B Bush

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

It is important to resist the commodification of basic human needs. Food, water and healthcare cannot be subordinated to market considerations or geopolitical interests. Access to adequate food is a fundamental human right grounded in the dignity of every person. Meeting this need not only alleviates suffering but also addresses underlying causes of geopolitical instability. Indeed, food security is an essential component of global and integral security. https://t.co/DgkM9RegJ7

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

I’m in love with this sentence:

“The more delusionally optimistic you are, the more life rewards you.”

[Jay Bookman @jaysbookman]

So ... if they're honoring Georgia's women tennis players, why are the women all way in the back and the non-playing men are up front, where we can see them?

[Cyrus Janssen @thecyrusjanssen]

An Iranian man left this comment on my YouTube channel. This is without a doubt the single best explanation of the reality facing Iranian people today👇

"As an Iranian, I can tell you the situation is no longer just political—it's existential. We are trapped between two collapsing structures: one internal, one external. On one hand, we face a deeply dysfunctional government, led by the Supreme Leader and the Islamic Republic’s unelected institutions.

Decades of economic mismanagement, suppression of dissent, and brutal ideological control have alienated multiple generations. No one believes in reform anymore—because every attempt has either been co-opted or crushed. But here's the paradox: We are also terrified of regime collapse—because we've watched the aftermath of Western intervention in countries like Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan. Each was promised freedom; each descended into chaos, civil war, or foreign occupation.

So no, we don't trust the U.S. or Israel. Not because we support our regime—but because we know how imperial powers treat ‘liberated’ nations in the Middle East.

Freedom, in their language, often means vacuum, fire, and permanent instability. Right now, many Iranians live with three truths at once: The Islamic Republic is morally and politically bankrupt. The alternatives offered by foreign actors are not liberation—they’re collapse.

A bad government is survivable. No government is not. We are not silent because we agree. We are cautious because we’ve learned—too well—what happens when superpowers decide to "help." In a sentence: Iran is a nation held hostage by its own regime, but haunted by the fate of its neighbors. We are stuck in a house we hate, surrounded by fires we fear more."

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

Are we great yet?

[Tired Peasant @HorrorGorl]

Let me be very clear. If bringing down the largest child sex trafficking ring in history will “collapse the world as we know it” then the world as we know it needs to collapse.

[Jenni @hashjenni]

SPOILER ALERT: if bringing down the largest child sex trafficking ring will “collapse” your government, your government needs to collapse.

[Eddie S. Glaude Jr. @esglaude]

“The time has come, God knows, for us to examine ourselves, but we can only do this if we are willing to free ourselves from the myth of America and try to find out what is really happening here.”

-James Baldwin

[Boze Herrington, Library Owl 😴🧙‍♀️ @SketchesbyBoze]

George Orwell; it’s dangerously easy to justify atrocities when they’re committed by “our” side

[💗 @ma1ybe]

women are 32% more likely to die if their surgeon is a man. Women make up 51% of the population but receive only 4% of healthcare R&D funding. women experience 75% more side effects because 4/5 medications are only tested on men. 5X more research goes into erectile dysfunction, which affects 19% of men, than PMS which affects 90% of women. women are half as likely to receive painkillers after surgery. women are 2X more likely to be discharged from hospital when reporting pain….Strange that on average women pay 30% more for healthcare. Medical misogyny is real

[The Husky @Mr_Husky1]

I was homeless for six months in 2011. I slept in my car. I used to park behind a small church because it was dark and quiet. I thought nobody knew I was there. Every morning, I’d wake up, drive to a gas station to wash my face, and go to work (yes, I had a job, just couldn't afford rent). One night, it was freezing. 10 degrees. My car wouldn't start to run the heater. I was shivering so hard my teeth hurt. I saw the back door of the church open. A janitor came out to dump the trash. He saw my car. He saw me huddled in the front seat. He didn't call the cops. He didn't come over and tap on the window. He just walked back to the door, unlocked it, and propped it open with a small rock. Then he turned on the hallway light and left. I waited ten minutes. Then I ran inside. It was warm. There was a couch in the lobby. There was a bathroom with hot water. I slept there every night for the rest of the winter. Every night, the rock was there. I never met the janitor. I never thanked him. I’m back on my feet now. I have a house. I have a bed. But every year on the first snow, I donate a check to that church. I write "For the heating bill" in the memo line. Sometimes the loudest way to love your neighbor is to say nothing at all.

Anonymous

[Shane Claiborne @ShaneClaiborne]

Happy Buy Nothing Day.
It’s a good day to buy nothing and laugh at the lie that happiness must be purchased.

#BlackFriday
#BuyNothingDay

[Karly Kingsley @karlykingsley]

40% of SNAP recipients are kids, 18% are elderly, 11% are disabled and of the rest, ~70% already have jobs. So unless your company’s hiring Junior Juice Box Interns, grandma and her walker, or knows how to fit more hours in a day, maybe cool it with the “just get a job” takes.

[Travis Akers 🇺🇸 @travisakers]

A message from a Kindergarten teacher:

After forty years in the classroom, my career ended with one small sentence from a six-year-old:

“My dad says people like you don’t matter anymore.”

