It's insane. Like you can tell people how the water rights system works and they literally will not believe it could possibly work like that because it's so stupid bsky.app/profile/high...

Encinitas Highlands Surfer@highlandsurfer.bsky.social · 4h ago

It's the way ag water has these sinks of pure waste that really grates. Some of the most efficient farms in the world in California, but some of the least too, because of old water rights bleeding into the now. Cities fight tremendously to conserve drops that ag bleeds out in wasted buckets.

If I had a motto, it would be: "No organization is perfect, and few are excellent. Join the one you want to make better."

I think about projects like this when some right winger is whining about know-nothing bureaucrats or pointless government programs. There is no one more dedicated to their work than a government employee getting paid a modest sum to do something they deeply care about.

s. e. smith@sesmith.lol · 7h ago

The dedication and care people are putting into trying to preserve Dutch elms feels like a testimony to the best parts of us when we collaborate on something to make the world better.

SCOOP: 404 Media placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it. What did we find? It ended up at an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books. Yes. This is literally the logo outside the Amazon warehouse door. Read now:

We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility

We placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books.

404media.co

The fundraising texts you delete are working on someone. It’s infuriating and heartbreaking. An 85yo in Ohio gave more than double the value of his home. A 91yo in an Indianapolis senior facility gave 25K times. The DCCC/DSCC don’t just tolerate the spammers who exploit seniors. They take part.

Hook and Squeeze

How Democratic consultants, committees, and party leaders built a fundraising spam pipeline that funnels money from a captive pool of elderly donors into their own operations.

data4democracy.substack.com

Two married professors and their son are being held in ICE detention, despite being legal permanent residents and having no criminal records. All, apparently, because their mom/MIL was a translator for the Iranian hostage takers in 1979, before they were even born. www.thenation.com/article/soci...

One Woman’s Message From the Hell of ICE Detention

My husband, son, and I have been locked up for months—despite being permanent residents with no criminal record. It is an unendurable, unending nightmare.

thenation.com

He told us we can say it. I hope people are saying it.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 5d ago

CNBC: Do you regret voting for RFK Jr? BILL CASSIDY: If you want to tell me that somebody didn't tell me the truth, and I should've seen in the future they were not gonna tell the truth, you can say, 'Bill you should've seen into the future'

she could at any one point write a book that would make her several million dollars. she hasn't because she's in it to win it.

I enjoyed this. ordinaryabundance.com

Ordinary Abundance

A walk through a modern apartment, through the eyes of the people for whom everything in it was new.

ordinaryabundance.com

I reeeally don’t like “you know”. It just doesn’t make any sense. No, I don’t know. That’s why you’re telling me.

Dave Weigel@daveweigel.bsky.social · 4d ago

My only skills as a talker are banishing "you know" and "like" and "I mean" from my lexicon. I underwent intense anti-millennial therapy for this, but anyone can do it

Cool idea from someone I know - retro-style boxscores for the baseball fan who misses the old newspaper sports pages of our youth retroboxscore.com Updates every day; share with the baseball fan in your life! (Also, they would love feedback - please reply with thoughts...)

Normally I just appreciatively read @jamellebouie.net 's columns-sharable video content just isn't my bag. But this is a very, very, very trenchant piece of commentary that captures a lot of how I increasingly understand the disjunction between the commentary environment and on-the-ground politics.

The pundits have completely lost the plot

YouTube video by Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie

youtube.com

Congress passed the Corporate Transparency Act. Trump vetoed it. Congress overrode his veto on a bipartisan vote. So Trump has decided to simply not enforce the law. I do not understand the role of Congress anymore. I guess they just make suggestions?

Treasury Scales Back Scrutiny of U.S. Shell Companies (Gift Article)

The Trump administration will not enforce reporting requirements of the 2021 Corporate Transparency Act, which was intended to crack down on money laundering.

nytimes.com

The perfect MAGA "self-made man." Mom helped him lie to investors about a drug, giving patients false hope. He cashed out for $260m, and then the stock dropped like a rock. One teacher's union retirement fund lost $1 million. Dude made his fortune on the backs of Alzheimer patients and teachers.

How Vivek Ramaswamy’s mom manipulated Alzheimer’s data and made her son rich

Vivek Ramaswamy, a billionaire and the Republican nominee in Ohio’s gubernatorial race, served as the frontman for a dubious pharmaceutical company and then cashed out weeks before its dramatic crash.

oligarchwatch.substack.com

Can’t blame the short porch on that one #TridentsUp

I’m concerned

The UnPopulist@theunpopulist.net · 5d ago

A party whose leaders have trivialized the Holocaust and called for mass deportations is now polling first in Berlin and could win a governing majority in Saxony-Anhalt next month.

