The Republicans are absolutely committed to the lie that the shutdown is because the Democrats are demanding the government pay for illegal aliens’ health care. It doesn’t matter how many times they get corrected; they’ll just keep repeating it.

It’s an interesting experiment in just how brazen a lie they’ll be able to get away with. I’m hoping this is the one that finally breaks them, and they lose credibility for good, but the right-wing media bubble is sewn up pretty tight, and so far it seems they’ll believe pretty much anything they’re fed.

This is a hideous mis-meme-ing of the original XKCD comic. The tiny pillar is supposed to represent something we all actually need – since we have built so much on top of it – but barely think about. Like curl or ffmpeg.

Trump and Hegseth are not the sharpest tools in the shed, for sure, but they’re also not the ones really making decisions. Stephen Miller is possibly in charge? JD Vance’s vassalage to dystopian surveillance tech titan Peter Thiel is another influence channel.

I’m convinced that the real purpose of this meeting was to gauge the willingness of top military officers to support a coup. I would be surprised if their private conversations in response to this spectacle were not spied on.

Fortunately, at least in public appearance, they don’t seem thrilled with this administration.

The ICE campaign of terror is not a distraction, in the sense that it is meant to draw attention away from something else. It is a primary ambition – perhaps the primary ambition – of this administration. Remember those “MASS DEPORTATION NOW” signs people were holding up at the Republican National Convention?

It is also unsympathetic to those being abused by ICE to call their plight a “distraction”. No! It’s something we need to pay attention to and put a stop to!

If I had to guess, I’d say there are probably many in the military’s high ranks who believe that blowing up random fishing boats off the coast of Venezuela is a violation of international law, and would refuse if ordered to do so. Maybe everyone who has such a conscience will be fired?

In all previous instances, the agents of the ruling class were totally in control of the media landscape. Mainstream media has finally ceded enough to the internet, and the influencers they rely on to deliver a single message are all off their leashes, with fully half of them unwilling to get back in line.

I’ll concede that it’s probably still wishful thinking on my part, but the current situation is significantly different that what has happened before.

The whole ‘Q’ mythos is based around the premise that liberals must be pedos because, lacking a religion-based straitjacket of a moral code, there’s nothing to keep them from doing anything.

The reality is that, while there are certainly instances of bad sexual behavior across the political spectrum, it is the authoritarian MAGA culture in which child sexual abuse is a systemic problem— a natural consequence of deference to power and the entitlement felt by those given that power.

I know it’s wishful thinking, but the Epstein obsession of the MAGA base may end up crumbling more than just the current GOP.

Governor Walz is grieving the loss of our state’s house speaker, Melissa Hortman, who was killed by someone influenced by violent extremist Republican rhetoric. As the polar opposite of the Republicans— who would never take a milligram of blame for Hortman’s death— Walz is introspective, looking for anything he might have been able to do differently to change this outcome, which is a common part of the grieving process.

So I don’t blame him for not thinking clearly here, but the truth is that the sort of rhetorical attacks he was making on the Republicans is sorely needed. Calling them “weird” was clearly a winning strategy and the campaign consultants who got him to stop are at least somewhat responsible for the fact we now live in a fascist dictatorship.

No one would ever mistake Walz’s rhetoric as an actual call to violence (even though Republicans would be certain to make that bad faith claim). We need to call out who these people are and what they’re doing in a direct, non-apologetic manner. I hope Walz comes around to understanding this and goes back to calling out the fascists.

I’ve got to admit, I was a bit confused by this headline, because I’d heard that despite cuts to NOAA, the usual flood alerts were given and Texas officials were lying about that.

The article clarifies that a bit:

Former and current NWS employees have defended the agency’s response, as have meteorologists across the country. NWS’s Austin/San Antonio office—which covers the region— issued a flood watch on Thursday afternoon, followed by flash flood alerts that night into Friday morning.

However, the office’s warning coordination meteorologist took an early retirement offer in April as part of NOAA’s personnel and budget cuts, which were part of DOGE’s efforts to slash government “waste.” The position still hasn’t been filled, and according to the department’s website, the office currently has six additional vacancies. That vacancy may have delayed urgent communication with local officials.

It also sounds like the Trump admin isn’t going to change their plans for NOAA:

Unfortunately, NOAA’s recently released 2026 budget plan would shut down multiple NOAA labs, including the decades-old National Severe Storms Laboratory, which is crucial in researching and developing storm prediction technology, including hurricane forecasts. These cuts were outlined in Project 2025, with Russell Vought—Trump’s OMB Director—writing that he wanted to gut NOAA because the agency is responsible for “climate alarmism.”

I have to agree, knowing the facts about how rapidly the climate is changing does lead to alarm.

While we don’t all know he cheated, we do all know he totally would if he thought he could get away with it, and there are some troubling irregularities in the vote counts.

A bill like this was proposed in the Minnesota state house, shortly before one of the co-sponsors was arrested for soliciting sex from a minor.

The original marshmallow experiment is so popular to cite because it is a “just so story” – that is, as typically explained, it presents a moral lesson that seems intuitively obvious. That’s one reason the result stood for so long without attempts to reproduce it.

Such attempts have now been made, and no one can reproduce the reported clarity of the original. One interpretation of this is related to the wealth of the families involved: the original subjects were, after all, children of Stanford University students, and as such came from families of relative wealth.

There are studies which reach the conclusion you’re reporting (likely popularized by this Atlantic article but it’s paywalled so I can’t check), but the way you present this as a “fun fact” is turning the test into a different “just so story”.

The reality is that, while there are some stats gathered from the marshmallow test and followups that could be interpreted that way, the actual data gathered is too messy and inconclusive to draw any definitive conclusions.

Oh, thank the gods. I read about the “Trump Derangement Syndrome” bill and thought – they’re flooding the zone with shit, just like Steve Bannon advised, and just like when you train a puppy, we need to rub their noses in it.

We have free public school lunches for all our kids here in Minnesota because of Governor Walz. How the fuck is that “blue republican”?

From the article:

“We have to make sure that Americans know it’s not just that Donald Trump is bad but we’re offering them something better,” he continued. “And I think that’s what we need to work on.”

That’s an admission of culpability.

It didn’t help that the New York Times and other media outlets were all in on talking shit about Biden, and that undermined their credibility on the age issue. It was only after Biden’s disastrous showing at his debate with Trump that the average voter had any credible evidence of his decline.

Warren, MICHIGAN. I would like to encourage anyone who posts local news to put clarifying geographical data in the title … I’ve spent so many minutes of my life clicking thru to some local TV station’s story and looking … looking … looking for any sort of clue where the hell they are.

Was this created by someone who doesn’t understand the concept of a Venn diagram? I thought it was supposed to be one (despite not being complete), but I can’t see how the items in any given circle should be grouped with each other any more than any other label in the diagram.

Now I wish I’d sent a DM instead. No need to embarrass you in public, oops. Oh well, next correction I’ll be more discreet.