TSandBooks

[The Vigilant Fox 🦊 @VigilantFox]

Bill Maher’s audience audibly gasps when he reads what the Democratic Socialists of America are actually saying out loud:

MAHER: “Trump has told 1 trillion lies, but when he says the DSA are actually COMMUNISTS, that’s not one of them.”

“And it’s not hard to prove it just by quoting the DSA and their candidates.”

“J.D. Vance was on the show, and I told him that if the Democratic Party keeps going in the direction of the DSA, my vote was in play. And all I heard all vacation was, ‘Oh, my God, you’re a Republican now.’ No, that's not what I said. I said in play, and here’s why.”

“Because not a week goes by where I don’t read about some newly chosen, exciting new face in the Democratic Party. And then when that face opens its mouth, the Communist Manifesto or some other crazy shit comes out! Again.”

“Let’s just read the quotes. The DSA platform says: ‘You work as much as you are able and no more than needed.’ If that was any closer to Karl Marx’s dictum, from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs, they’d be sued for plagiarism.”

“New York Mayor Mamdani once tweeted, Karl Marx’s words exactly. They’re not trying to hide it. Their most popular influencer, Hasan Piker, thinks communism is so groovy, he laments the fall of two of the most murderous regimes in history, the Soviet Union and Chairman Mao's China.”

“Mamdani's aide, his top aide, Cea Weaver, said, ‘If you don't believe in the government's sacred right to seize property, it's over.’ And ‘impoverish the white middle class.’ What? That's a goal? You know you're supposed to scare people into voting for you, right?”

“One of the new, soon-to-be Democratic congresspeople, Darlesia Chavalier, supports seizing all properties from landlords and said, ‘Seize the means of production.’ Mamdani has said ‘The end goal is seizing the means of production.’ I think they want to seize the means of production.”

“Now, maybe you missed that in school or missed school altogether, but THAT'S COMMUNISM.”

“Now the coalition within the DSA called the Marxist Unity Group is in ascendance. And I must take them at their word. When their words include, ‘Our commitment is to the long-term struggle for a fully liberated classless society. In a word, communism.’”

“What do they have to do, tweet out ‘Elect more communists’? Oh, yeah, Cea Weaver did that.”

[Shows tweet, audience audibly gasps]

“Yes, [she really did that]! ... People gotta realize this is going on.”

[TSandBooks @trsaag]

😂😂😂

[Quantum Flux @QuantumFlux1964]

Good morning, folks!

And now, a food Venn:

[TSandBooks @trsaag]

@jk_rowling Whale watching and grizzlies…. Did y’all go to Alaska? Or Canada? Anyway Happy birthday!!

[TSandBooks @trsaag]

@jk_rowling @AmnestyUK Happy birthday!! 🎉

[TSandBooks @trsaag]

Wait…I thought doxxing was illegal?

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🚨 JUST IN: Ugandan Mayor Mamdani is facing outrage for PUBLICLY POSTING a SEARCHABLE database of "wealthy" property owners in NYC

"The city just posted a searchable list of every homeowner on the hook for his new tax. Names, addresses, 30,000 of them." 🤯

"A socialist mayor handing out a rolodex of the rich in a city that just watched a CEO get gunned down on a sidewalk. Sounds like a HIT LIST."

This communist wants more violence, MAKE NO MISTAKE.

[Robert 🇺🇸 @ziegler2u]

Today I finally understood something about Donald Trump that I had been missing this entire time. And when it hit me — it hit me completely. Because, look at who this man chose to surround himself with.
Not billionaires.
Not people born into power.
Not people who had everything handed to them.
Karoline Leavitt — 27 years old. Ice cream shop girl from New Hampshire.
Trump looked at her and saw something the entire world missed.
Made her the youngest Press Secretary in American history.
Susie Wiles — a woman who has spent her whole life quietly strategizing from the background.
No fame. No spotlight. Just pure brilliance.
Trump looked at her and said — you will be my Chief of Staff. First female Chief of Staff in American history.
JD Vance — a soldier. A boy from Appalachia who served his country in uniform before he ever served it in office.
Trump looked at him and said — you will stand beside me.
Pete Hegseth — a soldier who gave everything on the battlefield. Two Bronze Stars.
Trump looked at him and said — you will lead our military.
Marco Rubio — the son of a bartender and a hotel maid. Two immigrants who came to America with nothing.
Trump looked at their son and made him the first Latino Secretary of State in American history.
My wife heard all of this tonight and said, "Do you understand what Trump actually did?
He did not build a powerful administration.
He built an unbreakable one."
Because every single person in it knows what it feels like to have nothing. And people who came from nothing never take anything for granted.
Tonight, say one prayer for this entire administration. And say a bigger one for the man who chose them.
Then pass this to every American who needs to understand why this administration hits different from every single one that came before it (Jeff Roush)

[Rothmus 🏴 @Rothmus]

One of the cleanest experiments in history already settled the economic debate on capitalism vs. socialism.

Same Germans, same starting line in 1949, the only variable was the system they lived under.

West Germany under Ludwig Erhard abolished the old price controls and introduced a new currency in 1948 and industrial production jumped 50% in 6 months.

East Germany went Soviet-style central planning with the state controlling prices, production, and property.

By 1989, East Germany’s GDP per capita sat at about $9,679 while West Germany’s was roughly 3x higher, and at reunification in 1990, East German output per capita was only 55% of the West’s.

The wall fell, but the gap never closed up to this day. All to say it’s been easier to recover from an atomic bomb than years of socialist rule.

[Brian Roemmele @BrianRoemmele]

In this machine I can scan 1000s pages a day and never destroy a book.

