Checks out
Checks out
I think Instagram may have me wrong, but another Christian-based reel showed up in my feed this morning. This time, it was from the Holy Post Podcast. In episode 705, founder and Editor in Chief Skye Jethani said the following:
Nobody wants to believe that they are on Team Evil. And there’s a lot of people in this country, 70-something million of them, who voted for Donald Trump, for a variety of reasons, and now they’re watching what’s unfolding, and none of them wan to believe that they contributed to this. And so when the horror that comes out on video is shown to them, they have to come up with some narrative that excuses their endorsement of this man and this administration. So they are predisposed to pick the narrative that alleviates their guilty conscience.
Because no one wants to be on Team Evil.
I don’t want to condemn my fellow citizens who voted for Trump for various reasons, but this is when everything else breaks down. When Congress breaks down in their role and holding the president accountable, is given up, they have no backbone. When the courts break down and they don’t hold the president accountable, especially not quick enough. When the political parties break down and they allow somebody with a demonstrably, terrible character and an inability to follow the Constitution to get the nomination again. All of our structures have broken down and the last one is the people themselves. And unfortunately, the only way they can be informed is if we have people of integrity in the media presenting the narrative as it actually unfolded. And it’s very evident that that’s not happening. So you can live in your narrative bubble that protects your conscience.
I see this in (right-leaning) news clips. I hear this in talking to actual people in my life. The excuses flow freely, even if the originating offense is utterly indefensible. I think Jethani hits the nail on the head here.
Here’s what I’ve been thinking. If everyone can ship software, what will distinguish the successful companies from the apps that are lost in the noise? It’s no longer enough to just spend more time coding, or to be the first with a good idea.
Manton and I don’t always share the same viewpoints. And that’s perfectly ok. But I do greatly admire his independent spirit and his love for the (open) web. I read this quick post this morning and it made me really pause. And think. And then think some more.
Hat tip, Manton!
In its latest effort to weaken the federal workforce, the Trump administration issued a rule on Thursday that would shift an estimated 50,000 senior career staffers into a new category that would make them easier to fire.
The controversial rule allows agencies to reclassify federal employees involved in policy into at-will positions that don’t provide the same job protections that other career workers have. It will affect an estimated 2% of the federal workforce.
Don’t want to play by the rules? No problem. Just make new ones. Making America Great Again!
On the February 5th (2026) episode of The Sacred Slope podcast, pastor and author Cody Deese espouses the following:
Here’s a truth that I never wanted to see that I’m coming to see. I made excuses for years of why my evangelical family supported Trump. And when I say support him, I mean signs in the yards, attending rallies, supporting him. I was like “well it’s the economy. I mean, I kinda understand why they voted him. Quit making it a big big deal, Cody. It’s just like it’s the economy. I mean he’s a shrewd business man.” Heard the comments: “I didn’t vote for a pastor. I voted for a president.” Or those that are like “I just learned to compartmentalize. I don’t agree with everything he does, but he’s the lesser of two evils.” I heard it all. Like all of these.
And I gotta be honest. I made excuses for them because I didn’t want it to be true what I’m seeing. But it’s one thing to vote for that one time. It’s another thing to vote for that two times. But when you vote for it three times in a row, here’s what that is telling me. Many, not all, but many support him because he mirrors back the very behaviors they already excuse in themselves. It’s a defense of the part of themselves they’ve long wanted permission to keep. And I know we don’t want to see that, but misogyny, racism, an insatiable hunger for power, sexual sin without accountability.
I am coming to see they justify him because they’re justifying themselves. And that is a realization that’s really, really difficult to stomach. But I will go back to this truth: If we can’t name that, we can’t heal that. So we have to hold all of those.
And, in some way, maybe what all of this is is all of the stuff that I had buried within me as an individual is true for the nation. The nation, as one body, has buried history, slavery, so many atrocious things and we want to just move on without any therapy at all. We want to pretend it never happened. And maybe what is coming out of this movement is we are watching it surface for the first time. It’s no coincidence that Trump is the president in a time when we have cameras in our pockets, This is the moment of what I call the “great exposure”. It’s not that it hasn’t been going on. It’s been buried within this nation since it’s origins. It’s just, for the first time, we are in a culture where we are actually seeing it.
