Maria Thompson

Entrepreneur, Founder, VC and Board Member. Passionate about family, social justice, alternative energy, art and design, and travel. Retired high tech CEO.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg @SherylNYT]

NEW: Major posts are vacant. Waves of scientists are gone. Ebola looms. How RFK Jr. manages HHS:

“If the C.E.O. lacked deep expertise in the company’s business and the leaders of its most important divisions were missing, investors would revolt."

https://t.co/QTZtLMUmUl

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Scientists at Trump’s EPA say they are being told to make chemical risks “disappear on paper.” Not to study or manage them, but to make them vanish.

When a safety test on a household chemical shows danger, supervisors reportedly ask to keep shrinking the scenario until the poison looks safe.

They have reassigned senior scientists to paperwork and handed life-and-death risk assessments to staff with less experience. They have installed former chemical industry lobbyists to run the very offices that are supposed to regulate the chemical industry.

A gift to industry, paid for with your family’s health.

They are even throwing out research on how certain chemicals hit certain communities harder, calling decades of established science “DEI.”

You can make risk disappear on paper.

The cancer does not disappear.

The birth defects do not disappear.

The infertility does not disappear.

The kids drinking the water and getting sick do not disappear.

The EPA exists to protect people, not to protect the profit margins of the people poisoning them.

Every American deserves to know what is happening. #TrumpMakesUsSick

https://t.co/5DwXgxBybt

[Wolf of X @WolfofX]

In Finland, children read to dogs in libraries and even to cows on farms because animals are calm, attentive listeners that help kids relax, focus, and gain confidence while reading.

Organized reading programs supported by the Finnish Kennel Club and participating municipalities have become a unique way to encourage literacy and make reading a more enjoyable experience for young learners.

[Brian Allen @allenanalysis]

BREAKING: Fox News Just Spent 3 Straight Minutes Airing A Detailed Case For Corruption Inside The Trump Administration.

Think about that.

This wasn’t MSNBC.

This wasn’t CNN.

This was Fox News.

Rep. Jamie Raskin walked viewers through what he says is a pattern of corruption, conflicts of interest, and abuse of power inside the administration.

And Fox aired the entire thing.

When even Fox can no longer avoid the conversation, it suggests the story has become too large to simply ignore.

[Rep. Suzan DelBene @RepDelBene]

Democrats just forced a vote to put an end to Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund.

Every House Republican rejected it & voted to support your tax dollars going to cop beaters & right wing extremists. Despicable.

[Ben Crump @AttorneyCrump]

This young queen did not just win a contest. She told the whole world that our crowns are beautiful, powerful, and unapologetically ours. Kameirah Johnson's artwork celebrating Black hair was featured on Google's homepage, and she is taking the Doodle for Google $55,000 scholarship to her dream school, NYU. We see you, and we celebrate you. 👏🏿
https://t.co/Qw7wi2YakR

[Democratic Wins Media @DemocraticWins]

BREAKING: In a stunning admission, Mike Johnson just told reporters that he has plan to cut Medicare and Medicaid after the midterms. We can stop this by making Hakeem Jeffries the next Speaker of the House.

[blue @bluewmist]

I'm finally reading Dune. This quote, which is in the first few pages, hits hard:

"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."

[Mr PitBull Stories @MrPitbull07]

In 1958, a divorced single mom got fired from her secretary job for being a bad typist.

21 years later, she sold her side hustle for $47.5 million.

And her teenage helper would go on to help invent MTV.

Her name was Bette Nesmith Graham.

Before she became a millionaire inventor, she was a struggling single mother in Dallas with no college degree and very few options.

She married young during WWII.

By 22, she was divorced, raising a son alone, and trying to survive on secretary jobs.

She eventually became an executive secretary at Texas Bank & Trust.

There was just one problem:

She was a terrible typist.

The bank had recently installed new IBM electric typewriters that made correcting mistakes almost impossible.

One typo could mean retyping an entire page.

Her son later remembered watching her sit at the kitchen table in “tears of panic,” terrified she’d lose her job.

But Bette had another skill.

She painted holiday window displays at the bank for extra money.

One day, while painting over a mistake on a window, she had a realization:

“An artist never erases mistakes. They paint over them.”

That night, she went home and mixed a white liquid in her kitchen blender using tempera paint.

She poured it into a nail polish bottle.

The next morning, she used it to cover typing errors.

It worked.

For five years, her boss never noticed.

Other secretaries did.

Soon, women from offices across the city were asking for bottles.

Bette started making batches at home with help from her teenage son, Michael, and his friends.

She called the product “Mistake Out.”

Then came the twist.

In 1958, she accidentally typed the name of her side business onto a company letter.