I don't care if Bluesky's numbers are down. I use it to follow a few hundred weirdos who post too much. If this place folds they'll move someplace else and I'll follow them. You don't have to care if your baseball team makes money and you don't have to care if your social media platform is growing.

And this is the thing about AOC that people trying to be too smart don’t get. This is the thing that Obama AND Trump had/have that so many politicians do not. This is the X factor. bsky.app/profile/rjks...

RJKSac 🤦🏻‍♀️@rjksac.bsky.social · 6d ago

I would stand in line for days to vote for her.

I think America is ready. This notion that we somehow know what voters will and won’t back, after we had a black man elected twice followed by an incompetent sociopath, lacks evidence. This country is just crazy enough sometimes to do the right thing.

America is simply weird & fucked up about women. Even more weird & fucked up about beautiful women. Even more weird & fucked up about beautiful women of color. Even more weird & fucked up about highly intelligent, articulate, opinionated beautiful women of color. The weirdest & fucked upest ...

Not sure what I just watched with that game. Combination of not generating any great chances from all that possession, terrible defense and mediocre goaltending on a couple breakaways and bailout calls that didn’t come. Disappointing result for FCC 🔶🔷

Love these anticipation plays from Dado

The backlash to Woke One has been more deranged and destructive than the worst caricature of progressive activism. But it is/was a thing (I try to define it as best I can) and if folks like AOC are worried about uncontrolled forces in politics, they should have a clear theory of WHY it happened.

Woke One Happened Because American Government Is Broken

And it'll happen again if Democrats don't return to power and fix it.

offmessage.net

Personally, I think what needs reckoning with is how fake it all was. Centrists convinced themselves annoying leftists on twitter were an equivalent threat to Jan 6 insurrectionists. They wildly inflated the threat of left-wing authoritarianism while ignoring how it was taking hold on the right.

Agree with this well-stated mini-thread. I also agree with @lastpositivist.bsky.social on TV and would extend to art/media more broadly. Personally I went through a corrective process to acknowledge that ideas/themes can exist in something without it being an endorsement. Small but meaningful.

Michael Hobbes@michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 6d ago

“Silly” is a good way to put it! There were excesses in 2020 but they were mostly low-stakes efforts by well-intentioned people to address real injustices. The excesses of the right during the same era were far more harmful. The reckoning we need now is about how elites lost sight of that.

the media doesn't care about normal americans and doesn't care about our rights. it would be easy to cover this as a persistent scandal but they instead treat it as normal and re-print trump's lies about "vandalism."

Phillip Anderson@phillipanderson.bsky.social · 6d ago

The President of the United States continuing to bring the full force of the federal government down on a guy *everyone knows is innocent*, just like he did with Kilmar Abrego Garcia and so many others, is absolutely 1,000% impeachable IMHO. This is just straight up tyranny

Q: Were you prepared for pushback you received, especially from Republicans, framing you as too extreme for Wisconsin? HONG: What's extreme is Rep. Tiffany has voted against interests of Wisconsinites over & over. What's extreme is that he's an election denier & continues to protect pedophiles

Do we have to pretend we can’t triangulate the dynamics behind this? Most adults are covered and most people with coverage have good experiences with most large expenses getting paid for by health insurance companies. That’s a good thing. It doesn’t mean the system couldn’t be better.

Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social · 7d ago

He’s obviously right on the merits but the idea Americans hate private health insurers is in tension with the bizarre-but-true fact that most Americans like THEIR OWN health insurance.

MAGA influencer Nick Adams' FLAG nonprofit may have spent little on its actual goal, but it’s been lucrative for Adams and his mother. In 2024, the pair collected a combined $587,279 in compensation and benefits from FLAG — 53% of the organization’s revenue for that year, records show.

This MAGA Influencer Runs a Charity to Teach Kids Civics. Much of the Money Goes to Him Instead.

Nick Adams’ Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness has brought in millions in donations and helped him land a State Department appointment, but records show there is almost no indication FLAG w...

propublica.org

Maybe a fun silver lining for Reds fans? Not sure what to make of it. Just thinking about what this would look like in Votto’s day.

FanGraphs Baseball@fangraphs.com · 7d ago

Who’s Getting Their Money’s Worth From the ABS Challenge System? blogs.fangraphs.com/whos-getting...