- A paralysed man can stand on his own after receiving an injection of neural stem cells to treat his spinal cord injury.
- From the Department of NSS: Media Use Is Linked to Lower Psychological Well-Being “The more time spent on screens, the greater the negative effects—especially among young people. The study suggests excessive media consumption disrupts essential psychological needs, such as real-world social interaction, physical activity, and sleep quality.” – via Arnold’s Pump Club, which is a surprisingly informative daily newsletter
- Lionel Messi trading card controversy: Who is signing his autographs? (See also: Why do companies buy memorabilia like the Ohtani ball and Skenes card? It goes back to Babe Ruth.)
- Tesla Is Dying, and Polestar Wants to Kill It
- The nightmare scenario for Hollywood has arrived: Viewers are choosing free creator content over premium subscriptions. Nielsen data for February 2025 show YouTube now dominates nearly 12% of total TV viewing time—more than Disney and about equal to Netflix and Amazon combined. And this doesn’t even count viewership on phones and tablets, where creators dominate even more. – via The Dailies
- Good news: Kentucky governor vetoes GOP abortion bill, says it undermines doctors and endangers pregnant women.
- Big Thunder Mountain Railroad opened at the Magic Kingdom in 1980 and I still think of it as one of the newer rides.
Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?
- I don’t understand why the AP bent over backwards to avoid mentioning the political party affiliation of an ex-North Dakota lawmaker sentenced to ten years in prison for going to Europe with intent to pay for sex with a minor.
- Lest We Forget the Horrors: An Unending Catalog of [the Current Administration’s] Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes
- “DOGE” claims it’s not an agency that has to comply with FOIA requests, so The Intercept is suing them.
- POTUS nominates Republican once accused of mishandling taxpayer funds as HHS watchdog
- For Fascists, Hypocrisy Is a Virtue
Posts tagged “fascism”
- New jazz fellowship honors the genre’s elders and gives them each an unrestricted $100,000 grant. – via @phillewis.bsky.social
- Welcome to Chicken Town presents exactly what its URL says it does. – via @erikahall.bsky.social
Thomas Perry is likely the strongest player in the 2025 NFL Draft. You’ve probably never heard of him.- While the individual accumulation of wealth offers an illusion of safety, does it simply create more instability and insecurity in the long run?
- After Pressure from Georgia Senator Ossoff, White House Restores Funding for HBCU Students Studying Agriculture
- College Football 25 broke video game records. Can EA Sports keep everyone happy?
- You Have No Rights
- Good News for People Who Love Bad News
- Once social security checks stop showing up, millions of Americans will finally understand the scope.
- After All This
- The Environmental Protection Agency will move to reverse its 2009 declaration that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare — a step that would threaten most major climate regulations and make it harder for future presidents to enact new ones. – via @vanhollen.senate.gov
- “You’re not going to like what I’m saying next, but we are in the middle of a totalitarian fascist coup in this country.” – via @anildash.com
- FDA Cancels Meeting of Vaccine Experts Scheduled to Advise on Flu Shots
- It IS Happening Here
- The White House on Wednesday denied reporters from Reuters and other news organizations access to [the administration’s] first cabinet meeting.
- It seems almost unavoidable that we are headed for a deep, deep recession.
- I will jump on the Last Week Tonight bandwagon and spread the word about how to change your settings to make yourself less valuable to Meta. (And, yes, that’s the correct link.)
- The surprisingly hopeful What Felt Impossible Became Possible is an excellent essay about the downfall of the Ku Klux Klan and how it relates to our current American crisis. The key takeaway — as many others have noted — is that fascism always fails. “It is destructive and it is awful and not everyone lives to see the other side, but it always, always fails.”
- A “super pod” of thousands of dolphins was spotted off the California coast.
- Disney’s Star Wars Succession Problem: Who Will Replace Kathleen Kennedy? – via The Dailies
- What happens when you pull a wildly valuable Jayden Daniels rookie card? For “Dr. Moist Muffins”, it literally changed his life.
- Scientists have found that eating more fiber could help reduce microplastic absorption and minimize its harmful effects on your body.
- Neither vaccines nor the virus prompted an increase in the number of cardiac arrests in athletes, contrary to misinformation that continues to circulate repeatedly.
- Annoying News:
- Starlink gets FAA contract, raising new conflict of interest concerns. – via @joshtpm.bsky.social
- The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., declined to sign an arrest warrant sent to them by local police for Republican congressman Cory Mills who happens to be an ally of the President.
- Trump Administration Litigation Tracker
- An analysis by ProPublica showed that dozens more pregnant and postpartum women have died in Texas hospitals since the state banned abortion. And while the national maternal mortality rate dropped, it rose in Texas by 33%. – via @joncooper-us.bsky.social
- Here’s a handy list of sixteen Democrats who simply aren’t doing enough. If your rep is on that list, get on the phone.
- Stop Calling Them Firings. Business terms provide a totally wrong conceptual framework for the purges underway.
- Within 24 hours of the inauguration, Amazon and UnitedHealth asked regulators to help crush their shareholders’ demands for transparency.
I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down. I just didn’t expect them to be such losers. – via Laura Olin- When my iPhone is connected to my MacBook Air via USB-C cable, both iOS and MacOS should prioritize that connection over the WiFi connection and maintain the link until I actually remove the cable from one of the devices. I don’t understand why Finder would / could / should ever report that “the connection was lost” when the two devices are physically connected.
- The 24-Hour Reality Check: Musk’s Impossible Power Grab and America’s Crisis
- “Be calm when the unthinkable arrives,” is one of the very eloquent bits of advice in this essay On Tyranny. – via Jodi Ettenberg
- From the Department of Irony: You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism “The internet has conditioned us to constantly seek new information, as if becoming a sponge of bad news will eventually yield the final piece of a puzzle.” – via kottke
- Profiles of Courage, Patriotism, and Resistance in standing up to Trump
The Scarlet M
I’ve been thinking lately that there should be some way to flag others on Facebook to remind yourself to ignore them. Of course you can unfriend people; I’m not talking about that. I’m primarily talking about friends of friends. I kind of like the idea of a scarlet M, for moron. Frequently I’ll read a