John Rennie

A war that isn't a war, documented with videos that may or may not be real, funded by elected leaders who are neither for nor against it, is the most dystopian thing that's happened in my lifetime

Like, these guys all could have absolutely turned around and then voted to give Trump the green light to wage all the war he wants. But none of them wanted to actually be on record in support of it. Instead, they're going to hide behind this BS, instead.

Absolutely ridiculous that Republicans (minus Paul, plus Fetterman) all lined up to defend Trump's ability to do an end-run around Congress and just start a war unilaterally. Cowards.

Balint to Noem: "You're the secretary of DHS -- for now. And you think you're immune from accountability. But I promise you this: one day he is not gonna be president anymore. And when that day comes, we will still be here. And in hearings like this, we are going to continue to prove your guilt."

Here are 4 districts the TX GOP gerrymandered to gain seats in November, with the Dem and GOP primary vote. Dems outvoted GOPs in every one of them.

Kristi Noem is stealing your tax dollars.

Call your Senators and House Rep and demand that she be impeached.

You can always tell the difference between the legislator who is just reading questions put together for them by staff, and one who understands the subject and knows what they're asking.

In a long tweet about Anthropic, Pete Hegseth, through the offical "SecWar" Twitter account says "the Department of War must have full, unrestricted access to Anthropic’s models for every LAWFUL purpose in defense of the Republic."

Hegseth is wholeheartedly endorsing the core premise of fascism: industry, as part of the private sphere, must be subordinated to the military objectives of the state.

Paramount-Warner Would Create a Hollywood Jobs Apocalypse - The American Prospect The deal comes complete with so much debt that it would almost certainly lead to mass job loss. That could prove to be an argument against the deal in court, too.

"The deal is tied up with so much debt that it virtually guarantees layoffs the likes of which Hollywood hasn’t seen before." prospect.org/2026/03/02/p...

One of my favourite sides of politics/media.

This stuff — the astroturf fake Dem groups, cancelling people’s IDs and threatening jail if you keep the paperwork that correctly genders you, the attacks on trans kids playing school sports — are all disgusting, and a playbook we saw a decade ago to prop up the last fascist Republican president.

Anyone found to have improperly used a restroom or other private space in a government building would face a written warning for a first violation. A second violation would carry a $1,000 fine, and each subsequent violation would be a misdemeanor offense punishable by another fine and up to six months in jail. Anyone who believes someone used the wrong restroom in their presence could file a complaint seeking $1,000. "This whole deputization thing — it turns Kansas residents into Dog the Bounty Hunter," Lawson said. "So now I have to worry about people watching me walk into the ladies' room, and then oh, they're going to call in a $1,000 bounty on me. That is just so, so wrong on so many levels.

In addition to its draconian measure on drivers licenses, the state of Kansas is offering $1,000 bounties to citizens who want to report that a transgender person is using the “wrong” bathroom.

amp.kansascity.com/news/politic...

New A.C.A. Plans Could Increase Family Deductibles to $31,000

After a decade of dithering, the Trump admin has outlined a plan to change Obamacare. And it is to make the coverage exponentially worse and send out of pocket costs to the moon—essentially to make it not health insurance—in the name of lowering premiums a little. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/h...

They are so insane and incompetent that I'm wondering if i could join ICE and then just stay home and collect paychecks without anyone noticing

this is extremely fucking important, esp with what just happened in kansas. they are trying to criminalize every aspect of our existence. i try not to be alarmist about things but this is where we are and it is BAD bad

Very cool that my power bill has increased by 50% to pay for the grotesque consumption from data centers using technology that stole the work of millions of people, including myself, to put millions of people out of work

If this happened in a cyberpunk story I'd be like "Okay, dial it down a notch"

This is consistent with what we’ve found in our polling - term limits for Supreme Court justices are extremely popular and enjoy bipartisan popular suppprt

Dare I say it? With the right kind of elite alignment, it could even be “amendment-level” popular support (still unlikely)

America was winning the race to find Martian life. Then China jumped in. The Mars Sample Return mission got off to a promising start, hunting for potentially humanity-changing space rocks. How did it fall off the rails?

Is there life on Mars? For decades, America was in pole position to find out with its multi-mission Mars Sample Return program.

But MSR is now officially dead. And in the race to find alien life on Mars, it’s now China’s to lose.

Me @technologyreview.com www.technologyreview.com/2026/02/26/1...

Study: Dolly Parton is the Greatest Everything is terrible, obviously, and I have been getting particularly fed up with the general state of literacy I’m seeing in the world. And considering that for some reason my video about the Fo…

For what is apparently the 10,001st post on Skepchick (and my own 3,000th), it's a HAPPY STORY of how scientists have shown that Dolly Parton is substantially improving literacy rates around the world through her Imagination Library 🧪 skepchick.org/2026/02/stud...

New A.C.A. Plans Could Increase Family Deductibles to $31,000

Republicans: great news we have a new healthcare plan that bills you every month and ALSO allows you to pay the full cost of any treatment

People : so whats our benefit

Republicans : what do you mean your benefit

Big Tech Says Generative AI Will Save the Planet. It Doesn’t Offer Much Proof A new report finds that of 154 specific claims about how AI will benefit the climate, just a quarter cited academic research. A third included no evidence at all.

"My problem with claims being made by big tech companies around AI and climate change is not that they're not fully quantified, but that they're relying on hypothetical AI that does not exist now, in some cases…” — @drolnick.bsky.social ino.to/BQ1Saun

The major findings are that multiple aspects of a species' ecology shape the tempo of visual perception, which is a highly evolvable trait:

Pace of ecology drives the tempo of visual perception across the animal kingdom - Nature Ecology & Evolution Using phylogenetic comparative methods across 237 species from disparate phyla, the authors show that species with fast-paced ecologies have higher temporal resolution of perception.

Pace of ecology drives the tempo of visual perception across the animal kingdom www.nature.com/articles/s41... - new paper with Clinton Haarlem, Cliodhna Hynes and colleagues

Different species see the world as fast as they need to...

The assumption that Somalis, who obviously have built their own lives, businesses, and families need white help is just disgusting, naked racism.

These are the values of so much of Twitter's pseudointellectual class.

4) And they STILL haven’t released the Epstein files.

Is Particle Physics Dead, Dying, or Just Hard? | Quanta Magazine Columnist Natalie Wolchover checks in with particle physicists more than a decade after the field entered a profound crisis.

First column for Quanta Magazine's new essay section, Qualia.

I take stock of particle physics, a field in crisis. What happened, and what now? Commentary here from many angles.

Please lmk your thoughts, or any tips or topic ideas I should look into. 🙏

www.quantamagazine.org/is-particle-...

Nice article from @nattyover.bsky.social about the state of particle physics as a field. It’s historically been perhaps the highest prestige and most prominent subfield of physics but there are genuine worries about the path forward, as Natalie clearly lays out. 🧪

Pretti clearly did not brandish his gun. Which means the government is saying he was killed for legally exercising his right to carry.

It’s as clear-cut a violation of the Second Amendment as I can possibly imagine. And we’re about to see the bulk of the gun rights crowd defend his murder.