Thomas H. Moller

i have seen a lot of McCain footage but I have never seen this-- his tortured body struggling to come down that ramp. It's so powerful. He was a true American hero, whatever you think of his politics. Almost a Jesus-like figure-- he took that abuse for all of us.

This man singlehandedly destroyed science as an institution His name was Robert Maxwell, and he was the father of Ghislaine Maxwell He turned scientific knowledge into a commodity, locked it behind a paywall, a created the system which breeds authoritarian, conformist scientists who are terrified to challenge established dogma His system weaponized science for elite control British jew, media tycoon, and Mossad agent He was the first to turn scientific publishing into a ruthless commercial business, locked behind steep paywalls. In 1951 he founded Pergamon Press, which launched hundreds of niche scientific journals - each a tiny monopoly in its field, demanding expensive subscriptions Overnight, freely available public-domain scientific knowledge became gated behind high costs, accessible only to an “intellectually elite” class… the new “intelligentsia” He called this setup “a perpetual financing machine.” and it became the template for the entire industry today. This commercial monopoly on science extracts free labor from scientists, who work tirelessly to write papers, review work and edit manuscripts to further their career prospects - all at no cost, The profit margins for scientific journals far exceed almost every other industry. The top publisher’s margins are higher than Google and Apple. Elsevier, for example, brought in ~ $1.4 billion profit in 2024 alone. This is a huge business which artificially inflates the cost of knowledge dissemination - that is ironically funded in large part by the taxpayer. Unfortunately the entire business model incentivises VOLUME over QUALITY: Careers, grants, and promotions tie to publication count in "prestigious" (high-fee) journals. This means that researchers are penalized for publishing less, and are instead rewarded for pumping out high quantity with little inherent value. In other words, there are tangible benefits to publishing junk science, manipulated data and fabrication. This model disincentivizes and actively punishes genuine scientific curiosity, independent thinking, long-term/risky work, and controversial opinions or lines of research which challenge established dogma. It breeds authoritarian, conformist, self-censoring scientists who are averse to risk. Furthermore, it laid the foundation for a gated elite class of “intelligentsia”. Only those in the “club” at wealthy scientific institutions, who tow the party line, are granted access to scientific knowledge. Those who stray too far from the norm are shunned and expelled. The ultimate result? A bloated, generic mess of low-rigor, irreproducible papers This model, which still dominates to this day, facilitated the corporatization and weaponization of of science What began as a relentless pursuit for truth was coopted and sacrificed for endless greed & elite control of knowledge itself

@kathyireland My 14yo self thanks you!

@THMoller Oh my goodness! Congratulations on all those awards!

 Dad always said, “Kathy, always give 110%. If the customer expects the paper on the driveway, get it on the front porch.” Oh my goodness! I just found my newspaper sacks from 50 years ago! So many memories! 101 customers, 7 days a week, plus door to door monthly collections for 3 1/2 years! Priceless childhood lessons, especially in customer relations and service!

"My parents have been married for 75 years but few have noticed. Most of their friends have died. I contacted 6 local news stations and the Union Tribune newspaper giving details so they could do a story on their lives. Not one response from anyone. I think living into your 90's and staying married 75 years is quite an accomplishment. If you agree, please like and share my post. I want to show them people do care." Credit Eileen Atkinson

🇮🇷 47 years ago, I stood at a window in Tehran as a 3-year-old boy, smelling burning tires and hearing the chants that would steal my country. I didn’t have words for what was happening. Today, I am watching smoke rise over the same city — but this time the smoke is not the end of Iran. It is, God willing, the beginning of her resurrection. Several weeks ago I wrote in that the fever of 1979 was finally breaking. I never imagined I would wake up to see that fever confronted so directly. Israel — with the clear support of the United States — has launched a preemptive strike deep into Tehran and against the regime’s military machinery. Explosions in the capital. Military targets hit. The IRGC’s aura of invincibility, already cracked, is shattering in real time. I do not celebrate war. No decent person does. What I celebrate — what millions of Iranians inside the country and in the diaspora have prayed for in secret for decades — is the possibility that a regime which has no right to exist may finally be forced to go. This is the same regime that: - Armed and cheered the October 7 massacre against Israel for no reason other than pure genocidal hatred. - Murdered tens of thousands of its own sons and daughters who dared to walk peacefully in the streets demanding the most basic freedoms. - Gouges out the eyes of young women for the “crime” of wearing makeup. - Hangs teenagers from cranes for posting a tweet. - Exports terror, poverty, and darkness to every corner it can reach including the U.S. No nation, no people, should have to live under that. Not Israelis. Not Americans. Not Lebanese. Not Syrians. And certainly not Iranians. I am a physician who has spent his life trying to heal bodies and a son of Iran who has spent his life mourning a stolen homeland. What we are witnessing is not aggression — it is surgery. Painful, necessary surgery to remove a tumor that has metastasized for 47 years. The tumor is the Islamic Republic that has hijacked Iran. To the brave pilots and special operators of the Israeli Air Force and the men and women of the United States military now carrying out this mission: I pray for you with everything I have. May God shield you from harm. May every missile find its target and every soldier return home safely to the families who love them. You are not invaders. You are the answer to the prayers of millions who have whispered “enough” in the dark since 1979. You are giving our friends the chance to breathe free air again. The entire region will owe you a peace we have not known in my lifetime. To my fellow Iranians watching from inside the country right now, heart pounding, maybe hiding in basements or on rooftops: Hold on. The end is clearer than it has ever been. The regime’s fear is real. Their eyes — those same eyes that once stared down at us with absolute power — now show something they haven’t shown in decades: panic. The math has changed. The window of 1979 is finally closing. To the little three-year-old boy I once was — and to every little boy and girl in Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, and Tabriz today who hears explosions instead of lullabies: This time the sounds are not the closing of a door. They are the opening of one. The road ahead will not be easy. Transitions never are. But the direction is unmistakable. A secular, prosperous, free Iran is no longer a dream — it is becoming an inevitability. I have lived the stolen life so that others might not have to. Today, for the first time in 47 years, I allow myself to believe that the stealing is almost over. Thank you, Israel. Thank you, America. The Iranian people — the real Iran — will never forget. The fever is breaking. The dawn of 2026 is here. And this time, the light wins. 🇮🇷❤️🇮🇱🇺🇸

