Two years (and more importantly one election) apart

"A Russian online sabotage network was behind a series of arson attacks on Sir Keir Starmer’s family home and other targets linked to the UK prime minister, an FT investigation has found." ft.com/content/dd79d6eb-44e4…

The real reason Russia is pushing the Ukraine biolab narrative is more serious than the propaganda suggests. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝗹𝘀𝗼 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝘄𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝘄𝗵𝘆 𝗧𝘂𝗹𝘀𝗶 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀. As the old saying goes, accuse your opponent of what you are doing yourself. Russia claims Ukraine and the United States operated secret biological weapons labs in Ukraine. That claim has not been substantiated. The UN has said it is not aware of any biological weapons programme in Ukraine, and Ukraine has repeatedly denied developing, producing, or stockpiling biological weapons. Ukraine’s facilities are publicly described as public health, disease surveillance, biosafety, biosecurity, and threat-reduction labs. Ukraine says it complies with the Biological Weapons Convention and rejects the claim that these sites were military bioweapons facilities. Russia’s position is the opposite. Russia accuses Ukraine of hidden biological weapons activity while keeping its own military biological infrastructure secretive and largely inaccessible to meaningful international scrutiny. Russia inherited the Soviet biological weapons legacy. The Soviet Union operated one of the largest and most secretive biological weapons programmes in history. After its collapse, serious questions remained about how much of that infrastructure, expertise, and military research culture survived inside Russia. Those concerns remain unresolved. The U.S. State Department has assessed that Russia maintains an offensive biological weapons programme in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention. Russia denies this, but its relevant military biological facilities remain closed, opaque, and shielded from independent verification. Ukraine’s labs are discussed as public health and disease surveillance facilities. Russia’s military biological sites are treated as restricted state secrets. Ukraine’s cooperation with the United States was linked to biosafety, biosecurity, and reducing risks from dangerous pathogens inherited from the Soviet period. Russia, by contrast, has a documented Soviet bioweapons legacy, current official compliance concerns, and restricted military facilities that outside observers cannot meaningfully inspect. In 2024, satellite imagery and expert analysis reported major construction and expansion at Sergiev Posad-6, a restricted Russian Ministry of Defence biological research site with a Soviet-era bioweapons history. The reported construction began in May 2022, shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion and during the same period when Moscow intensified its claims about Ukrainian “biolabs.” That timing does not prove the new construction is an offensive biological weapons programme. But it does make Russia’s propaganda campaign look highly suspect. Russia demanded outrage over Ukrainian public health laboratories while expanding or upgrading its own secretive military-linked biological research infrastructure. The strongest factual argument is not that every Russian biological activity is illegal. It is that Russia has no credibility accusing Ukraine of hidden bioweapons activity while refusing transparency over its own military biological facilities. This is classic projection and deflection. Russia turns Ukrainian public health and threat-reduction work into a fake Western bioweapons plot. It shifts attention away from its own closed military biological sites. It muddies the waters around biological weapons compliance. Ukraine denies the allegations, points to peaceful public health work, and says it complies with international obligations. Russia has a Soviet bioweapons legacy, U.S.-assessed BWC violations, secretive military biological facilities, and refuses the transparency it demands from others. So when Russia talks about Ukrainian “biolabs,” the relevant question is why a country with closed military biological sites is trying so hard to redirect attention onto Ukraine’s public health laboratories.

In 2022, CBS and the State Department were already explaining that the U.S. supported labs were part of biosafety and threat-reduction programs, while Russia’s bioweapons claims had no verifiable evidence and were part of a propaganda campaign.

Ohio Republicans secretly awarded Google, Meta, and Amazon $600 million in tax breaks to build data centers. The tax breaks were written to last 40 years and cannot be undone.

In June 2000, Robin Williams sat down for a conversation with George Lucas for Robin's brief weekly interview show on audible. The episode was originally thirty minutes but below you'll find the entire raw recording from two different sessions, with discussions ranging from Marlon Brando as Jabba the Hutt, to Lucas asking if Robin would voice a CG Howard the Duck for a special edition of the '86 movie 👏 Really cool

Update?

