Me.

Thank YOU so much for writing this!

I'm An Outsider Living Deep In MAGA Country. This Is What Most People Will Never Know About Life Here. "I still don’t know if I belong here."

This is a beautifully written essay from @author-maya-fisher.bsky.social.

"Resilience doesn’t mean strength. It means you keep breathing even when no one tells you to."

She wrote the "Reborn In Shadows" novels, which are very much worth reading.

I'm glad to have the opportunity.

It's strange. I wasn't sure i'd be able to handle it, emotionally and mentally. But I find it fulfilling in a really nice way.

Tahara this evening. They don't happen very often, thankfully. But I'm grateful to be able to do them.

I've developed a personal ritual of chanting the gayatri mantra aloud in the car while I drive there and back. I find it calming and focusing.

To Stay in Her Home, She Let In an A.I. Robot

💙

Original: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/u...

Paywall free: archive.ph/Hdhfe

At the time:
Property taxes jumped.
Everything snowballed.
Home prices and values increased.
Landlords doubled, tripled and quadrupled rents.

Homes that were assessed at $400,000 in 1998 were suddenly "worth" $1,200,000+ in 2003.

Prices never dropped and the city became a lot less affordable.

Mamdani Threatens Blanket Property Tax Hike as ‘Last Resort’ Stymied by Albany on tax increases for wealthy individuals and corporations, the mayor proposed a preliminary budget with a 9.5% property tax hike, which he called the “most harmful path."

This is going to be interesting. Mamdani's proposing a 9.5% property tax increase if he can't tax the rich.

The last time property taxes were raised in NYC was under Bloomberg, who hiked them by 18.5%.

Back then, that increase made it impossible for us to buy a home. We were priced out.

Jesse Jackson - European Holocaust Memorial Day for Sinti und Roma Civil Rights Activist

This is a transcript of a Jackson speech from 2019, commemorating a new Roma and Sinti memorial in Auschwitz-Birkenau on European Holocaust Memorial Day for the Sinti and Roma.

The Reverend Jesse Jackson has passed away.

He grew from someone who made an antisemitic slur in 1984 to a pro-Jewish advocate. He defied expectations and transformed himself into a strong, public voice against antisemitism.

I have such respect for the man. May his memory be a blessing.

.

"I have no idea who Birkat Hamazon is" is wild.

TransLash's Relocation Guide: translash.org/resources/tr...

Pay attention to this. The purpose of these investigations is not just to manufacture evidence to support Trump’s 2020 “voter fraud” accusations, but also to set the stage for another round of efforts to suppress votes and delegitimize election results in 2026 (which the GOP is likely to lose).

True.

Thursday will be their fourth full day home from school. We've been home since Friday afternoon.

How are things there? Are you all ok?

School cancelled AGAIN tomorrow.

Kids are desperate to get out of the house now.

Both of ours are full, unfortunately.

It's good you can wait! Right now it's very slick outside. Pls be careful if you do wind up going out later. Hopefully some of this will melt by late afternoon, but who knows?

It barely snows here, and when it does it's usually just a dusting. We don't even own a snow shovel anymore!

Had to chop into and clear the ice blocking the gate from opening with a long handled garden shovel. Messy but effective.

Small chunks of ice against a brick wall, next to a wooden gate.

We have garbage pickup today. Haven't ventured outside since Friday.

On the ground? Solid ice. Not deep. We live in an HOA, so our garbage bins aren't allowed to be visible from the street on non-pickup days. Ours live in our backyard.

Couldn't open the backyard gate. Blocked by 3" of ice.

YES!

THE DILDO DISTRIBUTION DELEGATION The revolution did not arrive with speeches, pamphlets, or a carefully moderated Zoom call about optics.

@cnn-news.bsky.social please, please, please interview one of the organizers of this specific protest.

Do it in prime time.
Imagine the ratings.

Extra points if a spluttering, outraged, emasculated ICE agent provides counterpoint. 🤣

www.closertotheedge.net/p/the-dildo-...

This is genuinely hilarious. And inspiring.

"As I stood there coughing, eyes streaming, lungs on fire, watching cops lose their goddamn minds over a dildo, I realized something sacred and stupid and true:

...you absolutely cannot maintain authority while tear-gassing people over a rubber dick."

THE DILDO DISTRIBUTION DELEGATION The revolution did not arrive with speeches, pamphlets, or a carefully moderated Zoom call about optics.

"There's a special kind of rage that comes from realizing your car is gone while you are holding a box of dildos and trying to overthrow a federal agency before midnight. This is not a scenario your therapist prepares you for. This is the kind of inconvenience that feels personally targeted by God."

It's been so many years since I saw this one that I did not remember that the movie has a disturbing scene where Jason Alexander assaults Julia Roberts. I really have to remember to look up *everything* before watching.

This afternoon's movie was My Girl. My son skipped it. We didn't let my daughter know about the ending in advance.

She sobbed. 😞

We're now watching Pretty Woman. Which is less sad, but from the premise alone I doubt it's aged well.

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, warning signs of our contemporary society crumbling As we observe Holocaust Remembrance Day, we must also examine the signs of troubling moral degradation in the United States today.

A society’s moral fabric does not degrade all at once. It does so as a kind of cumulative effect.

...agencies of state power operate without the restraint of transparent accountability
...deaths treated as less than tragic, because the people who died were seen as less than fully human."

Menopause linked to Alzheimer's-like brain changes Menopause is linked to a loss of grey matter in regions involved with memory and emotion, study suggests.

Menopause linked to Alzheimer's-like brain changes

Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal More than 36,500 Iranians were killed by security forces during the January 8-9 crackdown on nationwide protests, making it the deadliest two-day protest massacre in history, according to documents re...

www.iranintl.com/en/202601255...

Sharing this, with a note about the source: Iran International is UK-based, but majority-owned by Saudi Arabia. Their reporting about Iran has an anti-regime bias. The facts they choose to report seem accurate, but what they don't report is anyone's guess.

Thank you, @adamserwer.bsky.social.

Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong The pushback against ICE exposed a series of mistaken assumptions.

Gift link. Amazing, inspiring piece.

"The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once."