This is how it starts. Denny’s is slowly dying. Its revenue in 2025 is half what it was 20 years ago. Denny’s is trying to stop the bleeding by scaling back, but it’s too little too late. Private equity smells blood in the water. This will end just like Toys R Us, Sears, and so many others.

So long, Denny’s. Soon you will be gutted and sold for scrap, and your name will be added to the list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_private_equity_owned_companies_that_have_filed_for_bankruptcy

Boomers hold over 50% of all wealth in the US, while Gen Z and Millennials together hold 10%.

Also, the median age of first-time homebuyers in the US is now 40..

Boomers pulled up the ladder behind them.

IANAL, but my understanding is this is how laws are challenged in the US. A plaintiff cannot file suit against the legislature, or the government in general, to challenge a law. A plaintiff needs to sue an individual within the government who has enforced the law, and then demonstrate that the enforcement of said law has caused the plaintiff harm. In this case the law will be enforced by Newsome or someone within his administration like the Secretary of State.

I learned this when Texas passed their anti-abortion law in 2021 (S.B. 8). Rather than having government officials enforce that law, the state offloaded enforcement to private citizens by paying them cash rewards for successfully suing alleged abortion providers. Since state officials are not doing the enforcing they are not directly causing harm to any potential plaintiffs. There’s nobody in the state government you can sue to initiate a challenge to the law.

Oooo, that’s a neat site!

Why do we even have this lever truck?

Good photo.

AFAIK, UT Austin has not officially accepted, but I read that they expressed early interest. I do not know the specifics though. Maybe they will be swayed by the other schools’ actions. I’m sure a targeted demonstration would be a good idea.

Good on Arizona. Now we only need Vanderbilt and UT Austin to speak up.
Vanderbilt has been wishy-washy about their position.
Texas, of course, expressed almost immediate interest in signing up. Bastards.

As an aside, does anyone know why the administration chose these 9 particular colleges to begin with? I don’t see an obvious theme here. They easily could have chosen schools in more conservative areas, or schools which receive more federal research money.

Brown University
Dartmouth College
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
University of Arizona
University of Pennsylvania
University of Southern California
University of Texas at Austin
University of Virginia
Vanderbilt University

Sure, there is room for reasonable doubt. It may have been a staffer who put it up, or even a visitor to the office who pinned it up as a grim prank or to frame the congressman. But this guy’s party is currently championing mass arrest, imprisonment, and deportation of thousands of people with no due process, so my willingness to give him any benefit of the doubt is long gone.

A picture of the flag, from Politico:

It wasn’t exactly hidden.

Remember when Ronald Reagan said this in 1981?

government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.

American conservatives grabbed onto that line and have held it as gospel ever since. Kneecapping the government has been a major goal of theirs for over four decades now. You will sometimes hear people talk about “bleeding the beast”: taking all the government benefits they can get their hands on and then dodging taxes, with the assumption they are helping to slowly kill the system. Unfortunately, there is no plan (AFAIK) for what they want the world to look like after the collapse.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if MTG took speaker job.

Don’t give them any ideas!

David Frum, speechwriter for George W. Bush and an outspoken member of the neocon movement of that era. He was apparently one of the “never Trump” Republicans who foresaw the coming disaster before the 2016 election. He has since left the Republican party and written two books titled Trumpocracy and Trumpocalypse.

Editorialized headline. The linked article’s headline is “US government shuts down after Senate fails to advance both parties’ bills”

I am not military, but somehow manage to interact with a lot of veterans. This has been my impression as well, at least among the officers. The higher up the leadership chain, the more they recognize and despise that the military is being used to push politics rather than actually being a functional organization.

There’s a great YouTube video of Adm. Gilday defending a non-binary officer in a Senate hearing. The admiral recognizes that running a large, functioning military requires integrating people of all types, and that building camaraderie can be as important as anything else. We can only hope there are enough people like him toward the top to prevent the military from being thoroughly abused.

https://youtu.be/qNwJGum3N8E

I have a Rayhunter but have never sent a data capture to EFF. I believe you are supposed to download it to your PC then send the file to their Signal account.

https://efforg.github.io/rayhunter/faq.html

This is a great time for people to start building and operating Rayhunters, and to share the results with the EFF to improve the tool.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/03/meet-rayhunter-new-open-source-tool-eff-detect-cellular-spying

I have encountered a few all-gender bathrooms in the wild, and they have all been really nice. I hope they stop being a political football someday so we can get more of them.

If you have not yet come to the conclusion that Pete Hegseth is a dangerous and disgusting pile of dung, go listen to the recent Behind the Bastards podcast episode about him.