Timothy Piper

Dad, musician, choral director, tea lover. Papa, musicien, directeur de chorale, amateur de thé.

[The Figen @TheFigen_]

It's as if he's from another planet.

[Team Ilhan @Team_Ilhan]

Take it from @ewarren - our whole country needs @IlhanMN!

You can vote early. You can vote on August 11th. But whatever you do - make sure you vote for Ilhan.

https://t.co/d2SNe8me4g

[CNN @CNN]

Today, only around 1% of the Earth’s surface is urbanized and it wouldn’t take long for what we’ve built to be erased. The further back in time a hypothetical civilization existed, the harder it would be to find direct evidence, like objects. https://t.co/jnathkJnxQ

[KATY PERRY @katyperry]

I am deeply appalled and angry to see “Firework” used on the @WhiteHouse TikTok account as a backing track for video footage of military strikes. I did not approve this, I was not asked, and I absolutely do not condone it.

I wrote this song to be an anthem of hope, healing, and inner strength for people going through their darkest personal moments. To see a message of self-worth and upliftment weaponized to soundtrack destruction and violence is a complete violation of everything my song stands for.

My music is for bringing people together, not celebrating warfare.

[Truth Matters @politicsusa46]

Tell me a US journalist that would be prepared to put Musk in his place the way Zanny Minton Beddoes from the Economist did.

My thanks to The Economist for the clip

🎥 TikTok - https://t.co/HvYq21RPzV

[Timothy Piper @TimothyJPiper]

He describes it well

[BBC News (World) @BBCWorld]

Four beluga whales have arrived safely in Chicago, while two others were relocated to San Antonio in Texas, after their former marine park in Ontario, Canada closed down. Full story: https://t.co/hxYLfOmtvm

[Netflix Is A Joke @NetflixIsAJoke]

Bill Maher's Mark Twain Prize acceptance speech got... interrupted.

[Timothy Piper @TimothyJPiper]

All my kids are dancers. I can totally relate to this!

[The Wall Street Journal @WSJ]

Actor Ryan Gosling shared the reason he’d like to redo his role in “La La Land” with WSJ. Magazine in 2024.

For the movie's 10th anniversary, Lionsgate released a new version of the poster to make Gosling's hand stick straight out, Variety reported.

🎥 Watch more: https://t.co/pQjNPprJDZ

[Truth Matters @politicsusa46]

Every now and then, someone comes along and with little fanfare, calmly tells the truth.

How utterly refreshing don’t you think?

My thanks to End of News for the much needed reality check as an amuse bouche before the Liar in Chief takes to the airwaves to vomit a bucket full of lies while murdering sentence structure and making grammar hide in the corner.

🎥 TikTok - https://t.co/Y0wRe6YGMz

[Winter @MsWinterrrr]

I love Mamdani so much 😂

[Yogi @Houseofyogi]

RIP Lindsay Graham

The internet will do what it always does: flatten a complicated human being into a villain, a meme, or a collection of his worst clips.

I understand why people disliked him. I disagreed with him plenty. But the man spent more than three decades in Congress and 33 years serving in the Air Force, Air National Guard, and Air Force Reserve.

He deserves a more honest accounting than “sycophant” or “warmonger.”

Graham was a serious public servant.

He came from a working class family in South Carolina, lost both parents while he was young, helped raise his younger sister, and became the first person in his family to attend college.

He served as a military lawyer, retired as a colonel, spent eight years in the House, and more than two decades in the Senate.

That does not make him correct. It does establish that his life was fundamentally organized around public service.

For much of his career, Graham was also the kind of senator people now claim they want. He was clearly conservative, but willing to work with Democrats.

He helped negotiate the Gang of 14 compromise on judicial nominations. He supported comprehensive immigration reform through the Gang of Eight. He repeatedly worked with Dick Durbin on the DREAM Act. He voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan because he believed a qualified president’s nominees generally deserved confirmation.

He took real political risk to solve problems. That matters.

He was also one of the Senate’s most engaged foreign policy voices. He understood alliances, knew foreign leaders, traveled to war zones, supported NATO, defended Ukraine, and believed America had obligations beyond its own borders.

His final public work involved meeting with President Zelenskyy in Kyiv and advancing bipartisan sanctions against Russia.

You can disagree with his worldview. I often did. But he treated foreign policy as a serious responsibility. Q

His shortcomings were also real.

Graham was too interventionist. His default answer to foreign policy failure was often more force, more troops, more sanctions, or more American involvement. He understood the costs of weakness better than he understood the costs of overreach.

His transformation from fierce Trump critic to loyal Trump ally badly damaged his credibility.

The charitable explanation is that he chose access and influence over irrelevance. The less charitable explanation is that he adapted to wherever Republican power moved.

Both are probably true.

Lindsey Graham was not a saint. He was inconsistent, overly hawkish, and sometimes far too willing to trade institutional credibility for political influence.

But he was not useless, stupid, or evil either.

He served his country for most of his adult life. He knew the Senate. He worked across the aisle. He attempted to solve immigration when both parties preferred weaponizing it.

He defended alliances when isolationism became fashionable. He remained engaged with the world until his final days.

My honest verdict is that Lindsey Graham was a flawed but net positive public servant.

A genuine institutionalist who became less institutional over time.

A knowledgeable foreign policy senator whose appetite for intervention often exceeded his strategic caution.

A conservative partisan who still understood that governing requires negotiation.

Criticize him honestly. He earned plenty of it.

But a country that cannot distinguish between a flawed public servant and a worthless one eventually stops producing public servants at all.

I write this to pay respect. Social media has created too many vile content creators who only see the bad. Want clicks. Let the man rest in peace and be honest about it. Hyperbole is just silly.

[Timothy Piper @TimothyJPiper]

This is actually so awesome 😄

[Ottawa Senators @Senators]

Welcome home roomies!

#GoSensGo 🤝 #FullyCharged

[Terrible Maps @TerribleMaps]

Who everyone is supporting in today’s USA vs Belgium match

[CSPAN @cspan]

NYC Mayor Mamdani on American exceptionalism: "We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else... The truth, my friends is that America is exceptional because here, nothing is fixed into place."

[De’Asshole Fox 🇭🇹🇭🇹 @Alf954]

This is why it’s not a difference of opinion or a political disagreement.

If you support this, you are the lowest of the low, an immoral POS that doesn’t deserve social grace.

We will never break bread, we will never find common ground, I wouldn’t spit on u if u were on fire.

[Decoding Fox News @DecodingFoxNews]

Coney Island!
Nathan’s Famous!
Joey Chestnut!

[Ottawa Senators @Senators]

Congratulations @CANMNT_Official on a historic run at the @FIFAWorldCup and for making all of Canada so proud 🇨🇦