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Jeff Tiedrich @jefftiedrich.bsky.social · 2d

here's today's post: "fuckwits and furniture molesters: your Republican roundup" — scenes from the Sunday shows.
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fuckwits and furniture molesters: your Republican roundup

scenes from the Sunday shows

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bleary @bleary.off-the-records.com · 1d

If anyone needs me I will be in the museum, lying down next to the bog bodies.

Did people really memorize phone numbers before cell phones, or is that just a movie thing?
2? Questions
I was watching some old shows from the 90s and noticed people would just dial numbers from memory - like they'd call their friends or family without looking anything up.
Made me wonder if that was actually normal back then? Did people genuinely have all their important numbers memorized, or did most folks keep a little address book or written list nearby?

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George Gantsoudes @pedsortho.bsky.social · 2d

Please remember that the disgust people have over Christopher Columbus is not based on some modern, 21st century “woke” ideology, but rather on contemporaneous accounts of atrocities that make many modern genocides appear quaint in comparison.

Below, are the accounts of Bartlomé de las Casas.

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had in-vested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.
The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.

After each six or eight months' work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died.
While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.
Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides... they ceased to pro-create. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and fam-ished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desper-ation.... In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk ... and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fer-tile... was depopulated... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write....

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Steve Downes @stevemdownes.bsky.social · 1d

I stopped paying.

Jay Rosen @jayrosen.bsky.social · 2d

This is what I pay the New York Times for: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/12/w...
[Gift link]

Viktor Orban’s ‘Propaganda State’ Is Starting to Show Cracks

www.nytimes.com

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lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 1d

i am so ready for quantum to be the next dumb buzzword the tech industry forces everyone to pretend to care about. "how are you incorporating quantum into your daily work?" i'm not but it's so refreshing you asked me a new and different stupid question

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Alan Richardson @alanrichardson.bsky.social · 1d

This is quite literally the shit that when the Soviet Block did it, Cold War America pointed to as proof of its intrinsic superiority in matters of freedom.

Gregory Pratt @royalpratt.bsky.social · 2d

NEWS: ICE gave a Rogers Park man a $130 ticket for not having his papers on him. They rounded him up last week and eventually let him go, but not without a fine that some critics say is un-American. Trump admin enforcing little-used law
www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/13/i...

ICE tickets Chicago man with legal residency $130 for not having his papers on him: ‘It’s not fair…I’m a resident’

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement fined Rueben Antonio Cruz $130 for not having his papers with him.

www.chicagotribune.com

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Mrs. Betty Bowers @mrsbettybowers.bsky.social · 1d

ICE has been deployed to *provoke* civilians, not to protect them. They want to throw tear gas canisters and get people on the streets riled up, all to create footage for Fox News and Newsmax, et al., that will be used as a pretext for imposing martial law to lower voting rates in Democratic cities.

Christopher Webb @cwebbonline.com · 2d

The only violence I’ve been seeing in Portland is from the so-called Feds!!!

Keep sharing these videos; it’s evidence.

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Alan Richardson @alanrichardson.bsky.social · 1d

The peace president

Yashar Ali 🐘 @yasharali.bsky.social · 1d

2. “…Bibi would call me so many times—“Can you get me this weapon? That weapon? That weapon?” Some of them I never even heard of. But we’d get them there, wouldn’t we? And they are the best. They are the best…and you obviously used them very well.”

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George Conway 🇺🇸🚫👑🐸 @gtconway.bsky.social · 2d

Thugs. And we're paying for them.

Nick Kristof @nickkristof.bsky.social · 2d

In Portland, an ambulance was summoned to the ICE office to treat an injured protester (not clear how he was injured). But when the patient was loaded inside, ICE officers refused to let the ambulance leave and threatened to shoot the ambulance driver: www.wweek.com/news/2025/10...

Documents Allege a Federal Agent at Portland ICE Threatened to Shoot an Ambulance Driver

Feds delayed medics who had come to pick up an injured protester. Then, according to confidential incident reports, the agents became aggressive.

www.wweek.com

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The Salt Lake Tribune @sltrib.com · 1d

Letter: The Republican Party gave us a government featuring RFK Jr., Pete Hegseth and Pam Bondi… and now they want Democrats to vote to keep funding it?

Letter: Utah’s lawmakers helped create a dysfunctional government. And they expect the Democrats to fund it?

www.sltrib.com

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Alan Richardson @alanrichardson.bsky.social · 1d

Looking forward to the NYTimes column, “Columbus did conquest the right way.”

Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 1d

I used to think people just didn’t understand what Columbus did but now I think some are really attached to him (as opposed to other worthy italians to celebrate) because their whole thing is not only getting away with doing horrible things but forcing everyone to praise them for being horrible

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Adanedhel🌹 @danielwaweru.bsky.social · 1d

Users of this excuse tend to be quite unhappy about the Muslim conquest of Spain—at least, they’ll happily use moral language in condemnation of Muslims killing Christians in Spain well before Columbus. Maybe basic moral norms take alternate generations off. Governing is hard work.

