we all know I have no life, so:

Simple pleasures: my state's Department of Ecological Restoration has a newsletter called Culvert Connections that is all news and updates and RFPs related to, well, culverts, and I am happy to see it in my inbox every month.

Starting to look like a systematic removal of all of the women in the administration. I mean, they're all monsters, same as the men in the administration, but still.

How much revenue did your fire service make last year? The military? How much money did your legislature make last year?

Why is the postal service the only governmental agency that's expected to be profitable? In the US or Canada?

Highlighted text which reads: "Every CEO who is so horny for savings should prove that they fly coach or take a bus when they travel city to city, if they care so much about not spending money. Or, hell, have just one house. No? Not happening? Surprise! It's always other people who have to suffer when the folks at the top decide to prioritize savings."

Loving @joshgondelman.bsky.social 's newsletter this week:

www.thatsmarvelousnewsletter.com/180-reese-wi...

You could put together the combined might of the writers' rooms of Seinfeld, 30 Rock, and Parks & Rec and still never come up with anything as dumb as "the sustainable sneaker company has pivoted into an AI company and your pasta sauce is now doing surveillance tech."

Pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine shows lasting results in an early trial Scientists caution that more research is needed, but nearly all of the patients who responded to the personalized vaccine are still alive six years later.

"Pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine shows lasting results in an early trial: Scientists caution that more research is needed, but nearly all of the patients who responded to the personalized vaccine are still alive six years later."

This shit is what I mean when I say "AI" is the tool of and the prevailing aesthetic of fascism.

Nostalgia is a thought terminator.

"High-speed rail in the US is unrealistic"

Party consultants keep pulling the Democrats out of the mainstream into anti-social, pointlessly pro-industry stances and it is literally killing us.

The campaign consultant class HAS to go. They are making society worse.

The Trump administration put these tariffs in place illegally, and most companies responded by passing the costs on to consumers. Now that courts have struck down the tariffs, repayments will go to the companies, essentially giving them a handout of money taken from customers.

Unshocking but fucking infuriating. This administration has done this in a thousand ways, but this one might be the most legible: the tariffs took money out of all of our pockets and will now hand it back to corporations.

I think a big part of what’s different here is their ability to just put this shit on things we already own. I could ignore them telling me to buy crypto. But it’s different when my phone or computer updates and suddenly there’s AI trying to write my emails.

The super-rich are not worried about their car dying, or if they can afford daycare, how to feed a family & clothe growing children. They don't consider skipping a medication b/c of its cost.
But the rich want to feel oppressed, so they pretend slightly higher taxes is life or death. How dare they

The fact that "being taxed on a wealth that would take most people dozens of generations to gather" is "the scariest thing she's ever seen" means the world isn't scaring millionaires and billionaires nearly enough yet.

Again: for any big liberal donor who wants to funnel millions into fixing this country's politics, the ROI on buying any struggling paper and simply tasking it with doing real reporting on local news is vastly higher than the same $$ given to some group that does mass ad buys every election year.

This is a big problem

A new annoyance unlocked recently is that a lot of stores have not been able to work out how to accept cash at self-checkout with the new penny shortage so if you want to pay in cash, after that first round of waiting, you then have to wait again for one of those two employees to check you out.

If that's what he thinks doctoring looks like, it just lends credence to my theory that he died months ago and is being kept shambling along via some kind of secret necromancy the non-billionaires among us haven't been informed of yet.

Key sticking points: four things that were already painstakingly negotiated and settled via Obama's hard-won deal that Trump cavalierly threw out the window in his first term; followed by one problem created entirely by Trump LEEEROY JENKINSing his way into this war; then also a beautiful unicorn.

Honestly should have known the question didn't need asking; there is only the one answer sick enough to sit in the same part of any venn diagram as the other two photos. :D

Live action or animated Moana?

She should've had Barbara Streisand herself make this announcement

My t-shirt saying "the lies tying me to Jeffrey Epstein need to end to day"....

Happy Confederate Surrender Day to all who celebrate. Lee was a treasonous slaver and failure.

A lot of them are people who want right wing evangelical theology but are strongly attracted to Catholic aesthetics. They tend to make common cause with the nutters still sad about Vatican II and ruin everybody’s vibe.

Did the phrase "Squirrel Nut Zippers" come up? Because I great that only makes it more implausible.

Lunar Flyby - NASA

On an emotional knife-edge right now, between the relentless horrors of the Trump administration and the absolutely awe-inspiring Artemis II mission, basically always on the verge of tears one way or the other, but for the good kind, these gob-smacking images: www.nasa.gov/gallery/luna...

Just another morning spent contacting my representatives in Congress and begging them to do anything at all.