I wish the Platner tattoo thing hadn't happened, it would be much better if he really was an ideal progressive candidate able to take on Susan Collins

However, huge silver lining: we are learning a lot of important info about certain individuals and orgs on the left The tattoo thing is a litmus test and I'm shocked at how many people are failing something this easy

Are you able to adjust assessments based on new information?

Do you find Nazi iconography to be an actual problem, or just when MAGA does it?

I'm watching the Antifa press conference on 1.5x and trying not to grind my teeth into a fine powder and did Jack Posobiec really say, out loud, that Antifa has been a problem since the Weimar Republic I'm never going to make a deadline again, I turn off my phone for 5 hours to try to get work done and turns out all the worst people in the world had an Antifa Press Conference and openly broadcast their intent to murder and imprison dissidents

Do I have that about right?

OK I finally had time to sit down and watch Hegseth pretend to be George C Scott pretending to be Patton

Cutting through the bullshit: here's what he wants to change (and my analysis as a veteran): 1) Hegseth wants to have the same physical fitness standards for combat arms MOSs (jobs). Currently, women and men have different physical fitness standards

I don't actually hate this. Physical fitness standards should be tooled to the jobs themselves

The "Obama did a coup" thing is a pathetic attempt to distract from growing evidence that Trump and Epstein abused kids together. Also, it's total bullshit

Here's a fully-annotated point-by-point refutation of Gabbard's nonsense, evidence-free accusations:

🧵

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1948084138671513994

For this thread we'll be comparing Gabbard's 7 basic accusations as written in her press release and parroted on Fox and now a White House press conference: dni.gov/index.php/news…

With the 118-page report she claims proves the accusations: dni.gov/files/ODNI/doc…

2/

I can at least partially explain why voters believed Trump: a liar who does nothing but lie

(Please keep in mind that "this is what happened" and "I think it's awesome that this happened" are two very different things. All of this is very bad! I'm not a fan!)

🧵 1) Low-info voters remember that life was better between 2016-2019 than it was from 2020 onward, and Trump made that a big part of his campaign. He promised a return to 2019

("But Trump was President in 2020!" Yep, and the GOP did a great job connecting Biden to COVID anyway)

A thread of conservative reactions to Trump's decision to start a war

Candace Owens: Furious, catty Charlie Kirk: memory-holing his concerns and doing the pragmatic thing, per usual

It's .........very cosplay so far here at Trump's birthday parade. Those wigs must be so damn hot

Let's do this!

🧵 Really this is the Army's parade of course, and they seem to be doing a thing where they're dressed in uniforms of yore

Pleased to report they have chosen to wear the union blue and eschewed the rebel grey

Good morning, I am at the ghost town that is the Army Birthday Celebration, excited to experience what promises to be an incredibly stupid day

The Army Strength Competition is about to begin

Let's do this

🧵

Schedule for today:

9:00 AM (running late): strength competition

12:30 PM: fair with booths from sponsors like Palentir and Coinbase
6:30 PM: Big Beautiful Parade
Afterwards: concert

(Sponsor info courtesy of @noturtlesoup17.bsky.social)

motherjones.com/politics/2025/…

Hello from downtown LA, where the sun is setting and the tenor of the protests is shifting

It's been a long day and has all the markings of a long night

Let's do this

🧵 I've been live tweeting this protest for the last 4 hours over on the Other Site, check it out of you'd like to:

bsky.app/profile/lauraj…

We've heard about the teenage freak shows working for DOGE, but not as much about the other types of people actively destroying our government

By looking at the factions inside DOGE, we can get a better picture of where all this is going

It's not good 🧵 DOGE employees are comfortably well-off, but have voluntarily chosen to work 80+ hour weeks for not a lot of money

Only three reasons why anyone would do this: fanatical devotion to a cause, Scrooge McDuck money, or both

