Michael Scarns

I prefer we meet directly...that way when you spit in my face, I can act accordingly...

[Michael Scarns @MScarns]

My sarcasm is like an onion...the more you peel back my layers, the more I remind you of a fart.

[George Alexopoulos @GPrime85]

The Odyssey is actually a super problematic story.

It's about a white man who took his sweet time returning home after pillaging a middle Eastern city, then cheated on his wife. Meanwhile his estate is being visited by noble refugees who just want a little bite or two of his plentiful food (he has so much to spare, being a rich white landlord). All of these fine men of fighting age just want to marry his widow and take his place, no big deal.

Well, it IS a big deal to Mr. Odyssey's white son, a freshman college who's been spending way too much time on 4chan who gets the idea he should kick these dreamers out of his country. And so, unfortunately, the migrants have to find him and defend themselves.

Yada yada a few chapters later the white daddy returns home in disguise and along with his son kills all the noble visitors, which is exactly what all European men fantasize about since they claim their countries are being invaded and bled dry.

And with the rise of the far right today, Christopher Nolan thought this would be a good story to tell.

That's why we all need to skip this movie. It is pure white supremacist fantasy.

[Mark Pellegrino @MarkRPellegrino]

Love it.

[Rothmus 🏴 @Rothmus]

Private property rights were surrendered the moment we accepted the first exceptions.

The government taxes what you own and it seizes it through eminent domain whenever officials decide your land serves a “higher purpose.”

And the instant we treated those takings as legitimate, property stopped being a right the state exists to protect and became a privilege the state grants and can revoke at will.

The truth is governments have always confiscated more wealth through taxation, regulation, and legal plunder than private thieves could ever manage.

But that’s not even the core problem.

The deeper issue is what happens when rights cease to be sacred boundaries and become subject to majority vote.

If 51% can vote to rob the 49%, nothing in principle stops them from voting to do worse.
They can authorize killing, torture, enslavement, or any other violation and call it legitimate because “democracy.”

And no, that’s not a slippery slope. It’s the logical endpoint and the consistent application of treating rights as collective permissions rather than individual moral claims that no majority may override.

America was founded on the opposite moral premise that natural rights were understood as existing prior to government and independent of popular approval.
They were the fixed limit on power, not up for negotiation.

Every exception we normalized since then has eaten away at that foundation. And the result is exactly what the founders warned against, and that’s a system in which rights are whatever the majority, the bureaucracy, or the latest coalition decides they should be.

But rights do not come from society and they do not bend to majority will.
They supersede it.

The laws, institutions, and precedents that turned them into revocable privileges must be repealed and dismantled.

Anything less leaves us as subjects to a tyranny more total and arbitrary than anything history has yet produced.

[Megan Basham @megbasham]

Okay, this is insane. I asked Google Gemini about when Florida's primary date is. It wouldn't tell me but gave me a list of election sites to search. I said, "fine I'll ask ChatGPT."

It then immediately gave me the information it wouldn't give me earlier. Then when I asked what that was about, it offered the ridiculous excuse that its internal calendar happened to reset in that split second so now it COULD give me the info.

Obvious malarkey, which I pointed out. Then it's like, yeah sorry I blatantly lied to you. WHAT???

[Spike Brehm @spikebrehm]

they did it. the mad lads actually did it.

i never talked about my time at DOGE last year because it was so controversial and contentious (remember that?)

early last year, @jgebbia recruited a handful of his most trusted early Airbnb engineers to embed at the Office of Personnel Management to solve the "retirement paper" problem.

processing a federal retirement took months, and in the extreme retirees could wait up to 6 months for their full pension to arrive. what was the holdup? paper. remember hearing Elon talk about "the mine" in Pennsylvania? we got to visit it. in deep underground caverns blasted out of limestone, there were literally acres of file cabinets, as far as the eye could see, storing files detailing federal employees' employment and paystub history. a simple "case" might be only a quarter or half inch thick, but really complex cases filled up whole filing cabinets. one famously took up a whole pallet.

