A real welfare state and universal health care require broad taxation, including the middle class. But high end wealth taxation is the kind of tax that protects democracy and the rule of law, and prevents aristocratic dynasties. It keeps us human.

i remember finding out that the masculine voice of authority on the subway was voiced by a trans woman and being kind of annoyed about it. then i met her and she was really nice to me. the moral of this story is that nothing you think ever matters

I really needed this - thank you!

Literally right at this moment you could be watching five little cubs twitching their paws in their sleep, their tiny little ears flicking back and forth.

If you could use a pick-me-up, check out the Smithsonian’s live cheetah cub cam. The five-day old cubs are beyond adorable, and an important addition to the captive breeding program for this vulnerable species.

This is a moral atrocity and it needs to be loudly condemned as such. There is a reason that democracies *don't* do publicly televised executions (and why many don't execute people at all): it inculcates and rewards bloodthirst, which corrupts the spirit and corrodes the foundation of the polity.

Ivan Turgenev's "Execution of Troppmann" is a short essay, published in 1870, that gives a first-hand account of the writer attending a public execution in Paris. Turgenev's details how the drunk, unruly crowd turned a somber moment into a carnival. A deeply moving essay; I encourage you to read it.

For some unknown reason woke up this morning and read an article about de Baen's 'The Corpses of the De Witt Brothers' then caught up on the latest execution news. Might print out the message below and pin it to myself as punishment.

Do, we want to be tied Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump’s brokenness?

Second, the whole point of the lynching spectacle was to indict and implicate the white community involved the lynching. It tied them together; it implicated them; it bound them to each other in guilt and shame.

I've been thinking and talking and writing about the death penalty for my whole adult life and the past week+ has been truly surreal and exhausting, not only because of the onslaught of horrors but because there seems to be so little historical memory of what this system is and always has been.

This is incredible. Brave, principled and will save people’s lives. Outstanding.

a livestreamed execution is just a lynching

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