Reporter: Isn’t there concern that this slippery slope to socialism inevitably ends up as full-blown communism?
AOC: I mean, no. I think that’s very silly. We can’t even raise the minimum wage. Do they really think communism is going to happen? No. They’re trying to scare people because they don’t want us talking about the fact that we all have a right to health care.
So they want to call everything they don’t like communist because if people actually wake up to the fact that their elected officials are screwing them over when they get here, they’re going to realize they deserve better and that health care as a right isn’t crazy. They want to call this stuff communist because they don’t want us to realize that the rest of the developed world has guaranteed health care. They want to call it communist because they don’t want you to know that Germany, Italy, the UK, Canada—everybody else—has it better than us, and we spend the most money for the worst care in the developed world.
You've seen the meme: one opossum eats 5,000 ticks a season. But when researchers dissected the stomach contents of 32 wild opossums, they found zero ticks.
The 5,000-tick number came from a single lab study that got stretched into a feel-good statistic and repeated.
But the opossum's actual résumé is impressive enough without the tick myth. It's the only marsupial in North America, a creature with a body plan that reaches back toward the age of dinosaurs. It's highly resistant to the venom of pit vipers, including copperheads and rattlesnakes, and can prey on venomous snakes that would kill many other mammals, including you.
Opossums are so resistant to pit viper venom that scientists have studied their blood for clues that might someday lead to better snakebite treatments.
It cleans up dead animals, fallen fruit, slugs, snails, insects, and even rodents if given the chance. Also cool: it rarely carries rabies. Researchers think its unusually low body temperature may be one reason rabies is so uncommon in opossums, but the jury is still out on that one.
It does all of this without much fanfare, at night, without asking for anything, and still gets shooed off a porch for looking a little weird.
When one waddles through your yard after dark, you're watching your neighborhood wildlife cleanup crew doing its thing. Leave it be. It'll keep working for you.
This is how you protest. Not with cutest signs, not with cringey chants. Not with stupid hats. You roll up your sleeves and fuck some shit up.
I never thought in 2026, that i’d be rooting for Albania and Iran. But here we are.