August 4, 2026 is the setting of the Ray Bradbury short story "There Will Come Soft Rains" So if today you are feeling like the only structure left standing after a nuclear war, that is probably why
btboces.org
John Skiles Skinner
@skiles.blue
I work on @securedrop.org Former fed at 18F "deleted" by DOGE 🔗 https://skiles.blue/
I don't even know how we ever built potable drinking water or CISA or anything complex and useful, considering that many beneficiaries of those systems don't value them and even celebrate their destruction
John Skiles Skinner@skiles.blue · 5d agoAmazing that Iran is successfully attacking the drinking water in the American Midwest, and this is pretty directly the Trump administration's fault, yet this is not a huge scandal among his voters who live there
Amazing that Iran is successfully attacking the drinking water in the American Midwest, and this is pretty directly the Trump administration's fault, yet this is not a huge scandal among his voters who live there
Matt Novak@paleofuture.bsky.social · 5d agoMinnesota Gov. Tim Walz responds to Trump: “DOGE took an axe to CISA and left the U.S. exposed to cyber attacks."
I can never un-see the people who willfully died of infection because of Facebook memes. Who sprinted harder toward death because they saw their own family members die in denial. It has changed my idea of human nature from the root.
The Fig Economy@figgityfigs.bsky.social · last wk.One of my Crank Theories of Everything, at least of Everything in the Recent Past, is that we are dealing (badly) with COVID trauma we’d mostly prefer to pretend never happened.
This appears to have been the psychological motivation for DOGE: firing the most talented and dedicated public servants so that billionaires could prove to themselves that talent and dedication do not exist
Louis@louisevans.bsky.social · last wk.one thing that really defines Trumpism the lived ideology (as opposed to the various Potemkin Trumpisms touted by court philosophers) is the conviction that there are no skills, only sinecures.
DOGE has effectively hidden itself by breaking FOIA "If the department is stonewalling the inspector general’s office, it’s an extremely safe bet that they’re absolutely ignoring FOIA officers who are asking for information" per @laurenleharper.bsky.social
Trump’s Education Department Leaves Mountain of Public Records Requests Unaddressed
A review by The 74 of FOIA logs shows the department has fulfilled 3% of them — some only in part.
the74million.org
A lot of people crave self annihilation when they get bored
Rick Caruso’s Private Fire Crew@amandasmith.bsky.social · 12mo agoIt’s just wild to me that there has never been an easier time in history to be human and a few groups of lunatics are determined to undo that.
I missed this when it happened 2 months ago, but ask.com ("Ask Jeeves") finally shut down. My career started when I typed "how can I become a computer hacker" into it around 2000-2001.
A Farewell to Ask.com | 30 Years of Curiosity
ask.com
So much of the reactionary tech elite and rationalist movements' views, epitomized in Elon Musk, are indistinguishable from Calhounism. Here is Calhoun's famous 1848 Senate speech arguing that Jefferson's assertion that "all men are created equal" was wrong.
Trump's big news is China acquired the publicly available voter file? Bro, DOGE employees took off with our Social Security info on thumb drives.
Amazing FOIA win from @reprorights.org raises more questions about State Department’s potential view of contraceptives as abortifacients (or if officials know the difference between the two). (Also raises more Qs about USAID records going missing during chaotic shutdown)
Emails detail confusion in State Department over Trump plan to destroy contraceptives
“There is no one here that knows definitively what is in the warehouse,” one official wrote of a USAID storage facility in Belgium as its contents were left to expire.
washingtonpost.com
Like there was a whole thing about how life expectancy for people with cystic fibrosis has dramatically improved in just the past 10 years? There was/is a whole thing about Vought killing the research funding that saved his own kid.
I'm trying to find the video of Graham's red-faced temper tantrum on the subject of "who paid for her lie detector test," a question that had already been answered. Anyone have it?
John Skiles Skinner@skiles.blue · 3w agoThe only thing I'll remember about Lindsey Graham is his mistreatment of Dr Christine Blasey Ford. Acting apoplectic at nonsensical details because he knew the most powerful misogynist in the world was watching him. I've never seen a man debase and humiliate himself so much.
Conservatives used to argue that if a popular movie encouraged courage and hope and celebrated family that that meant it was conservative and you should vote Republican. Now they argue that if a popular movie encourages courage and hope and celebrates family it is leftist propaganda.
