Ian Welsh: Germany’s Merz Is A Moron, But At Least He’s Got Some Guts Merz realizes Germany needs to declare independence from the US.
Mapquest, which is still a thing, has a “Gulf of… " generator. The body of water formerly known as the Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of Mitch.
Rusty Foster: “If Trump Season One was a galvanizing historical threat to the Republic, so far Season Two is a re-tread with a lot of the same tropes but more D-list celebrity cameos and a much less coherent plot.”
The coup has failed
The Coup Has Failed. Also: The Democratic Brand Has Tanked. Trump Is Doing the Same to the Republican Party. And: James Carville says the Trump administration will collapse within 30 days. Democrats just need to “play possum,” Carville says. All may be true; but Trump has more lives than a cat. He repeatedly teeters on the verge of destruction and bounces back stronger than ever.
I’m not counseling despair — Trump and his movement are beatable. But don’t take anything for granted.
Looks like Dave Winer is doing valuable work on Wordland, a simple, web-based front end for Wordpress. It appears to be an implementation of the WordPress for One idea he talked about last year. No Mastodon or BlueSky integration, just RSS. I love seeing more simple, easy-to-use blogging platforms.
News that got my attention today
Conservatives won German elections, a beginner’s guide to long covid, the new antitrust consensus and more.
Something I saw while walking the dog: This “Blessing Box” in front of a church, stocked with small food donations
Today's news and links that got my attention
Pope Francis is critically ill. Measles outbreaks in Texas and New Mexico. Weird politics in Chula Vista. An American missionary spying for Russia. Six things ER doctors wish you’d avoid. And the perfect girl next door — living your mediocre life in the shadow of a hipster goddess.
News that got my attention today
Trump dismissed four-star Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the joint chiefs of staff, a fighter pilot, and replaced him with a retired white three-star general loyal to Trump, passing over the usual chain of command. The chief of staff traditionally spans administrations. The change included a purge of six Pentagon officials, including a woman, and furthers the Republican white supremacist, anti-women, sexist, authoritarian agenda.
Protesters confronted California Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones, of Santee, Calif., who is pandering to white supremacy and xenophobia by restricting California’s so-called “sanctuary city” law.
School shooter Brenda Spencer, 62, was denied parole for the sixth time. She opened fire on a San Diego elementary school in 1979, killing two and injuring nine others, and later explained her reason: “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.” The shooting became the inspiration for a song, “I Don’t Like Mondays,” by the Boomtown Rats, an Irish band, written by Bob Geldof and Johnnie Fingers. It is a lovely piano ballad. The video is a perfect capsule of cheap, cheesy 1979 music videos. Geldof later said he regretted writing the song because it made Spencer famous.
Also:
An 87-year-old widower went viral for hand-delivering party invitations door to door that read “4 pm unitl the cops arrive.”
A 94-year-old woman reunited with a toddler she saved from drowing 64 years ago. He’s now 66 years old.
Authorities seized 303 cocaine-filled ceramic bananas.
9.3% of US adults identified as LGBTQ+ last year, up from 7.6% in 20230. This is the kind of thing that means TRUMP-DOGEism will have a short shelf-life. Trump came into office with the slimmest of margins; only about a third of eligible voters supported him. Those LGBTQ+ people make up a big part of the population, and they have plenty of friends, families and allies in the cisgender-heterosexual community (like me). Trump-DOGEism will continue to lose popularity as their stupid and dangerous policies harm more and more people.
Additional source: 1440