“again, follow your dreams, because unqualified idiots are paid to do things they shouldn’t be doing every day, why not you” — spencer hall

monday motivation

There’s a house in my town that has been flying a Trump flag since 2015.
It’s long been one of four flags they fly.

I pass it every day.

Passing it today, I noticed something…

That flag isn’t there anymore.

They took it down.

Replaced it with a Marine Corps flag.

Whoa.

I'll simply say again that for Shlaes to resurface in The Economist at this moment is an indicator of an ambient concern that Rooseveltian policies and politics are increasingly likely. The thing about the New Deal is, it was *immensely popular.* That's terrifying to certain people

whats so crazy to me is the only job that chatbots could actually eliminate right now is ceo, every company could save millions today right now by replacing their ceo with a computer program that just parrots what other ceos say

CERTIORARI -- SUMMARY DISPOSITION 24-1099 SMITH, KYLE, ET AL. V. SCOTT, ROCHELLE, ET AL. The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for further consideration in light of Zorn v. Linton, 607 U. S. ___ (2026) (per curiam). Justice Sotomayor, Justice Kagan, and Justice Jackson would deny the petition for a writ of certiorari.

By a 6–3 vote, and with no opinion, the Supreme Court throws out a lower court decision denying qualified immunity who killed an unarmed, mentally ill man by using "bodyweight force" to restrain him. All three liberals dissent. www.supremecourt.gov/orders/court...

Beyond it being exciting to see an important policy being made real in NYC, the other groundbreaking thing about Mamdani loudly and doggedly supporting universal childcare is that it's not coming from a woman or even a parent. It's being championed by a childless man.

As a former StoryCorps facilitator, this is fucking disgusting.

End the project already, Dave.

You created a good model: you encouraged people to sit and do oral history for 20 yrs.

Turning StoryCorps into a surveillance capitalism nightmare is not worth the money to keep the project going.

Maryland has, for now, stopped ICE from converting a warehouse designed to hold commercial products into a warehouse used to hold people.

Similar lawsuits have been filed against ICE's warehouse detention camp plans in New Jersey and Michigan.

Victoria Toensing @VicToensing Hubby being sworn in as Counsel to the Attorney General. 4:04 PM · Apr 20, 2026 · 6,199 Views Jason Reding Quiñones, the US Attorney in Miami, swearing in a much shorter Joe DiGenova.

Joe DiGenova, whose wife once solicited payments from foreigners to lie about Joe Biden in 2019, just got sworn in to investigate things those things he lied about in the past.

Over the weekend I laid out why this is so problematic.

emptywheel.net/2026/04/19/t...

The Wild Wild Western Water Wars - The American Prospect As a changing climate bakes and dries up the Colorado River, the seven basin states can’t agree on how to share the declining water resources.

in the American West, we've got totally nonsensical 174-year-old legal structures about water rights colliding with climate change-fueled drought, with the federal government AWOL prospect.org/2026/04/17/w...

“Move fast and break things” as an ethos was always going to run into “laws are a hinderance to xyz” and while people may cheekily call it ‘cyberpunk’ or such the reality is it’s nothing more than white collar criminality and should be prosecuted as such

Posting this in the hopes it can be manifested:

Palantir's greatest source of profit comes from underpaying its so-called "forward-deployed engineers." They are paid well, but only a fraction of their value to the company. They should be encouraged to unionize.

advertising technology in the 1990s: look at this “website” you can “surf”. it has an image of a cat on it

advertising technology in the 2020s: you must adopt this now or die. we are going to completely kill you if you don’t download this app immediately

‘Simply stop giving millionaires water for literally free’ is one of the most insane sounding but actually serious policy solutions out there

the penne opticon

1 year ago today I was terminated by DOGE from USAID where I worked to get humanitarian aid into Gaza. Everyone I knew across almost 10 years of my career across 3 prior jobs became unemployed as well. My entire LinkedIn network suddenly became "open to work"

I'm a one issue voter. Punishment.

Most Americans know what it would take to fix our broken country

- Abolish Citizens United
- Outlaw foreign influence
- End the electoral college
- Tax the oligarchs
- Reestablish rule of law
- Strict separation of church & state

It’s whether we have the courage to change our self-destructive ways

this is why Dems need to go as hard as possible on reforms and actually fixing things rather than kick the can, because "people will remember how bad things were and not put these folks back in charge" is a demonstrably false statement

Trump Library Saga Takes Dark Turn: Where Did Millions in Funding Go? Four huge media conglomerates forked over $63 million in “settlements” earmarked for Trump’s presidential library. Democrats are trying to track that money—and the latest developments don’t inspire co...

What happened to the combined $63 million that Paramount, Meta, X, and ABC paid to the ‘Trump Presidential Library’ fund after surrendering? It just kinda disappeared. newrepublic.com/article/2092...

Add "farmers in the American West whose farms are only viable because they are given incredibly scarce water resources for 5 cents on the dollar" to the car dealers and realtors — destructive, unproductive conservative groups that we need to reduce the influence of when we're back in power.

Very serious point here — media vastly overreport what Trump says rather than clarifying for the reader the actual strategic situation.

a lot of the quote posts of this are in the "don't get your hopes up/don't be delusional" genre which, I think, miss the point.

the GOP is gonna be losing a lot more sleep at night if it's starting to look like they might have to fight to keep Mississippi.

we don't have to win there to fuck 'em up

Once again need to remind everyone that the supposedly crime-infested hellhole of New York is one of the safest cities in the country in no small part because most people in the central area don’t drive. America has a much bigger car problem than a violent crime problem.

Join The Onion Don’t just read the news. Feel it. Be among the first to feel the news.

For fuck's sake, sign up for The Onion, and get a free limited edition IW tote.

A share of merch sales will go to the Sandy Hook families, which will be the first time they get any money since they filed this lawsuit eight years ago.

Legal fees have been insane. Please sign up and help us out!

The media blackout of Jared Kushner’s historic, ongoing corruption scandal As Trump's son-in-law returns to Pakistan for more talks with Iran, major news outlets are largely ignoring an egregious

As Trump's war on Iran continues, reminder that his own son-in-law Jared Kushner — who is leading negotiations with Iran — stands to profit from lucrative contracts with its regional rivals.

War gives dictators like Trump (and his family) more power and more wealth.

Were I a Dem super PAC, I would be very quietly putting 5ish million behind targeted persuasion and deep mobilization canvassing.

Feels kinda silly to say that rich people from the center to left of things politically can’t build a successful media environment when the onion is doing it basically using donations from semi-employed forum goblins

Thank you, Bill.