And this is why my heart goes out. I get why people are frustrated that white people are just waking up because two white individuals were killed. I get it. Where were you when George Floyd, Briana Taylor? I get those conversations. My God, half of our spiritual collective are brown and black individuals, people of color, and I hear them and I want to say to them publicly thank you for giving people like me grace. Thank you. That’s not an easy task. Thank you for giving space for people like me to wake up. And what I wanna say is there are many people waking up. And it’s sad it takes white individuals to be killed for people to wake up. Nevertheless, we are here and many people are waking up.
I’m not a religious person. But this excerpt came across my Instagram feed this morning and I listened. To all of it. As he says, he’s not without blame in this. But he called it out. He articulated the very idea I’ve been trying to find words for. Kudos for saying it out loud.
😎
I’m very glad I’m not in college right now. The rigidity of the core classes at these big universities is just absurd.
At 45, I’d tell them exactly where to shove their doctor’s note rule when I had blood gushing from my nose just 5 min earlier.
I was watching a Season 5 episode of “The Americans” last night. One of the characters was talking about potential colleges their son might attend. He said “he has his eye on the University of Minnesota”. That sparked a curiosity.
Keep in mind, the data points that follow are simple Google searches. So I can’t verify their legitimacy. I’m only using it for ballpark, and I think this suffices. Also, I’m not picking on the University of Minnesota in the least bit. It just happened to be the one he mentioned.
In the 1983-1984 academic year, the tuition for the University of Minnesota was:
In the 2025-2026 academic year, the tuition for the University of Minnesota was:
Comparatively, in 1984…
Just wondering, which Democratic president should I blame this on? (Asking for a friend)
Berkeley Students Make 300,000 Wikipedia Edits to Preserve Queer History Against Trump | Them
Over the past decade, students in ethnic studies, gender and women’s studies, and performance studies professor María Rodríguez’s courses have edited and even created Wikipedia articles about LGBTQ+ history, with an emphasis on queer and trans people of color. The assignment currently replaces a final paper in three of her classes: “Documenting Marginal Lives,” “Queer of Color Cultural Production,” and “Queer of Color Critique.”
I can’t tell you how much I love this.
If you can, remember back to 2014. When there was no MAGA. Wishing for those days right now.
After the Minnesota killings, what is your role and how can you help? | Vox
The dark genius of this setup is that most people don’t realize that the prerogative state is active until it’s too late. They only wake up when the knock comes on their very own door — or when the door is forcefully broken down.
A mention of the The Dual State. Seems pretty popular these days. I wonder why that is.
Another quote from the article that speaks to me right now:
Everything is not normal. And so, I would argue, the first obligation we all have is an epistemic one: It’s to know what kind of reality we are actually inhabiting. All other obligations will then flow from that knowledge. Because once we discern that we are living in a dual state, it becomes obvious that compliance won’t save us, and that some kind of action is called for.
Why Some People See Collapse Earlier Than Others
So we begin with the obvious: collapse awareness is fundamentally a pattern-recognition event. Some people are wired for that.
Yep, we’re all programmers.
Cook is not stupid. He is not evil. He is trapped. The iron clasp of market expectations has turned him into what he never meant to be: a man who goes to parties at the White House while nurses die.
In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Roy Bland captures a cynical, post-ideological, corrupt English society: “You scratch my conscience; I’ll drive your Jag.” You could say the same of today’s Silicon Valley. It used to believe it could change the world. Now it just hopes the world won’t change its stock price.
As my kids would say: “Damn!”
A question just hit my mind: What is the Venn Diagram for programmers and people who consider themselves liberal?
As you may know, I’ve been binge-watching The Americans. I’m at the end of Season 3 and have been really enjoying it. One of the newer characters (I think this season) is named Pastor Tim. As the name implies, he’s a pastor (and the youth minister) at the church that Paige (the Jennings’ 14 or 15-year old daughter) attends. Given that very dry, just-the-facts-ma’am description, his character seems fairly innocuous.