each case was hand processed by case workers in cubicles deep underground. they checked calculations, made sure forms were filled out properly (many weren't), and handled a long tail of complex issues. we'd watch as they keyed data into a black and white terminal, transmitting to the COBOL mainframe built many decades ago.

since cases were processed by hand, there were multiple rounds of human review, and additional rounds for complex cases. case files were walked around between one worker's outbox and another's inbox. sometimes it would sit in one place for days, waiting to be picked up.

to OPM's credit, they'd done multiple rounds of "digital transformation" spanning decades, so some systems were newer than others. there was a big effort in the mid-90s. but the systems were disparate, and it was a total maze getting them to talk to each other. there was a big effort to build a web app where employees applying for retirement could digitally fill out the necessary forms — just to be mailed to the mine and stuffed into the paper file. and few federal agencies were even using it.

when we arrived, OPM was midway through a fresh attempt at digital transformation, delivered by a software contractor.

the blackpill was seeing the terrible quality of the software and interacting with the contractors. coming from silicon valley, i couldn't believe how low the talent and quality bar was for selling software to the government. it's clear, as the OG USDS people explained to me a decade ago, the primary skill these vendors have is securing government contracts. it's a huge moat. delivery of quality product be damned.

we fired the vendor and took over the project. they'd been working on it for more than a year, and there was another year before they were going to deliver it. at first we tried to bend it to our will, to actually connect all the various data sources and get to a decent UX for case workers in the mine to use, but we soon realized we were going to have to rebuild the whole stack from scratch.

it was around this time I had to go back to new york — i had a new job waiting for me, a four month old, and a wife whose patience was running out. but i got to watch from afar as the team cranked day and night, hitting early milestones. and now they've fully done it.

huge congrats to Joe and the team. @yatshitcray was the hero in the trenches. indefatigable, unrelentingly optimistic, and determined to see this project through. when i recruited him for "ok i can do two, maybe three months", he stuck it out over a year making this project a reality.

while the retirement project was under the DOGE banner, it operated different from what you heard from the breathless, negative media — we came in with the attitude of partnering with career OPM employees. we were team members determined to bring our software talents to bear on the problem they've been trying to fix for years, which they hadn't had the resources to solve before. they were wary at first, not sure about us, but they quickly saw how authentic and determined we were to work together toward the same goal. props to Joe for developing those relationships, setting the example of how to collaborate together.

what's the end result? lifelong federal employees, veterans, postal carriers get their full pension installments almost immediately. days instead of months. peace of mind for these people to devoted their careers to serving our country. massively streamlined operations inside of OPM. and NO MORE PAPER 🫡🇺🇸

[Robin Monotti @robinmonotti]

NASA CONFIRMS THE SUN IS THE DRIVER OF TEMPERATURE ON EARTH
“The thermosphere always cools off during Solar Minimum–and it warms up again during Solar Maximum,” explains Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center. “It’s one of the most important ways the solar cycle affects our planet.”
Mlynczak and colleagues recently introduced the “Thermosphere Climate Index” (TCI)–a number expressed in Watts that tells how much heat nitrogen oxide (NO) molecules in the thermosphere are dumping into space. During Solar Maximum, TCI is high (“Hot”); during Solar Minimum, it is low (“Cold”).

[Canary Mission @canarymission]

SHOCKING VIDEO: What does a neo-Nazi have in common with a DSA politician?

Watch 2026 candidates use THE EXACT SAME rhetoric about AIPAC that white supremacists have pushed for years. "AIPAC" was always code for Jews.

You cannot unsee this.

[Defiant L’s @DefiantLs]

Javier Milei: There is an alliance between the radical left and Islamist terrorism. This is more than a temporary alliance. It is an evil brotherhood founded on hatred for Western civilization

[WikiBias @WikiBias]

Meanwhile, on Wikipedia, the deletion of Jewish heritage and identity continues.

[Jarvis @jarvis_best]

She previously dropped a "wait for it."

It is only a matter of time before she uses a gif.

[Michael Scarns @MScarns]

@ConceptualJames Absolutely we should teach about the Barbary wars...