Her boss fired her immediately.

It became the best thing that ever happened to her.

She renamed the product Liquid Paper and focused on it full-time.

Orders exploded.

By the late 1960s, she was selling over a million bottles a year.

By the 1970s, 25 million bottles annually.

Then she did something even more unusual:

She built one of the most progressive workplaces in America.

Her company offered:
• child care
• continuing education
• leadership roles for women
• jobs for disabled workers
• integrated staffing

This was decades before most corporations even considered those ideas.

In 1979, with failing health, Bette sold Liquid Paper to Gillette for $47.5 million.

Six months later, she died at age 56.

Half her fortune went to women-focused charities.

The other half went to her son.

That son was Michael Nesmith.

Yes the same Michael Nesmith from The Monkees.

And with the money from Liquid Paper royalties, he funded a small experimental cable TV project called PopClips.

It featured short films set to music.

PopClips became the direct prototype for MTV.

So one woman’s “typing mistake” helped create:
• a multimillion-dollar company
• one of America’s most progressive workplaces
• and the blueprint for the modern music video era

Bette Graham proved something her old boss never understood:

The mistake wasn’t the failure.

It was the opportunity.

[CooperBaggs 💰🍞 @edgaralandough]

5. Travel while your body still says yes. The trip you keep saving for retirement assumes a future no one is promised. Your knees, your savings, your parents — all of it has a quiet expiration date. Take the trip while you can still wonder and walk.

6. The grudge you're holding is damaging you more than the person you refuse to forgive. They moved on; you stayed inside the pain redecorating. That anger lives in your body rent-free. Forgive them for you, before it calcifies into bitterness.

[Lovable Liberal and his Old English sheepdog @DougWahl1]

BELIEVE WHAT YOU HEAR WHEN ITS RECORDED BY A HIDDEN MICROPHONE

It doesn't appear that Mike Johnson knew he was being recorded today when he admitted that if they hold on to power, Republicans will cut Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security next year.

Vote Blue in November!

[Bob Elder @southernphd]

I never met Gordon Wood, but I have a story about him.

In one of my grad school seminars, we read Wood’s Creation of the American Republic. The sheer erudition and evidentiary depth of the book bowled me over.

Back then, before kids and before life accelerated to warp speed, I used to call my mother every Sunday to catch up. Lots of times, we ended up talking about what I was reading that week in my grad seminars or for leisure. Mom had an omnivorous mind, and she was always looking for something else to read. She was a true intellectual—curious about almost everything, always eager to integrate new arguments or ideas into her existing schemas of how the world worked or to have those schemas challenged and changed.

When we talked that particular Sunday, I think I tried to describe to her part of Wood’s argument about the relationship between the state constitutions during the Articles of Confederation era and the federal Constitution. Maybe I was tired, maybe I didn’t completely understand her questions, but the end result of the conversation was that Mom had questions about Wood’s argument that I didn’t answer satisfactorily. I told her that she should probably just read the book, and we said goodbye.

She did eventually read the book, but the next Sunday, Mom started our conversation by saying, “Well, I had a lovely conversation with Gordon Wood this week.” For a split second, I thought she was joking, but then I remembered who I was dealing with. I started to sweat. “How?” I asked. A whole variety of unlikely scenarios in which the foremost historian of the American Revolution and my mother, who lived in Wichita, Kansas, might have met ran through my mind. “Oh, I just looked up his office phone number on Brown’s website and called, and he picked up!” Mom said. I decided I would have to find another profession.

As it ended up, Gordon Wood spent about an hour on the phone with my mother answering her questions about the Constitution. Ever since, I’ve had a soft spot for the man when I imagine him picking up the phone in Providence and finding Becky Elder from Wichita on the other end of the line. His generosity in that moment spoke very well of him.

Rest in peace, professor.

[Team Talarico @TeamTalaricoHQ]

BREAKING: Ken Paxton’s own lawyer just endorsed James Talarico:

“I defended Ken Paxton for years in the impeachment trial and in state criminal cases. But in my view, I think Ken has lost sight of his core mission, which is to represent the people of Texas. 

And unlike Ken, I believe that you, James, believe in unity over division and that you know how to assemble not only Democrats but Independents and Republicans and we need that right now. 

We need unity, we don't need any more division and that's why I'm supporting you.”

[Crazy Vibes @CrazyVibes_1]

A Nazi commander loaded his pistol, pressed the cold metal barrel directly against the forehead of an American soldier, and gave a chilling ultimatum: "Order the Jewish soldiers to step forward, or I will shoot you right now."

What happened next in that frozen prisoner-of-war camp changed history forever, yet the man who stared down death kept it a secret for the rest of his life.

