This is scary. You should read it–“impoundment” touches every aspect of life.
If you are a veteran, have a relative who’s a veteran, or know a veteran, this is for you.
True!
“So when all was said and done, the only country that opened [its] prisons and sent crazy murderous criminals to prey upon innocent American citizens, was us.” – Heather Thomas
tl;dr: The DOJ is ordering the States to do something that Justice Antonin Scalia declared, in now-established law, that the States do not have to do.
This should be fun to watch…
And no doubt had his fingers crossed, so it doesn’t count. He DID NOT TAKE the oath of office.
True Words
“How can we love our country and not love our countrymen; and loving them, reach out a hand when they fall, heal them when they’re sick, and provide opportunity to make them self-sufficient so they will be equal in fact and not just in theory?”
These words were said by none other than Ronald Reagan, in his first inaugural address. What has happened to the Republican Party?
DT’s New Cryptocurrency
“It is literally cashing in on the presidency—creating a financial instrument so people can transfer money to the president’s family in connection with his office. It is beyond unprecedented.”
– Adav Noti, executive director of the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center
“Trump owning 80 percent and timing launch hours before inauguration is predatory and many will likely get hurt by it.
– Venture capitalist Nick Tomaino
Gotta Protect Those Poor Billionaires
At his confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Finance today, Trump’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, billionaire Scott Bessent, said that extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts was “the single most important economic issue of the day.” But he said he did not support raising the federal minimum wage, which has been $7.25 since 2009 although 30 states and dozens of cities have raised the minimum wage in their jurisdictions.
– HCR, 01/16/2025
PSA
Good Advice
The irony is that we’re living through one of history’s great periods of progress, but we’ve lost the ability to see it because of the sludge of bad news. And that sludge is about to get a lot thicker. An 80 year-old felon and a 53 year-old ketamine addict now have the two biggest megaphones in the world, and the media will dutifully keep reporting their every utterance, no matter how inflammatory or incorrect, because the clicks will keep coming. The biggest danger in the coming months and years will be the exhaustion of our critical faculties, our failure to withstand the noise, and the inevitable retreat into our personal spaces.
If we want to remain sane and engaged, we’re going to need to do something about it. The solution isn’t complicated, though it requires some effort: Get rid of algorithmic media and switch as much as possible to chronological media. Algorithmic feeds dominate social media and, through A/B headline testing and engagement metrics, most legacy media too. But there are alternatives. Books and newsletters get opened on your schedule, not the algorithm’s. Platforms like Bluesky offer chronological feeds that aren’t optimised for clickability.
The delivery mechanisms for the sludge may be largely undifferentiated, but our consumption doesn’t have to be. The challenge isn’t finding better algorithms or more aggressive regulation, though both might help. The challenge is learning to see our information ecosystem for what it has become — a vast apparatus fine-tuned to amplify our darkest impulses — and then having the wisdom to step away from it. It may seem quaint to suggest that emails and books could save us. But in an age where our collective attention has become everyone else’s most valuable asset, the simple act of reclaiming when and how we consume information might be the most radical move we have left. (x)
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