Things you don’t like to come home to: a backhoe parked on the grass and an 8 foot deep trench dug in the yard.
We noticed with the spring thaw that we were building a lovely swamp in the yard — we had a constant leak from the water main feeding our house. The only way to deal with it was to bring in the heavy equipment, excavate the pipe, and replace the leaky broken bit. I think I’m going waterless tonight, but they think it will be fixed tomorrow morning.
We now have excerpts from that Signal chat, where a reporter was accidentally included as they discussed bombing the Houthis in Yemen.
Jesus fucking christ.
Emojis? Cheering while they gloat about killing people? I know there are a lot of things wrong with this colossal fuckup, but please…can our military leaders take their own actions seriously? If you’re bombing someone, it is not an occasion for joy and laughter, it’s a catastrophe, a failure of policy that has led to violence. It may sometimes be necessary, but it’s also regrettable.
Others have noticed that these people are unqualified amateurs, putting on a clown show.
Zachary B. Wolf of CNN noted that “Trump intentionally hired amateurs for top jobs. This is their most dramatic blunder.” Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) told Brian Tyler Cohen: “My first reaction… was ‘what absolute clowns.’ Total amateur hour, reckless, dangerous…. [T]his is what happens when you have basically Fox News personalities cosplaying as government officials.” Foreign policy scholar Timothy Snyder posted: “These guys inherited one of the most functional state apparatus in the history of the world and they are inhabiting it like a crack house.”
Four more years of this. Great.
Martyn Iles lost his status as Ken Ham’s successor at Answers in Genesis (there’s a story there, I’m sure, but no one is talking), and now he’s an immigrant wandering loose in the United States, which is definitely not a good position to be in. Normally, I’d be sympathetic, but Martyn Iles? The Young Earth Creationist and far right kook? Nah. Deport him.
Prayer request: | need a new visa for the USA so | can come and go freely for our new project.
The lawyer recommends going for an O-1 visa, but it’s a high bar.
I’ll need some senior political and church figures to help me out with letters that verify my past activities… essentially to confirm that | have been a national leader in political, legal and grassroots advocacy work. And trust nobody who really hates my beliefs ends up with the application on their desk.
But once it’s granted, it’s a very good visa, and very durable.
So… Pray everyone is suddenly overtaken by a desire to do me just a small favour
OK, I’ll be generous: everyone can give him all the prayers he might want. I don’t know what his “new project” is, but I’m sure it’s garbage pandering to ignorance.
AI spills the beans. An alternative to humanity is being developed from mouse stock.
You should feel guilty if you put out mouse traps and squish those mega-brains.
I think this clown’s head might roll pretty good
Canada, Greenland, Mexico, and Panama are even more relieved that the American war machine is run by idiots and incompetents. When they make war plans, they invite random journalists to the meeting…which is also held over a commercial app rather than all those secret channels the government controls. The editor of the Atlantic got advance notice about a recent bombing run over Yemen.
The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.
I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.
This is going to require some explaining.
Is it? Is it, really?
It’s clear the military is being controlled by the gang who can’t shoot straight. My questions are: are they going to repeat this behavior next time they want to blow something up? Are they going to pay attention when the Pentagon tells them to not use that app? Will the Democrats be as persistent in hounding these baboons as the Republicans were about Hillary’s Emails
?
And, was Pete Hegseth sober at this badly mismanaged meeting?
NASA’s budget is getting slashed.
NASA is terminating $420 million in contracts the agency says are redundant or “misaligned” with its core priorities, but has provided few details about what is being cut.
In a statement to SpaceNews late March 24, NASA press secretary Bethany Stevens confirmed a post by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that NASA had terminated about $420 million in “unneeded” contracts.
The question I have is…how much of that $420 million in contracts was going to SpaceX, which is run by Elon Musk, who is also running DOGE?
Much corruption, so respect.
Male tarantulas, when they reach sexual maturity, are focused on wandering away to find sex, to the point where they may lose interest in eating.
Females, on the other hand, turn into voracious consumers of calories.
Blue wants her morning mealworm, and strikes like lightning.
Apparently I need to go back to bed and shut down all social media, because this is the dreck I’m getting now on Bluesky.
Created by @darwintojesus, posted by @markwillworship
I can’t resist, let’s look a little more closely at the supposed contrasts in this illustration.
