Yeah, you could see the whole Reflecting Pool as a colossal failure, but OTOH, it gives chemists and materials engineers a chance to geek out in public about all that they know about the chemistry of polyurea laminates and "bond-breaking edge stress". So overall, I'm choosing to be happy for them.

The Monarch Diaries@monarchdiaries.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Mechanism and updated prediction for the epic fail of Lincoln Memorial Bioreactor's polyurea coating! First chemistry, then physics It was sprayed in big sections. In addition to pool edges, failure will concentrate at the OVERLAP SEAMS between sections because they likely barely bonded at all. 1/x

Yes, Swiss scientist Fritz Zwicky coined the term “dark matter” which is impressive, but he also coined the term “spherical bastard” to describe people who are bastards no matter which way you look at them, and I think that should be celebrated more.

Even as he became the center of the art celebrity culture that he had once skewered, he kept looking and looking and looking and looking. RIP, Mister Hockney.

Josh Marshall@joshtpm.bsky.social · 2mo ago

www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

IN A EFFORT TA COMBAT INNERNET MISERY AND CHRONIC ONLINENESS, THUNK HAVE DIS TA SAY TODAY. BIRDS ARE HOPPING AROUND, YELLING AT NOTHING AND HAVE TINY DEVILSAUR FEETS FOR SOME REASON. THUNK BET YOUS NO CANS STAY GRUMPY WHILE WATCHING BIRDS BE RIDICULUS FOR TWO WHOLE MINNITS! GO LOOK AT BIRDS.

Idk about you, but it seems to me like we’re well into whatever phase comes *after* farce in the whole history-repeating-itself cycle.

Myra Åhbeck Öhrman 🧢@myrannosaurus.doomscroll.se · 4mo ago

A lot of Orbán's American fans are saying that this election proved he was never an authoritarian in the first place. This is completely wrong — and, in fact, betrays a complete misunderstanding of both Hungarian politics and modern authoritarianism. Here's why.

I’ll have what Hungary’s having.

an elderly woman is sitting at a table in a restaurant and looking at the camera .

ALT: an elderly woman is sitting at a table in a restaurant and looking at the camera .

media.tenor.com

I've said similar before, but if step 1 of the plan to avoid the end of the world is "Democrats win every election everywhere until the end of time" then it's a bad plan.

@hcrichardson.bsky.social -you correctly noted that there are only 2 people with the power to reconvene Congress and to start proceedings that might remove a certain genocidal maniac from power. One of them will be speaking at 7:30 very close to where you’ll be speaking at 6. Any thoughts?

"Hooray!" shouted Yertle. "I'm the king of the trees! I'm king of the birds! And I'm king of the bees! I'm king of the butterflies! King of the air! Ah, me! What a throne! What a wonderful chair! I'm Yertle the Turtle! Oh, marvelous me! For I am the ruler of all that I see!"

Trump Action Tracker@trumpactiontracker.bsky.social · 5mo ago

​President Donald ‌Trump on ​Monday ​told reporters ⁠at ​the ​White House that ​he ​thinks he ‌will ⁠have the "honor" of ​taking ​Cuba. TAT: [Foreign policy]

Looking forward to upcoming social media posts from the Trump White House and Day Care, including "Pete Hegseth plays with G.I. Joes" and "Stephen Miller lights ants on fire with a magnifying glass"

Ron Filipkowski@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social · 5mo ago

I regret to inform America that this was just posted by the HHS Secretary.

Oh right. (Another basic truth about our world that I hadn’t thought about much, but that makes total sense in a way that leaves me a bit embarrassed that I’d never thought about it in exactly that way before.)

Data Bear 🏳️‍🌈@dataandpolitics.net · 6mo ago

The leader's first constituency is the foreign patron who installed them. Their second is the domestic population they must govern. Those two audiences typically want contradictory things. Every decision signals to one audience that the other won. 6/

We haven’t seen this kind of confident religiosity on the left in a long time. This is a guy so fluent in the substance, themes, upshots of his tradition that he can’t help put draw on it to frame the message of the campaign itself. It’s something close to a perfect alchemy of faith and politics.

Well, except no, they really can’t. Real housing requires infrastructure that warehouses don’t have. To put a whole lot of people into a city block and keep them healthy, you need lots of plumbing, lots of HVAC, lots of windows, etc. They’re just not worried about the “keeping them healthy” part.

Sarah J. Jackson@sjjphd.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Someone has sure already made this observation but the fact they can convert all those empty warehouses into prison camps means they could have converted them into housing, community centers, job training centers or, hell, libraries or schools all along. It’s always a matter of will not resources.

