"They're making D&D an MMO" is old enough to run for congress

A truly sickening and humbling photo I took of a male mandarin duck. I didn’t even look this good when I was 24 and had just bought some new trousers.

Please subscribe to my newsletter here: www.tom-cox.com. I promise it’s better than the things I post on Bluesky. With the possible exception of this mandarin duck who dropped by to show off on the railings outside my kitchen.

the end card to MST3K that says "keep circulating the tapes"

In retrospect this had a way larger effect on me then I ever could have imagined.

A common refrain I've heard from (often well-meaning) people is that they agree that Section 230 is important, but they'd like to reform it so it doesn't apply to algorithmically recommended content. I think that's a bad idea and finally wrote a long thing explaining why.

A meme of Alysa Liu based on Da Share Zone reading: JUST WALK OUT work social thing movies home class dentist figure skating too fancy weed store cops it your quick friend ships IF IT SUCKS... HIT DA BRICKS!!! Real winners quit You can leave!! Da Gold Zone

I’ve been talking about Alysa Liu’s story about her quitting skating only to come back and become even better because she did it for herself and this came to me in a dream…

dana is incredible, whatever musical needs you may have 🔥

I've been yelling about this for a while, but even in the medieval era there was great debate and carryings on about the application of the law to the sovereign. the notion that the sovereign was above the law was NOT settled. The Digna vox was established in the 5th Century ffs.

I posted this 38 minutes ago and it's done.
THANK YOU ALL...gonna go probably make a lady (good) cry here in a sec.
Thank you @normcharlatan.bsky.social nation!

A significant number of Americans think that being racist should be free speech but calling someone racist should not be.

Oh yeah this is basically demo coding

that 10-15 seconds of horror when you install a new desktop app and are frantically looking for dark mode in the settings

The right-wing version is that it didn't happen because "things like that don't happen to people like US" and the left (which you see too much on here) is that "if only Biden FELT HARDER about Covid it would have gone away"

There’s a very widespread assumption that any action undertaken for the common good is a scam designed to help African Americans at the expense of whites. This underlying prejudice is then wrapped up in verbiage about freedom and socialism.

COVID was conservatives announcing that they will never sacrifice anything for anyone else, not even to save the life of their own grandmas

Sandy Hook/Uvalde was conservatives announcing we must sacrifice everything, even our children, for them and for their right to a large personal arsenal

3,000 Americans died on 9/11 and we invaded two countries and created vast new government agencies to protect the country and surveil the citizens

At the height of COVID, 3,000 Americans were dying EVERY DAY & we were told wearing masks in Home Depot & online classes were crimes against humanity

We didn’t learn anything from covid. I was in Singapore when the pandemic started, and they immediately applied lessons from the early oughts SARS epidemic.
It was so disheartening to then turn around and listen to Trump suggesting drinking bleach. And we said yeah more of that.

I hear that from a lot of folks - mostly from the right who still believe they were mandated by libs to wear masks outside, stay inside, forced to get vaccinated! None of which happened. And on the middle and left, who magine that it was just a cold and we overreacted. A million people died. wtf?

I walked across an absolutely surreal and empty NYC to see the hospital ship docked in the river. I have pics. I know it happened. I saw the morgue trucks. I heard the endless wailing of sirens taking people who were not likely to make it to hospital.

Now it's like none of that ever happened.

I was thinking about that today because I remember when the hospital ship was docked in the Hudson River because NYC hospitals were overflowing. Morgue trucks were stacked up behind every hospital. Everyone seemed to know someone who died of COVID.

We seem to have memory-holed ALL OF IT.

They were stacking bodies up in refrigerated trucks and now people are just either pretending it never happened or blaming vaccines.

I remember a politician saying, “I’ve heard masking only protects other people”, as a reason to not mask. And I knew we were in trouble.

You can get into all kinds of reasons why and why the normal, hard working american is so often beaten down and been shown for decades why they (allegedly) can’t have a less bloodthirsty society, to the point we may actually believe it. But it’s still disheartening

A remarkably disheartening thing is you get the sense there are a handful of genuine historic fork in the road moments of what kind of country we want in our lifetime, and I still can’t shake how much during the height of Covid we had a decision of what lessons we’d all take from it and what…

The reason for his stupid fucking boat post?
He should be grateful, but trump isn't grateful to anyone. It REALLY cramps his 'only I can solve it' talking point, which embarrasses him, which REQUIRES him to start blustering about nonsensical bullshit.
He sees receiving help in any form as weakness.

Danish military evacuates US submariner who needed urgent medical care off Greenland Denmark’s military says its arctic command forces evacuated a crew member of a U.S. submarine off the coast of Greenland for urgent medical treatment.

Denmark’s military says its arctic command forces evacuated a crew member of a U.S. submarine off the coast of Greenland for urgent medical treatment.

yeah it's probably bad that the entire organization is falling apart but also I'd prefer that to whatever they were actually going to use it for

certainly makes me feel less than enthused about the US hockey team but I continue to hold that Kash treating the FBI director job as an extended make-a-wish trip is the absolute least damaging thing he could do with the position given this administration's goals

Equality Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Sarah McBride: At the end of the day, transphobia, homophobia, misogyny, and sexism are all rooted in the same prejudice: the belief that one perception at birth should dictate who you are, how you act, what you do, who you love, and how you dress. And it's why threats towards trans people are threats towards all women."

"Because when they use trans people as the tip of the spear, when they come after trans people as they're doing right now using us as a political wedge issue, using people like me, using me—as you mentioned—as a political pawn,"

"not only are they licensing discrimination against trans people, they're sanctioning gender policing that we know in reality actually disproportionately targets non-transgender women."

"When they come after trans people[...] not only are they licensing discrimination against trans people, they're sanctioning gender policing that we know in reality actually disproportionately targets non-transgender women."
- CEC Co-Chair @mcbride.house.gov

Not bad for someone who has had to spend a fair amount of time covering up evidence that appears to link him to sexual crimes involving children. A multitasker!

tl;dr We are ruled by people who enjoy watching other people die.

After everything we saw, every Republican senator except Mitch McConnell voted to confirm the deranged sadist RFK Jr.

That’s not just failing to learn. That’s an agenda. That’s actively seeking the deaths of other Americans.

Don’t underestimate the role of eugenics in the thinking of the GOP.