In a Strange Land

The U.S. Government’s Repair Bills Are Coming Due Decades of accumulated technical debt have hollowed out state capacity.

My new Foreign Policy article is out: “The U.S. Government’s Repair Bills Are Coming Due.”

It looks at what happens when austerity becomes policy, and how the national security enterprise erodes when we hollow out the state that sustains it.

foreignpolicy.com/2025/10/29/t...

this is like if Obama had a team whose job was to argue in the Breitbart comment section

it is pretty funny that the government is so completely obsessed with Posting that they came here to set up accounts during a shutdown

Screenshot of a Facebook post featuring three of the Portland protesters wearing inflatable frog costumes with the following text: Episcopalians on Facebook Elizabeth Rose Elrod • 22h • Exodus 8:2-6 "But if you refuse to let them go, I will plague your whole country with frogs... The frogs shall come up on you and on your people and on all your officials."

you fucked around and now the Episcopalians are doing memes. are you happy now. are you

This also tells you a lot: www.adl.org/resources/ar...

doomscroll break

Such a good take. And part of why I don’t want my kids using it, even though I generally am content using it selectively myself.

In past shutdowns, it was a highly decentralized process, with leaders across gov applying criteria. It wasn’t perfect. Some services were not essential but stayed open with residual balances. That left some big variation, but generally did a good job of maintaining mission critical work.

This shouldn't need to be said, but coal is failing in the year 2025 because it is more expensive than alternative solutions. You can't polish this lump.

Let it ride. Especially if it’s federal adjacent, they may need client approval before they proceed. And with the FY ending, everything is FUBAR’d.

My last cycle, the timeline slipped 6+ weeks, but they ended up giving me way more money than planned in the final offer.

this is something you just have to live with if you are even barely well-known online; people make up elaborate stories about you in their heads. it will always happen and you cannot give a shit about it, only stomp on it if they try to spread these weird tales to anybody you actually know.

YOU MUST DO YOUR STRETCHES TO HAVE STRENGTH TO GRIND YOUR ENEMIES' BONES TO DUST.

Goebbels Ends Careers of Five 'Aryan' Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime (Published 1939)

These are precedented times and the precedent is a loud ass warning

www.nytimes.com/1939/02/04/a...

Political violence disproportionately hurts people with less power, not people with more power. Political violence will disproportionately hurt people of color and women and LGBTQ people. It’s not fair, but that’s the way it works. Celebrating political violence means at best indifference to that.

Our billionaire President put an airline lobbyist in charge of the Department of Transportation. So no, this is not a surprise.

Opinion: Zohran Mamdani will make New York City work for workers As unions that represent nearly 400,000 workers across the city, we’ve proudly united behind Mamdani’s agenda to build a city where workers can truly thrive.

Unions built this city and keep it running. They’ve fought against power and greed to make the impossible possible. Now, they need an ally in City Hall.

On Labor Day, the presidents of the Hotel Trades Council, 32BJ and SEIU 1199 make the case at @cityandstateny.bsky.social.

On this Labor Day, let us remember that it wasn’t the CEOs and billionaires who saved us during COVID-19. It was the janitors, nurses, cleaning crews, grocery and food workers with their hard, often invisible labor.

never get sick of seeing the self-own of someone posting something negative about bluesky while simultaneously censoring its name because they site you're posting on instead algorithmically buries any post or account that mentions one of its competitors

You have more in common with every unhoused person, every undocumented immigrant, every trans or otherwise LGBTQ person, every disabled person, every person in any marginalized minoritized ethnicity, than you do with even one single billionaire.

These people don't pay taxes, and they're coming for every single valuable thing you have.

More than 2.8m people in US identify as trans, including 724,000 youth, data shows Exclusive: largest data analysis of its kind counters Trump’s aggressive efforts to deny trans minors’ existence

It is an incredible testament to our strength that in the face of a relentless political onslaught designed to push transgender people from public life, more and more of us are finding the courage to be ourselves. Every living trans person is a Republican policy failure.

Trump Administration Quietly Makes Last-Minute Policy Change That Will Impact Thousands An estimated 14,000 trans federal employees would be impacted by this policy change.

Public service is a responsibility in a democracy.

The introduction of a bar to public service for one group of citizens is a threat to the integrity of public service and to the efficacy of our democracy.

www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-...

They also make down to a (mens) 34, and they fit bodies of all genders pretty well.

These are truly amazing, in all weights of fabric.

us.spierandmackay.com/collection/f...

a graph of US solar generation, which was 40TWh in May and is up 26% compared to the year prior

Official data is in today, and America set a new record-high for solar power in April, with generation up 26% compared to last year!

I knew what I was doing but I still hate myself afterward. Plus side? Doesn’t take long for both cardio and strength training on the rower!

I’m getting back to cardio, and today’s rowing may be the end of me.

Happy birthday. May you persist and thrive in the next year.

I’ve really loved this food court when transition through Penn Station. Definitely makes the wait a lot better.