But as we see in the course of season 3, Paige develops a relationship with Pastor Tim (and his wife). Not in the way you might be thinking and/or fearing, just a close relationship. To the point where during one of the episodes, she leaves a note for her parents saying she’s gone to a church lecture and will be spending the night with Pastor Tim and his wife afterward.
If you’re anything like me, that sounds…well…icky. This would in no way be okay with me (as the parent). Even allowing for the culture changes in the past 30 years, I can’t imagine my parents being ok with a 15-year old me spending the night at my pastor’s house outside of a youth group outing. And I’m a guy. Imagine if I’m a 15-year old girl. Hard “no”.
But why is that? After all, (at least from what we’ve seen so far) Pastor Tim has done nothing to indicate he’s creepy or bad for Paige. In fact, during this season, he’s served as an adult (dare I say father) figure for Paige when Phillip has not been available. (Let’s face it, Phillip and Elizabeth have not exactly been poster parents).
The answer is simply reputation.
I have grown up in a time when:
Time after time, story after story, allegation after allegation, these themes have pierced our collective consciousness to the point where the idea of a male mentor / female mentee relationship raises suspicions right away.
Is it justified in every case? No, of course not. Is it always in the back of people’s minds? Absolutely.
That’s the power of reputation.
And that’s what troubles me the most in the wake of the first year of Trump’s second administration. The reputation of so many things are just being tarnished. And the result, the damage, it is causing might not be felt for months, years, or even decades.
Ask yourself these questions:
All of these questions were (I think, at least) easily answered 12-18 months ago. Or at the very least 10 years ago. Not only did we have laws, we had laws that were obeyed (by everyone). We had norms that a civilized society (one in which we believed we lived in) abided. I would argue (and have vociferously argued) that the answers to these same questions are now very different.
One of the most powerful statements I’ve heard recently was from an opinion columnist Aaron Retica at the NYT describing the recent killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis. In describing the incident, he said:
She had crossed over a border without realizing it. She thinks she’s still living in the regular world and she has moved into an irregular world.
That’s terrifying.
Up is down. Down is up. Laws are suggestions. Norms are “woke”. Doing what is right is weak. Doing whaterver you want, however you want, is seen as strength.
I ask you this: What does America stand for now?
How long will that reputation last?
NOTE: There’s a longer explanation of the idea of the Dual State, as explained by David French here. Well worth a listen/watch. If you’re interested in the actual work, the Internet Archive has the German translation here.
As I watch the national anthem at the Seattle Seahawks game, this is a time when we need Colin Kaepernick.
What happened in MN (again) is fucking disgusting. You cannot excuse this. You just can’t. Ever.
And yet, the administration (just like with Renee Good) is blaming the victim when all can watch the videos of what happened.
I am so angry that I can’t think straight.
If you voted for this, you are the ultimate problem.
I’ve always liked these:
Not an easy one, but I’m choosing:
No notes
It’s got to cause some serious whiplash…
I’ve reached the point in my life when I see those compilations on IG Reels where daughters want to hug their dads or sons talk about their fathers and the Twilight song “A Thousand Years” is playing, I will just ugly cry. Almost every time.
This is what I’ve been saying…they are getting too comfortable with this shit. We (as a people) made progress for so long. And it has been erased in a single year. By a single administration. Guess you have to have that progress for multiple generations for it to stick.
To even think about the news, let alone read it, feels like a herculean task—and that’s from someone with a good job, supportive family, and has all the privilege in the world as a straight white cis man. I can’t begin to imagine what it must feel like for people worried they could be kidnapped or harassed at any moment because of the way they look.
Neither can I.
Claudette Colvin, Who Refused to Give Her Bus Seat to a White Woman, Dies at 86 - The New York Times
To add to the indignity, Black riders were not allowed to occupy the same row as white riders, which meant that they had to move back even if there were empty seats next to those passengers.
That’s exactly what happened when a white woman boarded Ms. Colvin’s bus. The driver ordered Ms. Colvin and the three other Black people in her row to move. Two of them did. Ms. Colvin and another woman remained seated.
