One of the best things I’ve read in a while:

In today’s edition of “Maybe the problem is in America’s really messed up nontradable sectors.” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/o...

Dozens of vulture carcasses—at least some and probably all infected with HPAI—were reportedly left strewn about the grounds of an elementary school for days while bureaucrats wrangled over who would clean up the site, illustrating what appears to be a huge crisis of state and local capacity in Ohio.

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.’

George Orwell, Animal Farm

The Pig Is in the White House This is what consequence-free misogyny looks like.

Bless @sophiegilbert.bsky.social @theatlantic.com: "The past decade has been a gloomy lesson in how limited a proportion of men actually see women as equal human beings...The fish rots from the head. The pig is in the Oval Office." www.theatlantic.com/culture/2025...

quotes by Musk and Hannah Arendt

“In my work with the (Nuremberg Trial) defendants, I was searching for the nature of evil, and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy... a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”

- Captain G.M. Gilbert, US Army

Whenever people complain about the number of folks relying on food stamps, it is worth reminding them that SNAP is, by too large of a degree, a subsidy for corporations that refuse to pay a living wage and their political allies who reject public policy prescriptions to reduce income inequality.

SNAP is probably the most effective federal dollar we spend in terms of long term domestic economic outcomes.

that isn’t why you should support it; you should support it because it is a moral imperative to feed the hungry.

but it’s why even a growth-oriented ghoul shouldn’t oppose it.

Jane Goodall with monarch butterfly scarf

“It actually doesn’t take much to be considered a difficult woman. That’s why there are so many of us.”
― Jane Goodall

💙 RIP to a real one. My childhood hero

As end-of-empire scenarios go it is so much more dignified to get your capital city sacked by the Visigoths than to have a bunch of illiterate rich people in their 70s doing it through a series of incomprehensible tantrums because their brains were defeated by their phones.

Economist Amartya Sen won a Nobel in part for asking: Why did India avoid the mass famines that killed tens of millions in China? His answer: a free press. Journalists could expose suffering and shame governments into action. Silence and avoidance, by contrast, can be deadly.

"Japanese officials said there was no written agreement with Washington — and no legally binding one would be drawn up", and surprise surprise, they deny giving Trump $550b to arbitrarily spend however he wants. www.ft.com/content/c118...

$1 spent on health care is not just $1 of benefits delivered. It’s also $1 of income to an industry that is labor intensive and leveraged. This is going to have significant impacts on employment and aggregate output.

If you’re zip-tying grandmas protesting losing health care maybe you’re not the good guys in the story?

A reminder of how the number of centrifuges in Iran soared after Trump’s 2018 JCPOA withdrawal.

@brendannyhan.bsky.social

A very interesting thread, well worth taking the time to read. The explanation around American Heresy really resonated with me.

Based on what I've seen credibly reported over the last 2-3 hours, it is fair to now call this a full-scale war.

new pope!

*crowd goes wild*

American pope!

*crowd boos*

woke for an American!

*crowd goes wild*

bad on protecting abusive priests!

*crowd boos*

hates JD Vance!

*crowd goes wild*

Walz: When did government get to tell you how many dolls your child has? Government just big enough to fit in your bedroom, your womb, and apparently now in your toy chest.

Welcome to Brexitland, US, in which waywardness is described as "strategic uncertainty", restrictions on trade boost performance and self harm is lauded....

Spoiler, it does not end happily

www.ft.com/content/342d...

personally would like to see every store show what part of the price increase is due to tariffs bc if these tariffs ever come down, i need to see that price go right back down

After Trump Aid Cuts, Food Banks Scrounge and Scrimp (Gift Article) In one of the country’s poorest areas, the quantity and quality of government deliveries have dropped, forcing one charity to make do with thin soup and dried cranberries.

A very worthwhile Fahrenthold story on what Trump’s cuts are doing to food banks and the communities that depend on them. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/u...

Used to be a useful government agency and now it’s a mouthpiece for whatever QVC ad this is.

Walz: If you say you love freedom but you don't believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love is not freedom, it is privilege.

The freight guys have really started freaking out over the past 48-72 hours:

I reported on economics full-time in 2020. It taught me there are no incentives to have a baby in the US. Women in the US have to pay for pre-natal, medical and child care, earn less, do most of the parenting and chores, get promoted less, and are now at 27% higher risk of maternal mortality.

it’s a perfect plan. we will fire everyone doing skilled work in science, technology and medicine and force them into factories making consumer electronics. this will enrich the country somehow.

James Franco "first time?" meme

Elder millennials watching traders freak out about a global economic collapse that will wreck tens of millions of lives and livelihoods, possibly irreparably

The biggest thing we need to do is let people know that the protests are FUN. Yelling fuck the man is fun. You will meet fun people.

We also need to make them more fun. Bring grills like the French. Bring instruments like it’s Mardi Gras. Give people a reason to spend their weekend in the streets.