Rabies is in my top three fears, maybe even number one.

Same. I went on a road trip one summer a few years ago, and we decided to take a long detour through the Appalachian trail for part of the drive. We had all the windows down and the sunroof open, just enjoying the cool fresh air bc it was too disgustingly hot everywhere else outside of the mountains to roll them down. Anyway, we were going down this really narrow back road, seeing like 1 or 2 other cars every 45 mins to an hour, and eventually got to a point where we had to drive through a really old narrow tunnel like this one:

My first thought was, what if a bat flies in the car lmao. I demanded we roll up all the windows and shut the sunroof before we went through, and my husband made fun of me and said I was being ridiculous. I probably was, but there’s way too many documented cases of people who were out in the wilderness, got a tiny bat scratch, didn’t even realize it or think twice about it, then weeks or months later died a slow horrible death because of rabies. Even if you spend your last days in a hospital there’s nothing they can really do by the time you’re showing symptom except try to make you comfortable (which is probably impossible unless they just place you into a medically induced coma).

I also worked with a girl that grew up in Vietnam and said there were multiple times she got bit by stray dogs, and had to get rabies shots when she was a kid. I grew up in the sticks always playing with stray cats and dogs, but never thought twice about it back then. Definitely wouldn’t be taking that risk now.

Anyway, tldr, some people seem to be under the impression a fear of encountering rabies is like a fear of someday encountering quicksand. I’ll take my chances being ridiculous and overly safe to avoid it. Especially after reading the article and learning we’ve now got a fucking rabies outbreak to worry about on top of everything else going on in the U.S.

I think it’s that attitude with any neurodivergence or mental health related issue. You know, all the things that doctors didn’t know about diagnosing “just didn’t exist” in the past.

Like we saw the consequences of people struggling through life, not getting a diagnosis, and not understanding why life was so challenging. For example, my dad was dyslexic and my mom very likely had ADHD, but neither was ever diagnosed.

They just struggled constantly through school, had terrible self esteem, and when somebody told them to just give up and choose a different career path they just said ok, guess I’m just not cut out for this.

Then I got both, and my parents were ok with acknowledging the dyslexia bc it was pretty easy to diagnose.

The ADHD was a whole other story, and I was told by my own parents (who were tough on me because they just didn’t want me ending up like them) and most of my teachers, that I was just careless and lazy over and over. I started hating school when I was like 8, and barely even finished high school. When I got to college by the skin of my teeth, I found stuff that actually interested me, but I still struggled so much through college and grad school. For a very long time, I believed the reason everything was so so much harder for me than my peers was bc I was just dumb/not cut out for it.

I had to wait until I was in my 30s and had my own real job and insurance to even attempt to seek help and get an ADHD diagnosis, and even then it took a very long time, but I’m so glad I finally did it.

Maybe if we can keep society from further devolving, in a few generations we can also get people to understand that acknowledging neurodivergence and mental health in kids means isn’t weakness and doesn’t mean you have to accept some kind of dangerous magical sorcery. It just means understanding that people often thrive when you allow them to just be themselves, and treat them like individuals with their own strengths, weaknesses, and unique skills.

And it’s what makes them so fucking awesome.

No judgment. No bullshit. Just our best friend, here for a good time, but unfortunately not a long time. We could learn a lot from them.

My fellow Americans, your government has let you down. They’ve let us all down. So please allow me to address something they somehow repeatedly fail to address.

I understand your hesitation to trust the American healthcare system. God knows it would be an absolute lie to say your health is always being prioritized before profits. However, this is a fault of the system itself, not the science behind the medicine. The fact that we have a broken system, and the fact that your understandable mistrust has been misdirected towards science is the fault of our politicians and their greed.

Everyone deserves to be healthy and everyone deserves access to the medical care that they need. I can’t fix a broken system, but I can swear to you on a stack of bibles, vaccines will not give you, your children, or your dog autism. Please vaccinate and help stop the spread of preventable diseases. God bless you and God bless the United States of America. ❤️

Listen Doc, yesterday I tried to get my dog to drink some whiskey and get on the roof with an aluminum baseball bat during a lightening storm, so we could go Back to the Future, but he just kept running away. Clearly, whatever was in that vaccine you gave him has made him autistic.

I just want to know what they put in the water in America to make everyone fight eachother

It’s a healthy dose of 1:1 lead (Pb) and misinformation. We call it fight water™️

There times when I see obvious disinformation attacking America, and I will immediately stand up for my country and call out the bullshit.

Then I see something like this, and it leaves me feeling like I just stood up for a family member I felt was being unfairly picked on, who in response immediately decided to shit his pants and light a cigarette while filling up his car with gas.

They are attempting to undermine and dismantle it. It took over 50 years of scheming and clawing their way into government to gain enough power to try and tear down from the inside out.

And they will continue to attack and try to dismantle it. That’s what enemies and bad actors will always do. That’s why the article lays out a strategy for creating a system that allows more flexibility in response to these attacks.

🙄 reconstruction was a response to oligarchs who wanted to ignore progress. There was literally a civil war fought over this.

USSR Uhh…

History should teach you that the co-founder of the Heritage Foundation was traveling around Moscow and Eastern Europe when the Soviet Union collapsed, but it never really gets talked about for some reason.

A conservative who essentially birthed Project 2025 and is famously quoted as saying “I don’t want everyone to vote,” was teaching soviet politicians all about American “democracy” just prior to the collapse.

