Erick Langer

Reminder for all young parents: You only get: - 1 Summer with your baby - 3 with your toddler - 9 with your child - 5 with your teenager This time is precious. Don’t rush it.

I read somewhere that being an American right now is like riding in the backseat of a car with a drunk driver, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.

Imagine an American vice-president traveling to Budapest in 1956 to support a pro-Kremlin government. That’s how pathetic the current U.S. government is.

Si no hay libertad de hablar sin eufemismos, no hay libertad.

@DavidAstinWalsh In the end, libraries are effectively only renting any of those books. They can disappear in a second. If presses disappear, so do their electronic books.

One reason why it's bad that university libraries have stopped buying physical books is that when the website goes down, that's kind of it. There's no backup or alternative to an ebook that is now wholly unaccessible.

Ok. Here we go Ari, you know better than this. You’ve been inside the room. You understand how alliances actually function, not just how they’re talked about on cable hits. NATO was never meaningfully consulted here. Not brought in as partners. Not treated as allies whose buy-in mattered. Instead, for years they’ve been publicly dressed down, threatened, and told outright that they’re on their own. When the President of the United States repeatedly questions the value of the alliance, floats walking away from Article 5, and even talks about things like taking Greenland, you don’t get trust—you get hedging. So now there’s a major war raging on their own continent, and those countries are being asked to stretch even thinner for an operation they had no role in shaping, led by a president who has made clear he views alliances as transactional at best and disposable at worst. Of course they’re cautious. Of course they’re calculating risk. And yes—of course they’re worried they’ll be left holding the bag when Trump inevitably changes course or loses interest. That’s not freeloading. That’s rational behavior in response to uncertainty we created. You’re right that some European countries have underinvested in defense. That’s been true for years, and many have started correcting it—especially since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But let’s not pretend this moment exists in a vacuum. Trust is cumulative. And it’s been burned down repeatedly. And the idea that this is about “refusing to help the U.S. rid the world of Iran” ignores the bigger strategic picture. European nations are dealing with an active land war, energy insecurity, domestic political strain, and the very real possibility that U.S. commitments to NATO could evaporate overnight. You don’t expand commitments under those conditions—you consolidate. You know this, Ari. And I think you know why this argument doesn’t hold up. But somewhere along the way, you traded that understanding for applause lines. You’ve sold yourself at the altar of popularity instead of leveling with people about the complexity here. Alliances aren’t maintained by ultimatums and public humiliation. They’re maintained by trust, consultation, and consistency. We’ve offered too little of that lately—and now we’re seeing the result.

Yes it's true - the Black Death did end without a vaccine It killed 200 million people including wiping out half the population of Europe but at least they never got one of them nasty vaccines right?

La mayor proeza de la humanidad no será volver a la luna ni conquistar el espacio, será frenar las guerras y sostener la Paz!

Think about what Washington Republicans are actually asking you to believe: that there are noncitizens so committed to voting illegally that they’d risk deportation, prosecution, and everything we’ve seen ICE do, just to cast a ballot in our elections.      There is no documented crisis of noncitizens voting. It is already a federal crime, and it always has been.       Republicans invented a crisis that doesn’t exist so they could sell a “solution” that makes it harder for YOU to vote.      Call it what it is: the SAVE REPUBLICANS Act.

Right then. Let me explain something very slowly, because it appears some basic logic has gone missing somewhere over the Atlantic. No serious nation in the history of warfare has spent fourteen months insulting its allies, threatening to annex their territory, siding with their common enemy, and then knocked on their door expecting them to come running to rescue a catastrophe of its own making. That is not how alliances work. That is not how anything works. You abused the UK. You threatened Canada. You tried to grab Greenland. You called the EU an adversary. You praised Putin, the one man every serious NATO ally has spent decades preparing to fight. You hosted Kremlin officials in the Capitol. You undermined European elections. You abandoned Ukraine. You imposed tariffs on your closest partners. You did all of this loudly, proudly, and on camera. And now you are surprised that nobody is returning your calls. Here is a question worth sitting with. Why do you think that is? Is it possible, just possible, that when you treat your allies like enemies for over a year while cuddling up to their actual enemy, those allies might update their opinion of you? Is that concept too complicated? Does that require more working memory than is currently available? You did not plan this war with your allies. You did not consult them. You did not build a coalition. You started a conflict, watched it go sideways, and then got on your knees asking for help from people you spent fourteen months calling weak, corrupt and irrelevant. NATO is not what it was. Not because Europe changed. Because Washington made crystal clear which side it is on. And it is not ours. You want European boots on the ground? Start by explaining why America is more aligned with Moscow than with Brussels. Take your time. We will wait. Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

Marco Rubio 2 days ago: “Imagine if Iran funded the well-being of its people, rather than its military” Trump today: “We can’t fund daycare or Medicaid, we need more money for our military” Sometimes the jokes write themselves.

