PghGrace

Hear me out: why don’t we take that pile of money given to DHS and instead, give it to a new Department of Technology and Privacy?

We neither have an agency solely designed to monitor/defend the rights of individual Americans or to keep tech in check.

It would be so awesome if we got a version of this on the album!

America, JD Vance tells us, is merely a nation like many others ⁠– a “homeland”, he said upon accepting his nomination to the vice-presidency, for “people with a shared history and a common future”. That’s a vision of American identity that would have described bands of cavepeople in skins just as well or better. Stephen Miller’s proleptic defense of seizing Greenland last week suggests the Trumpists themselves know this. “We live in a world, in the real world ... that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he declared. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” Miller’s laws are the laws of animals. It is true, obviously, that high ideals have long been deployed to obscure or justify predation, here and elsewhere. But Miller’s stance and the stance of the administration is that there aren’t, actually, any high ideals worth pursuing or even pretending to – that the human being, in itself, is nothing so much ⁠and that we are, fundamentally and forever, primitives. Against the demands and best aspirations of civilization – western or any kind – they tell us the human being is a creature that yearns for nothing more than blood and soil, which is, of course, just mud. The lust for mud has taken up many guises in our history and has been many given names of late – neo-reaction, post-liberalism, fascism. But the name familiar to most is evil.

It was evil – the standpoint that only might matters, that human morality, and our sense of reality itself, must yield to the turfism of the primates with the biggest clubs – that ginned up the propaganda that provoked an act of terrorism against our legislature and the policemen defending it five years ago. It is evil that undergirds pronouncements from the same voices responsible for that attack, in defense of the man who shot Renee Nicole Good, that those who disobey the commands of law enforcement, however unsound or unjust, deserve summary execution – that implies, as Fox’s Jesse Watters and others have, that Good’s killing was of trivial significance because she was a lesbian “with pronouns in her bio”. It is evil that sends innocent men to foreign gulags, evil that condemns hundreds of thousands of destitute people abroad to death without a moment’s discussion or debate about what the country they had depended on might owe them, or the furnishing of alternative arrangements for their wellbeing. The gutting of USAID remains this administration’s worst and least surprising offense against the human conscience – a president who rejects the idea that we might have obligations to all within our society can’t be expected to wonder or worry about whether we have obligations to those outside of it. This is also why, after all the noise and nonsense about the need to depose the Maduro regime, the Venezuelan people are now being told that regime will be left in mostly in place for as long as it takes to secure and extract the country’s resources on our terms – that Venezuela will not see democracy unless and until it is profitable for the United States.

Democracy has always been a useless abstraction to those who deny we have basic human entitlements – for those who believe, instead, that the idea of human liberty is a luxury for those wealthy and powerful enough to consider themselves our betters rather than the birthright of all. As many who’ve taken to the streets in protest have noted, the Trump administration’s assaults on liberty here at home are the kinds of abuses that spurred the revolution we will commemorate this year. But no grand revolution is in the offing this time around. The only just and plausible recourse for our situation is politics – understood not merely as the contest to win any given set of elections but as the broader fight to forge a republic that honors and strengthens our humanity. The American project must and will succeed. Its enemies stand for too little. Our lives are worth too much.

I wrote about Renee Good, Venezuela, Greenland, and what it means to be a human being. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Sure: Follow Me, Jump, Doom Du Doom, Work, Fall In Love Again, Back Down, Do It Like This, Sad Song, Killin It, Duh, Pretty Boy

P1Harmony is awesome.

At the end of Jin’s last concert, wasn’t there a card at the end that said something about December? I wondered if that meant Run BTS.

PA election 2025: Supreme Court retention candidate guide Three PA Supreme Court Justices are facing retention votes on Nov. 4: Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, and David Wecht. Here's what you need to know.

🚨ATTN: PA VOTERS
On Election Day 11/4/25

🚨VOTE TO RETAIN to Democratic PA Supreme Court Justices: Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty and David Wecht

🚨PHILLY
Re-elect DA LARRY KRASNER

www.spotlightpa.org/news/2025/09...

That is actually pretty cute!

We need to make the anniversary of the day the traitors surrendered a national holiday and lean into it hard.

Did he get highlights in his hair since yesterday?

AI policy and guidelines - Joe McVeigh.docx You are strictly prohibited from using Generative AI (GenAI) or Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, and Grok, for research or writing assignments. Any submitted wor...

Unfortunately, my policy on AI has grown by quite a few sources over the last year. Here it is for anyone who wants to adopt or adapt it for their courses. And if you have ideas, I'm all ears.