No guillotine spines, no ripped the bindings..

just a normal book ready to be treasured for centuries.

Any large AI company can afford this both financially and ethically.

[TSandBooks @trsaag]

@rdgrongoodnet1 @PNW_Shane @MoodyBlueliner @kayteterry I mean, I think we can agree, for example, that one of the most curious and inventive thinkers currently living is fairly conservative in his vision for how society and government should function, you know, that guy who bought twitter….

[TSandBooks @trsaag]

@rdgrongoodnet1 @PNW_Shane @MoodyBlueliner @kayteterry Also engineering, medicine, computer science, any of the stem fields really, not to mention law…. All those wage earning, taxpaying men who voted for President Trump (along with their suburban, middle class, college educated wives) are not just ‘in the trades.’

[TSandBooks @trsaag]

Have we fixed this yet?

[TSandBooks @trsaag]

@AZMAGA100 She’s so tiny!!

[TSandBooks @trsaag]

@AZMAGA100 Um no. She looks like Bert from Sesame Street.

[TSandBooks @trsaag]

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!! TOUCH NOT THE BOOKS!!!!😱🤯💔💔

[Hedgie @HedgieMarkets]

🦔AI companies are bulk-buying rare books, scanning them through high-speed machines that cut the spines off, and shredding the originals. A service called ISBNdb facilitates orders of up to a million books and keeps buyers anonymous. Pre-2022 books are premium because they're free of AI-generated text. A federal judge ruled the practice is fair use because eliminating the original means only one copy exists at a time. Anthropic hired the former head of Google Books partnerships to obtain "all the books in the world."

My Take
This got to me. A bookseller told 404 Media that rare books with almost no surviving copies are being fed into this pipeline. Books that survived wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an AI can learn to write a better marketing email.
ISBNdb's website literally says "'AI company destroys two million books' is not a headline that generates sympathy," and they still built an entire business around making it happen quietly. They offer NDAs as a feature. They coach clients to call it "digital preservation."

I've covered AI companies scraping the internet, torrenting libraries, and stealing music. This is worse because it's irreversible. You can re-upload a website. You can reprint a bestseller. You can't replace the last three copies of an 18th-century botanical text once someone shreds them for training data. And the judge said it's legal. So it's going to accelerate.
"We shred rare books and offer NDAs so nobody finds out" is a legitimate business model in 2026. What a timeline.

Hedgie🤗

[🇺🇸 Kyle Bass 🇹🇼 @Jkylebass]

Incredibly effective policy. No political spin…just the raw numbers. Thank you @RealTomHoman and @POTUS 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸. @SecScottBessent @USPACOM @CENTCOM

[I liked the old normal @Feet_On_Grass]

Going upstairs to fold stuff. Might be a while…

[I liked the old normal @Feet_On_Grass]

Plant-based eating effects climate …

[Chairwoman Lisa McClain @RepLisaMcClain]

This is COMMUNISM.
We have history to show exactly what will happen:

1) Gov opens subsidized grocery stores at 30% below cost.
2) Local stores can’t compete and go under. The city store becomes the only option.
3) Shelves go empty. Rationing starts (“2 per customer”). There will be daily rushes, hoarding, and lines around the block.
4) Quality quietly tanks. Wilted produce, thinner cuts, fewer choices.
5) The subsidy bill balloons forever.

You didn’t solve hunger. You just built another Soviet bread line.

[Portland Moderate. @pdxmoderate]

Nvidia reportedly in talks to back a $250 BILLION financing package for OpenAI’s massive Ohio data center project, while Oregon’s anemic job growth is mostly government jobs and one way u-haul rentals to safer and more business friendly states like Texas, Ohio, Carolinas and Tennessee…

For years, Oregon's political leaders have promised that higher taxes, more regulation, and bigger government would produce a stronger economy.

The results tell a different story. Oregon is no longer creating businesses fast enough to replace the ones it is losing—a warning sign that the state's economic policies are failing the very workers and entrepreneurs they claim to support.

According to the latest U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, Oregon lost more businesses than it gained in both 2024 and 2025.

Closures outpaced new establishments by 1,700 in 2024 and by another 6,000 during the first nine months of 2025.

While some closures may prove temporary, this is the longest sustained period of business decline since the Great Recession.

This is not a national trend.

Across the country, new businesses have continued to outnumber closures, underscoring that Oregon's struggles are largely self-inflicted rather than the inevitable aftermath of the pandemic.

The consequences extend far beyond the businesses that have locked their doors.

Fewer new businesses mean fewer jobs, less competition, lower investment, and diminished opportunities for workers.

Unsurprisingly, Oregon now has the nation's third-highest unemployment rate at 5.2%, while job growth has stalled since 2023 even as employers across much of the country have continued hiring.

For too long, state leaders have treated private employers as a source of tax revenue and regulation rather than as partners in creating prosperity.

Businesses large and small have faced rising costs, an increasingly complex regulatory environment, and growing uncertainty about whether Oregon remains a competitive place to invest.

Entrepreneurs have choices, and too many are choosing to expand elsewhere.

@GovTinaKotek
@MayorKWilson
@jvegapederson

[TSandBooks @trsaag]

My ‘kids’ are actually adults now, but I must promote this for anyone following who has littles; also shoutout to local libraries and independent bookstores in the US (I can’t speak to other places 🤷🏻‍♀️) which also have terrific summer reading programs!!

[Second Lady Usha Vance @SLOTUS]

My Summer Reading Challenge is for everyone! Emerging readers or readers with learning differences are free to take part in any way that works for them, whether through audiobooks, shared reading with an adult, or other approaches. Visit https://t.co/MGY6LuhiYP for links to resources on enjoying books this summer and participating in the Challenge.