I feel like I recall hearing about how experienced military leadership being replaced by unqualified sycophants is a common theme in certain types of governments… 🤔

So, he guts USAID, destroys the U.S. Institute of Peace, causes starvation, spread of disease, lowers U.S. presence in the world, helps China and Russia and destroys tens of thousands of careers. Hell of a legacy.

Trump is seeking to pay for his new $1.5 trillion military budget by cutting the following: $510 million - Grants for farmers and agricultural research $82 million - Loans for rural small businesses (Fully eliminated) $61 million - Support for farmers and food markets (Fully eliminated) $240 million - School meals and food education for children abroad (Fully eliminated) $659 million - Community building grants $47 million - Support for minority-owned businesses (Fully eliminated) $449 million - Economic development grants for communities $1.6 billion - Weather forecasting, fisheries, and coastal protection (NOAA) $993 million - Scientific research and technology standards $150 million - Support for American exports and trade $2.2 billion - Broadband and internet access programs $8.5 billion - Funding for public schools $1.5 billion - Vocational training and adult education (Fully eliminated) $2.7 billion - College access and higher education support $15.2 billion - Roads, bridges, and infrastructure projects $1.1 billion - Home energy efficiency and clean energy programs (Fully eliminated) $1.1 billion - Scientific research funding $386 million - Environmental cleanup programs $150 million - Cutting-edge clean energy research $4 billion - Help paying home heating and cooling bills for low-income families (Fully eliminated) $768 million - Refugee resettlement assistance $819 million - Care and shelter for migrant children $775 million - Local anti-poverty programs (Fully eliminated) $5 billion - Public health programs, mental health services, and disease prevention $5 billion - Medical research (NIH) $129 million - Healthcare quality and safety research $356 million - Emergency preparedness and disaster response $1.3 billion - FEMA community disaster preparedness grants $707 million - Cybersecurity protection for critical infrastructure $52 million - Airport and transportation security $40 million - Protection against chemical and biological weapons threats $53 million - Funding for homeland security operations $3.3 billion - Community development block grants for local neighborhoods (Fully eliminated) $1.3 billion - Affordable housing construction grants (Fully eliminated) $393 million - Programs to reduce homelessness $529 million - Housing assistance for people living with HIV/AIDS (Fully eliminated) $489 million - Housing and services for Native American communities $50 million - Grants to help communities build more housing (Fully eliminated) $60 million - Enforcement of fair housing and anti-discrimination laws $58 million - Homebuyer and renter counseling services (Fully eliminated) $45 million - Renewable energy development programs (Fully eliminated) $1.7 billion - Grants for local law enforcement and public safety $20 million - Civil rights mediation and legal access programs (Fully eliminated) $1.6 billion - Job training for at-risk youth (Fully eliminated) $395 million - Jobs program for low-income seniors (Fully eliminated) $234 million - Worker safety and labor protection programs $101 million - Enforcement of equal pay and workplace anti-discrimination laws $46 million - Programs to combat child labor and forced labor abroad $2 billion - International humanitarian aid $1.2 billion - Food aid for hungry families abroad (Fully eliminated) $4.3 billion - Global health and disease prevention programs $2.7 billion - Funding for the United Nations and international partnerships $642 million - International economic and treasury programs $315 million - Democracy and anti-corruption programs abroad $486 million - Grants for public transit projects $4.2 billion - Electric vehicle charging infrastructure $372 million - Airline service for rural and small communities $145 million - Grants for sustainable and equitable infrastructure $204 million - Loans and investment for underserved communities $1.4 billion - IRS taxpayer services and enforcement $100 million - Air pollution monitoring and reduction programs (Fully eliminated) $1 billion - EPA grants to states for environmental protection $2.5 billion - Clean drinking water and wastewater infrastructure funds $90 million - Grants to reduce diesel pollution (Fully eliminated) $3.4 billion - NASA space and earth science research $297 million - NASA technology innovation programs $1.1 billion - International Space Station operations $143 million - STEM education programs $309 million - Small business development and entrepreneurship programs $170 million - Small Business Administration operations $158 million - Loans for small businesses

Many Iranians supported your war, because your plan was to liberate Iran. Instead you celebrate sending a civilization to the Stone Age. Great leaders build, not destroy. They serve humanity, not murder schoolgirls in the name of Jesus Christ. I weep to see America like this.

I feel like journals should do mandatory checks on all references to see if they exist, and if not (and isn't the result of minor typo), reject and bar the authors from resubmission for some period of time

I am optimistic about this country's ability to assimilate immigrants and their children into American values, and less optimistic about our ability to assimilate citizens with a seething hatred of immigrants into American values.

An interactive digital resource for historical maps of Chile. memoriachilena.gob.cl/602/w3-article…

Trump: “Birthright citizenship is a scam and should not be allowed.” Grok: “Tiffany Trump is the only one of Trump’s kids who is not a beneficiary of birthright citizenship. All the other kids were born before his wives became U.S. citizens.”