Jim Gruman

Banner in the Sky, Ullman
Time and place as a kid, I guess

Code switching -- not being your thriving authentic self -- is a burden.

Having to hide or not talk about your family or your relationships because a bigot has opinions and is in charge... isn't "love" or even "getting along"

What makes an American? Three in 10 Republicans say: Being White. (National Archives) There's a car in my neighborhood (and perhaps in yours, too) that sports a confounding pair of bumper stickers. One advocates for making America great again, an idea recently popul...

Two of the four most important characteristics for being "American" in the eyes of Republicans? Obeying U.S. laws and respecting the Constitution. 🤔

"If a cyclist makes a mistake, he dies. If a car makes a mistake, he also dies."

This Dan Donahue video is so good. I love his point that a lot of cyclist hate comes from drivers being mad they have to drive everywhere. I don't think that's the reason for *all* the hate, but it's a factor!

Seems worth pointing out—

“Crypto Now Accounts For Most Of Donald Trump’s Net Worth”

@danalexander21.bsky.social for @forbes.com

"Don't be your child's first bully" is pretty good advice.

TY!

Naperville train station 🚉

Naperville

Rural areas in the US are unsafe, because they reflect the repellent values of the conservatives who live there.

the USA built a system of higher education so good that smart/rich people from across the world came here, spending billions to learn here, subsidizing education for Americans while spending money to live in our cities and towns. our government arbitrarily decided we should stop doing that

Gray tabby

#caturday

Seems early

Descent: Destination Saturn

Cantigny music in front of 1st Division Museum

Music, too

Worth pointing out that this is only possible because the “textualists” on the Supreme Court don’t like the text of Section 5 of the 14th Amendment or Section 2 of the 15th Amendment and so they just choose to act like those clauses don’t exist.

Donald J. Trump 9+ @realDonaldTrump I was just informed that our Country's "Jobs Numbers" are being produced by a Biden Appointee, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, who faked the Jobs Numbers before the Election to try and boost Kamala's chances of Victory. This is the same Bureau of Labor Statistics that overstated the Jobs Growth in March 2024 by approximately 818,000 and, then again, right before the 2024 Presidential Election, in August and September, by 112,000. These were Records - No one can be that wrong? We need accurate Jobs Numbers. I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can't be manipulated for political purposes. McEntarfer said there were only 73,000 Jobs added (a shock!) but, more importantly, that a major mistake was made by them, 258,000 Jobs downward, in the prior two months. Similar things happened in the first part of the year, always to the negative. The Economy is BOOMING under "TRUMP" despite a Fed that also plays games, this time with Interest Rates, where they lowered them twice, and substantially, just before the Presidential Election, I assume in the hopes of getting "Kamala" elected - How did that work out? Jerome "Too Late" Powell should also be put "out to pasture." Thank you for your attention to this matter! 2.37k ReTruths 7.88k Likes Aug 01, 2025 at 2:09 PM

This is extremely bad. Soviet Tractor Production numbers stuff.

COVID Contrarians Are Wrong About Sweden Trying to ‘let it rip’ in early 2020 was a disaster.

sick and tired of bullshit pandemic revisionism from those Princeton political scientists, feat. @michaelhobbes.bsky.social @notalawyer.bsky.social prospect.org/health/2025-...

It is not that anyone imagines the law to be just. Everyone knows that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. But no one accepts the implications of this, everyone takes it for granted that the law, such as it is, will be respected, and feels a sense of outrage when it is not. Remarks like ‘They can't run me in; I haven't done anything wrong’, or ‘They can't do that; it's against the law’, are part of the atmosphere of England. The professed enemies of society have this feeling as strongly as anyone else. One sees it in prison-books like Wilfred Macartney's Walls Have Mouths or Jim Phelan's Jail Journey, in the solemn idiocies that take place at the trials of conscientious objectors, in letters to the papers from eminent Marxist professors, pointing out that this or that is a ‘miscarriage of British justice’. Everyone believes in his heart that the law can be, ought to be, and, on the whole, will be impartially administered. The totalitarian idea that there is no such thing as law, there is only power, has never taken root. Even the intelligentsia have only accepted it in theory.

An illusion can become a half-truth, a mask can alter the expression of a face. The familiar arguments to the effect that democracy is ‘just the same as’ or ‘just as bad as’ totalitarianism never take account of this fact. All such arguments boil down to saying that half a loaf is the same as no bread. In England such concepts as justice, liberty and objective truth are still believed in. They may be illusions, but they are very powerful illusions. The belief in them influences conduct, national life is different because of them. In proof of which, look about you. Where are the rubber truncheons, where is the castor oil? The sword is still in the scabbard, and while it stays there corruption cannot go beyond a certain point. The English electoral system, for instance, is an all but open fraud. In a dozen obvious ways it is gerrymandered in the interest of the moneyed class. But until some deep change has occurred in the public mind, it cannot become completely corrupt. You do not arrive at the polling booth to find men with revolvers telling you which way to vote, nor are the votes miscounted, nor is there any direct bribery. Even hypocrisy is a powerful safeguard. The hanging judge, that evil old man in scarlet robe and horse-hair wig, whom nothing short of dynamite will ever teach what century he is living in, but who will at any rate interpret the law according to the books and will in no circumstances take a money bribe, is one of the symbolic figures of England. He is a symbol of the strange mixture of reality and illusion, democracy and privilege, humbug and decency, the subtle network of compromises, by which the nation keeps itself in its familiar shape.

I think Orwell put it best www.orwell.ru/library/essa...

useR! Conference useR! is an annual nonprofit conference organized by R community volunteers and supported by the R Foundation. Attendees include R developers and users who are data scientists, business intelligence s...

Today is the @user-conf.bsky.social 2025 virtual conference 🙌

The talks are being posted one at a time on YouTube, starting last night at midnight ET going through midnight tonight:
www.youtube.com/@useRConfere...

Every Scientific Empire Comes to an End America’s run as the premiere techno-superpower may be over.

"Trump’s interference in the sciences is something new. It shares features with the science-damaging policies of Stalin and Hitler, says David Wootton, a historian of science. But in the English-speaking world, it has no precedent

www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

Trump seems to want a tent revival — in the federal workplace New guidance allows proselytizing at work and the religious right to exploit their persecution complex

“American Christians are the most privileged group to exist in the country, Tim Whitaker of The New Evangelicals said.

www.salon.com/2025/08/01/t...

43mph here. Still grinning

Love the Amish treats

🍻

Cheers

No

Field of Dreams

No, this is exactly right and something I’ve tried to argue: the idea that voters care about kitchen table issues and “economic populism,” not law-breaking, indecency, tyranny, and corruption, is founded first and foremost in total contempt for voters as illiterate walking stomachs

Evergreen.

In college in the midwest in the late 80s, the SALT Company was the evangelical group that would draw young adults in and eventually tell you that you weren't Christian (enough)

Opus Dei is one of the sects filling this mission w young Catholics today