John

Please cease following me and follow these people instead. I don't know what idiot put me on a list, but I can assure you that it was a stupid decision and you'll regret it.

I literally just turned in a round of edits to my editor at Bloomsbury for my book about the founding of JPL and the Suicide Squad, and this is painful to see.

JPL has been responsible for some of our most incredible achievements in science, and this is going to set us back.

this is the “break glass in case of not enough potentially monetizing users”

the case against any democratic shutdown strategy was that the congressional party always loses shutdowns and who trusts Schumer and Jeffries to buck that trend

what those folks didn't see coming was the Trump / Vought / Miller "actually we are wholly responsible for the shutdown" strategy

We lost sight of the idea politics is something that you do, not just electoralism or numbers fuckstein wonkism

Yes. It gets to Marshall's quip about this being a constitution they are expounding. So much of what the Roberts Court is doing is a legal language game untethered from the aim, purpose and structure of the Constitution.

Trump Offers All Colleges Preferential Funding Plan Rejected by MIT The Trump administration is inviting all US colleges to participate in a compact — initially rejected by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — that would grant preferential federal funding in re...

After getting zero firm commitments to this point from the first nine invitees, the Trump administration is extending its proposed compact to all colleges. Expect some red-state publics to say yes.

HAA letter to Oceanside, CA for tonight's Planning Commission meeting re proposed 83-unit housing development project "Guajome Lakes Homes" on Guajome Lake Road, southeast of Albright Street, which includes 4 very low-income units.
drive.google.com/file/d/1OtTg...

huh, it’s almost like Canadians intended to inflict reciprocal harm on American exports to put homegrown political pressure on the Trump admin in favour of free trade.

A window pane with this text: "...No one would exchange his country for a foreign land if his own afforded him the means of living a decent and happy life." —Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum (1891), no. 47

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, living in exile in Egypt to escape the fury of an evil king, are, for all times and all places, the models and protectors of every migrant, alien, and refugee of whatever kind, who, whether compelled by fear of persecution or by want, is forced to leave his native land, his beloved friends and relatives, his close friends, and to seek a foreign soil." —Pope Pius XII, Exsul Familia Nazarethana (1962), Apostolic Constitution

"The poverty and misfortune with which immigrants are stricken are yet another reason for coming generously to their aid... It is necessary to guard against the rise of new forms of racism or xenophobic behavior, which attempt to make these brothers and sisters of ours scapegoats for what may be difficult local situations..." John Paul II, World Migration Day (1996)

"Migrants present a particular challenge for me, since I am the pastor of a church without frontiers, a Church which considers herself a mother to all. For this reason, I exhort all countries to a generous openness which, rather than fearing the loss of local identity, will prove capable of creating new forms of cultural synthesis." Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (2013)

The Catholic Chapel and Center at Yale has added these (and more) quotations from various papal teachings about care and concern for immigrants to the windows outside its main meeting room. This is the kind of catechesis we need more of in the U.S. church.

Having spent a considerable amount of time at a Pentagon-based investment fund, I expect to see men popping off cliché after cliché, vests, dress sneakers, walking/chatting, showing up to work at 1145am, and overflowing, unmonitored inboxes.

You can fix acquisitions by making people do their jobs.

Wow, wow, wow. This has always been legally possible but the law has virtually never been enforced — and now this is the SECOND case I've heard of in the last month (first involving a person with a green card) of a noncitizen being charged for failure to carry their papers.

For a 40m/130-ft. construction hoist in Naples, the cost is €1,500-1,800 for the first month, €500-700/mo. after that. I shudder to think what this would cost in NYC. For one, you’d need to cover the sidewalk with a shed, which would cost many, many times that.

There’s not a tradition of masked police in America,

Ds saying “this is not right; we will hold those responsible & those participating accountable” is the message.

It is a kitchen table issue.

It is inflation.

It is schools.

It is the price of gas.

It is Support The Troops.

It’s the shot.

If there’s ever been a moment to go all in on “America is different and we reject this” it’s right now.

It’s the only American Exceptionalism worth backing.

If your candidate can’t say it or won’t say it, they’re running for the Applesauce Party, which caucuses with Stephen Miller’s men.

I'm loving this Pope.

It's a shame Orwell is so often reduced to 1984 and Animal Farm, which are so commonly abused to have become worthless cliches, when his non-fiction is so interesting and still relevant today. His obsession with language and politics is particularly interesting to think about now

It doesn’t get much press for obvious reasons, and it only shows up occasionally, but there’s a version of Trump that appeared after he took office again that’s atypically melancholic and resigned.

It also showed up in his first (but very much not his second) National Prayer Breakfast speech.

“Without U.S. Studebakers (trucks), we would have had nothing with which to pull our artillery." - Georgy Zhukov

Chicago priest Fr. Larry Dowling describes procession to ICE facility: “No one had the courage to speak directly to us. No one from Homeland Security could stand in the presence of the Monstrance holding the Blessed Sacrament. No wonder. Evil is repelled, recoils in the presence of Christ.”

A city is not the aggregation of the financial interests of the people who currently live there. It's the aggregation of the dreams of all the people who desperately yearn to live there.

The Secretary of Defense was lecturing military leaders about the warrior ethos when he should have been ensuring military pay was exempted from the government shutdown.

"The public has a right to know how the government and the military are operating."

MMWR was the early alert system that told doctors to be on the lookout for Gay-Related Immune Deficiency (and just about every other pandemic/epidemic since the 70s

i don't think there's any way to productively use them. "win a majority and appoint judges who will mulch those powers immediately" is, i think, the ideal outcome.

California’s Wine Industry Is in Crisis — The Wall Street Journal Changing drinking habits, falling prices, tariffs and the weather are forcing winemakers to do the unthinkable: rip up the vines

apple.news/A4-DPKdi2QrS...

There aren’t really any American-built, -owned or -operated ships in international trade, are there? This one is just for the love of the game.

I think it is wild that the Republican leaders of Congress are publicly delegating their branch of government's constitutional spending powers to the president. Why not just let him vote on Supreme Court cases, too?

ICE Stranded a 17-Year-Old on I-20 After Arresting His Father. The Mississippi Dad Now Faces Deportation. A 17-year-old watched as ICE arrested his immigrant father, Hector, on I-20 in June. The family faces mounting legal fees and the risk of deportation.

ICE left David, a 17-year-old boy, stranded on the side of Interstate 20 after pulling over his immigrant father, Hector, in Mississippi.

David began running in the scorching sun after the car and watched as it disappeared from sight—soon headed to a Louisiana ICE prison.

Here's their story.

Russ Vought v @russvought The RIFs have begun. 12:27 PM • 10/10/25 • 15K Views

Three key points:
1) The admin has been planning mass firings to begin in October since February
2) The work necessary to carry out mass firings is illegal during a shutdown, violating the Antideficiency Act, which carries a criminal penalty
3) This harms America, ridding us of talent and expertise