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 2d

yearly reminder to people insisting that we view Christopher Columbus as "a man of his time" that *the people responsible for the Spanish Inquisition* thought Columbus was out of pocket

Thomas Lecaque @tlecaque.bsky.social · 2d

Christopher Columbus was dragged back to Spain in chains by a crusading knight, convicted of tyranny and immeasurable cruelty, pardoned by Isabella but banned from returning to Hispaniola.

Fuck Columbus.

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uoɯolɐS uɐƃɹoW uɥoſ @fuzzybunny.org · 2d

Weirdly, this applies to a ton of colonialist figures - Leopold II, Lothar von Trotha, Valeriano Weyler, James Forsyth, Reginald Dyer, and I'm surely missing many from non-Western countries - whose misdeeds horrified people at "home" whom we wouldn't consider very enlightened by today's standards.

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 2d

yearly reminder to people insisting that we view Christopher Columbus as "a man of his time" that *the people responsible for the Spanish Inquisition* thought Columbus was out of pocket

Thomas Lecaque @tlecaque.bsky.social · 2d

Christopher Columbus was dragged back to Spain in chains by a crusading knight, convicted of tyranny and immeasurable cruelty, pardoned by Isabella but banned from returning to Hispaniola.

Fuck Columbus.

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Sexy Andrew Hickey Costume @andrewhickey.500songs.com · 1d

Also, all the people he tortured, raped, enslaved and mutilated were also people of their time. I suspect if anything they felt rather *more* strongly that Columbus was a bad person than even the most fingerwagging person on Bluesky does.

Always worth thinking who we count as "of their time".

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 2d

yearly reminder to people insisting that we view Christopher Columbus as "a man of his time" that *the people responsible for the Spanish Inquisition* thought Columbus was out of pocket

Thomas Lecaque @tlecaque.bsky.social · 2d

Christopher Columbus was dragged back to Spain in chains by a crusading knight, convicted of tyranny and immeasurable cruelty, pardoned by Isabella but banned from returning to Hispaniola.

Fuck Columbus.

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Cindy Phyillaier @cphyilla.bsky.social · 1d

Pat Bagley @bagleycartoons.bsky.social · 2d

Worse that useless

Actively harmful to American democracy and the rule of law

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Alt National Park Service @altnps.bsky.social · 1d

Workers are being threatened with RIFs, and when asked whether all federal employees would receive back pay after the shutdown, Trump replied, “It depends on who we’re talking about.” It’s the classic government motto: the beatings will continue until morale improves.

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Steve Downes @stevemdownes.bsky.social · 2d

👏 I want the cliff notes version of this for my congressional rep.

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A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 3d

I wrote about a new Nazi party that seeks to criminalize all human virtue, and how that means that human virtue is the greatest weapon against the new Nazi project.

www.the-reframe.com/the-crime-of...

The Crime of Human Virtue

Sometimes it really is as simple as good vs. evil. This is one of those times. Human virtue is our great crime against the fascist project; it's also our great weapon against it.

www.the-reframe.com

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Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 2d

Yes AI is having an effect on me. I’m getting closer to buying a fountain pen than I’ve been for decades.

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Gwen Snyder is undead @gwensnyder.bsky.social · 2d

No. No. No.

(Nothing against Steven, I used to do this too until I learned that it was a bad idea.)

Swim goggles hit by a projectile (like a tear gas canister or pepper ball) can direct force to the area around your eyeball and pop it out of your skull.

NOT desirable.

Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 2d

Pro tip to reporters and protesters: always have swim goggles in your pockets or bags. They’re small, $10 and if tear gas is used, slip them on & no matter how much you cough, you’ll still be able to SEE without burning eyes.

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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 2d

This two-parter below is exactly why it's hard to make clothes in the United States.

Let's look at how much it costs to produce a button-up shirt in the US. 🧵

Someone on Twitter replies to me: "meh. buy american or stfu."

Two hours later, in a separate thread, the write: "$30 for a single button-up is ridiculous unless it is decent quality silk."

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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 2d

As ICE terrorizes communities, remember that some of Trump's biggest supporters are private prison companies that will make bank off his budget bill.

And Stephen Miller recently disclosed over $100K of stock in Palantir, the shady data firm ICE uses to target immigrants.

Cashing in on cruelty.

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Jeff Tiedrich @jefftiedrich.bsky.social · 3d

here's today's post: "Republicans are losing, and they know it" — they’ve MAGA’d themselves into a corner.
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Republicans are losing, and they know it

they’ve MAGA’d themselves into a corner

bit.ly

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Jeff Tiedrich @jefftiedrich.bsky.social · 4d

it's Saturday, and it's time for "this week in stupid: October 11 edition" — Charlie rides it, Donny hides it, and so much more...
thanks for reading, and please sign up for my daily newsletter to keep getting the good stuff —

this week in stupid: October 11 edition

Charlie rides it, Donny hides it, and so much more...

bit.ly

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