Bill Z. Stephens 🏳️‍🌈

If you do call the police for a mental health situation here in the City of St. Louis, be sure to request a Purple Shirt member! Our Cops with Clinicians program, though reviled by the parasitic assholes on Nextdoor and Facebook who contribute nothing to society, is wildly successful in this regard.

For those outside of higher education, the sciences are especially elitist and have the largest chip on their shoulders. It's not that you won't find that in the humanities — you certainly will! But damn, the quantitative fields can be so damn difficult. As if they don't get all new everything 🙄

Now where else have we heard the insidious rhetoric that a Black female Mayor is "cooking the books" on crime stats? 🧐🧐🧐

Almost-welcome to St. Louis!

Yesterday was my 85th and last day on the Red Cross tornado disaster relief operation. 12 weeks ranging from the morning after, to the midway point of long-term recovery.

I need some time to decompress, but I'd like to do a write-up on this experience. We can come back from this stronger—will we?

So what's going on here, eh?

Kennedy Curse Sure Taking Its Sweet Time With RFK Jr.

Kennedy Curse Sure Taking Its Sweet Time With RFK Jr.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced the extension of the Aug. 11 deadline to Aug. 26 in a brief statement. It offered no explanation for the deviation from the city’s request for an Oct. 10 deadline.

No worries! Just wanted you to know. Thanks for the free article!

It's not a free article on mobile, at least.

I've been reflecting on the recreated videos of the Ceausescu trial myself..

First porn, now YouTube, ID checks to access the internet are creeping in.

China & Russia started this way. Now their internet is locked down: no anonymity, no dissent, total surveillance.

We are sleepwalking into total fascism. Don’t buy the “protect the kids” excuse. They want total control.

History is the study of human choices, and each day we're living and have lived since 2016 are going to be under a microscope by future scholars.

This is exactly how I imagine ancient Greek theater. I'm not kidding, either; I think we unintentionally add a somber severity to history out of reverence, when really, they were probably just having a laugh. Parts of the Iliad are comedic, after all!

On this Chairteenth, we celebrate the good folks of Montgomery, especially our guy AquaMayne. Special shout out to the folks who, within 72 hours, recreated this in their apartment complex. A COMMUNITY!! 💀

Such an important point:

“Progressive policies…are very popular in this country…but you have a segment of the Democratic Party that keeps trying to convince progressives we’re losing elections because their policies need to be more moderate.” Matt Dowd

I wish more understood this.

A confession…
🧵

Called it! He'll move to vacate the offices, and in doing so, will lower the threshold for quorum. This is the early stages of a civil war, y'all — or perhaps a reheating of it. It's the last gasp of our constitutional system of government. Republicans destroyed our government, plain and simple.

Rep. Flood is correct — we do not have unlimited money in the United States. No country does.

Which is exactly why a nation's allocation of those limited funds is an expression of its priorities, spirit, and ethos. A budget is a declaration of what — and who — matters most to us.

11 more NYC libraries will soon open on Sundays A $2 million City Council deal will expand seven-day service to more than 30 branches citywide.

Eleven more libraries will reopen on Sundays, thanks to the leadership of the City Council. They never should've been closed in the first place.

As Mayor, I'll end this absurd budget dance that keeps our beloved libraries in limbo year after year.

No seat should be safe for those who neither uphold our rights, our interests, nor our dignity. Sometimes it becomes incumbent upon some individual to pose the electoral question: can this — should this! — not be better?

The response may be a firm "no.", as I know. Nevertheless pose the question.

Did we as a society ever pause to reflect on the hippie-to-fascist pipeline? Because it seems that there's a hippie-to-fascist pipeline that we're not talking about.

Nice little tacit disassociation in the last sentence there, traitor. As if he wasn't part of the MAGA movement 🙄

Hey, at least we got Hulk Hogan, right?

Tom Lehrer was smart and, thus, fine as hell, and I won't stand any nonsense that says otherwise.

Sit tibi terra levis, Mr. Lehrer!

West Nile virus has been detected in mosquitoes in the St. Louis Metro Area.

I actually know who needs to hear this, but:

Ending parking minimums ≠ Banning new parking

Ending single family only zoning ≠ Banning new and existing single-family homes

I've been listening to Studs Terkel interviews from the 70s (if not earlier) and the looking threat of automation is a frequently mentioned topic. As much as they change, things really do stay the same.

I absolutely adore the work of Vivian Maier, a reclusive photographer whose work was only somewhat recently discovered. Just really stunning photographs.

I adore Vivian Maier's work! She doesn't get enough exposure. Thanks for sharing!

Happy to lend my constitutional law textbooks to the endeavor.