I read and I know things 🇺🇸🚀🌈🌊❤️☮️

Locus of Improbability.
Not the political party @arivalayam .
DMK என்று அழைக்கப்படும் தமிழ் அரசியல் கட்சியை நீங்கள் தேடுகிறீர்கள் என்றால், நான் அவர்கள் அல்ல!

[I read and I know things 🇺🇸🚀🌈🌊❤️☮️ @dmk]

What are 5 topics you can talk about unprepared for 5 minutes?
1-Science fiction / fantasy
2-Software design
3-Politics (social progressive & fiscal conservative), especially economics ("saltwater")
4-Medicine (thyroid cancer survivor)
5-Life, the Universe, Everything (polymath)

[dr. alicia andrzejewski (she/her) @aliciaandrz]

what are 5 topics you can talk about unprepared for 5 minutes?

1. why Toni Morrison should be read every year in highschool instead of Shakespeare
2. Pema Chodron’s teachings
3. contemporary songs w good horn parts
4. pregnant people of color in Shakespeare
5. Bruce Springsteen

[Democracy Docket @DemocracyDocket]

MYTH: A widespread level of noncitizen voting is taking place across the country.

FACT: There have been very few cases of noncitizens intentionally voting illegally. Dispatching ICE agents to obtain personal voter files infringes on states’ rights to manage elections. https://t.co/B71DYaThNT

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Fred Rogers met with a child psychologist every week for 22 years to build his show. She shaped everything: every script, prop, and song. The whole point was to give a child's nervous system time to slow down. In 1984, a single regulatory decision ended all of it.

The psychologist was Dr. Margaret McFarland, who co-founded the Arsenal Family and Children's Center alongside Benjamin Spock and Erik Erikson. She and Rogers understood that the prefrontal cortex in children, the part of the brain that controls impulse, emotion, and attention, takes decades to fully develop. At the start of every episode, Rogers tied his sneakers and changed his sweater while children settled in. Those pauses were intentional, designed to help a child's nervous system shift into a calmer, more focused state.

What ended it had nothing to do with child development science. In 1984, Reagan's FCC chairman Mark Fowler abolished the advertising limits that had protected children's programming from commercial pressure. Toy companies moved within months. Between 1984 and 1985, cartoons tied to toy lines increased by 300%, from a handful of shows to more than 40 animated series. In almost every case, the toy was designed first. The cartoon was built to sell it.

Researchers later put numbers to what parents were already noticing. A 2011 study in Pediatrics from the University of Virginia tested 60 four-year-olds across three groups: one watching SpongeBob, which cuts scene every 11 seconds; one watching a slow PBS show, which cuts scene every 34 seconds; and one drawing. Nine minutes later, all three took tests on attention, impulse control, short-term memory, and problem-solving. The SpongeBob group scored significantly worse across every measure.

In the 1970s, children began watching television around age 4. Research from pediatrician Dimitri Christakis found that by 2009, the average age of first screen exposure had dropped to 4 months, as the content got faster and the audience got younger. Researchers separately found that each additional hour of daily screen time at ages 1 or 3 raised the risk of attention problems at age 7 by 9%.

[Spencer Hakimian @SpencerHakimian]

Americans are now going to pay $300,000,000,000 to reopen the Hormuz Strait that was fully open in the first place.

[Annie @AnnieForTruth]

Yes! 💯💯💯

[Rachel Bitecofer 🗽🦆 @RachelBitecofer]

While Republicans plot in secret to steal your Social Security and Medicare keep in mind that Trump’s budget doubles defense spending to $1.5 trillion.

[I read and I know things 🇺🇸🚀🌈🌊❤️☮️ @dmk]

Happy Barack Obama Appreciation Day!

[I read and I know things 🇺🇸🚀🌈🌊❤️☮️ @dmk]

Graphic of American flag entirely formed by the superimposed text of the United States Constitution, creating the stars, stripes, & canton out of the document's opening words.
https://t.co/7Bg6yyDl1V , entitled "The reason for the season".

This is the shirt I'm wearing today!

[I read and I know things 🇺🇸🚀🌈🌊❤️☮️ @dmk]

Patriotic t-shirt for Flag Day!
The QR code goes to https://t.co/kprpiewase

The shirt is available at https://t.co/4bfzv24Eih

[I read and I know things 🇺🇸🚀🌈🌊❤️☮️ @dmk]

Happy Flag Day!
"It is RED for love,
And it's WHITE for law,
And it's BLUE for
The hope that
Our forefathers saw
Of a larger liberty"

-- Mary Engelbreit

[Hunter Biden @HunterBiden]

I’m just going to post this every few days rather than arguing with faceless, nameless trolls in the comments.

[Hunter Biden @HunterBiden]

Find substance abuse help through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Helpline. Connect with treatment and mental health referrals near you by: Calling 1-800-662-HELP (4357)

[Hunter Biden @HunterBiden]

Things the recovery industry will not tell you:

1. The drug worked. That is why people use it. Not weakness. Not moral failure.
A neurological event so complete and persuasive that any honest account of addiction has to start there.
The problem is not that the drug fails. The problem is that what it does is unrepeatable, and you will burn your entire life to the ground trying to get back to a place that no longer exists.

2. Shame is not guilt. Guilt says I did something bad. Shame says I am something bad. Guilt is appropriate. Shame is a cell with no windows. Most people use the words interchangeably. That mistake is lethal.

3. You cannot shame someone who has already named the thing you are holding over them. Say it first. Say it in plain light. The weapon drops.

4. Guilt can coexist with self-respect. Shame cannot. You can hold the damage and the dignity at the same time. I know because I live there.

5. Radical honesty does not give you back who you were. It hands you the clean slate of who you always wanted to be. The mask comes off. The cartoon other people drew of you stays on the page.