The average atheist pretends to understand science, while the average Christian understands science
. I’m an atheist who has an advanced degree in biology and teaches evolution, and I guarantee you that the average Christian apologist does not know the first thing about science — I’ve been debating them for a few decades. All I have to do is point out that this illustration was created by a fanatical Christian who thinks Darwin is to science as Jesus is to Christianity.
The atheist doesn’t believe in right and wrong while the Christian believes in right and wrong
. Atheists do believe in right and wrong, they just reject the unthinking authoritarian right and wrong, the rule-following idea that Christians have that they already possess absolute inviolable Truth in their mish-mash of a Bible.
The atheist secretly hates god while the Christian loves god
. Nope. God doesn’t exist. We don’t feel much of anything about the invisible man. Now Christians, on the other hand…
The atheist doesn’t care about evidence while the Christian cares about evidence
. The one thing about most debates between Christians and atheists is that the atheist will spend most of his time asking for evidence to back up the Christian’s assertions, while the Christian will gish-gallop all over the place, making a whole series of baseless claims. These debates get boring and predictable.
See also the atheist refuses to defend his atheist worldview while the Christian defends his worldview
. This is not true, the two approach this concern from two different angles. The Christian thinks a recitation of dogma is a defense, while the atheist expects to give and take evidence.
The atheist has no purpose while the Christian has a real purpose
. All purposes are constructed frameworks we use to explain why we do what we do. Atheists have them, they just don’t accept that they are fixed and absolutely assigned by a deity who communicates them to us through an old book. Christians real
purpose is an arbitrary bit of nonsense, to serve God
, which is dangerous and destructive since that God is observed by following a lot of out-of-date rules that don’t apply to the society we live in.
Then the whole image collapses into scattershot nonsense because the artist couldn’t think of comparable contrasts.
I’m not particularly terrified of dying, I’m sort of resigned to the reality — but I will resist it even as I know it’s inevitable. I don’t believe that Christians are unafraid of death or ready to die and go home
, they will fight it as hard as I will.
I don’t think I’m just an evolved fish. Fish are pretty amazing organisms. I respect my lineage, I don’t deny it like the average Christian does.
I do understand the moral argument
. That’s just the idea that a moral norm is an objective truth that is only explainable as a command from a God, or a kind of created instinct. I understand it, I just reject it.
I don’t want to be god. Can Christians ever get it through their thick skulls that we don’t believe in gods?
I’ll add another label. The average Christian believes in pious bullshit
and readily lies about others
.
This is how I start my morning? Make sure you’ve got a clear path to the toilet before you click on play.
The good news: it’s not an earworm. As soon as it stopped, I figured out that there’s nothing memorable or interesting about the “song”.
We have two kinds of Democrats in the party, and I want to see more of the JB Pritzker kind.
He gave a great speech.
Donald Trump cannot take anything from us that we don’t choose to give him. He and his henchmen don’t want people to realize that. But now is the time for us to wake up. The good news is every day I’m seeing more and more people across this country realize that they don’t want to give him much at all.
The question I get asked most right now is, “So what can I do? What can I do?” And I’m going to be blunt about this. Never before in my life have I called for mass activism, but this is the moment. Take to the streets, protest, show up at town halls. Jam the phone lines in Congress, 202-224-3121, and afford not a moment of peace to any elected representatives who are aiding and abetting Musk and Trump’s illegal power grab. This is not a drill, folks. This is the real thing.
Seize every megaphone you have. Go online and make a donation to the legal funds fighting Trump, to HRC, and to the candidates for Congress that vow to take this country backward. And don’t limit your voice to the traditional political channels. Be like Lucy Welch. When JD Vance went to vacation at the Sugarbush Resort in Warren, Vermont, Lucy, who writes the Sugarbush Daily Snow Report, used her report to defend her diverse and wonderful community, ending by saying, “I am using my relative platform as a snow reporter to be disruptive. What we do or don’t do matters.”
What we do and don’t do matters. It matters right now more than it ever has before. When my future grandkids look back on this moment, I want them to know that my voice was one of the loudest in the room, screaming for justice and fighting against tyranny.
And in the midst of this existential fight, this battle that seems to consume everything, well, let’s not take the soul-sucking path of sacrificing the most persecuted for that which we deem to be most popular. I know that there are transgender children right now looking out at this world and wondering if anyone is going to stand up for them and for their simple right to exist. Well, I am. We are. We will.
Yes! More Democrats like that!
