If you have time for another story, I would truly welcome your input. I was obsessing over this even before the Hunter pardon - What do we owe our adult children in a world where powerful parents create massive inequities?

So I spent Thanksgiving w my cousins Katie and Dean. 🧵 They were a typical MN couple 30 yrs ago when they married. Katie was a PT; Dean got his B.S. in business & sold insurance. Little house in the suburbs. Katie got pregnant. They adopted a dog.

Then a guy from Dean's agency came to him and said he had an idea for a startup.

The holy grail in #advertising is to activate on-the-ground brand ambassadors - consumers who love a product so much they'll help you market it. Think White Dudes for Kamala... I was reminded of this over the past few days when my 87-yo mother closed two sales for KitchenAid.🧵 Mother has owned a @KitchenAidUSA stand mixer for 35 years. She uses it at least 3-4 times a week. It's like her tractor; it powers everything in her kitchen. She has all the implements. She has asked me ~700 times if I have a mixer like it. I have said no. Too expensive.

I want to tell you a story about food that I've never told anyone before - because I've been ashamed, for 30+ years.

When I was 25, living in Duluth, MN, married to a helpless shapeshifting addict & mother to 2 little boys, I started some mac & cheese for dinner one night. 🧵

https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/1861047551736332668

I stepped out of the kitchen for something - maybe to change the baby's diaper - and my 3-year old got up on a chair & shook the cheese powder into the boiling noodles - into the water. He thought he was hurrying them along.

I came back to find him teetering over the hot stove.

I am just haunted by this. To smear a man's reputation is - to me - one of the worst things a mob can do.
The refusal to lift Dr. Scott Atlas's censure signals something fundamentally broken. Because EVEN if Atlas had done what he was accused of...(1/x)
stanforddaily.com/2024/11/22/fac… he should not have been subject to censure.

The original punishment was based on 2 things: his telling the people of Michigan to "rise up" against their governor's crazy, despotic Covid policies - which is squarely w/i his rights as a tenured prof speaking independently.

I'd like to tell you a story about my November 6.
Dumbest day I've had in years. I woke up relieved - the election was over, actually decided, a win for the team I'm hoping will restore common sense and protect free speech.
Then everything went to hell, but in a funny way. 🧵 Two weeks ago, a magazine editor I know quite well asked me for a 'hot take' on the election - 800 words, anything I wanted to say, due by noon today.

I was thrilled. I'd never written for the magazine (he was new in his job there) but I loved it. I got up early this morning ☕️

Yes, I've read the op-ed by @JeffBezos. Great. But I want you to understand how swift & certain the partisan filter was @washingtonpost.
They were my mainstay as a freelancer. I published in WaPo for a decade. The DAY I spoke out against school closures in 2020, that ended.

https://twitter.com/annbauerwriter/status/1851290864934387864

In truth, I'd been riding a fine line for years. In 2018, they published this piece - following the first Trump election - that referred to liberal anger (an editor added the paragraph about Parkland). This was circulated by many clergy & @ConnieSchultz.
washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-…

I have a theory about the immense wave of adolescent transgenderism that I haven't seen discussed before. But it requires me to tell you a story.

When I was 15, I left home & moved 30 miles away. I lied about my age to get an apartment & a job as a waitress at a Ramada Inn. 🧵 I'd been a profoundly unhappy kid. I was weird and small and there was something beatable about me. I was an outcast at school and to some degree in my home. I wasn't just the black sheep - I was like a scaly armadillo among the other sheep. Age 14, I was suicidal. So I left.

I have a theory. It has to with the ardent converts Dems since Obama have won over - middle-income aspirational state college grads in what we used to call pink-collar jobs.
The DNC's marketing goes straight to people with a consumerist mindset & an external locus of control. 🧵

https://twitter.com/LeadingReport/status/1834274372460155153

Remember my thread about Tom? (below, for ref) He was one of those guys: looking for the next, cool edgy thing (RenFaire! Polyamory!), eventually finding his identity in White Dudes for Kamala. Now let me tell you about "Becky" - a distant cousin of mine.

https://x.com/annbauerwriter/status/1817361213300347246

Frankly, if you've been trusting Tim Pool your judgment was pretty seriously flawed, and we don't need Russians to prove it Do not tell me you think a former skateboarder who was making $100K per weekly podcast believed he was coming by that money through the free market

I'd like to tell you a story about Tom*, who reached out recently to let me know he's joining up with White Dudes for Harris. Settle in, this will take a bit of time and involves all the hot topics of our time: online scammers, obesity, cosplay and polyamamory. 🧵

*name changed I met Tom through a mutual friend back in the mid-aughts. He was a nice guy with a dear wife - his hs sweetheart; they'd been married 25 yrs & had 2 kids. We became Facebook friends and Tom posted A TON. Every cappuccino, every bird he saw, every high score on a video game.

