It's remarkable that you have not just incredibly stupid people like this. But whole movements based on this stupidity. Having your currency as a global reserve currency means that the whole global economy is structured to your advantage and most hard constraints that everyone faces you don't.

Olga Nesterova@onestpress.onestnetwork.com · 24h ago

JD Vance wants to end the US dollar's position as a global reserve currency. (Loud cheers in Beijing and Moscow)

Northwestern University is reportedly shuttering its 80-year-old Program of African Studies, laying off staff and keeping students in the dark It is the "first formal academic program focused on Africa in the United States."

SCOOP: Northwestern moves to close Program of African Studies

thepurplewire.beehiiv.com

Serious critiques of higher education emphasize financialization (of administration) and the ever increasing precarity of teaching labor. It’s no accident that the mainstream critiques we actually see in the discourse ignore this to blame the crisis on excesses of liberalism

Annia Ciezadlo@anniaciezadlo.com · 17h ago

"Universities now have more adjuncts than tenured and tenure-track professors combined. Many adjuncts make around $4,000 a course, and a quarter of adjuncts make less than $25,000 a year. In no city in the United States is this enough money to live off comfortably."

Wow. Proponents of the ICE taser gloves are openly saying that one reason they love the gloves is that they doesn’t leave any marks or proof that they were used, making it harder for people to sue when they’re shocked excessively.

Sophie Hurwitz@hurwitz.bsky.social · 24h ago

This story’s got everything: Spiderman-villain weaponry, Black Hawk Down, vaccine conspiracy theories, weird YouTube videos www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

I remember when Bill Clinton—a FORMER president—met Obama’s sitting AG on an airplane and it was a massive scandal. Now, here’s Trump’s new AG just doing Trump political rallies like it’s NBD.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2d ago

Newly confirmed Attorney General Todd Blanche is speaking at a Trump rally to endorse Bruce Blakeman

Criminal slumlord Jared Kushner’s corrupt $5B resort plan in Albania has all but effectively collapsed after the country froze all of his assets that are tied with his money laundering project. Good. Well done to the Albanian people who refused to see this happen.

Peggy Noonan and Joe Rogan simultaneously awaken a thousand miles apart, rocked by the same epiphany.

Carl Quintanilla@carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 2d ago

“.. there’s no denying the current erosion of his position,” writes Noonan. It’s “not only that the conflict is dangerous and unresolved, or that his attempts at diplomatic resolution seem half-baked, but that almost six months in, he seems utterly out of his depth ..” www.wsj.com/opinion/trum...

Weird!

David Corn@davidcorn.bsky.social · 2d ago

Joe Rogan knows everything there is about every conspiracy theory out there, but when it comes to all of Trump's real-life government scheming and corruption, he seems behind the curve.

Donald Trump is ordering the Navy to stop using an electromagnetic catapult system to launch fighter jets from its aircraft carriers and return to the age of steam.

Trump Orders Navy to Tear Up Ships to Fulfill His Crazy Steam Fantasy

The president’s weird obsession is going to cost the U.S. Navy billions.

thedailybeast.com

And... that's all, folks. San Francisco State University is shutting down its Estuary and Ocean Science Center, the only marine lab on the shores of San Francisco Bay.

I feel like an issue that would connect well with voters would be doing anything at all to slow the current progression toward "absolutely everything now is a scam"

The president is refusing to spend taxpayer money assisting Americans suffering from natural disasters solely because their states didn't vote for him. I know there are a thousand scandals at the moment, but this one deserves some more oxygen at every level.

Don Moynihan@donmoyn.bsky.social · last wk.

Is this just business as usual in politics? No. Approval rates of federal disaster aid requests were about the same regardless of the state and did not vary much with the party of the President. This graph powerfully conveys the scale of the partisan discrimination now.

This is a good example of something that is entirely political (the government dislikes higher ed and foreign people) and has large economic impacts but will get less attention than "woke one" from our pundit class.

The Washington Post@washingtonpost.com · 3d ago

There will probably be far fewer foreign students on college campuses nationwide this fall following the Trump administration’s crackdown on international visas. A new report predicts international enrollment will decrease by 9.5 percent this fall.

The White House normally gets $2.5 million a year for maintenance. Trump’s team has allocated $875 million.   That’s 350 years’ worth of the usual budget spent by a single administration.

The only to understand about "MAHA" or Trumpism is that these people all believe the fundamental flaw with our society is that we devised too many ways to intervene against the laws of nature to allow The Weak to survive. They're solving the problem that some kids should be dying but aren't.