I spent the morning at the DOJ looking at the unredacted Epstein files. Here are my initial thoughts and what I’ve found, so far.

Rep. Stansbury: I viewed the unredacted Esptein files earlier today

YouTube video by Rep. Melanie Stansbury

youtu.be

We still don't know the names of the ICE agents who killed Gonzàlez behind the wheel of his car outside Chicago in September. They were unmasked in this BWC footage from Franklin Park police. If you have any information at all about these men—please text us on Signal at unraveled.66

ICE must be destroyed 🏳️‍⚧️🏴@miawong.bsky.social · 7mo ago

It's really distressing the extent to which in all of this Silverio Villegas González, the first man to be murdered by ICE in the streets, has been almost completely forgotten Moreover, ICE must be destroyed

Garcia is holding up a chart that shows how the Trump administration made "ICE the highest funded law enforcement agency in the history of the United States" and says this funding has been used "to terrorize, disfigure, and in some cases kill" US citizens.

Veritas.

Waiting for the "aNtiFA rAddYcalLz R uSinG kiDz aS hYoomaN sHeeldZ" comment coming in a Homeland Security press release in 3... 2... 1...

Dumb Runner@dumbrunner.bsky.social · 7mo ago

I saw it too:

Chicago represents!

Dave Byrnes@djbyrnes1.bsky.social · 7mo ago

It's near-white out conditions in Chicago as the snow comes down, and tonight's anti-ICE/CBP rally is wrapping up in front of city hall. But not before the crowd bounces and chants, "I believe that we will win!"

Jesus, this is a brutal minute.

Dave Jorgenson@davejorgenson.bsky.social · 7mo ago

THIS is the last straw!!!

Two fables to share with you this morning: Fable number one, or why doesn't anyone know who Ernst Röhm was anymore? (a 🧵)

Duuuude, that's me on the drums! Well, one of the drums, anyway. A silver lining in [everything everywhere] is that you can come with an instrument, bump into a random group of people, and get woven in to a moment of utter joy in the midst of it all. Most people still don't suck. Good reminder.

Dave Byrnes@djbyrnes1.bsky.social · 7mo ago

The crowd is so big there are mini-rallies taking place inside it. This group, dancing with puppets and an antifascist action flag, chants "general strike, shut it down!"

I’m going to respectfully disagree. Unless your personal health is at risk because of past trauma, we ALL need to watch, and be traumatized, by it. This is what America is becoming, and unless we’re happy about it, we need to internalize exactly what happened so that we can’t pretend otherwise.

Orcish Law@orcishlaw.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Ice apparently murdered someone again and the video is distressing. You don't have to watch it, folks. There are better ways to bear witness than traumatizing yourself. If you do see it, play some tetris afterward. Seriously. I'll post rahaeli's thread on that.

WTAF America.

I was living in China during the Arab Spring of 2011. The wave of anti government uprisings started with the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, so “jasmine” was banned from the Chinese internet for a while, leaving many tea producers very confused about why one of their products was being censored.

Acyn@acyn.bsky.social · 7mo ago

CNN: DHS officials have come to FEMA staff and told them to limit the use of the word ice…they are worried that by posting something like, watch out for the ice, that it's going to become a meme….

Day-umm WaPo. Why don't you just start using the lyrics from Free Bird and My Way for your headlines? It'd save you some time.

Lindsay Beyerstein@beyerstein.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Unfettered by "traditional constraints" like making sense, standing up straight, and following laws. God, this is pathetic.

Does anyone besides me remember the Reagan Era movie Red Dawn? Where a bunch of All-American high school students in Colorado took on the evil invading Soviet army and against all odds, triumphed through sheer pluck and tenacity? Why bring this up now..? No reason, really.

Jacek Debiec, MD, PhD, DPhil 🌎 🧠@drjacekdebiec.bsky.social · 7mo ago

"The Canadian Armed Forces have created a model of... a hypothetical U.S. military invasion of Canada and the country’s potential response, which includes tactics similar to those employed against Russia and later U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan..." www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/art...

Oh man. It would be terrible if people started following Bovino around and playing Baby Shark. It would be terrible because he would hate it, and it would probably become his theme song, and it would make his Nazi in a long coat cosplay all the more ridiculous. So no one should do that.

“These senior citizens on the bus with me are tiny people with tiny budgets and tiny left uppercuts. Under every understanding of law that has existed about personal property for 500 years, to keep your wallet you have to be able to defend your wallet.”

Molly Ploofkins@mollyploofkins.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Miller: Denmark is a tiny country with a tiny economy and a tiny military. They cannot defend Greenland… Under every understanding of law that has existed about territorial control for 500 years, to control a territory you have to be able to defend a territory…