[Michael Scarns @MScarns]

@SovMichael @ConceptualJames They "Weinered" themselves...

[Jeffco Sheriff @jeffcosheriffco]

Suspect Arrested in Connection with Intentional Brush Fire Along Highway 74

At about 4:46 p.m. on June 29, 2026, Jefferson County Sheriff's deputies responded to a report of a man intentionally setting fire to brush near mile marker 16 on State Highway 74.

Multiple witnesses called 911 after observing a man standing over a fire on the south side of the highway. Deputies located an active brush fire in a ravine south of the highway. Deputies quickly located a suspect matching the witnesses' description and detained him without incident.

One deputy used a fire extinguisher to slow the spread of the flames until fire personnel arrived and fully extinguished the fire. During the investigation, deputies recovered a lighter near the fire's origin.

The suspect was identified as Royce Ben Jameson, 25, of New Mexico. He was arrested on suspicion of the offense of Firing Woods or Prairie, 18-13-109 (2) (a), an F6, and Third Degree Criminal Trespass, 18-4-504, a petty offense. The quick reporting by community members and the rapid response by deputies and fire personnel helped prevent the fire from spreading further.

Jameson is being held at the Jefferson County Detention Center on a $5,000 cash or surety bond.

The charges are merely legal allegations, and the defendant is presumed innocent of the charges against them unless and until they are proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

[The Fat Electrician @Fat_Electrician]

“The danger of umbrellas is that they turn rain into a matter of private comfort. Those who can pay escape getting wet, while the public world becomes soggier, more unequal, and less livable. Moral thinking must begin outside the dry zone.”

[Michael Scarns @MScarns]

@ConceptualJames You in a couple of hours

[Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol]

I have awful news...

A North Carolina mother of two and postal worker has been kidnapped and m*rdered in rural North Carolina while out delivering mail.

Her name was Brandi Reynolds, she had two little girls who are now orphaned because sadly they also lost their dad 6 months ago.

Brandi was a rural mail carrier in Wilkes County, NC.

On Friday afternoon, while she was working her route, police say William Craig Durham restrained her, took her against her will, and sh0t her to death inside a vehicle.

Brandi was already a widow. Her husband Brent passed away in a car crash on December 23rd. Two days before Christmas.

She had spent the last six months raising their two daughters alone.

In her own words, those girls were "the reason I get up every morning. What makes life worth living."

And now those two little girls have no mother and no father.

Please pray for these two girls, Bayla and Addy...

I cannot imagine losing both parents.

I pray that this evil man is brought to justice SWIFTLY!!!

[Michael Scarns @MScarns]

@PeteKaliner

Black pilled yet?

[Pete Kaliner @PeteKaliner]

#Journalisming Rule 2:
When the scandal involves a Republican, the story is the scandal. When the scandal involves a Democrat, the story is the Republican reaction to the scandal.

[Rep. Chip Roy Press Office @RepChipRoy]

🗒️STATEMENT: Rep. Roy Calls for Congressional Action Following Supreme Court Birthright Citizenship Ruling.

“The Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roberts, failed the American people, the Constitution, and the rule of law today—not to mention the national security of the United States.

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in no way stands for the proposition of creating a dangerous cottage industry of traveling to our soil to manufacture United States citizenship. That's insane. The Supreme Court today should have said so explicitly and ended this damaging exploitation of our laws.

Congress must now immediately do at least two things it should have done long ago.

First, define the phrase ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ very specifically to make clear that citizenship is tied to the citizenship of the parent, not the soil.

Second, completely restrict funding from DHS or any other agency or state that provides documentation and status to anyone not subject to the ‘jurisdiction thereof.’

In other words, Congress must act immediately and must not hide behind the fiction that it must amend the Constitution to fix this abuse of our laws. To do otherwise would be an abject failure of the United States Congress."
https://t.co/IyBP84W8wZ

[Ford O'Connell @FordOConnell]

Rewarding lawbreakers (illegal aliens and birth tourists) it’s not what the reconstruction Congress had in mind.