Liesel

mom to 👦🏻+👦🏻+👧🏼. enjoys 📚, 🌳🚶🏽‍♀️🌳, and 🍫🍬🍭

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

Nearly every problem we’re seeing in our culture is downstream of the decline in reading. The fact that only 13 percent of kids read for pleasure is a nationwide emergency. There is no more pressing issue than getting kids back into reading.

[Tanya @tanyaelisabethh]

Once children became things we can create, select, freeze, discard, rent wombs for, pay for, screen for, customize, we really should not be shocked when people begin speaking of them like they are just products, because that is what products are, they are judged by their quality, they are measured by how useful they are, they are accepted or rejected based on whether they meet the desires of the buyer.

This is what normalizing abortion, IVF and surrogacy has done for us. Evils beyond our wildest imaginations.

[Liesel @LieselCrocker]

@bigstrawberryy That’s so mean lol

[Jason Miyares @JasonMiyaresVA]

If Abigail Spanberger and Virginia Democrats had paid attention my October 2025 AG’s Opinion that made clear this scheme was unconstitutional and illegal, they could have saved more than $70 million, countless headaches, and months of obnoxious television ads defending the indefensible.

Instead, they ignored the law, wasted taxpayer money on running a special election, and dragged Virginians through a completely avoidable mess.

[Kim R. Holmes @kimsmithholmes]

A lot of people are asking why more politicians are not like Ben Sasse.

Because voters will not elect them, that’s why. They may say they care about character, but most don’t vote that way.

Instead they vote party line, ideology, self-interest, or out of pique against a perceived enemy.

How can we expect our leaders to embody higher levels of virtue if a majority of voters don’t make personal character a red line?

It looks like we get the leaders we deserve.

[Danny Slavich @DannySlavich]

“The grand divide that’s coming is about intentionality and what you do with your affections and these (AI) supertools… people who agree to outsource attention and affection to somebody else’s algorithm? That’s hell.”

@BenSasse on AI

[Mary Katharine Ham @mkhammer]

Spanberger is a useful lesson, though I’m bummed my state and its citizens are the collateral damage. There is no such thing as a moderate Dem (especially w national ambitions) & an intel operative is trained to lie her ass off to you. When you are sold this again, beware.

[Glenn Youngkin @GlennYoungkin]

This is a lie. A blatant lie. Not to mention a complete reversal of your campaign promises.

This unconstitutional power grab will permanently rig Virginia’s Congressional maps and disenfranchise millions of Virginians.

Virginia, VOTE NO.

[Rob Henderson @robkhenderson]

"Practically overnight, we took an ancient vice—long regarded as soul-rotting and civilizationally ruinous—put it on everyone’s phone, and made it as normal and frictionless as checking the weather. What could possibly go wrong?" https://t.co/NbxQloQslT

[Kelsey Piper @KelseyTuoc]

I doubt that anyone I know steals from Whole Foods, but the milieu that the article depicted, where it's normal for perfectly well-off people to steal things because why not, was really upsetting to read about, so I actually want to try to earnestly explain why you shouldn't do this just in case there's someone out there who has never had it explained to them.

When a business opens - or really, as soon as a business starts making plans to open - a defining question for the business is how it will collect payment for the goods or services it provides. If you trust the people you sell to, you can be pretty relaxed about this; send people an invoice, most of them will pay it on time, any who don't will pay it a bit late. You have to think about convenience and mistakes but not about people trying to cheat you. This saves you so, so much defensive planning to make sure you get paid. It's so much easier.

But if you're selling to the general public, you do have to think about people trying to cheat you. You have to structure the physical store so that it's hard for them to steal. You have to not carry some items that you'd like to sell, because they'd also be attractive targets to steal. If people swap price tags between items, you can't use stickers. If people put things on in the dressing room and wear them out, you need to pay someone a full time salary to monitor the dressing room.

The world that we all live in is much poorer than the world we'd live in if people didn't steal. The stores don't carry things that they could carry if people didn't steal. They don't use pricing and inventory systems that would be way easier and more convenient if people didn't steal.