As a student, Ms. Colvin had been active in her school’s N.A.A.C.P. Youth Council, which had been considering ways to protest the city’s segregation laws. She had also been close with a classmate, Jeremiah Reeves, who had recently been caught having sex with a white woman and arrested. The woman claimed that he had raped her. (He would be convicted, sentenced to death and executed in 1958.)
Remember Claudette Colvin.
AddyOsmani.com - 21 Lessons From 14 Years at Google
14. If you win every debate, you’re probably accumulating silent resistance.
I’ve learned to be suspicious of my own certainty. When I “win” too easily, something is usually wrong. People stop fighting you not because you’ve convinced them, but because they’ve given up trying - and they’ll express that disagreement in execution, not meetings.
Real alignment takes longer. You have to actually understand other perspectives, incorporate feedback, and sometimes change your mind publicly.
The short-term feeling of being right is worth much less than the long-term reality of building things with willing collaborators.
I absolutely love this lesson. It applies in so many instances. And it’s overlooked so many times by leaders. I know I’ve been guilty of it.
Re: The Americans, absolute peak Keri Russell.
Returning to some comfort listening.
Finally getting around to watching The Americans. What a great pilot! And the send-up to Miami Vice was spot on. Props to the creators!
MAGA’s Foundational Lie - The Atlantic
We have been watching indecency triumph in the public sphere on and off for more than 10 years now, since the moment Trump insulted John McCain’s war record. For reasons that are quite possibly too unbearable to contemplate, a large group of American voters was not repulsed by such slander—they were actually aroused by it—and our politics have not been the same. Much has been said, including by me, about Trump’s narcissism, his autocratic inclinations, his disconnection from reality, but not nearly enough has been said about his fundamental indecency, the characteristic that undergirds everything he says and does.
So, so good. It encapsulates everything I wish I had the authorial temperament to write.
And later:
We are in a long Lord of the Flies moment, led by a man who, to borrow from Psalm 10, possesses a mouth “full of cursing and deceit and fraud.” For many people—government scientists seeking cures for diseases; FBI agents investigating corruption and terrorism; military leaders trying to preserve respect for the rules of warfare; and, in particular, police officers who were brutalized by Trump’s army of deluded followers—these days can seem infernal.
Chef’s kiss.
Daring Fireball: ‘Fuck You, Make Me’ Without Saying the Words
It would do no ultimate good for Apple or Google to burn themselves to the ground in protest. These men aren’t beholden to shareholders, per se. They’re doing their duty to institutions they’ve devoted their lives to. Companies that are worth preserving and protecting. Perhaps not in your estimation, but certainly from theirs.
A calming voice in the storm. The “fuck you” part of me utterly disagrees with this. But the pragmatic, level-headed part of me agrees with it 100%. Kudos, Gruber.
Seems appropriate.
There are no words for this.
This administration is about nothing but cruelty and bullying. And now it’s led to this.
For all of those that voted for this, cheered it, may karma come and humble you.
P.S. If you’re wondering how Fox News will spin this, here you go.
Health Dept. Freezes $10 Billion in Funding to 5 Democratic States - The New York Times
The Trump administration on Tuesday froze $10 billion in funding for child care subsidies, social services and cash support for low-income families in five states controlled by Democrats, claiming without evidence widespread fraud throughout those states after a major welfare fraud scheme in one of them.
I don’t know the facts of this case. And I would venture to guess that neither does Trump. But picking on only Democratic states for this is just disgusting and, sadly, not surprising.
Trump is a piece of shit, and fuck you if you disagree.
How the hell are you supposed to have a career in tech in 2026? - Anil Dash
Many leaders at these companies have run full speed towards moral and social cowardice, abandoning their employees and customers to embrace rank hatred and discrimination in ways that they pretended to be fighting against just a few years ago. Meanwhile, unchecked consolidation has left markets wildly uncompetitive, leaving consumers suffering from the effects of categories without any competition or investment — which we know now as “enshittification”. And the full-scale shift into corruption and crony capitalism means that winners in business are decided by whoever is shameless enough to offer the biggest bribes and debase themselves with the most humiliating display of groveling. It’s a depressing shift for people who, earlier in their careers, often actually were part of inventing the future.