Hantavirus disappeared because the outbreak ended No one said it was going to be a pandemic and no one asked you to do anything or care about it

In 2016, Russia criminalized evangelizing outside of churches. Police have arrested people for merely hosting worship & publicly talking about their faith. Offenders face 10 years in prison. Portraying Russia as the good guy is either ignorant or evil. reason.com/2022/02/25/religi…

"Late Kakistocracy" is that phase of democratic decline where the regime starts running out of ppl who will work for it, and so the folks who aren't qualified for their current positions are promoted to even larger positions for which they are even more unqualified

Trump could have presided over a very strong economy. All he had to do was...nothing: Inflation was trending downward, the AI boom was raising growth. Instead, he engineered a global trade war and energy shock, while shrinking America's labor force. vox.com/politics/489397/infl…

"...until it repeatedly shoots itself in the foot because it's gotten tired of winning"

Larry Bushart spent 37 days in jail for posting a meme on Facebook. I’ve been doing this work for 25 years, and I can honestly say this is the worst First Amendment case I’ve ever seen. Not because Larry threatened anyone. He didn’t. Not because he committed violence. He didn’t. Not because this was a close call. It wasn’t. He posted a political meme — the kind of thing millions of Americans do every day — and local officials decided to treat it like a crime. And because they had badges, prosecutors, jail cells, and the terrifying machinery of the state behind them, they got away with it for 37 days. Larry is a retired police officer and National Guard veteran. The meme he shared quoted Donald Trump’s “we have to get over it” comment after a 2024 Iowa school shooting. Whatever you think of Trump, the meme was plainly political commentary. Perry County officials knew what it referred to. They knew it wasn’t a threat against a Tennessee school. They arrested him anyway. In the middle of the night. They set his bond at $2 million. He lost his job. He missed family milestones. He sat in jail for more than a month before the charges finally collapsed — because, of course, there was no crime here. Today, @theFIREorg secured a measure of justice: Perry County agreed to pay Larry Bushart $835,000 for violating his constitutional rights. This case should scare the hell out of people across the political spectrum. Because if the government can jail you for a meme by pretending not to understand obvious political commentary, your rights are only as secure as the good faith of the most authoritarian official in your town. That is exactly why we have the First Amendment. Not for speech everyone likes. Not for opinions that flatter the powerful. Not for the bland, safe, committee-approved stuff. It exists for moments when fear, outrage, politics, and authority all line up and say: “Surely this is the exception.” No. It isn’t. I’m incredibly proud of @theFIREorg’s legal team. And I’m even prouder of Larry Bushart for refusing to let the government get away with treating his constitutional rights like a suggestion. But despite the correct verdict, I'll probably always get angry every time I think of this case. Let’s make this the last time anyone in America is arrested — let alone thrown in jail — for a meme. Celebrate your independence. Defend your First Amendment. fire.org/news/victory-tennes…

A mind-blowing-but-true fact about Trump's stock trading. Trump traded up to ~$700 million in stock in Q1 of 2026. The 535 Members of Congress made ~$635 million in trades in 2025. Trump bought and sold more stock in 3 months than all of Congress put together did in a year.

No to judge a book by its cover but these guys often look exactly like you would expect them to.

THIS IS THE CRUX OF THE FUCKING THING AND IF YOU GIVE EVERYBODY A TAX CUT THERES NOT MONEY FOR THINGS LIKE UNEMPLOYMENT

Graham has been "very close to [these same] sanctions being passed" for more than six months. "Close" is working overtime doing lots of heavy lifting. No one believes it anymore. No one.

Honestly what a bunch of assholes @ABC

The Pittsburgh Zoo is clearly in win-now mode.

Visits by Canadians to major U.S. cities have crashed by a staggering 42% during Trump’s second term. thedailybeast.com/staggering…