In 1986, contracting HIV meant you were going to die, usually slowly, painfully, and alone. Now it's a chronic illness like hypertension. In 1986, gay and lesbian couples couldn't have their relationships legally recognized and had to adopt elaborate legal workarounds.

Constantine@ajaxsinger.bsky.social · 20h ago

Food, man. Food is so much better than it was in 1986. All of it. Poor-people food, restaurant food, fresh food, frozen food. Food is just a hell of a lot better.

Part of me wants to know more...but I can imagine and no I do not want to know more. It kinda feels more like a dog-bites-man story than a man-bites-dog story: the only reason you can't make it up is because it's just too common.

Pixie Casey@pixiecasey.bsky.social · yesterday

in insane local news, the 26 year old director of a rocky horror production was arrested for sending threatening messages to himself in order to get the play shut down bc he didn’t want to deal with cast drama www.mynbc5.com/article/rock...

I am breaking my normal rule of not engaging in Discourse to say: In context Vimes Boots Theory refers to an extremely specific phenomenon about extreme poverty vs old-money aristocracy. Pratchett was correct but the observation has limited applicability beyond this context. Thank you

I cannot imagine a worse time to be an International Relations professor. This is second only to the suffering of Constitutional Law professors.

I think it's very obvious that this sorta ultra aggro performance is what you do if you aren't actually a big tough guy. I think... like... Jason Mamoa's general affect is more similar to what I've experienced from actually big tough guys irl. Which is odd though cos the latter is just as fakeable?

Dan of the Year@downwithdan.bsky.social · 2d ago

He will never understand that being "the fat guy from Superbad" is infinitely better than being "the martial arts chud nobody likes"

Anne Frank was arrested on this day in 1944. History rarely returns wearing the same uniform, it returns asking the same thing of ordinary people: Will you sit down and look away? Or will you stand up and fight? #Resist

The framing that women’s rights are “minority rights” is especially revealing. Women are 51% of the US population. We’re not a minority. What women share with actual minorities is the idea that women are not fit to be full members of the political community.

This is what happens when anti-racism norms erode, and elites bear a lot of the responsibility for norm erosion, as they have disproportionate power to set and enforce norms

Charles EP Murphy@cepmurphy.bsky.social · 2d ago

news.sky.com/story/nhs-st... stereotypically this has been seen as Old People, but not only would the old people of now have often been born post-Windrush, lot of this will be younger people who've always lived in a diverse Britain. The guy with a pregnant wife likely millennial at oldest

I see a lot of you talking about "dopamine" and I wish you'd go back to talking about your astrological signs because at least then you wouldn't be confusing yourself about a real thing

Tom Vilsack is the former Secretary of Agriculture, former governor of Iowa, and CEO of the World Food Prize Foundation. Vilsack profiles Norman Borlaug, the Iowa-born scientist whose Green Revolution transformed global agriculture and saved more than a billion lives from famine. #WeAreAmerica250

this is not true. there was no conspiracy. it didn't matter whether the streetcars were publicly owned (seattle, detroit) or private (los angeles, atlanta). a thread (because i wrote a whole-ass book on this): 1/?

David Ho@davidho.bsky.social · 3d ago

Is everyone aware of the General Motors streetcar conspiracy? In the mid-20th century, auto and oil interests bought up electric streetcar systems across the US and systematically replaced them with bus routes and paved roads, funneling commuters toward private cars.

The Wild, The Innocent, & The E Street Shuffle -> Born to Run -> Darkness on the Edge of Town. The latter two are basically the bookends of the American Dream.

Mia Murphy 🏳️‍⚧️@miamurphy.com · 4d ago

What's the best three album run from a band? (the correct answer is Moving Pictures, Signals, and Grace Under Pressure by Rush, but I'm excited to learn second place)

I highly recommend reading this if you want to know exactly how a revolution in this country would go, who would be fighting it, and the moral character of the kinds of leftist who arm themselves www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

Newly discovered witness claims Seattle CHOP killing was ‘an execution’

Seattle Police never talked with a third teen in the car who calls Antonio Mays Jr.’s killing “an execution.” Podcast “We Keep Us Safe” reveals new witness accounts.

seattletimes.com

This is a nice soothing fantasy, like every explanation in America that doesn't involve race. White Flight to the suburbs created the need for limited core urban bus service, with a transport-gap that can only be crossed by private car. We called that gap the "inner city".