At 10:24 this morning, Friday February 27, the United States Ambassador to Israel emailed his own staff and told them to leave the country today. Not next week. Not when convenient. Today. Mike Huckabee, the man Donald Trump personally appointed to represent America in Israel, sent an email to every embassy employee in Jerusalem telling them that anyone wishing to depart should book “any available flight” and leave Israeli soil before the day ends. The embassy has shifted to “authorized departure” status, meaning the US government will pay for nonessential personnel and their families to evacuate. The New York Times obtained the email. The timestamp is 10:24 AM local time. The language says “no need to panic.” The action says panic. When an ambassador tells his own people to leave the country he is assigned to, he is not managing risk. He is clearing the blast radius. Authorized departure is the second-to-last step on the State Department’s crisis escalation ladder. The only step above it is ordered departure, which is mandatory evacuation. The United States has not reached ordered departure. But at 10:24 this morning it reached the step directly below it, and the ambassador personally urged speed. Now hold this against what happened in the last 72 hours. Wednesday, Geneva. Six and a half hours of talks. Araghchi called it the most serious session yet. The Wall Street Journal reported the US and Iran remain far apart on every core issue. Iran refused permanent zero enrichment. America refused anything less. Thursday, 37 advanced combat aircraft landed at RAF Lakenheath in a single day. 12 F-35As. 14 F-15E Strike Eagles. Additional F-22s. The staging base that funneled the first wave of Raptors to Israel is now reloading with strike aircraft carrying 23,000 pounds of ordnance each. Friday morning, the ambassador tells his people to leave. Wednesday you negotiate. Thursday you reload. Friday you evacuate your own embassy. That is not a sequence of unrelated events. That is a countdown visible to anyone reading the timestamps. Huckabee’s email went out five hours ago. Tomorrow, Saturday February 28, Oman’s Foreign Minister meets Vice President Vance in Washington carrying Tehran’s response to Geneva. Technical talks are nominally scheduled for Vienna next week. But you do not tell your embassy staff to leave today if you believe next week’s talks will happen in a world that looks like this one. The email says “make plans sooner rather than later.” Ambassadors are trained to communicate in precise diplomatic language where every word is calibrated. “Sooner rather than later” from a political appointee who does not speak in euphemism means the window for safe commercial departure is closing and he knows approximately when it closes. India told its citizens to leave Iran. Germany told citizens in Israel to prepare for airspace closures. Beirut’s US embassy began evacuating. And now America’s own ambassador in Jerusalem is telling his own staff to get out of the country he represents. Everyone with classified briefing access is moving in the same direction. Toward the exit. Today. Not Monday. Not after Vienna. Today, Friday February 27. The people who know what is coming are not waiting to find out. They are already on planes. The only people still debating whether this is real are the ones without the clearance to read what Huckabee read before he typed that email at 10:24 am this morning.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

This beaver was orphaned and rescued as a newborn. Watch the incredible instinct to build a dam, even though it’s never seen its parents build one..

@TradVat2 The problem is there are few jurists who understand the principle of natural justice or even believe in it.

Alexander Hamilton (as a lawyer): "No statute shall be construed so as to be Inconvenient or against reason." "Construction may be made against the letter of the Statute to render it agreeable to natural justice." "Many things within the letter of a statute are not within its equity and vice versa."

In a matter of 24 hours, Tim Walz went from claiming this is an Anne Frank situation to collaborating with what he suggested are the latter-day SS.

@michaelshermer Somewhere between Sandpiper and Refugio? Or in Carpinteria is my guess.

This is a dumb question but... why can't the backup quarterback do the kneel downs?

@JohnPalminteri Q: Hello! You interviewed me in 1990 at the opening of Paseo Nuevo mall when I managed this theater, then the Carpinteria Plaza theater). Does KEYT have that in the archives, and is there any way I could get that? My mom lost the segment and she was wondering. Thank you!

It's going to be an amazing night and a perfect start to the year with every seat packed at the Alcazar Theatre in Carpinteria. I have seen a few tickets on social media for those that can't make it but that's it.

You are one of the dumbest people on earth, my district is literally a majority white district. Your conspiracy theories are laughable and should have no place in a society that cares about facts.

Hail the Oxford comma

I’m an AO OG, but if @DavidAFrench is referencing MAGA’s critique of the MSM’s coverage of the recent rampant fraud in MN and elsewhere, respectfully, he’s just wrong. I’m a regular reader of both the @nytimes and @StarTribune, and helped prosecute fraud in MN as an AUSA. No fair observer could say the scope of the coverage was commensurate with the scope of the fraud. You just can’t.

Time-lapse of a tornado

#9 these CAPTCHas are really getting harder

“Every concession to factual error merely creates more unrealizable expectations.” — Friedrich Hayek

I, for one, applaud the brilliance of the Somali entrepreneurs who realized running a daycare for children is much more profitable without the daycare or the children