Gather 'round while I tell you about the only scene in Atlas Shrugged that is actually good PLEASE STAY WITH ME HERE this is NOT a pro-Rand post it is the OPPOSITE just trust me bro come with me on this journey

https://twitter.com/ThunderWolf08/status/1895499986168864869

The Train Scene happens after most of the Randian supermen who run the world (read: wealthy CEOs who singlehandedly keep the world running through their ability to never sleep and to do their own metallurgical research) have quit and moved to a Network State out in Colorado

There are places in this country that serve as tactial testing grounds, places where you can see the future before it arrives. Coeur D'Alene, Idaho is one of those places -- I've written about it before

Today, men without badges detained a woman for speaking during a town hall

https://twitter.com/TheGymQuinn/status/1893501846842388803

Here's a Facebook video with full context. She is dragged out by men who do not appear to be police for pointing out that town halls are supposed to feature citizen comment

facebook.com/share/v/15cbJq…

I'll be doing a full write-up of what it was like to be in the arena for Trump's speech and bill signing today

Before I pass out from exhaustion, though, I want to write about Musk's salute from the perspective of someone who was in the audience I was 11 rows back, on the floor --about as close as it was possible to be. I was only able to see above the podium

The salute did not register. Not with me, not with anyone around me. I wasn't looking for it, didn't see the heart slap, didn't see the repeated gesture

Got on TikTok six hours ago to see what's going on and I am here to tell you that the kids are both profoundly not alright and, simultaneously, the most alright any living generation has ever been

The revolution won't be televized but I think it might have a choreographed dance I've never seen anything like this. Only thing I can compare it to was the reaction to the George Floyd video, but that was a lot more angry and a lot less cheerfully nihilistic

No one in these videos has the slightest interest in protesting

Hello, I'm the journalist who wrote the article that is continuing to upset you so much. I am, once again, happy to answer your questions

🧵

https://twitter.com/KCRCC/status/1851401063787872407

I already answered your first round of questions, which you never directly responded to

I do, however, observe that you're attacking this issue from a new angle, so I assume you found my answers satisfactory and am glad I could help

https://x.com/LauraJedeed/status/1847334738639356092

There's this dystopian city-building Steam game that involves making interstellar jumps to find a new home (IXION)

Everything starts out normally enough for at the beginning, and you chalk up the weird little inconsistencies to developer oversights, until the end stage, when it becomes clear that you and everyone else on your ship has fallen victim to mass psychosis. Realizing this does not help: you are literally unable to tell what is real from what is not, whether you are hallucinating or having a moment of clarity

And this is when you remember

Hi there, I'm the author of this article and would be happy to answer your questions

🧵

https://twitter.com/KCRCC/status/1847313574395535495

𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗧𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗩𝗼𝗴𝘂𝗲'𝘀 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗡𝗜𝗖?

I'm a freelance journalist, which means I come up with article ideas and pitch them to publications. I'm the person interested in NIC

Ok I'm at a bar with $3 PBRs and Lesbian Trivia on Wednesdays, let's talk about the Bronx Trump rally, where I just had an existential crisis

🧵 I did a text thread for the first bit of it before the Internet completely shat itself, which you can see here if you missed it

I was totally unable to upload video, so I'll do that in this thread

https://twitter.com/LauraJedeed/status/1793726948348428478

Good morning, I'm back for one day only to bring you Trumpening II: Miami Vice, where police have just kicked media and a handful of protesters out of the park

Maybe 30 people protesting on the cement area directly in front of the courthouse In case you missed it somehow, Trump is being arraigned for the funniest violation of the espionage act anyone has ever committed

Laura Loomer has called for a rally at noon, one hour from now

Good morning and welcome to TRUMPWATCH IV: THE TRUMPENING here outside the Manhattan District Courthouse, where the, flags are flying and the press outnumbers protesters by at least 30-1 I was going to post a quick summary of what's going on today but I just got absolutely bodied by a crush of press struggling to get a shot of George Santos, who has arrived to great fanfare

I'm posting this essay of a comment I just got on my Substack because it's an incredible example of how people on the right sometimes use the AESTHETICS of rationality without any actual rationality behind it Observe that this very long comment barely engages with the argument I'm making. Instead, he delivers an extremely long but oddly generalized critique of gender science, which this article mentions in passing but does not discuss at all