we live. The real challenge is how do we protect the vulnerable while we're doing the rapid change necessary because we didn't start sooner.
Doctora Malka Older @older.bsky.social

yeah because brown squirrels drive like goddamn lunatics and somebody has to think of the children:


Elle @elleisanisland.bsky.social

What if we weren’t afraid of the future? What if it’s full of really cool possibilities? Like a malaria vaccine and cruelty-free meat and solar-powered everything and high speed rail and customizable cancer treatment and international space exploration and climate adjusted cities and UBI and —
Kaitlin Has Had Enough @gothamgirlblue.com

a repeated lesson is that the key to a usable online space is heavy-handed moderation geared specifically around kicking out assholes.
Michael Tae Sweeney @mtsw.bsky.social

yes — and, very specifically, you need to be able to kick out assholes who didn’t explicitly break the rules, because the people who make a point of “I didn’t technically cross the line” are always the most toxic people in your community
Micah @rincewind.run

After this past week, it's even more clear that anyone who votes for Trump is voting to make Vance the President. Trump is diminishing before our eyes (even if most in media won't report that). If he wins, Vance will be the President sooner or later. Just as JD's puppet masters intend
Joe Sudbay

I've seen more journalists denounce Democrats for a dumb couch joke than criticize JD Vance and the Trump campaign for smearing Tim Walz's military service.
Jamison Foser

Watching the media fall for swift boating again while facing mister bone spurs is quite the trip.
David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social

Philadelphia Inquirer showing how it’s done:


Seth Cotlar

a thing trump always says about whatever opponent is that everybody in the world is laughing at them, because this is a thing he himself is terrified of, and when he said it today I could only think buddy, they literally made giant balloons of you in diapers in the UK. There is probably no US president, including Nixon and Reagan, who was and is more of a global laughingstock than DJT (laughter mixed with apprehensive terror admittedly).
Tom Tomorrow

We’re really about to see more national press coverage of Tim Walz’s military record than about whether Trump took a $10 million bribe from Egypt, aren’t we?
Bob Mann

Take a moment to remember Trump is giving a press conference from a business where he charges anonymous freaks $200,000 for access to him, the most corrupt thing any ex or current president has ever done in American history by miles. And it never gets mentioned.
L O L G O P

A very stable genius, a reverse Midas, turning everything he touches to dross...


Lynn Becker @cmgiulini.bsky.social

Walz did good things in Minnesota because a lot of people pushed him to. We should celebrate both parts of that.
Allison Wyss

Vance suggesting that Walz isn’t veteran enough because he didn’t see combat is pretty rich given that Walz served in the military for 24 years and Vance served for 4, and is also a running mate to a draft dodger
Elizabeth Spiers

It’s only ever Republicans who attack people’s service records
Luman Buck @tofuttibreak.bsky.social

The media basically acts as if the GOP owns certain topics – security / military, economic growth, patriotism – and treats GOP / right wing claims in that space as by default substantive, no matter how farcical.
Hyperlexic

after 2004, where you'll have the clearest possible contrast between a legitimate combat war hero in Kerry and a rich kid draft dodger in Bush, and the result was the media all collaborating to smear KERRY as a coward, nothing will shock me. It's unfair but it's a game the Dems can't win.
Michael Tae Sweeney @mtsw.bsky.social

The purpose of the postmenopausal female is to stop the rebels in the outer planets, bring Mars to heel and gain control of the protomolecule


Cargo Weasel

The attempted swift-boating of Walz is truly something to behold as a veteran. Just an unbelievable disconnect between how a civilian might view the claims versus how a military member or veteran would view them.
John Brown stan account

The way I diagnose the Swiftboating thing is that it's a downstream symptom of the existence of a GOP propaganda machine and that machine's tendrils extending into the NYT/WaPo/TV News. You can't argue your way out of it really, they're just gonna smear you and get away with it.
Michael Tae Sweeney @mtsw.bsky.social

Walz? German, not a real American!
Trump, a corruption of Drumpf, a German name? American!
Kristian van der Vliet @vanders.bsky.social

the Vance rallies aren't getting a ton of coverage which is kind of a shame because they seem to have a real PUPPET SHOW/Spinal Tap energy.
Tom Tomorrow

“Google conducted a quality degradation study, which showed that it would not lose search revenue if [it] were to significantly reduce the quality of its search product." A company that makes its product worse “without concern of losing consumers is proof of monopoly power”
Laura Helmuth

A big part of the Trump phenomenon has always been whiners collectively making each other feel like whining is strength. I still can’t believe no one has cracked up in his face when he ducks a remotely challenging question by calling the questioner “nasty.” This is too much for you? Too scary? Wuss.
Nicholas Grossman

So obvious it might be overlooked: Walz is just hugely, rollickingly entertaining – the first contemporary Dem who can best Trump in that way (obviously without being an addled fascist).
David Brauer

I think it's important to push back against the narrative that Walz is a leftist that represents Kamala's refusal to pivot toward the center. All of his legislative achievements are normie Dem stuff.
Michael Hobbes

