Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Looks like we can use an open thread!
Someone posted a link to this in a post last night. Titled God in therapy, or something like that. I will probably go to hell for it, but I think this is really funny. Religion is some weird shit.
* Is that phrase the best thing we got from George W?
Totally open thread.
What I find even more fascinating is these caretakers are dressed in suit and tie
— Ragnarok Lobster (@eclecticbrotha1.bsky.social) May 24, 2025 at 9:33 PM
The party of death and killing children.
— Clean Observer (@hammbear2024.bsky.social) May 24, 2025 at 1:14 PM
the return of the know-nothings
— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) May 25, 2025 at 11:18 AM
Thousands are marking the fifth anniversary of George Floyd's murder at religious services, concerts and vigils nationwide.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) May 25, 2025 at 6:01 PM
Jesus tapdancing Christ. If you believe this nutball shit you are part of the problem, straight up.
— politiburb (@politiburb.bsky.social) May 25, 2025 at 2:15 AM
If I'm to take him at face value, he's knowingly siding with people would believe bullshit lies even though he knows it's not true, but also he believes in *other* bullshit lies. Very important distinction.
— politiburb (@politiburb.bsky.social) May 25, 2025 at 5:04 PM
We talked in that thread about whether it was better to try and defend the DNC and denounce the conspiracy theories, or just admit there was chicanery and ask for bygones.
I get the rationale, but I think conceding the conspiracy theories would do more harm than good, cutting off our nose style.— Max ? (@maximumeffort433.bsky.social) May 25, 2025 at 3:29 AM
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I will not call a person names on the computer I will not call a person names on the computer I will not call a person names on the computer I will not call a person names on the computer I will not JUST BECAUSE YOU DON’T KNOW A POLITICIAN’S PLATFORM DOESN’T MEAN IT DOESN’T EXIST Y I will not call a
— Starfish Who Can’t Think Something Witty (@irhottakes.bsky.social) May 24, 2025 at 6:44 PM
I mean, look. I get that politicians cunningly hide the details of their policies outside the same three viral clips your friends share like “websites,” “speeches,” “books,” and “three seconds after the clip cut off” but if you’re a political activist, it’s your responsibility to know these things.
— Starfish Who Can’t Think Something Witty (@irhottakes.bsky.social) May 24, 2025 at 6:52 PM
Chapo Trap House said in their book in early 2017 that they aimed to make socialists out of the country's fools and failsons, and they did indeed help boost the popularity of both the socialism of fools and the socialism of failsons.
— The Girl of Lemongrab (@mc-hesher.bsky.social) January 22, 2025 at 8:46 AM
Late Night Open Thread: Extremely Niche ConcernsPost + Comments (105)
(Air raid alert map of Ukraine at 4:00 AM Ukraine time on 26 MAY 2025)
Here is last night’s Ukrainian air defense tally:
Crazy figures shared by Ukrainian air force: overnight, Russia launched against Ukraine:
🔴 298 kamikaze drones
🔴 69 missiles (Khinzal, Iskander, Kalibr)
Out of which Ukrainian air defence says they have intercepted:
🟢 266 drones
🟢 45 missiles— Emmanuelle Chaze (@emmanuellechaze.com) May 25, 2025 at 2:59 AM
As you can see in the air raid alert map above, all but the westernmost oblasts are under air raid alert for drone, missile, and bomb strikes as Russia’s Tu-95s are up over western Russia.
It is now 4;55 AM local time in Ukraine and the air raid alerts have been extended to the entire country!
This comes between two and three hours since the President expressed his bewilderment over what his good friend Vlad is doing:
Trump: “I’m not happy with what Putin is doing. He’s killing a lot of people and I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin. I’ve known him a long time … we’re in the middle of talking and he’s shooting rockets into Kyiv and other cities. I don’t like it at all. I’m surprised.”
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 25, 2025 at 6:20 PM
Of course because Vlad is such a good friend of his, he can’t criticize him without also swiping at President Zelenskyy:
Beyond parody
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 25, 2025 at 8:47 PM
He is surprised! Guys. Putin is shooting rockets into Kyiv for the fourth year, and Trump is surprised. Insert pickachu face here.
— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) May 25, 2025 at 6:41 PM
If you look around the table and can’t tell who the mark is, you’re the mark.
Yet another night of russian terror in Ukraine
— Iryna Voichuk (@irynavoichuk.bsky.social) May 25, 2025 at 6:54 PM
Today is the anniversary of the founding of Kyiv.
Happy birthday, my dear Kyiv — the most beautiful and beloved city in the world! Founded in 482, you turn 1,543 today. That’s why muddy moscow wants to capture you so badly — to steal you as the cradle of our history and culture. You’ll prevail. Freedom will prevail.
— Olena Halushka (@halushka.bsky.social) May 25, 2025 at 8:08 AM
As you can see in the air raid alert map above, Kyiv is currently under Russian attack.
There is no address today from President Zelenskyy. Nor was any other video featuring him posted today by the Office of the President of Ukraine.
I remember when the late Reggie White was vilified for saying shit like this.
Now, the New York Times treats it as deep thinking.— Ragnarok Lobster (@eclecticbrotha1.bsky.social) May 24, 2025 at 10:22 AM
The funny thing is NYT already did a definitive piece on why Chinese workers are so much better at managing tiny screws in iPhones back in 2019 and (fun fact) turns out it's not because they have small hands, it's because they have a big tooling industry www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/t…
— Pwnallthethings (@pwnallthethings.bsky.social) May 24, 2025 at 9:24 AM
China has millions of people who migrate around the country to work in factories as Apple revs up production around a new iPhone. They often work from the summer until Chinese New Year, when production slows down, so Apple’s suppliers don’t have to pay them for a full year of work. They live in dormitories connected to factories with assembly lines longer than a football field, clustered nearby component suppliers.
