Jeff Barrus
Communications professional, middle-aged punk, gamer, public health and foreign policy geek, father of twins, a grain of sand in the gears, I stand with Ukraine 🇺🇦
- Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny (which has been cited infinitely the last few months), is moving to Canada.
- SNYDER: "People say, 'oh, the Democrats should be doing more. They should be fixing things.' But if you want the Dems to do things, you have to create the platform for them. You have to create the spectacle, the pageantry, the positive energy, the physical place where they can come to you." ..what?
- Well, Tim's running away to Canada, so he's clearly not in the platform creation business.
- he thinks American voters are really dumb
- I mean, a plurality votes for him ...
- Absolutely no one should die from measles. Not one single solitary person. Why is this even a debate
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- How much do you want to bet that Bobby's vaccinations are up to date?
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- This is like how DOGE tried to take over the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit. They really believe that everyone and everything are subject to their rule.
- This is a really interesting piece, and these points are ones I notice a lot in the discourse around GLP-1 drugs: much of the antipathy to them is in & of itself fatphobia, anger or anxiety that takers are “cheating” their way out of the fat = lazy, slim = hard work paradigm.
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- I've watched people in my life do everything right and still fail to lose weight. There are a lot of factors in being overweight, and for many, they're not eating cake every meal and heaping big spoonfuls of sugar into their mouths.
- Dr Oz says being healthy is a patriotic duty Worse, he says they spend 70% of Medicare & Medicaid funds on chronic illness & aren’t “getting their money’s worth” This is the quiet part said out loud. They don’t want to cure chronic illness, they want us to take the blame. They don’t want to pay.
- They all believe any illness is a moral failing.
- “When it comes to .. raw milk, I want to be free to form a relationship with a local farmer, look him in the eyes, pet his cow, and then decide if I feel safe to drink the milk from his farm.” — Casey Means, Trump’s latest surgeon-general nominee. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
- Does she understand that the bacteria inside the cow is unaware that the farmer exists?
- Brilliant to eliminate Energy Star, a program that costs $32m but delivered $40b in annual savings. None other than the US chamber of commerce tried to save it as a model of business/government partnership. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/06/c...
- I bet Trump is pushing the EPA to bring back leaded gasoline.
- You have to wonder if they have a betting pool among themselves to see who can be the worst monster. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/06/u...
- Imagine being a Venezuelan fleeing an authoritarian regime and then being kidnapped and dumped by the United States into a North African failed state.
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- I think his office posted it on BlueSky expressly to troll Democrats. No other reason.
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- When Newsom was slobbering all over Charlie Kirk on his podcast, it was pretty clear that he had been redpilled. He's a long way from the guy who issued marriage certificates to gay couples in San Francisco back in the 2000s.
- California built the film industry — and we’re ready to bring even more jobs home. We’ve proven what strong state incentives can do. Now it’s time for a real federal partnership to Make America Film Again. POTUS, let’s get it done.
- Talk about misreading the moment.
- Trump: "The courts have all of the sudden, out of nowhere, they said, 'maybe you have to have trials.' Trials. We're gonna have 5 million trials? It doesn't work."
- Muriel Bowser looks like a hostage.
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- I would give anything to retire and spend my days napping with my dogs.
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- This is why people in his first term kept "losing" his executive orders.
- *No paywall*The story starts with teachers pleading for empathy for 3 immigrant students. It ends with a border patrol agent pleading for empathy for 3 other students at the school — his own. Might be a theme here. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...
- The agent refused to say whether he participated in the family's arrest, which is an admission of guilt.
- This user blocks the quoter.FYI, folks from Bluesky. Reporters at The NYT, among other news organizations, are now generating a giant wave of accountability stories about the new Trump era. Reading these stories, sharing them, is a form of accountability as well. It is a form of participatory democracy too. Substance matters.
- I don't know if the Times covered it in their style piece, but yesterday, I attended a panel where all the GOP male staffers had their ties hanging down to their crotches.
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- Lol. Whitmer sold her reputation for nothing.
- Totally whacking the Doomer (and even non-Doomer) hornets nest here. But I have to give an honest read. talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump...