Withholding medical care due to unpaid debt should be a crime against humanity if it isn't already. That's a "right to life" that I stand behind.
@uncivil.work

The Democratic Party has a left wing, a right wing, and a broad center. The 2024 ticket is made up of two talented candidates from the broad center. The left wing of the party is mostly pleased with this situation, and the right wing is mostly freaking out.
Angus Johnston

Not to get too political but I agree with the new VP candidate that it’s probably best for everyone if we don’t have kids starving and bleeding on themselves in school, even if their parents are poor
Katie Mack @astrokatie.com

Rarely does a single picture really illuminate that the modern Republican movement is not based on political theory. It is just a quest for absolute power and domination of those they see as inferior:


@brainnotonyet.bsky.social

Walz is proof that the pundits who demand that Dems “appeal to rural voters” don’t mean “explain progressive policy in a way that connects with rural voters.” they mean “be conservative in a way that I, the pundit, personally agree with.” fuck ‘em
Micah @rincewind.run

Tim Walz talked about how free school lunch reduces the unequal burden of domestic labor on women by removing one daily chore, and I immediately set up a recurring donation.
Lila Byock

remains incredibly striking to me that most of the entire cadre of “democrats must reach out to rural americans” and “democrats must speak to blue collar americans” pundits are sour on the Walz pick
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social

All I’m gonna say is that Walz brand of positive and kind masculinity is a massive tool to use going forward to teach millions of people that being a strong man isn’t about domination and fear but through compassion, kindness and not the fascist masculinity of hate and domination
@brainnotonyet.bsky.social

Tim Walz might be too progressive for average Americans, according to millionaire cable news pundits, based on their one-on-one grassroots exchanges with other millionaire cable news pundits in a wide cross-section of midtown Manhattan greenrooms.
Frank Conniff

Kinda concerned about Walz as Harris’s pick; it’s hard to see how regular Americans can relate to a state college grad who coached football part-time at the high school  he taught at, as opposed to an authentically Yale-educated lawyer and one-time venture capitalist with a movie about himself.
Kieran Healy


bendawson.bsky.social

he’s a normal white man who isn’t fucking terrified of black or brown people. he’s an example of what white men can be if they don’t want to be like trump. a regular guy who isn’t going to pull a gun on you for driving with an old obama bumpersticker at a stoplight. a man who can experience joy!
@pnutsmama.bsky.social

Harris/Walz will give fourth graders free lunches, while Trump/Vance will force them to give birth. — It’s as simple as that.
Andrea Junker @strandjunker.bsky.social

"Walz wants to allow convicted felons to vote!" warns convicted felon who is running for president.
Ashton Pittman

Undocumented immigrants paid $97B in taxes in 2022. They paid a higher state/local tax rate than the top 1% in a majority of states. They contributed $26B to Social Security, which they can't benefit from. Remember this the next time the undocumented are called "freeloaders."
Robert Reich

VP announcement getting delayed because Tim Walz unionized the other candidates and now they're negotiating a collective bargaining agreement with the Harris campaign
Aaron Huertas

At this point I'm just gonna assume Clarence Thomas travels to the Supreme Court from his house every morning in a private jet.
Tom Tomorrow

Republicans are currently undoing many of the features of 20th century America which, imperfect as they were, reduced social unrest and mass violence. They are doing so on perfect, because when violence happens, they hope the state backlash will empower them.
David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social

Politicians who are against immigration want to make the country smaller, weaker, and poorer.
Nothings Monstered

Freedom of movement is a human right.
@audleyzdarke.bsky.social

This is very clever:


Helen Kennedy

Trump just congratulated a dictator on his success in holding Americans hostage and CNN is leading with "the Vice President's husband cheated in his previous marriage."
Gregory Hays @aristofontes.bsky.social

Vance on Harris: "She thinks she's better than us. She thinks she's better than you." Ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived at uppity.
Helen Kennedy

Montreal closes major streets during the summer to cars and suddenly every neighborhood has a mini state fair at night
Getting Gophery

The is the funniest criticism yet. Hugging people at a eulogy? What a weirdo!


Radley Balko

It is quite the juxtaposition with Trump, who doesn’t seem to care at all when people die.
Cody Cooper @coconutparty.bsky.social

First we find out she laughs out loud at funny things and now we find out she's hugging people at funerals. How much weirder can she get? Dancing to music? Eating with utensils?  /sarcasm
Hank G @neqone.bsky.social

She laughs! She hugs! She has parents and a family that she appeared in photos with! Is America ready for a normal human being as president!?!?
calizaybak.bsky.social

This line from a local real estate listing is right out of a horror novel: 'The minute you enter you are engulfed by the quality woodwork'
s. e. smith

even putting policy aside, Shapiro just feels like a bad choice. Kamala is a little stiff and cosmopolitan, why choose a VP with those same aesthetics?
Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social

It feels like the kind of decision you make out of pragmatism that does not end up being pragmatic at all.
Chris Person @papapishu.bsky.social

i have something to say. if a man doesn't have any successful platonic relationships with women he isn't related to or dating that is a 100% guarantee that he is a misogynist and i have never been wrong about this. if you as a man cannot sustain platonic relationships with women that tells me that you are incapable of viewing women as full human beings with value outside of being something that you can fuck or something that will be your mommy or both!
SIMONE @simonee.bsky.social