One of Sagal’s Laws of Human Behavior: the difficulty of admitting an error rises proportionately with the severity of that error.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3d 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'

Contrary to the talking points you are fed, shifting money from police to social services is enormously popular across all components of the income distribution:

Stop talking about reforming ICE. Stop mealy-mouthed performative “concern.” These people need to go to jail for their litany of crimes and human rights abuses and that should be the moderate position.

Timothy McBride@mcbridetd.bsky.social · 3d ago

A Third Immigrant Detained at Delaney Hall Dies After Medical Emergency www.nytimes.com/2026/08/12/n...

The "centrist" think tank Third Way is looking to pay someone between $140,000 and $150,000 to spend their days trying to dig up dirt on DSA members. They're trying to sell this gig as "anti-extremism" work, which I find completely disgusting.

Ecuadorean fishermen say drones attacked them in the Pacific — English-speaking men in US-flag uniforms, no insignia. 8 missing, several injured. Flight data shows a patrol plane shifting course to stay pointed at all 3 boats. It's on no Pentagon roll, registered to a UPS store mailbox in Virginia.

NEW: A progressive prosecutor in Vermont has over the years defied police union, business groups, and 'law and order' critics. Earlier this year, she didn't prosecute many people arrested during anti-ICE protests. She beat back a challenger yesterday, and is now near certain of a new term.

With Latest Win, Progressive Vermont Prosecutor Looks to Double Down on Reforms - Bolts

Over nearly a decade in office, Burlington’s chief prosecutor Sarah George has pursued a platform of restorative justice and dialing back low-level prosecutions.

boltsmag.org

when actual reality is inconvienient, the RW press creates a fake, alternate reality cope to live inside. so mamdani becomes an unpopular failure, NYC, the safest and richest city in the country, becomes a dangerous hellhole. Intermediated through screens, conservatives move to the fake world

Ben Collins@bencollins.bsky.social · 4d ago

Poll results vs. how poll results are presented in the Wall Street Journal.

“Universities denounced themselves as complicit in systemic racism.” Well yes, my university for example held the charred bones of Black children killed by Philadelphia police and at least one faculty member was using them to teach forensics so yes, gosh, there was some necessary self-denouncing

Peter@notalawyer.bsky.social · 4d ago

finally reading the Atlantic piece on “Woke 1” and it’s interesting how even in their attempt to list the movement’s sins they struggle to identify anything significant

WaPo Exclusive: The Trump admin is now set to spend at least $900 million for construction projects on the White House grounds. 
The price tag is much larger than previously reported, according to a Post review of confidential contracts. Taxpayers would cover most of it.

Trump administration set to spend at least $900 million on White House construction

The price tag is much larger than what has been previously reported, according to a Post review of confidential contracts, and taxpayers would cover most of it.

washingtonpost.com

I hope it's becoming apparent that the same ghouls who are funding and powering and participating in the fascist takeover of the government are also using their plundered wealth to buy literally everything and create unassailable monopolies and that these things are inextricably intertwined.

The current Lakers owner is being investigated by Trump's government for tax fraud. Today, it was announced that he is selling the team to a member of the Kushner family. A complete coincidence, I'm sure.

Was there a headline last week that read “A Stunning Win in Michigan Shows the Limits of Centrism”? I can’t seem to find it. Separately and important issue: Why did polling overestimate the chances of El-Sayed and Hong by 15 points? That seems bad!

Josh Sternberg@joshsternberg.com · 4d ago

A reminder that the media is not liberal or objective. Notice the editorialization in the headline and deck. Why is it "stunning"? etc This is both agenda setting and manufactured confrontation, designed, over time, to make readers think a certain way. Also never see "limits of the Right" frames

The only thing I'd like to see us borrow from the bad guys is the ability to say "Yeah I said that, and it was good" because the scary unearthed tweet is usually something like "The police shouldn't be allowed to kill you anytime they feel like it"

Brendel@brendelbored.bsky.social · 4d ago

Not going to pretend that I know who the best candidate for Wisconsin governor is but it does seem pretty rich that a tweet from seven years ago is apparently a big political scandal given the shit we see posted every single day by everyone in power

The first law of American politics is that pundits will draw sweeping conclusions from a single, narrowly decided result. A race decided by less than 0.5 percent of votes cast: had it gone the other direction, the headlines would be about the unstoppable force of progressive candidates.

This is what hitting rock bottom looks like. Can be quite lucrative for a failed pundit.

Scott Lemieux@lemieuxlgm.bsky.social · 4d ago

Of COURSE they do!