RVA: Wed, May 20 from 6 - 8 PM I'll be on guitar with the Duke Benet Ensemble at VMFA's Dominion Energy Jazz Café.

Happy Trans Day of Visibility (one day late, I know). You have an absolute right to be who and how you are without weirdos in government and law enforcement harassing you and trying to legislate you out of school, work, and public spaces. 🤘🏼

Remember the sustained breathless and painfully credulous coverage of the "Tea Party" beginning ~2010? Their largest single day draw topped out somewhere around 700k people.

And it devolved into mailing list grift almost as soon as it began.

Also, it was an AstroTurf operation.

it's incredible that as long as you do the right amount of bigotry you can just rob the country blind and enough people will not care, even though those same people will be filled with incandescent rage if someone uses food stamps to buy a 12 pack of diet coke

This is the key to understanding why unpopular things get funded, popular things get shelved, and the courts are staffed with too many ideological wingnuts.

A lot of contortion to avoid the obvious answer that nobody wants to live under a police state, and people will fight state goons to not to.

Rufo has an unearned reputation for being an intellectual.

Problem is, it's academic to you until it's not.

Maybe he had evidence...

These and so many companies are the same ones who went right back to donating to GOP incumbents who facilitated and brushed aside the 1/6 insurrection and coup attempt as soon as they realize they wouldn't face an immediate backlash from consumers or reputational damage.

That must change now.

This is a list of companies whose CEOs you can DM on LinkedIn and tell them you're not patronizing them until they explicitly call for a full retreat by ICE and DHS from the state of MN.

"Deescalate" is not gonna cut it here.

Who is renting them the vans?

This is a serious question.

If you rent equipment to someone with knowledge that their express purpose in using that equipment is criminal by nature or damaging to a person or persons, can a civil suit be brought to enforce accountability?

See also: the actual, historical Luddites didn't reject technology just because they were old fuddy duddys – they correctly apprehended that they were being mechanized out of being gainfully employed by an ownership class that didn't do any actual work themselves.

Using AI tools:

Honestly, the median age of professional musicians in any genre in 2025 probably selects pretty heavily for Star Wars / John Williams super fan status.

You Are Not a Rebel | Laurie Penny The new far right has recognized the enduring appeal of adventurism and appropriated its rhetoric for reactionary ends.

As ever, this 2017 piece is apropos:

thebaffler.com/latest/you-a...

Get ready for "I'd love to release the files but as you know there's an ongoing investigation (that I directed the attorney general to initiate to distract from my involvement), and Pam tells me we shouldn't make evidence public when there's an open investigation so you'll have to ask her about it."

Gonna tell my kids this was COVID restrictions.

Excellent context for the possible reasoning behind KBJ's decision.

(Hint: she's pushing on both the lower courts and her SCOTUS peers to not fck this up).

Celebrate tonight and celebrate tomorrow.

Beginning Thursday morning, there is work to do.

This looks like a manufactured, gerrymandered result. And VA is not a terribly gerrymandered state.

This means some things.

This is the kind of lopsided result you see for the GOP in red states, but only after they gerrymandered the absolute living fck out of their districts.

Fascist enablers gettin' dey ass beat.

Seven. Million. People.

#NoKings

Yes, but also, the FBI "planting envelopes" is made up nonsense.

Don't let them launder the bigger lie by sneaking it into a smaller one.

This bullshit courses through ostensible journalism when they wrap it in something everyone can point to as just another example of their profound stupidity.

It's incorrect to say that reasonable suspicion is 'protected' under the 4th Amendment.

Reasonable suspicion is /required/ by the 4th Amendment in order for police or any govt agent to detain someone on American soil without violating their rights under the US Constitution.

This can't be real. Like, this isn't real, is it?

Ostensibly, she is a serious person.

2 posts. Following a handful of accounts. This one is here just to troll you.

I have 100 calories left for today, and I'm going to spend all 200 of 'em on a slice of this cheesecake.

"Extraordinary 'ability'"...