The only thing I'll remember about Lindsey Graham is his mistreatment of Dr Christine Blasey Ford. Acting apoplectic at nonsensical details because he knew the most powerful misogynist in the world was watching him. I've never seen a man debase and humiliate himself so much.
Things right-wingers concerned about the birthrate won't touch: "If you’re worried about population collapse, then I have two solutions for you: attract many more immigrants, and figure out how to loosen the patriarchal bargain’s grip on the masculine imagination."
If You Want to Raise Birthrates, You Need to Fix Men
New evidence that patriarchy plus economic growth leads to declining birthrates
publiccomment.blog
I feel there hasn't been enough attention to the explosive diarrhea that is being caused by a foodborne parasite that was tracked until exactly a year ago by the FDA, but then was cut as part of the "cost savings" of DOGE. www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...
The CDC quietly scaled back a surveillance program for foodborne illnesses
As of July 1, a critical surveillance program is monitoring for only two pathogens instead of the usual eight.
nbcnews.com
I am looking for writing about the replacement of US federal gov capacity, destroyed by the Trump admin, by other entities: state governments, nonprofits, ex-feds, and volunteers working to preserve gov data, provide scientific advice, etc. Like a roundup or list of such projects. Help?
"MAGA Republicans are *not* more willing than anyone else to personally commit violence. They don’t want to throw the brick. They want someone else to throw the brick for them." Excellent essay on the tipping point into a low-trust society and how to walk back from the brink
Has America Crossed the Asshole Threshold?
Civilizations can carry a surprising number of parasites and live. But there’s a line — Rome crossed it, the Gilded Age toed it, and for the first time in history, we can measure it.
thegrimhistorian.substack.com
In this book there's a brief mention of American Legion members massacring trade union guys in 1919. Wait...the same Legion where my parents took me for chili feeds as a kid? One Wikipedia article later I'm reeling at how pervasive a capital F Fascist organization was in my small town childhood.
John Skiles Skinner@skiles.blue · last mo.What's your 4th of July read? I'm learning about the Americans who struggled for freedom against censorship, xenophobia, surveillance, and oligarchy in 1917-1921
conservatives will use AI to make everything - their house, family pics, the president, jesus, their enemies - all align more accurately with how they wish the world was. but me taking hormones to look different IRL is "not real"??
He also is the head of the “America by design” agency and has been profoundly fucking up digital security and accessibility in US gov services with a tiny team and pure AI slop.
Matt Binder@mattbinder.bsky.social · last mo.this guy is the co-founder of Airbnb
My parents got married in July 1976 and it made their anniversary super memorable because the bicentennial was a big deal for decades afterward
Angus Johnston@angus.bsky.social · last mo.It's hard to convey to someone who didn't experience it how culturally ubiquitous the bicentennial was at the time. Kids had red-white-and-blue SHEETS on their beds. Like many, many, many kids.
What's your 4th of July read? I'm learning about the Americans who struggled for freedom against censorship, xenophobia, surveillance, and oligarchy in 1917-1921
Tens of thousands celebrated Budapest Pride, the first since Viktor Orbán’s ousting.
Tens of thousands march in the first Budapest Pride since Viktor Orbán was voted out
Saturday's Pride march came a little more than a year after Orbán's nationalist-populist government passed legislation and a constitutional amendment to outlaw the event, drawing criticism from human ...
pbs.org
“The Trump administration [allegedly] sought to assign bogus death dates to 2.7M people living in the U.S., a flagrantly illegal misuse of Social Security Administration (SSA) data intended to pressure immigrants into leaving the country, a new government insider account reveals.” 6/5/26 … 1/
Trump administration weaponized Social Security records, attempting to falsely declare 2.7 million people as dead - Katz Banks Kumin LLP
The Trump administration sought to assign bogus death dates to 2.7 million people living in the United States.
katzbanks.com
A few people have sent this to me wondering if it is accurate My take is, the central claims are factually inaccurate yet the overall picture presented is fairly accurate 🧵
Jay Edidin@edidin.bsky.social · 2mo agoso, this is deeply, deeply horrifying thedreydossier.substack.com/p/i-found-a-...
Sasse's signature legislation was the "Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act," a nonsense bill designed to gratify a conservative conspiracy theory. He wasted his whole life on culture war lying.
