Ray Bradbury’s 1950 story, “There Will Come Soft Rains”, starts with a household AI reminding its owners of their appointments. But nobody is listening; they have all been killed in a nuclear war.
Hein Goemans
@heingoemans.bsky.social
Galactic Effectuator (obvious Jack Vance aficionado); Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester. Interests: war and war termination, territorial disputes, why do leaders and why do individuals fight?
Trump was literally ready to withdraw the nomination. But these invertebrate saw escape hatch, and took it.
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · yesterdayCornyn: "As to the idea it could be revived in the future, I think it's highly unlikely that could happen without the cooperation of the DOJ. And I think Mr Blanche gave us the assurances that it was dead and would not be revived and in this case we have no alternative but to take his word" 🙃
Troops were still resisting in the Maginot forts in July, knowing the situation was hopeless, and had to be ordered by their own government to stop fighting.
John C@badsocialism.bsky.social · yesterdayI will fight and die on the hill that no one fought braver and better in 1940 than the French army in June, knowing that their best troops had already been lost and the Germans would show them little mercy
and i mean we all remember how this went. the people who are still most rabid and enraged by the pandemic measures also ignored them and lived in places that mostly ignored them too. the rage isn’t connected to actual harm. it’s rage about having been told what to do by ppl you think are uppity.
we talked about this more at the time but initially a lot of the ppl who died were in big blue cities and were not white. this is not incidental to the revisionist and eugenicist nonsense we hear now.
Sky Marchini@sky.skymarchini.net · 3d agothis boils down to "the pandemic didn't actually happen but they still closed the applebees" which frankly i think is a trauma response by a lot of people that buy it - lot easier to be in denial that things were that bad instead of reckoning with 1.3m dead people [in this country]
DOD is not letting trans service members attend their own separation hearings unless they conform with Whiskey Pete's notion of their gender. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/u...
There's growing evidence the surge into Ceuta (🇪🇸PM Sanchez has called it an "attack") has, like in 2021, been orchestrated by the Moroccan government in retaliation for Sanchez visiting Algeria Yet it's Spain being criticised by European politicians, not Morocco. So much for solidarity.
About 60,000 migrants arrive in Ceuta in 24 hours, Spanish territory's leader says
The estimated number of arrivals is more than 70% of the population of the city, which is about 83,600.
bbc.com
A good friend of mine was a pulmonary ICU nurse in Brooklyn and the thing that made me realize how bad things were gonna get were her instagram stories that went from "wash your hands guys!" to "I saw three people die today" in like a week.
Gabriel Bosslet@gbosslet.bsky.social · 3d agoRFK Jr said these words today on national television "There were ICUs that were empty all over the country including in New York at the height (of the pandemic)" hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha You are a fucking idiot hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha <sobs silently>
One must bear in mind what an earthquake the 1995 Tokyo Subway attack really was to many people. PhDs and skilled engineers working in the most futuristic country on Earth became part of a doomsday cult and weaponized that futuristic technology in an orgy of death.
Doomsday cult with futuristic technology, eh? Can’t happen here
Calliope@calliope5431.bsky.social · 3d agoOne must bear in mind what an earthquake the 1995 Tokyo Subway attack really was to many people. PhDs and skilled engineers working in the most futuristic country on Earth became part of a doomsday cult and weaponized that futuristic technology in an orgy of death.
Phillips OBrien@phillipspobrien.bsky.social · 2d agoLatest in @theatlantic.com . Recent developments not only show we are experiencing an RMA, we should be witnessing a revolution in how states organise their defense. Relying on others, especially for production and adaptation, is a dangerous game. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
the writ-large media-baron equivalent of an active shooter
Prof John O Brennan@jobmaynooth.bsky.social · last wk.Every day Rupert Murdoch pours poison into our societies and our governments stand back and do nothing. Few men have done as much damage to the world as Rupert Murdoch has over the last 50 years.
"He volunteered to launder Trump’s bellicose, bizarre acts by finding an intellectual coherence that isn’t there." And he's not that good at it. @joestieb.bsky.social on Elbridge Colby:
Elbridge Colby and the Art of Defending the Indefensible
Trump’s impulsive foreign policy of grudges, threats, and contempt for allies is a self-defeating mess. His suave sophist struggles to spin it as strategically sound.
lnk.thebulwark.com
I read this as "it would be a bad idea to put relations with erstwhile allies somewhere low on the priority list, to be dealt with after tearing down the arch and whatnot. And it would be a worse idea to do what Biden did and *deliberately* keep bad stuff going."
I know there's no room for another scandal, but this should be a massive scandal.
