thedouglane.bsky.social

can’t wait for hurricane season to start and then we can collect almost all of the trophies for speedrunning the entire george w bush term in under a year

boy if I was the editor of the NYT (Harvard class of 1987) I might be thinking twice about why I empowered a racist attack on the institution for weeks, laying the groundwork for the deranged policy attacks of today.

Every book published in the United States is sent to the Library of Congress. Also, if you are under 16 you cannot use the reading room or order books.

we need to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth that the number one qualification for getting a top job in the Trump administration is defending Trump on Fox

the right to defend your country is a *crazy* thing to take away from people.

This dangerous psychopath is laying the groundwork to try to ban all vaccines.

Elon Musk is 'highly confident' SpaceX will land humans on Mars by 2026 SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said he is "highly confident" that the company will land humans on Mars in "about six years from now."

This guy has just gotten a $1 billion increase, in a NASA budget slashed by $6 billion, for Mars projects
www.cnbc.com/2025/05/02/n...

Track record: Was "highly confident" in 2020 that his SpaceX would be *LANDING PEOPLE on Mars* by next year. (2026).

What a grifter

www.cnbc.com/2020/12/01/e...

Robert F. Kennedy Jr will require all new vaccines to undergo placebo testing, WaPo reports U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr intends to shift the way vaccines are tested, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing a spokesperson from the HHS.

Just to be clear, this is a violation of the fundamental ethical principle in clinical trial design called "equipoise."

Equipoise means that no-one is exposed to excess risk just to test the therapy. That's specifically *why* vaccine trials don't use placebo arms.

Ethical violation as POLICY.

Biden, 52%: “low end approval”
Trump, 39%: proceeding “as expected”

100 days in and the public feels Trump’s presidency is proceeding mostly as expected - AP-NORC Most partisans agree they are getting what they expected from Trump’s second term, but 84% of Democrats think Trump is doing a poor or terrible job as president so far and 68% of Republicans think he’...

Wow I said yesterday we probably weren't far from the first national poll where Trump's approval dipped into the 30s. And here we are: AP-NORC: 39% approve, 59% disapprove. Best wishes to all who celebrate. apnorc.org/projects/100...

this guy is a world class asshole

At this point it's not even just that they're lying, it's that the lies are so insultingly obvious. This is up there with "no, the details of an imminent airstrike weren't classified" and "we have no way of getting abductees back from the guy we're paying to house them."

White House claims China is negotiating with them. China says, no, that's not true. Trump is planning to unilaterally roll back most of his China tariffs in exchange for nothing. So, in other words, a complete and humiliating failure.

US FDA suspends food safety quality checks after staff cuts

US FDA suspends food safety quality checks after staff cuts reut.rs/42C4h1Z

WOW. One of the Venezuelans whom Kristi Noem tried to render to El Salvador's slave prison managed to avoid removal and was able to make it to immigration court, and you'll never guess what happened: THE GOVERNMENT GAVE NO EVIDENCE OF HIS GANG MEMBERSHIP. Due process ftw

Destroy DOGE, undo every bit of its work, and render every DOGE employee unemployable in their professional field for life. End their careers and shame them in every way we can. And make them see that we fixed the government and everything they did was for naught.

Just got word from my college roommate - who is the state archivist for the state of South Dakota - that due to the DOGE shutdowns of IMLS, they can no longer fund InterLibrary Loan in SD.

This means exchange between libraries, ability to get books delivered across the system, is gone as of 4/30.

We had the reporter on tonight; @maddow has the whistleblower

When Andrew Tate was charged with rape and human trafficking, Trump intervened to fly him back to the US.

When a working-class father of a disabled 5-year-old child was wrongfully deported and charged with NO crime, Trump refuses to lift a finger.

God I miss the days when the only thing most people had to worry about was a beach making them old

Lots of signs that tourism business in the US is absolutely cratering. International tourism is only part of that. But just remarkable that you see Secretary of State saying stuff like this.

Elon Musk said he’d cut the federal budget by $2 trillion

Quickly lowered this to $1 trillion

Now he’s down to $150 billion

And even THAT appears to be an overestimate of $92 billion

So-after firing thousands of workers and destroying government services

This clown will cut $58 billion

Maybe

The US government has made an agreement to pay a foreign government to imprison people without any legal process for 12 months (pending the US government's decision as to what happens next) while putting in court testimony that it has no power to recover an individual from foreign custody

My fellow Gen Xers, I have so many questions

tbh i didn't know one person could destroy the global economy

one of the most accurate memes out there

This is a good, funny sign. But it gets at a key element of what Social Security does. Middle aged people who aren't fully supporting aging parents can fund their kids education. It runs through the whole life cycle.

The image is a screenshot of a tweet from Neil Stone (@DrNeilStone ). The tweet reads: "RFK Jr has cut Alzheimers research. ALZHEIMERS. One of the most devastating, urgent and increasing health problems we face today. He’s not interested. He’s a nasty piece of work."

Gen Z and Millennials: In ten years when we’re still without a cure and you’re caring for your parents, remember what he did.