David Ho@davidho.bsky.social · 3d ago

Is everyone aware of the General Motors streetcar conspiracy? In the mid-20th century, auto and oil interests bought up electric streetcar systems across the US and systematically replaced them with bus routes and paved roads, funneling commuters toward private cars.

This is the kind of thing that happens when people don't study the French Revolution at school

Seth Cotlar@sethcotlar.bsky.social · 3d ago

Meanwhile Laura Loomer is fending off accusations that she’s a trans woman. Participating in right wing political discourse just melts people’s brains.

So that’s the thing to know, if you’re a tabloid that’s going to name-check me in another round of transphobic shit about Bluesky discourse. I don’t stand with you. I stand with my trans friends and family members. ⏹️

I lived through one in Guatemala. The thing about civil war is that it empowers the very WORST dregs of society. They come out of the woodwork once civil rules have broken down. And it means that good people wind up dead in the ditch with their hands zip tied and plastic bags over their heads.

Let me tell you, having chronicled Pentagon-style war game on attacking Iran nearly 25 yr ago, every single "surprise," "darkening turn," "narrowing option," spreading warfare," "rising casualties," "no easy exit," etc that comes drip-by-drip is EXACTLY why GHWB WJC GWB OBAMA BiDEN did NOT do this

It's a bit disturbing to realize that the same criticisms I have of these illiterate bigots sounds so much like Aramaic condemnations of the Saduccees during the late Second-Temple era from a certain radical preacher... www.jta.org/2026/07/29/i...

As Conservative rabbis, we can't perform interfaith weddings. But we can bless the Jewish families they create. - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

The authors of a new teshuvah approved by Conservative Judaism’s Law Committee explain how they hope to balance tradition, inclusion and the realities of Jewish life today.

jta.org

Also, as we all know, there are lots of rural areas that don't vote GOP. Coincidentally, they're all the rural areas that aren't majority-white. We do ourselves a real disservice pretending the "rural-urban divide" in politics is real. It ain't. Full stop.

Most rural areas have a ruling class. And they want cheap unfree workers & to pass their fiefdoms on tax-free forever. It ain't rocket science. The fact that we're scared to talk about THAT, ime, is what's costing us a lot of rural voters!

What is happening inside the military with promotions and firings: We have a ton of people who are being removed from promotion lists. They’re being recommended by those in uniform, and they are being stripped out by Pete Hegseth.

there are a lot of philosophical concepts that get egregiously misused out of the seminar room (and in the seminar room, to be fair). but in terms of sheer pernicious misuse "social construct" has gotta be top 5 somewhere and it's not number 5

Scott Bryan@scottygb.bsky.social · last wk.

Channel 4 has announced documentary “The Great ADHD Myth?” It “seeks to determine whether ADHD is a genuine neurodevelopmental disorder, or a social construct.”

Buddy Guy turned 90 today! He put on a fantastic Tiny Desk Concert earlier this year: youtu.be/m5XxOLdMSS8

Buddy Guy: Tiny Desk Concert

YouTube video by NPR Music

youtu.be

One thing all marginalized people have in common is that under white supremacy, at any given time we are whatever beneficiaries of our status quo need us to be in order to advance their rhetoric but at no particular crucial point ever are we real actualized voice-having human beings.

Joel S.@joelhs.bsky.social · 6d ago

It's especially galling that Haley Stevens is portraying herself as the great protector of the Jews in her campaign against a Muslim candidate, given that in 2022 she beat a wonderful Jewish Congressman in a costly primary in part by accusing him of being insufficiently pro-Israel.

The evidence supports the alt theory of a spillover from animals sold at the market. Spillovers also happen to account for all other novel infectious disease epidemics. I'm tired of writing about this since I'm tired of the harassment. Pretty much every science writer I know feels the same.

It’s a very sad state of affairs: the peer-reviewed research evidence points to a zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-2 (epidemics & pandemics are usually zoonotic in origin) but when science writers lay out this evidence, they get harrassment 😢

Amy Maxmen, PhD@amymaxmen.bsky.social · 6d ago

The evidence supports the alt theory of a spillover from animals sold at the market. Spillovers also happen to account for all other novel infectious disease epidemics. I'm tired of writing about this since I'm tired of the harassment. Pretty much every science writer I know feels the same.

I was looking through my phone’s notes archive and found this from the day of my last day doing full time clinical medicine and field work. This is inseparable from my experience with Covid.

Haydon@haydonmp.bsky.social · 6d ago

Have I posted any of my “really sad and sometimes haunting Covid diaries” lately? I can do that if you want (read: I probably will anyway)