Then he and several other members of Heritage were ready to fill the power vacuum and help establish the first go between for U.S. and Russian capitalist businesses.

•to move us from our undemocratic present to a more democratic future, we need to institutionalize our commitments to a more inclusive and responsive democracy in more durable forms. These might encompass everything from alternative economic regulatory institutions and new approaches to anti-discrimination to a more universal safety net that secures the essential guarantees of health, housing, and income that individuals and communities need to thrive.

•A second reconstructionist strategy lies in containing reactionary power and backlash. We should presume that there will always be efforts to roll back egalitarian expansions of democracy. Part of how democracies survive and thrive is through institutions that contain the potential resurgence of anti-democratic policies and forces. The democratic institutions of the future will similarly need to develop ways to contain authoritarian power. This will require laws and institutions that respond to techniques that are emerging in the current moment, such as new forms of state and private surveillance, or the weaponization of presidential control of funding flows.

•The third institutional transformation strategy is to democratize our governing institutions, making policymaking more directly responsive to and shaped by ordinary constituents. One important area is the balance of power between the branches. Even before Trump, the trend has been to centralize power in an imperial presidency. The legislature, by contrast, has been central to past moments of democratization. Any future reconstructionist agenda will need to be built on congressional majorities and a legislature willing to check and permanently shift away from the overreliance on presidential power.

Which socialist country would be the best example?

Capitalists only have the power they do because of the state, if we smash and replace it they have no power.

The state, as well as the public and private military and resources they hoard and control.

Like which countries specifically? Bc I can almost guarantee there is currently a far right disinformation campaign targeted at undermining that country’s government.

Ok, but how do we get there? How do we keep oligarchs like the ones who own Palantir and work with oligarchs like Netenyahu to use remote weapons of mass genocide to fight and gain ground in order to control others, from taking advantage of the power vacuum left by destabilization?

What makes you think oligarchs haven’t been continuing to undermine and dismantle the second reconstruction this entire time, and aren’t using their established global institutions (like banks, corporations, and conservative think tanks) to do exactly what they’ve been projecting and accusing progressives of doing?

Do you honestly think there isn’t a good chance a global cabal of far right conservatives might be ready to use their collective wealth and resources they hoard and pass down for generations to take full global control?

Example: The CIA and the Royal family working together to overthrow a progressive leader in Australia in the 1970s.

Or Steve Kangas on the Origins of the overclass and the crimes of the CIA

I don’t really get how that contradicts needing a 3rd reconstruction that dismantles the government agencies that carry out that kind of shit and didn’t even exist until WWII rather than dismantling a democracy?

you guys are just upset it is happening at home now and not Iraq.

Can’t argue with you there, but that’s also part of what makes me question who’s best interest would be dismantling U.S. democracy instead of dismantling specific agencies within the government, with no plan for where we go next?

Because it kinda seems like those agencies would carry on doing whatever they want even after a union fully dissolves. They would just have fewer obstacles in their way.

When you think about how an American agency, for example, the CIA operates this playbook in other countries, what is their intended goal?

Their goal is to destabilize a country in order to remove any obstacles to taking full control. They usually achieve destabilization by undermining public trust in a system and the leaders of that system, so that the public will either dismantle the government for them or be less resistant once it is dismantled (see the Soviet Union in the late 80s). Once that happens, they already hold all the resources and power, and install somebody they already have lined up.

Considering that there seems to currently be a global campaign to spread disinformation and install far right leaders across the globe, it makes me question if this is happening everywhere bc global destabilization is the goal.

Currently, just about anywhere in the world, who holds the majority of the resources? The people or a small group of oligarchs? When destabilization happens and a local government collapses who has the upper hand when it comes to filling the power vacuum?

The Case for a Third Reconstruction

The scale and depth of the attack on our institutions means that there is no simple way for a pro-democracy coalition to flip the lights back on after Trump. We need transformative thinking.

Mississippi and Louisiana*

Alabama is 45

It’s not that they’re less important. These were very important propositions, but normally the election and proposition boxes are the same size.

This was an election where an incumbent candidate from a local political family had already done some things that seemed to undermine getting people to vote in the election.

There is a common misconception in Louisiana that if you have a felony conviction that you cannot vote – this is wrong (check out if you are eligible). Mr. Lombard promised to update the Clerk of Court’s website with the eligibility criteria a potential voter must meet if they have a felony conviction. As of today, the Clerk’s Website fails to share this essential voting information. This is not a great look for the City’s Chief Election Officer.

Up until September 5, 2025, under Mr. Lombard’s leadership, the Clerk of Court’s website listed wrong dates for the next election, and listed the wrong voter registration deadlines.

It’s either coincidental incompetence of the guy up for re-election, or more examples of the much bigger problem Louisiana has historically had when it comes to undermining the democratic process.

Nobody is (usually) standing at polling booths armed in order to intimidate people, but can you really call these passive aggressive attempts to test the boundaries and undermine equal participation “respect” for democracy?

I think it says a lot that they keep bothering with this passive aggressive shit. Why bother trying to stack the deck in your favor if you truly didn’t need to worry about how it’s stacked?

Democracy is trapped under the boot of oligarchy and corruption, but I don’t believe it’s quite dead yet. Looks like Duncan won by ~67%

Calvin Duncan projected to win hotly contested criminal court clerk race against Darren Lombard