Andrew Quinlan

Lifelong Ducks fan. Blazers 2023-24 NBA Champs. At least it's raining ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Scott Lincicome @scottlincicome]

"Trump won't drop war, tariffs or monuments to save the GOP" https://t.co/hLgHeQmwLz

Gosh this is funny. Terrible for the country, ofc, but if you can get past that...

[Amanda Carpenter @amandacarpenter]

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump has over the past year been snapping up America’s means of production — the literal definition of communism — even as he makes a habit of labeling virtually all of his critics and political opponents “communists.”

Since retaking office in January 2025, Trump’s executive branch has acquired stock or other ownership interest in dozens of U.S. companies, from $400 million in mining company MP Materials to $1 billion in defense contractor L3Harris/Missile Solutions to $8.9 billion in Intel, making the government the chipmaker’s third-largest shareholder. In all, according to a recent Cato Institute analysis, the U.S. government is now part-owner of 30 companies, with no end to the practice in sight.

https://t.co/inrqF3K8V3

[Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 @IAPonomarenko]

Remember how, for years, the Biden administration stubbornly resisted every desperate plea from Ukraine for ATACMS?

How it kept those missiles sitting in American stockpiles, and when it finally agreed to provide them, did so only sparingly, sending small numbers of older missiles…

Only for Trump to end up burning through almost the entire arsenal in his failed adventure against the Iranian regime.

History truly has a very dark sense of humor.

[Scott Lincicome @scottlincicome]

Umm...................................

[Scott Lincicome @scottlincicome]

https://t.co/DBVkUktRK2

[Daniel Whiteson @DanielWhiteson]

Misinformation has consequences.

[Mike (not a) Rothschild @rothschildmd]

The overwhelming right wing sentiment is that COVID was an engineered bioweapon that was also harmless. Trump overreacted to it by shutting down the country, then engineered a drive to create a vaccine that was the real bioweapon that killed millions, and it's Joe Biden's fault.

[JR @pdxbrocialite]

The worst thing Blazer fans can do is boycott the team right now. Dundon and his media loyalists will spin that as apathy. Show up, be loud, boo the owner, and chant “sell the team!” Write articles. Make viral Tik Toks. Win the media cycle over and over again.

[🏴‍☠️Maddox🏴‍☠️ @maddoxrules]

I think "Freedom Fuel" is a great idea. Cheaper gas due to a mysterious benefactor at $3.47? Hell yeah! But why stop there? I think we should have "Freedom Bakeries" too! People can line up for bread and we can pay for it with our government's return on investment on all the Intel shares we purchased with tax-payer money. I love it when the government seizes the means of production!

[John Bourscheid 🇺🇸 🚀 @bourscheid]

🚨BREAKING: The drained Reflecting Pool did not reveal any slices. Instead, tire marks were visible, obvious damage from Trump’s vanity drive in a fleet of 10-ton vehicles for no reason at all. He ruined his own project, then lied and blamed the citizens who paid for it.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

The average national constitution lasts about 19 years. The United States has used the same one since 1789, which makes it the oldest working national constitution on Earth.

That gap is the anomaly the original post is talking about. Since 1789 the world has produced close to 800 national constitutions, and only about half of them lasted past 19 years. France is the sharpest contrast. It started at the same line as America, and since then it has gone through five separate republics, two empires, a couple of monarchies, and at least fourteen constitutions. It is on version five right now, written back in 1958. The next-oldest national constitution still in use belongs to Norway, and it only dates to 1814, a full 25 years behind.

Most attempts at a lasting written government fall apart inside a single generation. America's has held through a civil war, two world wars, a depression that put about a quarter of workers out of a job, and 27 amendments, without ever being thrown out and started over.

About 4% of humanity lives inside US borders, and they produce close to a quarter of the world's economic output measured at market prices. The American economy is bigger than the next three put together, China and Germany and Japan combined. Eight of the ten biggest public companies on the planet, ranked by market value, are American. US stock markets alone hold a little over 40% of all the equity value on Earth.

None of that was ever the default setting for human societies. For most of recorded history the normal ending was collapse, conquest, coup, or a slow decline into something you would not recognize. Stable money, peaceful handovers of power, and courts that last longer than the people who built them are the rare exception, not the normal starting point.