- I think it's too early to say whether or not Trump has lost. Factually speaking, he is losing public support, and he is doing things that are incredibly unpopular. But the true accounting will be if we have future elections, if they're fair, and if another transition happens.
- The fan mail has just been rolling in today.
- OMG, was that Ross Douthat?
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- How are we going to survive the next 3.5 years of this bullshit? Jesus.
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- That stupid goddamn badge number.
- Hey Paul Weiss associates—meet your new pro bono clients. It’s ok, the Skadden associates are getting the coal companies.
- Skadden is no doubt relieved that they drew the coal companies over the cops. Which law firm is going to get assigned the Proud Boys?
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- Andor, the Star Wars prequel series on Disney+, is dedicated to telling a story about the effects of fascism on regular people and the need to resist.
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- Exactly. RFK Jr. believes that illness is a moral failing, and that the sick are to blame for their condition.
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- Why doesn't she just switch parties?
- “Can ChatGPT experience joy or suffering? Does Gemini deserve human rights?” our tech columnist asks. “Many A.I. experts I know would say no, not yet, not even close. But I was intrigued.”
- Articles like this exist to confuse regular people about what AI really is.
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- Anyone who claims to be a writer but doesn't read fiction, regardless of the reason, isn't a writer.
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- Very convenient.
- When normal people get bored of their jobs, they quit. Musk's ego prevents him from doing that, so he'll just drive the company into the ground instead.
- I am beginning to wonder whether Gavin Newsom is trying to win back Kimberley Guilfoyle
- That's the best explanation I've heard for Gavin's descent into MAGA.
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- It's awesome that the owner of the company also owns the regulators.
- Uh fuck no???
- This is some serious Josef Mengele bullshit.
- The author says she broke her NDA by sharing her story with the media, including with New York Magazine. Wallner accused Gaiman of sexual misconduct during the time she lived and worked on his property in Woodstock.
- I really hope Netflix shelves the second season of Sandman, and that it never sees the light of day.
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- The Last of Us Part II does something only a game can—it literally puts you inside the antagonist's shoes and makes you view them as the protagonist. Talking to my nongamer wife after the episode, I'm skeptical the show can succeed at this. I hope I'm wrong, as Abby is my favorite TLOU character.
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- America is going great. What a season of television.
- #TLOU Wow, they nailed the adaptation of that moment from the Last of Us Part II. Abby was perfectly realized. She's my favorite character in the series, and a lot of people hate her. I feel so much empathy for her and Ellie, too, of course.
- I see anti-Stancil “leftists” on here have negative polarized themselves into arguing that FDR liked Hitler and vice versa. no they didn’t. that isn’t true.
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- My high school history teacher believed that conspiracy theory and taught it as fact.
- If you think you can't make a political issue out of "people shouldn't be grabbed off the street and put in a foreign gulag forever," maybe consider getting out of politics/punditry. And these aren't technical slogans: they appear in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution (twice).
- Matty is starting to take a Taibi-style heel turn.
- American media are truly stuck on stupid. www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcn...
- It’s actually not very complex.
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- Seeing it today!
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- I’m an editor and I can’t stop laughing about how he capitalized “Heterosexual.”
- cis folks, i'm curious for you to share answers, if you want: what made you start caring about trans rights? who'd you know/what happened? tell me the story.
- I believe people should be able to live their lives in peace without anyone else dictating how they should live. When I see people trying to bully other people, it pisses me off. I felt this way before I ever met a trans person.
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- The lesson from this is that a good punch to the face makes them back off. Never cooperate, never negotiate, never concede a damn thing,
- No, actually, we shouldn't just let the government violently attack people on the streets and disappear them into foreign gulags. We should try to stop them.
- During the Civil Rights era, a majority of Americans were opposed to Civil Rights. Activists still fought for what was right, and they persuaded people to change.
- DOGE is trying to take over independent nonprofits that are not part of the federal government.
- the united states—the most powerfulcountry in the world—has now become the most dysfunctional, kleptocratic, and unfree political system of the advanced industrial democracies. by far. www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-a...
- I'd argue that the United States is no longer an advanced industrial democracy.
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- Newsom even hangs out with fascists like Charlie Kirk and gushes about how his son is a big fan.