It was January 1945, and the bitter winter of World War II was at its peak. Inside Stalag IX-A, a notorious German prison camp near Ziegenhain, thousands of American soldiers were trapped behind barbed wire. Among them was Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, a twenty-five-year-old from Knoxville, Tennessee. As the highest-ranking non-commissioned officer in his section, Edmonds was responsible for the lives of 1,275 men.

One day, the camp commander, a fanatical Nazi major named Siegmann, issued a terrifying directive.

He ordered that the following morning, all American prisoners of Jewish faith must step out of the ranks during roll call. Everyone knew what this meant. Separating the Jewish soldiers was the first step toward sending them to extermination camps.

Inside the dark, freezing barracks, the prisoners panicked. Some of the Jewish soldiers considered stepping forward willingly to protect their Christian brothers from Nazi wrath. But Edmonds refused to let that happen. He looked at his men and gave a clear, definitive order: "Tomorrow, everyone steps forward. Everyone."

The next morning, the ground was thick with snow. Major Siegmann walked out onto the parade ground, expecting to see a small, isolated group of Jewish soldiers standing apart from the rest. Instead, he stopped dead in his tracks. All 1,275 American soldiers had stepped forward together in perfect unison.

The commander turned red with anger and stormed over to Edmonds. "They cannot all be Jews!" Siegmann screamed.

Edmonds stood completely still, looked the Nazi straight in the eyes, and replied: "We are all Jews here."

Enraged, Siegmann drew his Luger pistol and pressed it against Edmonds' forehead. The tension was suffocating. Hundreds of men held their breath, waiting for the gunshot. But Edmonds did not blink.

"According to the Geneva Convention, we only have to give our name, rank, and serial number," Edmonds said, his voice steady and calm. "If you shoot me, you will have to shoot all of us. And when the war ends, you will be tried for war crimes."

Edmonds knew the German army was collapsing and the Allies were advancing. Siegmann knew it too. The Nazi commander looked at the wall of unified men, realized he could not break their spirit, and slowly lowered his gun. He turned around and walked away without saying another word.

Because of that moment of defiance, two hundred Jewish-American soldiers survived the Holocaust. When the war ended, Edmonds returned to Tennessee, married his sweetheart, and raised a family. He never bragged about his actions, never looked for medals, and never even told his own children what he had done. To him, protecting his men was simply his duty.

Decades after his death in 1985, his son uncovered the truth by talking to the survivors. In 2015, Edmonds was officially recognized as Righteous Among the Nations, the highest honor Israel bestows upon non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. He remains the only American soldier to ever receive this recognition.

True heroism does not look for applause, and love will always be louder than hatred.

By standing together in the snow, those soldiers proved that when we refuse to abandon each other, ordinary human beings can become absolutely invincible.

[Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski]

Mike Lee has posted 37 times in the last 24 hours about Hegseth removing the Mormons from the Pentagon’s approved list of recognized Christian denominations.

[Rep. Mike Levin @RepMikeLevin]

Trump is trying to turn every federal grant into a political loyalty test.

Before any grant for things like medical research, housing, public health, and more gets approved, a political appointee would have to sign off that it serves Trump’s personal agenda. If they don’t like what you’re working on, the funding disappears.

The Founding Fathers gave Congress the power of the purse precisely so no president could ever do what Donald Trump is trying to do right now. It is the most fundamental check in our entire system of government, and Republicans are forfeiting it without a fight.

Where on earth are my Republican colleagues on the Appropriations Committee? You and I spent the last year fighting for every single dollar of this funding. Every. Single. Dollar. And you are letting this president TRAMPLE all over Congress and your own job.
https://t.co/QCH17wANNb

[Democratic Wins Media @DemocraticWins]

BREAKING: In a stunning moment, the lawyer who defended Ken Paxton during his impeachment trials just announced he is endorsing James Talarico. This is huge.

[ABC News @ABC]

A new study of more than 111,000 women ages 45 to 80 found those on GLP-1 medications had a reduced risk of developing breast cancer by about 30%. https://t.co/Sn0Q7ZBF4U

[ProPublica @propublica]

New: In April 2025, a school bus driver dropped off 5-year-old Lens Joseph, then ran over the kindergartner as he crossed in front of the bus. But his death — and dozens of others — are missing from the federal crash record of the bus company. https://t.co/P8HWuMJ3Jn

[Jeremy London @SirJeremyLondon]

The first time I saw one of these I impulsively started to cry. In a weird moment of awe and wonder, I was so grateful to exist in a world where this amazing creature exists. I do believe there’s more beauty here than ugliness. Maybe I’m a fool, but if a leafy sea dragon is possible… anything is possible.