Before I tell you this, I want you to know YES, I understand this is just one experience with multiple causal factors. Stipulated, OK? Here goes:

I just traveled south from my heavily regulated very progressive state to a red state and a bunch of things got so. much. easier. 🧵 I went to a coffee shop today that was - no lie - fully staffed. No sign on the door saying, "We're closing early due to ...whatever." I ordered a cup of coffee. And? They handed it to me. No 20-minute wait. Also, there was cream that I was allowed to put in myself. OMG ☕️

Why does it matter that B Weinstein advocated for a 'real' 6-week TOTAL lockdown as a potential part of the plan to 'crush' the virus?

Because here's what real and total mean when it comes to lockdown. It means sharpshooters taking out those who are non-compliant from afar. 🧵 I don't care what you say, it's the only way to control the movements of 330 million people without getting close enough to catch a virus.

The person having a heart attack must stay at home and cope, either die or survive on his/her own, because to leave would risk infection.

"Americans today have the 'freedom' to be fleeced, groped, wiretapped, injected, censored, ticketed, disarmed, beaten, vilified, detained, and maybe shot by government agents. Politicians are hell-bent on protecting citizens against everything but Uncle Sam." "Today's politicians never lack a pretext for plundering private citizens. Despite being charged with no crime, half a million Americans have been robbed by government agents on the nation's sidewalks, highways, and airports in recent decades."

The longer I live, the more sympathetic I become to the Scientologist's view of psychiatry. There's no doubt psych theories & maladies crest in generational waves. There were the eating disorders of the 80s (my youth). Repressed memories & mult personalities of the 90s. (1/x) Family estrangement and 'toxic' mothers of the aughts. And trans mania + DID (look it up) of the 2020s. On the horizon, I can see the building trend of the 2030s - polyamory. That is, the need - created by therapists - for couples to move beyond trad marriage and become 'open.'

I just heard a talking head + Meghna Chakrabarti on @NPR discussing the fact that Republicans don't trust higher education because so many of them "don't know anyone who's ever been to college." Hand to God. @TafkaTrap @NPR @jeffreyatucker @WoodReporting + @jeffreyatucker

I have a near-obsessive need to hear your conversations, which are like music. Something about the alchemy of the two of you...Please meet monthly from now on. For me. ♥️

I was talking to the great @michaelpsenger today about how slyly the concept of 'lockdown' was introduced - and sold - to the American public. He has some hardcore histories of CCP/African lockdowns for disease. Me? I think it goes back to the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. 🧵 My husband flew into Boston for a job interview 4 days later. His plane landed at Logan & he sat in the airport for hours; everyone was prevented from leaving by car, taxi, or bus. The only way out was to fly out, so that's what he did. Turned around & booked a flight home.

I'm wondering what's become of me. I used to be ragingly liberal (small 'l') about matters involving sex and love. Do your thing. Your body is your own. There is no shame between consenting adults. But lately -- I'm just tired of it all and I want everyone to STOP with the (1/x) nonsense. I do not want to talk about strangers' sex lives or genital choices. I'm not amused by the celebrities who flaunt their just-barely-age-of-consent conquests. I'm bored by clothes that reveal the outline of mens' scrota. That whole group marriage thing? Yuck. (And why is

I'm increasingly worried about the uni-voice, especially in the arts and supposedly breaking/heterodox journalism, where it's being disguised as avant-garde.

Benign example: I've turned on 5 top-rated new shows with EGOT-level talent and every single one has been about a (1/x) BILLIONAIRE - usually a foppish, lovable, human billionaire, occasionally a gluttonous super-villain billionaire -- but it's the overriding theme. What do billionaires think/do/eat/invent/say/fuck/desire?

Less benign example: My in-box and feed are full of heterodox publications

I promised @Mithrandir48 and a few others that I would check out local middle school libraries - and I did. None would let me into the buildings (as I predicted) but a librarian did send me credentials for their catalog and I looked at the LGBT books available for 12-15 yo. (1/) It's a category that kids can choose (historical, mystery, black history, LGBT, etc) and there were 11 chapter books, all focusing on teens - most awakening to feelings about being gay, bi, trans or queer. All seemed appropriate. The graphic novel that I see screenshots of all

Here's how committed to free speech I am: I'm thrilled that Alex Berenson is back on Twitter and able to spew his self-serving bullshit any time he likes. Because that's how we maintain a fair, open, and democratic country. Protect the speech of the people you loathe. Despite the fact that he reached out from nowhere to QT one of the most harmless tweets I've ever sent out and accuse me of both lying (I didn't) and being "barely American" (lol), I admire the fact that Berenson pursued a FOIA and went after the Biden admin for interfering w his