6. Nobody gets clean on a winning streak.

7. You have to be almost self-delusional in your forgiveness of yourself. (Go watch Chase Hughes)

8. The greatest sin was not the chaos. It was the absence. Being unavailable to the people who needed you.

9. Sustainable recovery starts with one thing: honesty with yourself. If you love an addict and want to help, that is the only door in.

10. I am only an expert on my recovery. Nobody is an expert on anyone else’s.

[Hunter Biden @HunterBiden]

I see your profile picture. That’s Johnny Cash. My hero too. Arrested seven times. Smuggled 668 amphetamines across the Mexican border in 1965. Took every drug there was and drank like I did. Cheated on his first wife. Slept with more woman than I ever did. Hit bottom in a cave in Tennessee in 1968 trying to crawl off and die. And then he got up. He got clean. He spent the rest of his life singing for prisoners and addicts and the people the country threw away because he knew he was one of them.

That was the whole point of the Man in Black. He wore it for the poor and the beaten down. He wore it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime. He wore it for the ones who never heard a word of Jesus. He wore it for the addicted and the dying. He wore it as a standing witness that no one is past saving.

You picked his picture. You did not pick his message. Try listening to the words.

[I read and I know things 🇺🇸🚀🌈🌊❤️☮️ @dmk]

Laurence Fishburne reads a stark warning from W. E. B. Du Bois written in 1953.
https://t.co/c4TUI8tvMF

[Dr. Catharine Young @DrCatharineY]

Turns out we may already have an anti-aging vaccine.

Created originally to prevent shingles, it appears to influence aging and cognitive decline - far beyond anything it was designed to do.

The beauty of science.

https://t.co/Cynp2gcxBC

[Jesus Freakin Congress @TheJFreakinC]

🚨BREAKING: In Columbus, Ohio, ICE agents hit a U.S. citizen’s vehicle, and then admitted, on camera, that they “do this all the time”… before driving away.

A 17-year-old U.S. citizen was reportedly on his way to church, when multiple officials surrounded his car, backed into his front bumper, and jumped out of their vehicles.

When he rolled down his window, they told him…

“We got the wrong person.”

And walked back toward their cars.

The 17-year-old got out to document what happened, and told an officer they had hit his vehicle…

And the response was:

“You can take a picture if you want. We do this all the time. You’re okay.”

And then they drove off.

The Fourth Amendment protects you from unreasonable searches and seizures. And courts have made clear that a “seizure” isn’t just being arrested, or put in handcuffs.

It also includes situations where law enforcement use their authority in a way that blocks your freedom to leave… or creates an intimidating, forced encounter.

So, when officers surround a car, hit it while backing up, and pull a teenager into a sudden law enforcement interaction, with no valid reason…

At minimum, it’s a reckless stop. At worst, it’s an unlawful seizure, with property damage, and no accountability.

And then there’s the part when she casually said…

“We do this all the time.”

Because that turns an “oops” moment into a pattern.

And when that pattern violates your constitutional rights and due process, it starts to feel a lot like the government is using the Constitution like they use the Bible…

Quoted when it’s useful, ignored when it isn’t.

[Jesus Freakin Congress @TheJFreakinC]

🚨BREAKING: The Secretary of Homeland Security just admitted, on camera, that he is going to violate your First Amendment right to free speech.

He said, “I have ZERO tolerance. If you verbally assault our officers… we will find you, we will arrest you.”

Except… that’s not how the First Amendment works.

Unless someone is making a credible threat of violence, speech… even rude, angry, or insulting speech… is still protected.

That’s the whole point of a free speech clause… to protect the people from situations where those in power don’t like what’s being said.

So, when a top federal official starts framing “verbal assault” as something you can be arrested for, without clearly defining it as an actual threat…

It stops sounding like protecting officers, and starts sounding like a government trying to silence people who speak out against it.

[Miles Taylor @MilesTaylorUSA]

Yesterday Donald Trump tripled the size of his personal political army inside the government. Illegally. And almost no one noticed.

Here's what happened:

He signed an order converting ~8,000 of the most senior career officials in government into employees he can fire for any reason, or no reason at all.

These aren't rando's. They're the directors, chiefs of staff, and the people who write the rules or decide who gets federal money, i.e. the lieutenants right below his political appointees.

Until yesterday, they answered to the law. Now they answer to him.

A president normally gets ~4,000 political appointees. People he can bring into government and fire at will. I was one of them at DHS. You serve at his pleasure, full stop -- so if you're gonna speak truth to power, you're prepared to quit (or get fired if he doesn't like it).

The rest of the federal government is PROTECTED from firing if they tell the truth.

But Trump just stripped those protections. Adding 8,000 more people to his personal army. Overnight. Without asking Congress.

With the stroke of a pen, those people now serve at the pleasure of the president. They're "his" people, whether they like it or not.

And the chilling effect is real. An official who can be fired this afternoon for "subversion of presidential directives" (the order's own words) doesn't need to be hand-picked to know what's expected of him or her.

The threat does all the work.

By the way, this order is illegal. The law only lets Trump reclassify jobs when "necessary" in exceptional circumstances. And this blows an 8,000-person hole in the merit hiring / firing system created by Congress.

Without permission, Trump has created a whole new category of stormtroopers inside the Executive Branch.

If this doesn't get challenged in court, you're going to see the U.S. government become a very different place.

Here's the full story: https://t.co/mJzrvzhxGR

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

oh my goodness -- Ted Lieu played Rubio a video of Trump sleeping while Rubio tried to talk to him during a cabinet meeting. Then this exchange happened:

RUBIO: I've never seen him fall asleep

LIEU: I'm gonna show you a video that shows you just lied to Congress

*plays another video of Trump sleeping by Rubio*