Ted Mann

Trump-Musk Alliance Unravels in Split Over ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ From the moment Donald Trump and Elon Musk joined forces, betting in Washington held that the president’s bond with the First Buddy who bankrolled his comeback election win wouldn’t last.

Guess who on guess who: “I warned people in the transition, this guy is unpredictable, immature and a narcissist, and he’d turn on anybody — including the president — when it suited him.”

w @joshuagreen.bsky.social

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

And this: "Yet even as he prides himself on dispassionate rigor, Musk has proved remarkably uninterested in figuring out how the government that he sought to transform really works."

There’s your empty shelf.

US goods imports drop 19.8% in April — largest on record

Beating the Press In a time of eroding journalistic freedoms, a new book chronicles the deliberate effort to use libel law to bankrupt the independent media we have left.

The story Enrich tells is how wealthy plaintiffs are becoming far more systematic in bringing ruinous lawsuits not to win them, but to inflict costs. For ... powerful interests the goal is not just to kill stories or outlets, but the law that makes the stories possible.

prospect.org/culture/book...

When it comes to Trump's brain drain, “the damage is already done” How the DOGE-triggered attack on government research left America in the dark.

I spent five weeks talking to federal workers about knowledge loss and brain drain across the federal government, and its implications, both right now and for decades to come. Their stories are frightening, but I think it's important to know what we're facing: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Musk Exits DOGE Leaving Threadbare Agencies and Strained Workers The full effects of a drastic cost-cutting campaign are coming into focus as its billionaire architect departs from the government

Musk is out (or so he says). But the DOGE mindset remains, evident in gutted agencies and a demoralized workforce.

“Nobody else in the world is doing this kind of thing. And it’s basically going to get shelved.”

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

I take the subway by myself multiple times literally every day and the most memorable things that have happened recently are that a very cute dog in a purple sweater was on my train car a few days ago and today a guy with a cane got on and literally four people immediately sprang up so he could sit

Guy admitting he got caught speeding but being annoyed about it.

Very funny to act like the victim of a broken social contract in a post where you admit to breaking the social contract. Driver brain is astonishing.

Third Man erasure

feels like the end stage of social media acclimation — every drop of sugar water from the beaker is the first in existence and every previous moment is invalid and suspect

but if i'm not allowed to feed artists into my artist killing machine it's going to be basically impossible for the machine to keep killing artists. is that what you want?? and before you answer keep in mind this is a very expensive machine

Santino Corleone beating up Carlo with a trash can in The Godfather Part I.

The saddest part of the trash bag on the sidewalk revanchists is that they are also declaring their ignorance of the most righteous beatdown in 70s cinema.

Andrew Cuomo’s sideline — nuke startup adviser — just bumped a bit further into the money.

My Father Prosecuted History’s Crimes. Then He Died in One.

This is a really terrific, deeply thoughtful reckoning with personal and public/political history and the murky gray zone between international law and anything that can satisfyingly be called justice — by @bernstein.bsky.social

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/m...

“.. Low-information voters may be fooled for a little while, but bond markets won’t.”

this is with no exaggeration a david duke line

+1000

I am now trying to remember which critic (Ebert?) thought Hoskins too was robbed, both because of the comedy and pathos of the performance and because he was doing it all acting opposite a primitive greenscreen.

hyperloop that shit

Relevant to this: if you are in the business of selling self-driving cars, one competitor you might not want to contend with is low-cost, reliably funded, and plentiful mass transit, which a) already exists and b) already far surpasses all your claims about improving rider safety.

A fresh round of books — more than 600, by one estimate — have been taken out of circulation from Hillsborough County classrooms after a letter from state officials ramped up pressure on school district officials. Those books include Margaret Atwood‘s The Handmaid‘s Tale, Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Ari Folman’s Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation. In a letter last week, Attorney General James Uthmeier asked the Hillsborough County School Board for the “immediate removal” of materials he called “patently pornographic.”

One of the free state of Florida's biggest counties just blocked schoolkids from reading "The Handmaid‘s Tale," "Beloved" and "Anne Frank’s Diary" www.tampabay.com/news/educati...

my sense is that people are still dramatically underrating how much freaking money crypto is pouring into elections

The federal government filed its response arguing why a judge shouldn't issue a restraining order preventing them from retaliating against New York for continuing congestion pricing, and their one narrative argument against the toll is an out of date environmental justice argument

On Friday, Andrew Cuomo's appearance on the Spanish-language radio station Mega 97.9's morning show was looking like one of his uneventful, unremarkable media hits—until he repeatedly asked a host of the show, who was seated next to him, out on a date.

hellgatenyc.com/creepy-andre...

Everybody's Business - Bloomberg Listen Everybody's Business Podcast

Fun news: Today Businessweek launched Everybody’s Business, a new weekly (chatty, fun) podcast about what’s going on with the economy. It’s hosted by @chafkin.bsky.social and @svaneksmith.bsky.social, and I’m on our first episode talking about tariffs and Christmas! www.bloomberg.com/podcasts/ser...

It’s time to consider privatizing SEPTA | Opinion The fiscal instability of SEPTA is quickly on the horizon and has left us with a system in crisis and no good way out. The solutions for this cannot come from the same bank of tired ideas.

Comparing a transit agency that's required to run a fixed schedule and provide universal access to an entire region to Uber is just so deeply unserious it's hard to know where to begin -- www.inquirer.com/opinion/comm...

Mysterious New Group’s Likely Mission: Restoring Cuomo to Office

An informal adviser to former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has formed a new outside group that appears to be designed to boost his campaign for mayor of New York City w/ Nick Fandos www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/n...

it is on these grounds that I find it hard to believe Donald Trump Jr. doesn’t know what getting eighty-sixed means…

only a story if Iacocca talked back tbh

MOVE: Untangling the Tragedy | The Standoff Philly tries to evict MOVE from its Osage Avenue headquarters. As neighbors evacuate the block, former Inquirer reporter Maida Odom and former NBC10 photojournalist Pete Kane stay as the siege begins.

War reporting in West Philly - 40 years ago today

www.inquirer.com/news/move-un...