‘Shameful’: Pentagon accused of cover-up over US military casualties in Iran war
No press briefing has been held for months, as the defence department belatedly or inaccurately releases figures
theguardian.com
Kinda funny that the WHCA permanently canceled the stand up when Michelle Wolf called them complacent and made fun of Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ make up, but it meekly accepts deranged hate speech from the President. Funny because of what it reveals about the industry and its values, not ha-ha funny.
The grumbling Valkano@valklimate.bsky.social · last wk.Great take from @sulliview.bsky.social about the cowardly Washington press corps sucking up to Trump. When Trump subpoenaed Times reporters to coerce revealing sources, the dinner should have been canceled in protest. open.substack.com/pub/margaret...
Here is a prominent member of the Democratic Party apparatchiki— she previously was leader of the public relations firm SKDK which had to register under FARA for advocacy on behalf of Israel— explicitly saying that she thinks the future of the West Bank is "in the hands of Israelis".
Nathan Goldwag @goldwagnathan.bsky.social · 2w agoThe Israeli political consensus, including Eisenkot and Netanyahu, is that the Palestinian question is something to be resolved by Israeli Jews, on their own time and on their own terms. Liberal Zionists who refuse to understand how radical this is will simply be unable to understand this discourse.
Floridians!! Ashley Moody has become the latest loud Senator demanding the Senate stay in session to pass the SAVE Act. But while she was AG, she failed to prosecute a Russian citizen who fabricated >100 voter registrations. And DOJ's treatment of it is a bit weird emptywheel.net/2026/07/25/t...
The (Russian) Foreign Vote Fraudster Trump Didn't Mention - emptywheel
Last year, Trump's DOJ got guilty pleas from a Russian and his Uzbek buddy based on illegally registering false identities to vote in Florida. And yet the case against the Russian is getting weird in ...
emptywheel.net
Americans have more confidence in higher education than in big tech companies, and the gap is growing rather than shrinking. The higher ed-doomsday pundits need to get on board with the real vibe shift in public trust that is happening right now.
Mark Copelovitch@mcopelov.bsky.social · last wk.I look forward to all the reports & coverage about all of the internal problems & mistakes of all of these other institutions, in the same way that universities are constantly blamed (& blaming themselves) for “declining trust.” “Compared to what?” news.gallup.com/poll/712436/...
This is yet another reminder that fascism has been normalized across much — but not all — of the so-called "advanced industrial democracies." The ultimate goal should be to re-stigmatize it, but the reality is that, at least for now, it's going to be a "normal" part of the political landscape. 1/2
Joshua Foust 🪖🎮@joshuafoust.com · last wk.We’re pushing a month since Elon Musk was quoting from The Turner Diaries, and every single mainstream news and political figure has maintained an active account on his platform, enriching him.
The pattern is unmistakable: *Nobody died from USAID cuts. *Nobody killed by ICE is innocent. *No Muslim in the UK can escape the charge of being a rapist or a murderer. *No Somali in Minnesota is there legitimately by definition. And so on: newrepublic.com/article/2135...
And just as the corporate media continues to ignore Trump's threats to them, they'll continue to ignore Musk's threats to them too. They'll happily stay on his website and write gullible pieces about his latest promises. When you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.
Jameel Jaffer@jameeljaffer.bsky.social · last wk.Musk is calling for the assassination of a journalist. It's so difficult to comprehend why someone in his position would do such a thing that we naturally give him the benefit of every doubt, but it's crystal clear what he's saying.
A century ago, white nationalists were saying the exact same things about Rep. Rulli's Italian ancestors -- they weren't white, they were criminals, they could never assimilate to "our" country
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · last wk.Rep. Michael Rulli on reports that ICE is preparing to mass deport of Haitians from Ohio: "Let's get them out of here. Let's get 'em all out of here, and let's start from the beginning."
To @dhnexon.net and other sci-fi aficionados. In Canticle for Leibowitz, are the people who leave on the spaceship saved or doomed? Given the "birth" of the second head and all the accompanying promises.
It's telling that Musk smeared his interviewer as a "traitor to the west." As he sits there abusing her in his edgelordy leather jacket, you can see his confidence in his ability to communicate with the global fascist movement rising in real time. newrepublic.com/article/2135...
150,000 marched yesterday in London for trans rights. Opened the Sky News app. Scrolled and scrolled. Nothing. BBC News app. Nothing. Guardian app. Nothing. This is what actual silencing looks like.
Price of oil just hit $100 barrel. Economists tell us that rising prices lower demand. But don't worry, we've got a whole-of-government approach working on that: www.npr.org/2026/07/23/n...
DOT cranks up its campaign to strip bike lane references from federal websites
Transportation officials have removed a growing list of safety materials that mention bike lanes from federal websites. Safety advocates warn that's undermining proven measures for reducing crashes.
npr.org