Not mine but I can't find the original source:


Cavycore @rnrhamster.bsky.social

Actually democratizing art would mean making it easier for people to acquire the skill they want in art. Which would look like free college. Or free continuing adult education. More time off. Universal healthcare. The foundations that allow the freedom to pursue our various happinesses.
Tobias S. Buckell

Funny how crowded sidewalks don't get the same widening treatment that car infrastructure does, despite being significantly more efficient at moving people. Street parking is an insult to pedestrians everywhere who walk next to vacant cars on crowded sidewalks. Let the madness end.
@fema.bsky.social

Fact: Vienna is the only city in the world with wine vineyards within the city limits. There are 320 vintners.
Chris Steller

JD Vance seems to believe that having children automatically makes you a better person. That's ironic, because as this piece documents, Vance has become a much worse person since he had children.
Aaron Rupar

James Baldwin was born 100 years ago today, and humanity was made better for it:


Joseph Illidge

A lesson to be drawn from this cycle of culture war outrage [over "trans" athletes at the Olympics] is that fascism is happy to devour and derive energy from all of our most beloved institutions. In the name of gaining power it will devour the Olympics, school boards, libraries, higher education, the rule of law...anything in its path.
Seth Cotlar

It would've been nice if Trump's obvious and upfront corruption before the White House had been treated seriously and then the obvious and upfront corruption *in* the White House should've been treated seriously. Maybe even as seriously as 10,000 meetings with Trump supporters in diners.
En Buen Ora

“Are you okay, ma’am?”
“I think I swallowed my router.”
“Here, take my seat.”


Uncle Duke @uncleduke1969.bsky.social

I am fed up with the app-ification of things. I don't want 327 apps on my phone or whatever in order to see my bills and pay my bills and order pizza and check the weather and find out when the garbage is being collected and get notified of emergencies. This is ridiculous. This drive towards apps is also, in addition to being a pain in the arse, an equity issue. If we make it impossible to participate in things as diverse as online banking, taxi bookings, restaurant reservations, emergency information, and bus schedules, we are forcing people to buy smart phones.
@alisonborealis.bsky.social

the fascist leanings of late capitalism have an unquenchable addiction to inserting more and more more monetizable "chokepoints" into daily life. doesn't bode well.
Grant Sawatzky

I miss websites. It makes me sad when I try to find information from a business/club/organisation and their website hasn't been updated since 2016. Then you have to trawl through a Facebook page full of garbage to try and find any details on what you're looking for.
@alisonatkin.bsky.social

Frequent and accessible public transit, safe streets for all, accessible infrastructure, e-bikes, and bike infrastructure would increase freedom for Americans. Financial freedom, freedom from traffic violence, freedom to live in a livable climate, freedom to breathe clean air, and freedom of mobility.
Costa Samaras

This week, the conservative hive mind has decided:
1. Kamala Harris, a Black woman, is not a Black woman
2. Imane Khelif, a female boxer, is secretly male
I wonder what they’ll do tomorrow to nail the hat trick. “Weird” is way too nice of a word for these people.
Jared Holt

According to AAA – the *car people* – owning a new car costs like ~$15k per year. That's like $20k on your pretax salary. Put another way: making car free life possible in a neighborhood is like giving everyone there a $20k raise.
David Weiskopf

Transportation is the second largest expense for most Americans after housing. For low-income people, as much as 30% of their after-tax income goes to just getting around.
Doug Gordon @brooklynspoke.bsky.social

This is the carbon tax that already exists, and we all pay it.
Costa Samaras

Saint Paul, Como Lake:


Chris Steller

Win the election and pack the court, or face a generation of Federalist Society judges "discovering" that the way this country has run for nearly a century is entirely unconstitutional. Those are the two choices. There aren't others.
Very Very Common Mike Dunford @questauthority.bsky.social

A chicken in every pot, and 35 new judges in every circuit court. Bonus: if we do it over the next four years, we know we get to see Leo live to see his life’s work destroyed.
John Pfaff

"childless woman" is such a 19th-century-ass insult. what else you got. do I render inferior tallow? do my cabbages grow pale and blemished? does the quality of my sock-darning bring shame upon my father's name?
Janel Comeau @verybadllama.bsky.social

"0–60 time" is a car metric that needs to die. Even today’s slowest cars are quick enough for normal driving. Blazing-fast acceleration is pointless, and it shreds tires while endangering others on the street.
David Zipper

When you’ve only seen drawings of bikes:


Alex @mplsalex.bsky.social

One other thing about Trump's attack on Harris's blackness: It shows that the Trump/MAGA/red pilled worldview is incapable of imagining that the US mainstream will see Harris' identity/ascension in a positive light.
Greg Sargent

"Don’t use slurs you’ll never be called" is an ironclad rule that works for everyone in every situation, including on a niche microblogging platform that already has a persistent racism problem
Kaitlin Has Had Enough @gothamgirlblue.com