Grant Alden

Maybe we should worry about all the data those centers are accumulating.

Microsoft is offering buyouts to 60,000 workers. Tech workers. The good jobs. The future. 60,000.

AI is to writing as karaoke is to singing.

In the bleak future it may be useful to remember how easily the communication systems we all depend upon can be interrupted.

Ah. The evangelicals don’t mind living in a surveillance state because they already believe themselves to be living in one.

So long as the nature of personhood is up for grabs…

The price of diesel may win an election, but it won’t lead to the repudiation of maga. It won’t quell racism, end Citizens United, or improve health care. Those things require political will. Spines, even.

The AI titans don’t care about consequences — hell, they’re going to underground compounds. Or Mars. Just the consequences that cost them money. Which is why they now want government to step in. It’s a liability issue. That’s my guess, anyway.

So…if Iran would simply smarten up and purchase its nuclear toys from Kushner & Co., we could have peace? Just trying to understand the new logic of corruption and conquest. And who is being conquered.

They want to take our country and turn it into the worst place you ever worked.

A lot of people don’t realize the dust bowl wasn’t a natural phenomenon. It happened when agrobusiness interests dramatically transformed the plains without regard for drought, and created vicious dust storms that choked whole families to death. That’s what I think of when I read about data centers.

The continued existence of Keith Richards remains the most eloquent argument in favor of socialized medicine.

“Behind every great fortune is a great crime." — attributed to Balzac Have we come to the point where our last best hope is to be ruled by an honest thief? Even as a pacifist I should prefer to try out the pitchforks first.

Some day the mad king will be gone. His enablers will remain. Let’s not pretend Vance will be any less beholden to the oligarchs. Or that Rubio will give up Venezuela. Or that Stephen Miller will slither away. This is going to take a while.

So Mitch will deny Kentucky an election just as he denied Obama a selection. Some legacy. Such an inglorious final act.

Y’know how celebrity deaths come in threes?

Drinking a nonalcoholic Belgian and rooting for the good guys.

It's not about policy. It's not socialism, plus/minus. It's about authentic candidates who speak -- or are perceived to speak -- honestly to potential constituents. And it's about fighting back. We parse policy and utterly miss what's going on.

Adam Sandler?

Outside my window, the county has given into the urge to blow things up, to celebrate the dying empire.

I used to cycle between rage and despair. But I’m older now. So I walk.

Happy Juneteenth National Independence Day! On this day in 1865, "Union troops arrived in Galveston, TX, to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the last enslaved people in the country—more than two years after the Proclamation was officially issued."

I suppose it's inappropriate to suggest that the UFC claw/lighting rig/whatever would make a fine traitor's tree? To be clear, I'm a pacifist, so that's not advocacy. I would vastly prefer they be made to suffer more conventional fates.

Marjane Satrapi, author of 'Persepolis,' dies at 56

Have we given up, then? Subsided into restless silence? Oh, let's not.

I have found and read one work by Eleanor Arnason. They’re all out of print. One book and it’s clear to me a revival is called for.

I am neither fool nor monied enough to play the predictive markets. But if I were... I'd be putting big money on gas prices dropping to $3/gallon about a month before the election.

www.salon.com/2026/04/19/h...

I simply can’t believe Congress and the cabinet are sitting around, totally fine with what is absolutely demented behavior from the president.

It is a beautiful, ordinary spring morning. Time to feed the chickens and the goats, to dodge the Canada goose waiting for its mate to hatch goslings. And to worry if the Fascist Kleptocrat has gone so far around the bend as to use tactical nuclear weapons. Today. Unchecked. Dear god.

@tampabaytre.bsky.social @connorjrogers.bsky.social : Younglings, I am old enough to have seen Marc Wilson play HS ball. Don't bet, don't fantasy, rarely have time to watch games. But I depend upon y'all for a burst of decency every night before sleep. Sorry @ PFF. Proud of you both.

Dude thinks he can just bankrupt his way out of the entirely voluntary war with Iran. And the Epstein files.

Even if one cares more about climate than country, the incentives in this atrocious war are still perverse. If the Straits remain impassable, if things escalate and billion $ facilities are destroyed, if the world has to move on from oil (even if the US doesn't), that's still a net win.

His short, stubby fingers itch for the nuclear football.

If we made the green energy transition this war would be unthinkable and these authoritarians wouldn’t be in power — not in the US, not in Iran, not in Saudi Arabia, not in Russia. Hydrocarbons are killing our freedom and just plain killing us.

We live now in the fallout of the Bush Doctrine of preemptive attack, with blatant disregard for intelligence. And oil. We live now in a rogue state. We should have resisted more strongly then. We have to resist with all our strength now.

That $143-million Noem contract? Real question is where did the media buys go, cuz that's like 80% of it. Find that out, and it's further proof of state-sponsored propaganda outlets. That's the real graft here.

I wonder if the Fascist Kleptocrat even knew there were civilians in the Middle East, and how close together the countries were to his bombs, and how difficult it was going to be for them to get out. But the ICE flights continue. So there's that.

Do I have this right? Christian Nationalists have instigated war in the Middle East to hasten the Second Coming, abetted by the oligarchs, who were planning to move to Mars anyway?

Does war with Iran and closure of the Strait of Hormuz make Venezuelan crude (different tho it be) more valuable? Y'know, our imperialist seizure down south? With offshore bank accounts... Is it as simple as all that? (Probably.)

I so wish we cared about all the dead & maimed, and not just the Americans.

Really, the Supremes are just saying to their king, No, you have to do it this other way.

Anyone else think it's weird that a regime which so tightly embraces eugenics is simultaneously opposed to abortion rights? I mean, I know I'm slow here, but... ...and hatred isn't built on logic...

www.cnn.com/2026/02/11/u... This seems like a big deal.