Julia Wester, PhD

Turns out lawlessness is not a winning strategy. See you at Nuremberg 2.0

My wife says I like The Pitt because "where else do you see competent people in positions of authority trying to help?"

The irritating thing about boy kibble is that what they've actually made here is boy wet food, and I'm concerned that we're no longer educating our children to know the difference.

I’m at the old world dying, I’m at the new world struggling to be born, I’m at the combination old world dying and new world struggling to be born

I see the letters AI so often I knee jerk read them as “a” “i” even when it’s actually the name AL (as in I can call you Betty…”). The other day I read part of a skeet in my head as Weird “a” “i” Yankovich.

Anyways everything is bleak right now but that was really demoralizing all by itself.

*way

Oof

What’s the point of going to the gym?? This forklift can lift and move around weigh more weight more efficiently.

Underrated cat mood: when they’re like “where we goin?” And follow you from room to room

Why did I not know that this was a thing until RIGHT NOW?

Look at that cat's tail! Love.

I mean not that it’s the important part but those dolphins are going to crash into each other

The left is excited about underwater robots that livestream video feeds of octopus nurseries from the deep Gulf of Mexico.

The right is excited about summarizing a five word e-mail, incorrectly.

We had to monitor so many biathlon races that we barely had time for anything extra besides watching Ilia get the yips

This is so relatable. I’m a normal looking human woman but from pictures of me in motion you’d think I was 100% muppet

genuinely just don't even know how to talk about this stuff, these people are so fucking evil

Trump posted a video depicting the first Black president and his wife as apes and his excuse for this is that it's a riff on The Lion King, a movie that does not feature any apes. Somehow this was a one-day story and we've already moved on.

Makes me think of ppl who say things like "no I'm a strictly rational person who only makes choices based on logic & reason, never emotion" All I think is "you just aren't aware of your emotions AT ALL".
"No I'm a strictly objective scholar" just means you don't get how values shape your work.

Rockwell would have painted this.

I'm convinced AI is our generation's radium - a discovery with genuinely useful applications in specific, controlled circumstances that we stupidly put in everything from kid's toys to toothpaste until we realised the harm far too late where future generations will ask if we were out of our minds.

For years, a cottage industry of political observers has contorted itself to obscure and occlude the obvious. That regardless of what others see in him, Trump’s entire political career — from his embrace of birtherism to his hatred of birthright citizenship — cannot be understood outside the context of his bitter, deep-seated racism. Trump is not profound. He has been the same person this whole time. The question is why so many others have refused to see what he has never bothered to hide.

This, from @jamellebouie.net is exactly right. And I think so many folks have refused to see or admit what Trump is because admitting implicates them, or their families, so denial is easier.

crickets from the free speech crowd, of course

IF THIS WORKED, SHE WOULDN'T NEED TO SELL THE TECHNIQUES TO YOU

reading about organisms that aren’t your specialty is like

margins of the quorbus eplungulate, ploobular processes bent posteriorly towards the foobulum

define term “eplungulate”
- lacking plungae. synonym: thubulous

It’s 2026. There is a measles outbreak in the prison for babies

wake up babe the right is doing drapetomania for white women engaging in race treason bsky.app/profile/hann...

olive oil is a legitimate interest

Every social theory undergirding Trumpism has been broken on the steel of Minnesotan resolve. The multiracial community in Minneapolis was supposed to shatter. It did not. It held until Bovino was forced out of the Twin Cities with his long coat between his legs. The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.

Last week in Minnesota, I watched ordinary people risk their lives to protect their neighbors. In the process, they not only won a significant—though not final—victory against authoritarianism, they proved virtually every MAGA social theory wrong. (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Jeff Wheeler, The Minnesota Star Tribune

Minnesotans are showing the soul of the United States to the world.

unfortunately it appears that things are really complicated and getting the details matters a lot, sometimes more than anything, and also evil is extremely real. sorta the worst of both worlds there.

Maybe the most important thing I’ve learned over the past few years is that the solution to what looks like a collective action problem is to just start solving it. People will show up.