China has a deep bench of engineering talent. In 2017, Mr. Cook said the country had enough tooling engineers to fill multiple football fields, while the United States barely had enough to fill a room…
It’s not the crime criminally lazy racism, it’s the huffy, self-important how dare you question our objectivity!!! Squid Cloud of Butthurt …
lol I just got momentarily hysterical thinking about the fact that the New York Times got its managing director for communications to confirm on a Saturday that it is standing by its reporting that young women in China have tiny hands and this is why Apple has its factories there
— Julia Carrie Wong (@joolia.bsky.social) May 24, 2025 at 11:42 PM
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honestly speechless
“Our reporting does not make racial or genetic generalizations, but simply cites experts who have experience with the industrial process in U.S. and Chinese factories.”
like ok but you said “young Chinese women have small fingers” … ?? ?— Julia Carrie Wong (@joolia.bsky.social) May 24, 2025 at 1:34 PM
You know who else has tiny hands? Children. Is the New York Times going to be suggesting that we can only compete w China if we use children in our factories?
— Steph (@observingangel.bsky.social) May 25, 2025 at 12:05 AM
Doesn’t have to be actual children… if we could only produce a steady supply of desperate peons willing to live in barracks & toil six days a week, as during the first Gilded Age…
Sunday Afternoon Open Thread: <em>FTFNYTimes</em>, Yet AgainPost + Comments (67)
3 Teens Almost Got Away With Murder. Then Police Found Their Google Searches www.wired.com/story/find-m…
— David Foose (@davefoose.bsky.social) May 21, 2025 at 9:26 AM
Wiredz — “An arson attack in Colorado had detectives stumped. The way they solved the case could put everyone at risk”:
Amadou Sow woke to the shrieking of smoke detectors. It was a little after 2:30 am on August 5, 2020, and his house in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado, was ablaze. The 46-year-old rushed to his bedroom door, but a column of smoke and heat forced him back. Panicked, Sow ran to the rear window, broke the screen with his hand, and jumped. The two-story drop fractured his left foot.
Sow’s wife Hawa Ka woke their daughter Adama, who shared their room. She dragged the terrified 10-year-old to the window and pushed her out. Sow tried to catch her but missed. Miraculously, the girl landed on her hands and feet, uninjured. Then it was Ka’s turn. When she leaped, she fell on her back, shattering her spine in two places. Sow barely heard her howls of pain. He was thinking about their 22-year-old son, Oumar.
He couldn’t see any movement inside Oumar’s room. He hurled a rock at the window, but the glass held steady. Despair filled him. Then he noticed Oumar’s car wasn’t in the driveway. He must be working his night shift at 7-Eleven. Thank God! Sow’s family was safe. But what about the others in the house? All told, nine people called 5312 Truckee Street home.
Sow had bought the four-bedroom property in the northeastern suburb of Green Valley Ranch in 2018. The neighborhood was newly built and sparsely populated, cut off from the bulk of the city by miles of prairie grass, giving it an isolated, ghost-town feel. But for Sow, a Senegalese immigrant who usually worked nights at Walmart, the home was a refuge. Not long after his family moved in, his old friend Djibril Diol’s family joined them. Diol—Djiby to his friends—was 29 and a towering 6’8″, a civil engineer who hoped to one day take his skills back to Senegal…
At the same time firefighters were entering the house on Truckee Street, Neil Baker, a homicide detective for the Denver Police Department (DPD), was awoken by a call from his sergeant. Baker—in his fifties with reading glasses, thinning hair, and a rosy complexion—threw on a suit, muttered a hurried goodbye to his wife, and jumped in his car.
After nearly 30 years as a Denver-area cop, Baker knew his way around town. He also knew that Green Valley Ranch was a confusing rabbit’s warren of nearly identical roads. So before he set off, he did something innocuous, something anyone might have done: He Googled the address. And like anyone who Googles something, he was thinking about the search result he wanted—not the packets of data flitting between his device and Google’s servers, not the automated logs of what he was searching for and where he was searching from. But this unseen infrastructure would be key to figuring out what happened at Truckee Street—and it may soon extend the reach of law enforcement into the private lives of millions.
“Life is better when we leap together.” Kermit the Frog delivered a commencement speech at the University of Maryland on Thursday, the alma mater of his creator, Jim Henson. nyti.ms/4dwMuhQ
— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) May 23, 2025 at 11:28 AM
Per the NYTimes, “‘Leap Together’: Kermit the Frog Gives a Graduation Speech”:
… You might call the campus his birthplace: Jim Henson, the creator of “The Muppet Show,” was a student at the University of Maryland when he first built Kermit, using his mother’s coats and a ping pong ball cut in half.
Mr. Henson, Kermit said on Thursday, “had a hand in literally everything I did.”
News that the famously cheery frog puppet would be delivering the “Ker-mencement,” as some students called it, was met with mixed reviews on campus. Some wondered if the speech, penned by a Muppets writer and voiced by the puppeteer Matt Vogel, was an effort by the university to sidestep the difficult issues confronting American higher education, like the Trump administration’s crackdown on federal funding and cancellation of some international student visas.
The University of Maryland said it had chosen Kermit to deliver its commencement address to honor the legacy of Mr. Henson, who died in 1990…
He told students to stay connected to their loved ones and to their dreams, “no matter how impossible they seem.”
“Life is like a movie. Write your own ending,” he said. “Keep believing, keep pretending.”
He finished by leading the audience in a singalong to “Rainbow Connection.”
Kamala Harris gave the commencement speech at West Point in 2023. This year’s graduates, not so fortunate (or enthusiastic)…