Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

We still have time to mess this up!

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Is trump is trying to break black America over his knee? signs point to ‘yes’.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

So fucking stupid, and still doing a tremendous amount of damage.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

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Here’s One Occupation That’s on the Rise

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Was waiting in the supermarket queue this afternoon and decided to check on ye olde USD to GBP rate. Shortly after 12:00 on the timeline (a little after 7 a.m. US Eastern), you can spot the point at which those lacklustre US job numbers were announced:

Here's One Occupation That's on the Rise

I don’t think AI—or at least, generative “AI”—is coming for everyone’s job. But if you know a young person, here’s one career path you may want to put them onto, courtesy of the Norwegian Consumer Council:

It ain’t much, but it’s dishonest work. Open thread.

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Foreign Office Briefing: Accountability Is Possible

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In the midst of the American crisis of impunity, it can be difficult to see how any of the obvious bad actors among us will ever see any consequences for the way they’ve trashed society. However, two news stories that broke overnight/first thing this morning (US time) offer some rays of light.

First, a very unhappy birthday to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (b. 19 February 1960), who apparently was just arrested by the Thames Valley Police. He is charged with suspicion of misconduct in public office. This is based on information in the latest Epstein files release which suggests that he was passing confidential government information to his buddy Jeff while serving as trade envoy.

The theatre around arrests of high-profile figures in the UK is always amusing. From that BBC link:

“As part of the investigation, we have today (19/2) arrested a man in his sixties from Norfolk on suspicion of misconduct in public office and are carrying out searches at addresses in Berkshire and Norfolk.

“The man remains in police custody at this time.

“We will not be naming the arrested man, as per national guidance. Please also remember that this case is now active so care should be taken with any publication to avoid being in contempt of court.”

Assistant Chief Constable Oliver Wright said: “Following a thorough assessment, we have now opened an investigation into this allegation of misconduct in public office.

The “man in his sixties from Norfolk” is the probably the first member of a reigning British royal family to be arrested since Charles I in the 1640s. Fun!

'Being detained at your brother's pleasure' will never not be funny

— Tom Jamieson (@tomjam.bsky.social) 2026-02-19T10:28:41.662Z

But this won’t be our only callback to Charles I today. Next, Korea.

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Liam and His Classmates

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All throughout this hurricane of a week, I’ve been thinking of little Liam Ramos. I’m worried for his health. I’m worried about his future. And I’m worried about the kids in his class. They’re all traumatised by this too—and would have been even if more students at their school hadn’t been abducted. Every one of these acts of aggression and violence and injustice ripples out to shake dozens of other lives and other homes.

(Here, for instance, is a piece of art by the comic book artist and illustrator Wilfredo Torres:)

For Liam.

— Wilfredo Torres (@wilfredotorres.bsky.social) 2026-01-30T07:04:12.128Z

I spent two years right after college teaching first grade in Chicago. Late in the second year, I had to explain to my class that one of the other children had suffered a disfiguring accident outside of school and that they wouldn’t return for the rest of the year.

This had been a lively, bubbly group of six- and seven-year-olds, and the energy in the room was never the quite the same after that. They were always worried that anyone who took a sick day (me included!) wouldn’t be coming back. On many afternoons, we’d take time before dismissal to make cards and pictures for the injured child, which I’d give to their older sibling. There were many rounds of cards and pictures.

Liam’s classmates have written letters to the ICE agents, according to this video piece in the New York Times (archive link: note that the video didn’t work for me the second time I loaded the page). “I think you should make friends with the world,” one of the children writes.  A world in which ICE agents could make friends, wanted to make friends, would be a better one indeed. We do not live in that one, so we’ll simply have to make it so that nobody can become an ICE agent, or any kind of agent who inflicts this type of terror.

Open thread.

 

UPDATE: CNN reports that a federal judge has ordered ICE to release Liam and his father. Here’s hoping they are home soon.

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Time for Another Trip to Cancun

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In news that is utterly unsurprising (but a little bit funny, at least), Axios reveals it has recordings of Ted Cruz bitching about Trump and Vance in a phone call with donors. From Axios’s bafflingly formatted, executive summary-style article:

“Trump was in a bad mood,” Cruz tells the donors. “I’ve been in conversations where he was very happy. This was not one of them.”
  • Cruz says he told Trump: “Mr. President, if we get to November of [2026] and people’s 401(k)s are down 30% and prices are up 10–20% at the supermarket, we’re going to go into Election Day, face a bloodbath.”
  • “You’re going to lose the House, you’re going to lose the Senate, you’re going to spend the next two years being impeached every single week.”
Trump’s response, according to Cruz: “F**k you, Ted.”

(Link to paywall-free version here.) Can’t believe I’m saying this, but: in this instance, I agree with Trump. Fuck you, Ted Cruz.

The decency and courage of ordinary Americans is what will get us out of the mess we’re in. Infighting in the MAGA bucket of crabs, however, would be a nice bonus.

Hope you’re all staying warm over there. Open thread.

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Years of the Vampire (Open Thread)

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Well, this sucks. Just generally, you know, all of this.

2025 was a global trash fire and 2026, just 11 days old, looks like a case of a little bit louder and a lot lot worse. My job was finally smacked with the AI stick in early 2025. It left me scrambling and stressed, given there were moths in my bank account after buying my house. By mid-summer I had secured more work, but I was struggling to stay on top of life. Deadlines slid by. The garden ran wild. The Child vanished into her screens.

