Doug Brinbury

The thesis of the book is that early COVID lockdowns weren't worth it and mid-COVID mitigation measures like masks, contact tracing and business closures don't work. This is laughably false and the authors have endorsed the people now running Trump's HHS.

This is sinister. If you're wondering why so many people don't report sexual assault, this is why.

"It is logically impossible to simultaneously be evil, corrupt, and incompetent" is an absolutely amazing take to have in the year of 2025

Year 1 data on congestion pricing in Manhattan… * Vehicle traffic: -11% * Foot traffic: +3.4% * Storefront vacancy: -0.9% * Pollution: -22% * Revenue for mass transit: $548M So YES this has been a huge success.

Ya, no. If I see one of these in one of our bike lanes, it's going be out of action pronto.

At least 30 people have died in ICE custody in less than a year under the current administration. With the massive increase in detainments, conditions inside ICE detention facilities will only get worse, leading to even more deaths.

It used to be that the United States would use Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to transmit truth across the borders of repressive regimes. Now the work of American reporters, having been censored, is being smuggled across the border to reach Americans.

Posted it

if only we had some sort of massive federal grant program that provided all kinds of money for people to make the sorts of upgrades that experts thought were best for climate adaptation all while creating jobs and developing industries... oh.. wait.

So Bari Weiss’s first real editorial intervention at CBS is to repress coverage of American concentration camps.

Just because everyone assumed this is what Bondi would do with the Epstein files isn’t a reason to not raise holy hell about it.

I just saw someone yell “they’re just using it to generate ideas!” And I hate to say it But if you work in the ART DEPARTMENT and you need a death machine stuffed with your colleagues’ work to give you ideas Quit.

So, SFWA is very much not my circus, not my monkeys, but here are my two general thoughts right now: 1) clear rules excluding AI-created content are important to hold the line, especially for publishers who would want nothing more than to toss their editors into the drink.

This Yglesias piece in the NYT is horrifically bad. Almost every "fact" it cites is provably false. At best it is cocktail party banter from a pundit who knows nothing of energy. At worst, it was cut/paste from oil industry talking points. So, a rebuttal: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/o...

Former NSA employee (16 years) with a pro tip for you. Released controlled document on the left, Epstein on the right. See the difference? In real redactions, some words, headers, and bits will almost always still be visible, but especially classification headers. These documents are UNCLASSIFIED

I don't see any alternative but impeaching Bondi. Put Republicans in Congress on the record that they are OK with the coverup.

"There’s no reference to any legal authority & no detail. It’s just 'there are security concerns, as evidenced by the Secret Service saying there are security concerns & the project cannot be stopped, & you cannot have any more details.' How do you possibly push back against that? It’s just mush."

The Epstein Files, everybody!

White men are 30% of the US and if they look around the room and see it’s less than 90% white men they think it’s affirmative action.

Nation Just Kinda Assumed Pacific Northwest Always Lived in Giant Puddle Like That: tinyurl.com/bdh393s4

These are the people who are willing to go on the record. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/u...

Our new golden age of free speech, where opposition to immigration enforcement can trigger a federal investigation

This is not a time for nuanced, above-it-all takes. All those signal is that your opinion is functionless and your voice is bound for the blockpits.

David Brooks writing about how there was nothing to see with the Epstein Files while not disclosing *he was in them* is at least a Nuzzi-level journalistic scandal What I'm saying is, get ready to see a nude painting of David Brooks in the NYT within weeks

Have we considered just not paying attention to any of these people or at the very least not paying for their opinions? They got the biggest most important story of the century wrong and were smug assholes about it. Of what value are their insights?

i was especially struck by these paragraphs, which rang very true to me. libs who grew up around conservatives aren't embarrassed to be liberals--or confused about what conservatives want. there's a certain kind of elite media man, on the other hand--

I was a kid once. And my biggest regret in life is that I never got a childhood without pain. Politicians should never insert themselves into the personal health care decisions of patients, parents, and their providers—and that includes trans Americans.

Umm… what the fuck is even happening right now in the White House? The fucking Downfall meme feels more calm, measured, and logical by comparison.

This story Carl Nassib told on RC's pod about coming out in the NFL cracked me up. His delivery is so good!

They developed the "high school girl's sports" angle as a wedge issue, to lever their way up to full society-wide discrimination. What's endlessly stunning to me is how many purported liberals a) helped them when it started & b) are still helping them even after the larger purpose has become clear!

given how much cheaper touchscreens are than having to tool and manufacture physical switchgear, the safety data must be really bad for automakers to be voluntarily shifting back to real controls

Short version: chasing the hardline party’s voters without any real principles of your own makes you lose your own base and convince fence-sitters to support the hardline party, not you.

if you need AI to do your powerpoints or write your emails you shouldnt be in your job. those things ARE your job.

1. For at least 10 years, Pepsi has conspired with Walmart to force up grocery prices. That’s the shocking evidence made public today in an unsealed FTC lawsuit. The suit was abandoned in May by the Trump FTC just before it was to be un-redacted. We went to court to get it unsealed & won.

This isn’t even all of the AIDS quilt. It was so long they didn’t have room to display it all. Reagan flat out fucking murdered queer people

Most people don't know what Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration actually means in practice, how it should work, and why it's a specialized domain of research and practice. If you wrote a good overview to inform the discussion it could be very valuable right now.

One of the biggest moments of my career: USCIS canceled my client’s naturalization oath ceremony. We filed a lawsuit, went to trial, and the judge swore him in right there in the courtroom!

the problem for transphobes is that at this point nearly everyone has met or at least interacted with a trans person and figured out that they're just people trying to live their lives. this is why they want to ban trans people from existing in public at all costs