Anil hits the proverbial nail on the head.
I watched the two-part docuseries on Charlie Sheen last night, entitled “aka Charlie Sheen”. In episode 2, Sheen’s former cast mate from Two and a Half Men Jon Cryer said the following:
I think that a lot of people in the audience enjoy Charlie Sheen vicariously. That he he’s living the life that they want. And a lot of of them enjoyed the fact that he could have the highest paying job on the earth. And say this (flipping the bird) to his boss, say this (another bird gesture) to his boss’s boss, and give everybody everybody the finger. To live his life, do every bit of drugs that he wanted. And they were mad that anybody was holding him to a limit. That anybody was stopping him really pissed them off.
And later:
“Yeah, he’s a breath of fresh air”. No, he’s a guy who got everything he wanted from this business he just lost it and he’s having a tantrum.
Sound familiar?
I ran across this archive site this morning. Someone should make an audio podcast feed of all publicly available baseball games. Maybe even a podcast feed per team? A feed for given World Series(es)? A feed for greatest games of all time? A feed for a given broadcaster?
What I wouldn’t give for a feed of Vin Scully games throughout his career.
The possibilities are endless.
Van Lathan, Jr.:
The president is a piece of shit. Fuck you if you disagree.
I don’t disagree.
Context Several weeks ago on the podcast Higher Learning, Van and co-host Rachel Lindsay were discussing the aftermath of the horrific deaths of Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle. The quote above came, specifically, in reaction to the social media posting from President Trump where he said the following:
…Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donalo J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before…
Just abhorrent. Not befitting a human being. Much less a president.
Trump is a piece of shit. And yes, fuck you if you disagree.
Watching “The American President” again. I still find it hard to accept that Michael Douglas is the president when Martin Sheen (the one and only true president) is sitting next to him.
Also, the moral outrage over family values because the president has a girlfriend is laughable at best. And disgusting at worst.
Were we really this prudish back in 1995? And are we really this morally bankrupt now?
Hot take: ChatGPT is simply a really fast aggregator of information.
Not today, Satan. Not at a (larger) family game night.
They need to rename this game.
Cancel Culture’s Boomerang Effect - The Atlantic
The reason so many of yesterday’s free-speech champions transitioned so easily into today’s pro-Trump censors is that their definition of free speech never included the right of others to talk back. They were not defending a universal right to freedom of speech; they were defending a right to monologue. They could say what they want, and you could shut up and like it. The cynicism of the effort can be known by its fruits: an administration that issues executive orders “protecting” free speech while engaging in the most sweeping campaign of state censorship since the Red Scare.
This. For the love of God, this.
I looked in your cup to see if you had enough. You looked in mine to check if I had more than you.
We are not the same.
That gets me right there in the Democratic feels.
Just realizing we own a lot of hoodies and sweaters to live in…Georgia.
Car shopping has opened my eyes to the fact that, with a few exceptions, the vast majority of vehicles on the road right now are either black, white, gray, or silver. Coming in a distant fifth is some sort of red, but normally tending more toward a maroon.
When did that happen? Did I miss that memo?
A problem in both sports and the world at large. The rich can literally buy anything they want.
There’s nothing worse than people you know have waited in a line, and then fumble to find their wallet/credit card/phone to pay for something when they finally reach the front.
Mother fucker, what have you been doing in line the entire damn time?!?!
@futurebird@sauropods.win (via Mastodon):
In the US churches are excited about trans people existing and other deeply counterproductive nonsense. What if we could redirect them to being mad about gambling again? That seems like a much more productive project if they can’t be convinced to help the poor… which the Bible says they ought to be.
Gambling is a sin. Do your conservative politicians care about how it’s destroying people’s lives at all?
Seconded.
Chef Saves Man’s Life After He Stopped Showing Up for His Daily Dinners
Being a “regular” has its distinct advantages!
I believe that social media should be banned…for (cue Gary Oldman here) everyone!