During Biden’s interregnum I had begun to refer privately to 2017—2021 as the vampire years for the way they drained the mood and focus of anyone who was paying attention. And while Trump II was shaping up to be an order of magnitude worse than those years—the Nosferatu to Trump I’s Colin Robinson—surely my lassitude and lack of focus couldn’t all be attributed to the toxic background radiation of our times.

I figured I must’ve hit that mid-40s aging cliff they talk about. I supposed I needed to learn new ways of managing my energy. Then I passed out in a Sainsbury’s, and it turned out that I had iron-deficiency anaemia to the point of having a red blood cell count my GP called “fairly alarming” (that’s some of that British understatement you hear about). The underlying cause is nothing sinister—just an acute case of being a 46-year-old lady who tends to do everything the hard way—and I have been receiving treatment, slowly recovering over the course of the autumn and winter. Wish I could say the same for either of the countries I pay tax to.

Anyway, I’m back. Have some terrible photos of foxes by way of apology:

Years of the Vampire (Open Thread) Years of the Vampire (Open Thread) 1

Open thread!

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In Search of Medical Advice (Not Really)

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Does anyone know how I can contact the president? The Child, who has autism, spiked a fever today and I am concerned about giving her asceda… asceta… paracetamol, as the Brits call it. She has a very hardy constitution and this is probably only the seventh or eighth time she’s had a fever in her life. Will giving her paracetamol activate a new autistic interest? I find most of them charming: moths, snakes, practical effects used in the first dozen or so Godzilla movies, Anne Boleyn. But I worry that she might start trying to build a nuclear reactor in our garden shed or worse, get really into trains, and I can’t afford the time or money involved with either of those hobbies. Pokemon nearly broke me.

A white girl with long dark hair wearing pink sunglasses, a Pokemon-themed mask, and brown pointy Eevee ears, looks at the camera on a sunny urban street
The Child c. 2021, during her peak Pokemon phase

Conversely, if I do give her paracetamol, is there a way I can manipulate the dosage to seed a special interest that would benefit me, such as a love of folding the laundry? Or does the fact that I exercised a lot while pregnant and/or had her vaccinated according to a schedule—apparently these could both be how I “gave” her autism—negate all this? I just don’t want to mess her up anymore than I already have, because, as we know, autism is the worst possible condition and her life is basically ruined because of it, according to these motherfuckers.

As you’re all aware, I live abroad, so if I missed another key press conference by the president or the amazing talking garbage disposal currently in charge of HHS this week, do let me know.

And apologies for not checking in for a while; my work life has been fucking insane since late July.

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Quick, Someone Make a Ham Sandwich

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You’ve all heard the saying about grand juries — you could get them to indict a ham sandwich. Well, grand juries in LA seem to not be taking the bait when it comes to prosecuting people protesting ICE raids and kidnappings. According to the LA Times:

Although [Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli’s] office filed felony cases against at least 38 people for alleged misconduct that either took place during last month’s protests or near the sites of immigration raids, many have been dismissed or reduced to misdemeanor charges.

In total, he has secured only seven indictments, which usually need to be obtained no later than 21 days after the filing of a criminal complaint. Three other cases have been resolved via plea deal, records show.

The three officials who spoke to The Times on condition of anonymity said prosecutors have struggled to get several protest-related cases past grand juries, which need only to find probable cause that a crime has been committed in order to move forward. That is a much lower bar than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard required for a criminal conviction.

Five cases have been dismissed without prejudice — meaning they could be refiled — and records show nine have been filed as misdemeanors, which do not require a grand jury indictment to proceed. In some cases, prosecutors reduced charges against defendants to misdemeanors after repeatedly falling short at the grand jury stage, according to the three officials….

Legal experts said Essayli’s low number of indictments raised concerns about the strength of the cases he is filing.

Carley Palmer, a former federal prosecutor in L.A. who is now a partner at Halpern May Ybarra Gelberg, said the grand jury’s repeated rejection of cases was “a strong indication that the priorities of the prosecutor’s office are out of sync with the priorities of the general community.”

Huh, no kidding. I wonder if future jury members in other communities may be similarly inclined, given the revelations about the online company various ICE goons in suits keep. Here’s an excerpt from a February story from the Texas Observer, “ICE Prosecutor in Dallas Runs White Supremacist X Account,” that may have passed you by at the time:

Since GlomarResponder was first created in 2012, the account has posted hateful, xenophobic, and pro-fascist content. “America is a White nation, founded by Whites. … Our country should favor us,” GlomarResponder wrote last month. “All blacks are foreign to my people, dumb fuck,” the account posted in September of last year. “Freedom of association hasn’t existed in this country since 1964 at the absolute latest,” GlomarResponder wrote four months prior, further clarifying the post was referring to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in a reply to a comment. “I’m not a commie, I’m a fascist,” GlomarResponder posted a couple weeks later. “Fascists solve communist problems. Get your insults right, retard.”

In August, GlomarResponder posted: “‘Migrants’ are all criminals.” Two months later, GlomarResponder shared an image that reads: “It is our holy duty to guard against the foreign hordes.”

There’s a lot more in that vein, but I’ll spare you. (Also, GlomarResponder, you dipshit, commies very famously solved the fascist problem during WWII. Christ.)

Given that ICE has been provided with an absolute avalanche of cash to act out the fantasies of people like Essayli and GlomarResponder (a/k/a James Rodden), they may yet find a way to circumvent grand juries. But I’m glad that they’re throwing a little sand in the gears in the meantime.

“In the matter of Bondi vs. Ham Sandwich, we the jury find the defendant not guilty on all counts.”

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— Bill Grueskin (@bgrueskin.bsky.social) July 24, 2025 at 2:54 AM

Ugh. Fuck everything. Open thread.

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