Email from the "PUBLIC RECORDS OFFICE" to Kate Starbird asking for all emails from Jan 1 2021 through July 30 2025 with any of the following keywords: "diversity and inclusion" "DEIA" "DEI" "Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging" "DEIB" "gender identity" "racial preference" "ESG" "organizational equity" "intersectionality" "anti-racism" "critical race theory" "LGBTQ+" "transgender" "cisgender" "gender ideology" "white privilege" "privilege walk" "cultural humility" "equity audit" "restorative justice" "racial equity" "implicit bias" "microaggressions" "inclusive pedagogy" "identity-based oppression" "systems of oppression" "queer" "non-binary" "sexuality" “Trump” “fascist”

If anyone is curious about the current list of search terms being used by right wing activist organizations to harass university professors, here's a public records request I received today from Mike Howell of the Heritage Foundation. Not intimidating or meant to curtail by my speech at all, right?

Just learned from LinkedIn that a Heritage Foundation affiliate is now FOIA-ing (or equivalent) instructors’ syllabi to go snooping for supposed illegal DEI at state universities. It’s hard to describe how far past McCarthyism we’re headed here.

I think that’s your unique user code.

What a perversion.

CFPB Quietly Kills Rule to Shield Americans From Data Brokers Russell Vought, acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has canceled plans to more tightly regulate the sale of Americans’ sensitive personal data.

Russell Vought, acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has canceled plans to introduce new rules designed to limit the ability of US data brokers to sell Americans’ most sensitive data, credit history, and Social Security numbers.

Education Policy Reforms Are Key Strategies for Increasing the Married Birth Rate The fertility rate in the United States has dropped to 1.6,

Let's be clear about who some of these folks are and what their public positions have been - like Burke's position that women should not be seeking graduate degrees (and that gov't should not support them in doing so) www.heritage.org/education/re...

The Honorable Josh Stein Governor of North Carolina 20301 Mail Service Center Raleigh, North Carolina 27699 Dear Governor Stein: This is in response to your April 25, 2025, appeal of the denial of your request for an extension to the cost share waiver under major disaster FEMA-4827-DR that was declared on September 28, 2024, due to Tropical Storm Helene. You specifically requested an extension of the 100 percent federal cost share for debris removal and emergency protective measures, including direct federal assistance for an additional 180 days. After a careful and thorough review of all the information available, including that contained in your initial request for a cost share adjustment and appeal, we have concluded that an extension of the 100 percent federal cost share for debris removal and emergency protective measures, including direct federal assistance for an additional 180 days under major disaster declaration FEMA-4827-DR is not warranted. David E. Richardson Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Administrator

Congratulations, North Carolina. You’re on your own and your FEMA request is “not warranted.”

Read ⬇️

🧪 Detailed data viz NYT article, out today, on the extent of funding cuts at the National Science Foundation.

This "broken pie chart" is neat & new to me: Powerfully shows the slowdown in new NSF awards across areas.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

I helped build a government AI system. DOGE fired me, rolled the AI out to the whole agency, and implied the AI can do my job and the jobs of the others they've fired.

It can't. But, what DOGE accidentally revealed about themselves in the process is fascinating. 🧵

how much of the DOGE-driven destruction of the nation’s research and development capacity is because these people are AI cultists who believe that we’re on the verge of creating a sentient general intelligence?

Has Musk said anything about this clear manipulation of his AI?

How about two or three wall-mounted hooks above a wall mounted shoe storage cabinet from IKEA? IKEA shoe cabinets range from a nice-looking inexpensive plastic option to pricier ones that look more like a cabinet.

Your periodic reminder that "fancy fonts" on places like Bluesky are unicode & are a nightmare for screen reader users. DON'T use for your name

Not only that, good lucky having anyone search for you in the search bar by name.

More examples in the original post on Masto: toot.cafe/@aardrian/11...

I am teaching my phd writing workshop course this quarter, question: are there any words/phrases said to you by an advisor/mentor that stuck with you, were memorable, or particularly helpful? If so please reply below!

T-30 minutes from the start at #HandsOff Boston and Massachusetts is showing UP

Report: mRNA vaccines are in RFK Jr’s crosshairs; funding in question “Kennedy’s war on vaccines has started,” one researcher said.

mRNA vaccines are legit a near-miracle tech, there's one in testing that might be able to cure pancreatic cancer, and this fucking degenerate might take them from us arstechnica.com/health/2025/...

Apparently freeze dried is to be avoided to. I fed my cats a kibble with a freeze dried coating. Finally found a replacement kibble that they will eat.

BREAKING: Senate just UNANIMOUSLY restored $1.1 billion for DC local govt that was eliminated

Why?

Because Senators of BOTH parties work in DC - and most have homes there - and none of them want to be in a hellhole

Now - try applying that same logic to THE REST OF THE COUNTRY

Moon is such a beautiful song.