When a system runs this smoothly for this long, the stability starts to feel like gravity, like the normal way things are. The historical record says the opposite. What looks completely ordinary from inside America is one of the least likely things a large group of people has ever built and kept going.

[Rev. Benjamin Cremer @Brcremer]

Then Jesus said unto the sick, “you better have insurance.”

Then Jesus said unto the stranger, “are you here legally?”

Then Jesus said unto the hungry, “my taxes better not be paying for these loaves and fishes.”

Then Jesus said unto the poor, “this is your own fault.”

[Jesse Tinsley @JesseTinsley]

Imagine telling someone in 1999…

The year is 2026.

The President is Donald Trump in his second non consecutive term.

The richest man in the world is PayPal cofounder Elon Musk… but not because of fintech or Paypal. Because of rockets, electric cars, AI, satellites, brain chips and something called “Boring Company”.

Apple is worth trillions but its main business isn’t computers… its selling glass rectangles everyone stares at for 9 hours a day.

People don’t watch TV. They watch teenagers explain geopolitics, finance, and relationship advice in ~60 second videos.

The biggest taxi company owns no taxis.
The biggest hotel company owns no hotels.
The most powerful media companies are social networks where everyone argues with strangers for free.

Kids are making millions filming themselves playing video games.

AI Robots write emails, code, legal memos, songs, essays, and breakup texts.

The internet is mostly bots arguing with humans who are trying to prove they aren’t bots.

You can summon a car, groceries, a doctor, a date, a private jet, or a dog walker from your phone.

People pay real money for invisible currencies, digital monkeys, AI girlfriends and pictures that disappear after 24 hours.

The richest companies in the world don’t sell oil, steel, or cars. They sell attention, compute, data, and addiction.

And somehow, after all of that everyone is still using Excel.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

A note to my friends who still back Trump:

I am not here to dunk on you. I am writing because you have a working brain, and this story insults it.

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool got a $14 million paint job. Shortly thereafter the water turned green and the new “American flag blue” coating started peeling off the bottom in sheets. Trump says vandals did it. He claims, without evidence, that someone took a knife and cut a 300-foot slit, a number that grew to 350 feet while he was still talking.

Back on May 4, Trump bragged about that same coating and said, if you had a knife, you could not even cut it, so strong, like powerful rubber. He cannot have it both ways.

And the green water?

A George Mason scientist tested it and found ordinary, non-toxic algae, the kind that blooms in any shallow sunny pool. To fight it, crews dumped hydrogen peroxide into the water.

Hydrogen peroxide is also a paint stripper.

That, not sabotage or vandalism, is the obvious reason the paint came off. They wrecked their own paint job, then blamed phantom vandals for it.

The lone "vandal" they paraded is a 67-year-old Olympian who touched a flap of paint already peeling on its own.

Here is the thing. If they will look you in the eye and lie about something this small, something you can see with your own eyes, ask yourself what else they are lying to you about.

Again, you have a working brain. People like Karoline Leavitt are counting on you to stay loyal instead of exercising independent thought.

Prove them wrong.

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

The mess that will be left behind will take years to fix.

[Luke Miani @LukeMiani]

> save $15M a year by cutting a screwworm monitoring program

> screwworm outbreak almost immediately

> $1B to combat it

Government efficiency

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

On June 13, 1777, a 19-year-old French teenager landed on a beach in South Carolina, uninvited, to fight in someone else's war. He would become one of the most important men in American history.

The Marquis de Lafayette was one of the richest young aristocrats in France. He had a beautiful wife, a fortune, and zero reason to risk any of it. But he believed in the American cause so fiercely that when the French king forbade him from going, Lafayette bought his own ship and sailed anyway. He literally went AWOL from a life of luxury to bleed for a country that didn't exist yet.

Congress was annoyed at first. Another foreign officer looking for a paycheck? Then Lafayette offered to serve for free and pay his own way. That got their attention.

He met Washington and the two formed one of the great father-son bonds in American history. Washington had no biological children. Lafayette named his only son George Washington Lafayette.

He took a bullet in the leg at Brandywine and kept rallying the retreat. He was instrumental at Yorktown, the battle that won the war. He went home a hero on two continents.

A foreign teenager believed in America before America did. 249 years ago today.