Jim Hughes

I love the world, and all the people in it.

[Tony Tost @tonytost]

Accidental Pink Floyd album cover during our family trip to Alcatraz today.

[Jim Hughes @jeeeem]

@OwlcatGames PCVR version?

[Kelsey Piper @KelseyTuoc]

My ancestors buried half their children. All mine are alive. My ancestors' house had a dirt floor. Mine is wood. I have indoor plumbing, I have hot water, I have never in my life hauled a full bucket half a mile and I probably never will. Do you know how rare it is, in human history, for small children to wear shoes? Mine have multiple pairs. I can speak to my relatives who live thousands of miles away, for free, at any time. Video, if we want video. With machine translation, if we speak different languages.

The original Library of Congress had 740 books in it. I have more than that. If I run out of books in my home my local public library has 350,000. If I want to take a hundred books with me on vacation, they all fit on a device that fits in my purse.

I have heat in the winter and AC in the summer and a washing machine and I have never, ever, ever had to scrub a dress clean by hand in the stream. I can look up recipes from more than a hundred different countries and I've tried dozens of them. I ride a clean and modern train across my city for $4, or take a robot taxi if I'm out too late for the train. I donate $40,000 every year to the cause of getting healthcare to the world's poorest people and even after the donations I never have to think about whether I can afford a book, or a pair of shoes, or a cup of coffee.

There is a great deal more to fight for, of course. I hope that our descendants will look back on our lives and list a thousand ways they're richer. Maybe we ourselves will do that, if some of the crazier stuff comes true.

But the abundance is all around you and to a significant degree you aren't feeling it only because fish don't notice water.

[Baseball In Pics @baseballinpix]

1908 Cubs with their mascot. The Cubs won 99 games and won their 2nd straight World Series.

[James West @James_West_PhD]

Gorsuch is a G*d-d*mned genius:

"For those who think it important for the Nation to impose more tariffs, I understand that today’s decision will be disappointing. All I can offer them is that most major decisions affecting the rights and responsibilities of the American people (including the duty to pay taxes and tariffs) are funneled through the legislative process for a reason.

Yes, legislating can be hard and take time. And, yes, it can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises. But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design. Through that process, the Nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives, not just that of one faction or man.

There, deliberation tempers impulse, and compromise hammers disagreements into workable solutions. And because laws must earn such broad support to survive the legislative process, they tend to endure, allowing ordinary people to plan their lives in ways they cannot when the rules shift from day to day. In all, the legislative process helps ensure each of us has a stake in the laws that govern us and in the Nation’s future.

For some today, the weight of those virtues is apparent. For others, it may not seem so obvious. But if history is any guide, the tables will turn and the day will come when those disappointed by today’s result will appreciate the legislative process for the bulwark of liberty it is."

[Jim Hughes @jeeeem]

@SleepisforT @Fallout Do the locals like the Fallout stuff? Any resentment?

[New York Post @nypost]

Massive Shohei Ohtani, Decoy mural crops up in Los Angeles https://t.co/muwBKQNGqj

[Neil Stone @DrNeilStone]

"My daughter caught measles when she was seven. I remember not feeling particularly alarmed about it.

Then one morning she said, 'I feel all sleepy,' and she went into a coma. In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead."

Roald Dahl on his daughter Olivia

[Nick Gillespie @nickgillespie]

Also, the apparent inspiration for a good chunk of True Detective, Season 1.

[Veronique de Rugy @veroderugy]

Beautiful, moving and sad by ⁦@JonahDispatch⁩. It also gives me a wonderful perspective on the phrase “May her memory be blessed”. Saying Goodbye to Gracie - The Dispatch https://t.co/VcOvOwKncU

[Gregg Carlstrom @glcarlstrom]

To call this the most corrupt administration in American history doesn't really do it justice, because no prior president, Republican or Democrat, would have even conceived of a grift on this scale

"Four days before Donald Trump's inauguration last year, lieutenants to an Abu Dhabi royal secretly signed a deal with the Trump family to purchase a 49% stake in their fledgling cryptocurrency venture for half a billion dollars."

"The deal marked something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president's company." https://t.co/cgNTt417jn

[David Polansky @polanskydj]

Well, here we are. Another beam holding up democratic mass culture drops out. But I literally can't imagine my childhood without these.

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

Then leave the Judiciary Committee, the Senate, and Washington DC and go farm. Coward.

[Jonah Goldberg @JonahDispatch]

This might have happened. I’m at a total loss why anyone would take the “they’re eating the dogs and cats” guy at his word.

[Caitlin Flanagan @CaitlinPacific]

Bill Clinton would never have allowed this to happen. The Bushes, father and son wouldn’t have either. Obama has already spoken out about it.

We’re seriously losing our way.

[Justin Amash @justinamash]

We’re now finding out which Republicans were simply cosplaying as Second Amendment defenders.

[Brian Stelter @brianstelter]

A statement from the family of Alex Pretti, obtained by CNN:

"We are heartbroken but also very angry.

Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital. Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately he will not be with us to see his impact. I do not throw around the hero term lightly. However his last thought and act was to protect a woman.

The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper sprayed.

Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man. Thank you."

[Andrea Junker @Strandjunker]

“Get it all on record now — get the films — get the witnesses — because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower, after visiting liberated concentration camps in April 1945