In the NY Times crossword for Sunday, March 2, the clue for 47-down reads, “‘At a time like this, scorching ___, not convincing argument, is needed’: Frederick Douglass”. The answer can be found in Douglass’ July 5, 1852 speech, What, to the American Slave, Is Your 4th of Ju...
Russian activist Garry Kasparov on The Putinization of America. “Unleashing Elon Musk and his DOGE cadres on the federal government, menacing Canada and European allies, and embracing Vladimir Putin’s wish list for Ukraine and beyond are not unrelated.”
How the US press would cover the 2025 Coup if it were happening in a foreign country: “…and instead ever-more-firmly embraced an authoritarian government structure united primarily by transactional kleptocracy and white nationalism.”
Skilled technologists are being forced out of government; 18F and USDS are gutted by DOGE. “Musk is not just destroying core government functions, he is also destroying the actual tech capacity of government.”
Great Timothy Snyder analysis of the Trump/Vance/Zelenskyy meeting. “There was a logic to what happened…the logic of throwing away all reason, yielding to all impulse, betraying all decency…in order to bring out the worst in the world.”
Teens Seeking Abortions Face Huge Challenges. INeedAnA Is Here to Help. The website shows the closest clinics, info about parental consent laws, and abortion funds that can hel pay for care.
An interesting summary of a call with Dem Reps Raskin & Stansbury: “all 215 Dems are communicating on a scale they never have before and the senators are doing the same” & “Republicans who publicly say positive things are not doing the same privately”.
Jamelle Bouie: Democrats should skip Trump’s State of the Union address and hold their own event to explain to the American people what’s going on. (On Bluesky, AOC asked what Dems should do. Lots of ideas in the replies.)
Good news: at least for now, Lucy Welch remains employed by Sugarbush. From the Boston Globe (archive):
In a statement to the Globe, Sugarbush spokesperson John Bleh said the resort respects “the voice and opinion” of its employees but “determined that the snow report was ...
JD Vance cut his Vermont vacation short, perhaps because of the cold or because he felt unwelcome. Protesters lined his route all the way back to the airport in Burlington (about a 50-minute drive). Reports are that he didn’t even say thank you.
I’ve been updating this post about JD Vance’s ski vacation to Vermont with new information in the comments, including a video of Vance skiing and being called “Putin’s puppet” as he skips the lift line. Best sign: VANCE SKIS IN JEANS.
Here’s a straightforward description of Trump’s “ambush” of Volodymyr Zelenskyy from Heather Cox Richardson:
Today, President Donald Trump ambushed Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky in an attack that seemed designed to give the White House an excuse for siding with Russ...
JD Vance, fresh off of helping his boss ambush & insult a foreign leader in the White House yesterday afternoon, is on vacation in Vermont with his family this weekend and will be skiing at Sugarbush Resort in Warren, VT, a 15-minute drive from where I live.
This mornin...
“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week ordered U.S. Cyber Command to stand down from all planning against Russia, including offensive digital actions.” Because the US is a Russian ally (or satellite?) now I guess.
Trump just kicked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy out of the White House after berating him for being “disrespectful” in the Oval Office.
The astonishing turn of events could scramble international affairs in Europe and around the globe. During his visit with Trump...
Elon Musk, Apartheid, and America’s New Boycott Movement. An excellent piece by Clara Jeffery on how boycotts can work to combat evil and the lessons we can take from the 80s boycott of South Africa.
Re: fighting back against this criminal & corrupt administration: AOC sent a letter to the US Attorney General asking whether she’s under investigation for “educating her community about their constitutional rights”. I love that she CC’d Trump.
Dana Milbank responds to the WaPo’s pivot to focusing on “personal liberties and free markets” with a piece *in the Post* calling Donald Trump “the single greatest threat to ‘personal liberties and free markets’ in the United States today”. 👏
From Zeynep Tufekci, a reminder that people who get the measles “lose much of their immune memory”, which leaves them “more vulnerable to many other diseases for years afterward”.
More good reporting from Wired on white nationalist Stephen Miller’s role the ongoing coup. “Miller is carrying out the daily work of governance while Trump serves as head of state, focusing on the fun parts of being president.”
This is excellent reporting by the Times (although at times it makes Musk’s actions sound heroic rather than unconstitutional, criminal, and treasonous) on how Elon Musk took over a huge chunk of the US government, which he still controls today. It began at a Republican fund...
From Rolling Stone, a list of 20 essential movies starring Gene Hackman. The French Connection, The Conversation, Superman, No Way Out, Mississippi Burning, The Royal Tenenbaums. Phew.
💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
Touch Grass is a screen time limiting app for iOS that requires photographic evidence of you actually touching grass to unblock apps on your phone. (Is there a “touch snow” option?)
💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
I loved this short thread from Andrew Miller about how his pediatrician wife helps parents who are skeptical of vaccinating their children change their minds.
So my wife is a pediatrician and works in some hospitals with high vaccine and intervention hesitation (suburban o...
The central point of Dr. Brooke Harrington’s essay about the destabilization of “basic systems we count on to make our society function” over the past month is bang on:
This promises to be a tough way for Americans to learn a critical fact too often overlooked: that one of ...
From Choose Democracy and Build the Resistance, Boycott Central is a fledgling resource about boycotts. I found this checklist of requirements for effective boycotts really interesting & useful:
a target (who is supposed to change behavior)
a demand (so the target ...
When Social Security checks stop showing up because of gov’t employee purges, millions of Americans will finally understand what’s going on. “It is no exaggeration to say this will kill people — mainly people who are elderly, disabled and/or poor.”
“Democracy Dies in Darkness” Wasn’t a Warning; It Was Our End Goal. “When it comes to choosing whether or not to resist authoritarianism, I believe Snyder meant to write, ‘Do not! Obey in advance!’”
DOGE’s Chaos Reaches Antarctica. “If the Antarctic program budget is cut, then they’ll…get to the point where they can’t even keep the station open. If the South Pole [station] is shut down, it’s basically nearly impossible to bring it back up.”
From David Wallace-Wells, a reminder that those who were considered alarmists at the beginning of the pandemic were ultimately proved right — it actually was an alarming situation.
Today, the official Covid death toll in the United States stands at 1.22 million. Excess mor...
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