Stephen Baines

Melrose and La Brea is just a river right now.

I literally saw a post two weeks back in which a guy with two jobs was flagellating himself because he was short on rent, lamenting that had he donated plasma more, maybe his rent would be on time. This system is deeply fucked. Earth is a pleasure cruise for 1000 people and we're all just the staff.

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

—FDR, 1937

i‘m using it for a column but i want to share here this line from lincoln on jefferson because it is applies to our situation as well. you can find it in his april 6, 1859 letter to henry l. pierce.

So you're saying ICE is incompatible with the rule of law as practiced in this nation from the founding?

Think I see a pretty easy solution here, champ.

Trump named ‘undisputed champion of beautiful clean coal’ by industry group Award was presented as president directed Pentagon to buy billions of dollars’ worth of energy from coal plants

Thanks to Trump, the Pentagon is now being forced to subsidize the coal industry at enormous cost to the taxpayers – and Big Coal gave him an award for it.

WEATHER Air Quality Advisory For Southeast Michigan Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups Air Quality Alert Elevated Levels of Fine Particulate Where... Livingston, Macomb, Monroe, Oakland, St. Clair, Washtenaw, Wayne When... Now until 12pm Monday, February 16th Preparedness Actions... It is recommended that, when possible, you avoid strenuous outdoor activities, especially those with heart disease and respiratory diseases like asthma. Monitor for symptoms such as wheezing, coughing, chest tightness, dizziness, or burning in nose, throat, and eyes. Reduce or eliminate activities that contribute to air pollution, such as: • outdoor burning • use of residential wood burning devices Note...This Advisory is not due to wildfire smoke, but organic compounds and other pollutants being trapped in snowfall that are being released into the air upon melting. For up-to-date air quality data for Michigan visit the MiAir site: https://air-egle.hub.arcgis.com/ For up-to-date air quality data nationally visit EPA's Air https://www.airnow.gov/ February 15, 2026 11:24 AM National Weather Service Detroit, Michigan

Oh. We have an Air Advisory due to melting snow 😮 I’ve not seen this before.

read that first paragraph if nothing else:

Right-wing Heritage Foundation’s own data shows fewer than 100 noncitizens voted since 1982 (!!!)

This is not a real problem. “The SAVE ACT is a Trojan horse to nationalize elections”: open.substack.com/pub/thiswill...

Biden’s approach after the pandemic was way better. It feels like he has been vilified for it. We just keep learning bad lessons.

man ... lying under oath really ought to be a crime, you know?

I got yeasty.

Everywhere this man goes he should be treated as if he murdered millions of children, because he did.

douglas adams was our most accurate futurist

Will it be national news? Will it cause performative outrage? Will he be censured?

Nope. Forgotten by tomorrow.

Propaganda during WWI and WWII in fact

Having a parasocial relationship with a politician is never healthy. You might decide to vote for them, you might even respect a few. But they’re not your friends and you have no idea what they are like in real life. They are all deliberately projecting an image because that’s how the job works.

We've been dreaming of the same thing!!!

(AOC more likely to run for senator I think. Anticipate that wall street go bonkers at losing a major supporter in Schumer).

You would routinely see Twitter polls going 75-25 for Trump over Harris before the election, and you wonder how anyone on that site can believe the vibes there are anything like in the country as a whole. It's so depressing that MSM types don't see it.

Speaking for myself, they already have my money through withholding, so I want some back, including the heat pump credit.

Long term though I am pretty angry about it too. Nothing representative about what they are spending my taxes on.

(put another way, weird to say, as Rubio does, that Europe produced “the genius…of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones,” who were self-consciously playing music rooted in the traditions of the African diaspora.)

Broken bones, burning eyes: How Trump's DHS deploys 'less lethal' weapons on protesters Federal immigration officers have repeatedly used force in ways that appear to violate their own policies or general policing guidelines, NBC News found.

Broken bones, burning eyes: How Trump's DHS deploys 'less lethal' weapons on protesters www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

Haven’t been able to sit through an NFL game in well over a decade.

What does “Dow 50,000” actually tell you—anything about the economy, or just that a number got bigger? Dow 50,000 is a milestone, not a measurement. The level of the Dow is basically arbitrary: it’s… "Dow 50,000" Sound Nice. Until Justin Wolfers Shows You That U.S. Markets Are Coming 21st Out of 23.

The Dow was at 43,488 when Trump took office. It just hit 50,000.

So if you had invested $43,488 in the US, you would now have $50,000. But if you had invested the same amount in the rest of the world, you would now be worth $60,000.

Lemme do a expla-youtube-nation
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYL5...

Even without an on-campus voting site, NCAT students still marched to the polls. 💙💛 Students at North Carolina A&T showed that barriers won’t stop their voices. When access isn’t easy, they organize. ... TikTok video by HBCU Student Action Alliance

North Carolina lawmakers have voted to remove all college campus voting sites. Specifically at the largest HBCU in the US NC A&T. They now have to walk 30 minutes to their nearest polling place. Students are protesting this - pls share and support.

www.tiktok.com/t/ZThx29BJ9/

On Valentine’s Day, 1990, at the request of Carl Sagan, NASA turned Voyager 1's camera back toward home for one last look. From 3.7 billion miles away, it captured this: a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. Here is how Carl Sagan beautifully described it: “Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor, and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

"The Pale Blue Dot"

The Earth as seen from 3.7 billion miles away by Voyager 1 on #ValentinesDay in 1990:
📸NASA

ICE raid at apartment complex causes elementary students to run from their bus stop in NJ Thursday Students were seen running away from their bus stop on Thursday morning as ICE agents conducted an operation at an apartment in Lindenwold, NJ.

Nine and ten year olds, fleeing in fear.

www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/f...

In 1854, after watching the federal government deploy 2000 federal troops and spend $40,000 sending Anthony Burns back into slavery, Boston's Amos Adams Lawrence said “we went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad Abolitionists.”

Glad this is getting covered, but also… Completely surreal to read the NYT report on this as recently disclosed info, and just an allegation. This happened to every observer I know! It happened to me twice! I have it on video both times! www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/u...