How mad is Minnesota? THIS mad. In last night’s statehouse special elections, the DFL candidate in 64A got 95% of the vote (a 12-pt gain) and in 74A she got nearly 98%, a 37-POINT GAIN.
These are both heavily Dem areas in St. Paul, but that’s wild. If the GOP isn’t flipping out, they should be.
Oh hey, it me. I am thrilled to report that however kind you think LeVar Burton is, multiply that by ten and you MIGHT be in the ballpark. He literally held both my hands and said he was proud of me. Top 10 memory for sure.
Wow, they really did reserve space for Rubio just to hype Trump.
Trump was 40 minutes late for his statement and he looks ROUGH. Gravelly voice, monotone, stopping constantly to take a breath or study the words. Sniffing constantly like they finally just had him snort a line of Adderall to get him juiced up enough for the stage.
The Netflix series Stranger Things is a metaphor for childhood sexual abuse, in this essay I will
I’m preserving my blissful ignorance for a few more minutes before I start summarizing it for my rural-adjacent news roundup for my newsletter. Currently eating Haagen-Dazs and watching Scrooged instead.
Private equity: What CAN'T they ruin for rural America, Part 3,519. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/14/u...
Highly recommend Death By Lightning on Netflix. It's about James Garfield's short presidency and assassination, but it's so timely: About how hard it is for a reformer to root out corruption, and illustrates why the civil service reforms Trump is torpedoing were so critical.
Do I have to buy the report to see state-level stats?
Yet another way this administration is hurting rural communities and jeopardizing rural healthcare. Sloppy and careless policy (if I’m being charitable about the motives).
Yeah, I use Duck Duck Go a lot and it’s kind of clunky.
I wish some of the political cognoscenti would spend less time talking to each other here and more time with the rank and file in the comments on Reddit, Facebook and Threads (that last seems to be coming into its own as a supportive space for women).
My 21yo son said he and all his online gamer friends use Opera, of all things. Asked why and he said he was tired of Google tracking his every move plus six pages of sponsored results. Wonder if there’s a trend in play.
I love that! Is David is black and white, by chance? That seems appropriate.
That was such a lovely cover. I even bought it on iTunes.
Fun fact: the voice of Franklin the Turtle in the cartoons is Noah Reid, the guy who played Patrick in Schitt’s Creek. So not only is Hegseth disrespecting Franklin, he’s basically disrespecting David Rose’s husband, which I cannot abide.
I always pictured something thicker, like that pink ectoplasm from Ghostbusters.
Wait is that from The Abyss? All those drowning scenes messed me tf up.
Dear GOD, this.
Ha, well met, fellow former journalist and J! alum!
SAME. I’m at 3-5-1 and hanging on the edge of the cliff for relegation to B Rundle.
HEARD. I’m this close to getting relegated to B Rundle. And I still have no idea how that “historical Duchy of Schleswig” question had such a high get rate. Is there something I’m missing about that one?
This on top of learning there’s going to be a Project Hail Mary movie today. My cup runneth over.
A photo of my husband sitting at our dining room table and holding up his birthday banjo with a smile.
And that’s the story of how we kind of sort of basically scored my husband a birthday banjo off the Cornbread mafia. /🧵
Anyway, Jim brought the banjo with him on Saturday and it was definitely, probably worth getting mixed up with the Mt. Sterling Scarface just to see Dave’s face when he opened the box and saw the banjo. Even if the box was labeled “ABANEZ” because whatever Scott is, he is *really* not a music guy.
When Jim went back to buy, Scott and a woman were throwing stuff into boxes and said they were liquidating the store. Unsure if this was banjo-related and Jim really did give off cop vibes (very unlikely). Either way Scott still made Jim pay full price for the banjo. So much for liquidation prices.
I told Jim not to go back and put himself at risk, that I’d find a banjo elsewhere, but he said he’d be fine because he doesn’t give off “cop” vibes. Which, way to tempt fate, Jimmy.
I texted Jim and asked what was going on and he texted back, “My dude had muscle on the door and a room full of guitars covered in dust. Not sure what kind of business he's running, but it ain't a music shop. The banjo, fwiw, seems legit.”
He did some googling when he got home and come to find out, the ATF raided the pawn shop in 2019 because it was BASICALLY A FRONT FOR DRUGS AND STOLEN GUNS. The guy we both talked to was the same guy from the article. www.wkyt.com/content/news...
