Ted Mann

The dummymander rears its head... "Voting rights advocates say a backlash against Republican attempts to gerrymander Black voters into new congressional districts is helping to drive the surge in early and absentee voting." via @gregorykorte.com @bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

This is the sort of remark that used to end careers.

For the fabulously wealthy, paying taxes is pretty much optional. They can borrow against their vast wealth, which is mostly an untaxed capital gain, without paying taxes. When they die, the capital gain goes to zero. And loopholes exist to bypass the estate tax too.

I'll believe we've reached AGI when the agent responds, "WTF dude, that's insane."

FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) — Trump says he ordered the Justice Department lawsuit over Alaska's US Senate race: 'I'm the one that said do it.'

The head of the state response hasn't even been to this farm and is instead keeping tabs on the outbreak via Google Maps (?) because the owners are "a very private bunch." Brilliant.

NEW, from Bloomberg News: “Elon Musk has now given more than $445 million in the current election cycle.”

"Like most senators, he is photographed almost exclusively from the front, clad in typical Republican garb—navy blazers and slacks, the occasional checkered flannel to demonstrate a semblance of backwoods fluency—shielding off any lascivious thoughts." slate.com/life/2026/10...

NEW: Nearly 200 people granted pardons or other clemency by President Trump for Jan. 6 riot prosecutions are suing so far for millions in US payouts. More than a quarter were convicted of assaulting or interfering with police, court records show. Deep dive: buff.ly/keDq09P

"Sitting down broadens the ass" is just such a perfect Hemingway thought. The vanity, the confidence in something obviously anatomically wrong. A dumb idea, said with simple conviction. Glorious. www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...

Brendan Carr goes full speech police at the FCC.

“These discussions are very frank and oddly not at all awkward,” Kao told the FBI. “I suppose once we got that far, everyone knows the deal.” The perp accidentally blurting out why it's hard to actually prosecute this type of (alleged? nearly alleged?) crime. www.propublica.org/article/nava...

We’re back with our second story about how Trump’s purge of the FBI killed a sweeping bribery probe in D.C. This time, we take you to South Carolina, where two powerful politicians escaped scrutiny: Sen. Lindsey Graham and Rep. James Clyburn. THREAD 👇

What this piece says—and then derangedly refuses to hear itself saying!!—is that seniors spend less money because the American work force got its stable, guaranteed pensions taken away and replaced with personal investment savings. And then it wonders why they're risk-averse with the money!

Very, very good to see Washpost Executive Editor Matt Murray, whose photographer was beaten by violent Israelis, push back on Bibi’s bullshit

Ukraine's leader explains what happened when Musk's Starlink got throttled: "When the speed was reduced, we were unable to intercept a certain number of jet-powered 'shaheds.' We couldn’t use a tool that helps protect people. That’s very painful and frustrating."

damn that was as short as a Murdoch engagement

What Musk might do when the chips are down is a long-simmering, multi-state question: "The defense-industrial complex are not saints, but we don’t have to ask this question of Raytheon or Lockheed: Is there a chance you are more loyal to China than you are to us?” www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

“There’s a lot of red meat.” The companies that danced and dallied with Trump are armoring up, as an increasingly likely Democratic takeover of Congress means they will have to explain themselves to the public. w @joshuagreen.bsky.social www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

People taking an Elon Musk hype video at face value at this late hour should not be permitted to use a stove unsupervised.

Nobody seems to want to take responsibility for ordering the code red on Starshield — controlled by the US — degrading Ukraine's air defenses without warning at a time when Russia was stepping up attacks on civilians and power stations. Bipartisan senators have asked DOD IG to investigate.

good catch:

"It seemed to reflect a decades-long pattern of tactical fabulism." A great @austincarr.bsky.social profile of what seems like a very unhappy man. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

NEW: A lawsuit accuses Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, of unlawfully exercising government power by acting as one of the administration’s “go-to foreign policy negotiators” without Senate confirmation or compliance with ethics rules buff.ly/nT8HJxw Complaint: buff.ly/mtX7rZX

Last night the President of the United States posted a video of a tiger attacking an unwell person (who was fatally mauled shortly afterward), then an AI video of himself befriending the tiger. Remember when Howard Dean yelled weird

It would be nice if the freedom guys seemed to know what the first amendment is.

"Are you a lawyer?" "I'm a legislator." Oh dear.

This is clearly not acceptable

Damn good story.

Philadelphia will just take all your comestibles, don’t you learn.

"Technofascists want to shut the inward eye. They’ll close it like an eyelid on a corpse: a gambit, a formality. They want it shut for all eternity. Eternity is no big thing: the future is an asset they hoarded long ago."

rockets and jets www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

the tech industry is about to invent books

Seems like if you're going to make a national story out of Hasan Piker, who campaigned a few times with the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan, saying Israel causes antisemitism, you should also make a national story out of the favorite intellectual of the US Vice President supporting Hitler.

Does Tesla board member James Murdoch know that this is no longer Tesla's mission statement? www.vanityfair.com/story/james-...

New York City has recorded the fewest murders through September since before 1960, Baltimore since 1962, Philadelphia and Detroit since 1964, Oakland since 1967, and New Orleans since 1969.

this is completely unhinged, even by Trump's standards.

. 9 year old me having just watched the phillies-braves the shadow (1994) broadcast booth on VHS 🤝 incapable of shutting the fuck up about the shadow

We don’t spend enough time talking about just how WEIRD all these people are. This is just an incredibly weird and insecure thing to say. Imagine any other SecDef ever being this weird and insecure?!

it is very cool to have the livelihood of every creative person on earth obliterated by people who don’t understand what art is for

"From 9,000 miles away, she still placed the family’s Amazon orders. Still required the kids to check in with her when they came home. Still tracked their location on a GPS app. She yearned for more than these fragments of motherhood." www.thebanner.com/community/lo...

An infuriating story, incredibly well told. (Also, not really the point, but Tamale Hatchet is an incredible band name.)

non-vaporware TBMs hit different

"Ok, our new AI writing app is almost ready to go. Sure, we spelled 'Hemingway' wrong, but at least we captured some of the bleakness in the slogan, right?"