But it could be much worse! If I walk down to my local Whole Foods today, items on the shelves won't be locked behind sheafs of plastic - that is only worth it when the background rate of stealing is much higher than it is at my local Whole Foods. When more people steal, businesses have to further intensify security, or go out of business.

When you shoplift, you directly and unambiguously impoverish your community. You make prices higher for everybody else, you make stores less usable for everybody else, or you make businesses not viable that would otherwise be viable. The direct impact each time is small, but it's a lot larger than the direct impact of taking some trash out of the trash can to throw on the ground, or pouring just a tiny bit of poison into your local river, and most people have a deep, instinctive abhorrence of antisocially wrecking your community like that.

So don't steal.

The other thing that it seems possible some people might not understand is that while you might have a social circle that is incredibly nihilistic and cynical and thinks that everybody steals, in fact this is not true. Most people do not steal. Most people, if they learn that you steal, will lose more respect for you than you had to lose. I don't know anyone who has shoplifted except 'as a kid/teenager'. It is not always the case that virtue is rewarded and vice is punished but even before you bring the legal system into it, the risk-reward tradeoff of having everybody you know know that you steal things sometimes is absolutely terrible. Who would hire someone who steals things? Who would trust them around a vulnerable person? Who would want to live in a society with someone who will delightedly and routinely wreck it for the slightest personal benefit?

I hope that "Gina" turns her life around. I hope that Gina realizes that she needs to. And if you have been told that it's just a corporation or that having ethics is lame or that if you think about it, other bad things happen too, like wage theft, so that means stealing is okay, I hope you really, actually, think about whether you'd accept any of those as excuses for anything else.

[Liesel @LieselCrocker]

@katrosenfield It’s interesting this article only highlights moms of very young kids. Many people agree that the early years can be really tough but I’ve never heard a parent of adolescents or adults say “looking back, those first 3 years of diapers and tantrums wasn’t worth it”

[Brad Dayspring @BDayspring]

The true disrespect is coming from the reporters asking these gold medal winning athletes about the men's team, over and over again, instead of focusing on their amazing accomplishment and how it can grow women's hockey.

It's really a shame.

[Aaron Gwyn @AmericanGwyn]

2. They’ll tell me about video games or Netflix shows or mangas (whatever those are).

Which is fine. But if you don’t have a favorite novelist by the time you’re a senior in college, you’re not going to be one.

[Jill Filipovic @JillFilipovic]

I would like to extend a very hearty fuck you to the people who are in creative industries and then sell AI products that end those creative industries so they can get the last buck before the whole thing collapses. Special place in Hell, truly.

[Chris Obenshain @ObenshainChris]

As Dwayne Yancey points out, this entire exercise is crafted to silence rural voices in exchange for political favors for Party insiders.

The contempt shown here for the voters is beyond belief. If this ghastly gerrymandering survives judicial scrutiny, I hope that every sensible-minded Virginian rejects it at the ballot box.

[Jason Miyares @JasonMiyaresVA]

Only those who crave complete political control and are willing to silence millions of Virginians will attempt to defend this abomination.

They have created this map illegally - in defiance of a court order. They have shattered communities, destroyed common interests, and trampled state interests all to satisfy the radical left’s lust for power.

We will continue to fight their attempt to seize power in court, and, if necessary, at the ballot box.  This map is exactly why Virginians passed a redistricting constitutional amendment five years ago – to stop career politicians in backrooms dictating who should speak for us and seizing power for themselves.

[Christian Martinez @CDHMartinez]

NEW from @WSJ:

@GlennYoungkin shines, delivering Virginia surpluses, economic wins, and an over 50% approval rating in a deep blue state.

[Mark Hemingway @Heminator]

“I voted for this” is a joke among Trump supporters, because they’re aligned on policy. Who even in the Dem voting coalition is like “I voted for a tax on lawmowers, DoorDash, and gym memberships yayyyy! Oh and speed cameras? Yes please.”

What a joke.

[Enguerrand VII de Coucy @ingelramdecoucy]

Abigail Spanburger looks like she’s about to offer me Turkish Delight to flip on my siblings

[Rory Cooper @rorycooper]

24 hours in. The Spanberger years are going to be expensive for Virginians.