No sneer. No malice. Just quiet honesty — the kind that cuts deeper because it’s innocent. He blinked, then added, “You don’t even have a TikTok.”

My name is Mrs. Clara Holt, and for four decades, I taught kindergarten in a small Denver suburb. Today, I stacked the last box on my desk and locked the door behind me.

When I started teaching in the early 1980s, it felt like a promise — a shared belief that what we did mattered. We weren’t rich, but we were valued. Parents brought warm cookies to parent nights. Kids gave you handmade cards with hearts that didn’t quite line up. Watching a child sound out their first sentence felt like magic.

But that world slowly slipped away. The job I once knew has been replaced by exhaustion, red tape, and a kind of loneliness I can’t quite describe.

My evenings used to be filled with construction paper, glitter, and glue sticks. Now they’re spent filling out digital reports to protect myself from angry emails or lawsuits. I’ve been yelled at by parents in front of twenty-five children — one filming me with his phone while I tried to calm another child mid-meltdown.

And the kids… they’ve changed too. Not by choice.

They arrive tired, anxious, overstimulated. Their tiny fingers know how to swipe a screen before they can hold a crayon. Some can’t make eye contact or wait in line. We’re expected to fix all of it — to patch the gaps, heal the trauma, teach the curriculum, and document every move — in six hours a day, with resources that barely fill a drawer.

The little reading corner I once built, full of soft beanbags and paper stars, was replaced by data charts and “learning metrics.” A young principal once told me, “Clara, maybe you’re too nurturing. The district wants measurable results.”

As if kindness were a weakness.

Still, I stayed. Because of the small, holy moments that no spreadsheet could measure —
a whisper of, “You remind me of my grandma.”
a shaky note that read, “I feel safe here.”
a quiet boy finally meeting my eyes and saying, “I read the whole page.”

Those tiny sparks were my reason to keep showing up.

But this last year broke something in me.

The aggression grew sharper. The laughter in the staff room turned to silence. The light went out of so many eyes. I watched brilliant teachers — my friends — vanish under the weight of burnout, their joy replaced by survival.

I felt myself fading too, like chalk on a board that’s been wiped one too many times.

So today, I began my goodbye. I pulled faded art off the walls and tucked thirty years of handmade cards into a single box. In the back of a drawer, I found a letter from a student from 1998:

“Thank you for loving me when I was hard to love.”

I sat on the floor and cried.

No party. No applause. Just a handshake from a young principal who called me “Ma’am” while checking his notifications.

I left my rocking chair behind, and my sticker box too. What I carried with me were the memories — the faces of hundreds of children who once trusted me enough to reach out their hands and learn. That can’t be uploaded. It can’t be measured. It can’t be replaced.

I miss when teachers were partners, not targets. When parents and educators worked side by side, not in opposition. When schools cared more about wonder than numbers.

So if you know a teacher — any teacher — thank them. Not with a mug or a gift card, but with your words. With your respect. With your understanding that behind every test score is a heart that cared enough to try.

Because in a world that often overlooks them, teachers are the ones who never forget our children.

[Be A King @BerniceKing]

And about genocide. And about poverty. And about dictatorship in the United States.

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

“I have the right to do anything I want to do.”

That’s exactly what the Founders envisaged for the non-monarchical presidency, right?

Also, can you imagine the Fox reaction if Obama had said this? While wearing a tan suit?

[Zach W. Lambert @ZachWLambert]

Using Bible verses to justify violence against immigrants is not only the opposite of what Jesus teaches, it’s also a direct contradiction to the passage cited in this video.

“Here am I, send me” was the prophet Isaiah’s response after being called by God to deliver a message to the people and their leaders. What was the message?

“Your leaders are rebels, the companions of thieves. All of them love bribes and demand payoffs, but they refuse to defend the cause of orphans or fight for the rights of widows.” Isaiah 1:23

What were these corrupt and rebellious leaders doing?

“Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. What will you do on the day of reckoning, when disaster comes from afar? To whom will you run for help? Where will you leave your riches?” Isaiah 10:1-3

God is sending Isaiah to warn the people, and more specifically their leaders, that if they do not turn from their corrupt ways and begin caring for the most vulnerable among them, they will suffer God’s judgment. Isaiah answers that call by saying, “Here am I, send me.”

For a corrupt government to use these verses to justify the very marginalization and oppression being condemned in this passage is the height of blasphemy.

[Power to the People ☭🕊 @ProudSocialist]

If you care more about poor people using SNAP to buy soda than the government using our money to fund endless wars then you are a useful idiot for the oligarchy.

[Boze Herrington, Library Owl 😴🧙‍♀️ @SketchesbyBoze]

Ray Bradbury in 1953 (!) described his dystopian future world thus: “School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?”

[Billy Binion @billybinion]

I once again find myself wishing that people understood the basic difference between “cancel culture” and “having standards.” Giving an overtly & unapologetically racist man a taxpayer-funded job isn’t brave or gracious. It just debases yourself & rewards bad behavior.