Michael Stanford
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halfagain.bsky.social
Michael Stanford
@halfagain.bsky.social
DSP guy, Capitals, City, Basketball, and a wide range of shallower interest takes from the greater DMV.
Reposted by Michael Stanford
we have to make supreme court expansion a 2028 nominee litmus test, we have to get every candidate on the record about what their plan is to rein in this rogue court of unaccountable ideologues
December 6, 2025 at 3:16 PM
Reposted by Michael Stanford
I've been saying this for a year now: the Democrats have missed a gigantic political opportunity--and, at this point, have failed in an ethical obligation--to create a shadow-government health department that dispenses medically accurate information, guidance, and advice.
WATCH: A CDC panel voted to end the recommendation that newborns receive the hepatitis B vaccine, despite a 99% drop in cases since in the 30 years since it was implemented. Chris Hayes and Brandy Zadrozny react. www.youtube.com/watch?v=6REM...
CDC Panel ends recommendation for newborn hepatitis B shot
YouTube video by MS NOW
www.youtube.com
December 6, 2025 at 3:23 PM
Reposted by Michael Stanford
I don't think transgender athletes are the problem facing girls and women in sports.
Investigators say former coach Sean Gardner created videos showing close-up images of at least 10 minors naked or undressing, which they recovered from his computers last year while investigating reports of sexual abuse.

Gardner has pleaded not guilty and has been jailed pending trial.
Olympics Sports Watchdog Failed to Stop Mississippi Coach's Sexual Abuse, Women Allege
Two gymnasts who say they were sexually abused at an elite academy in Iowa filed lawsuits Monday against the sport’s oversight bodies.
www.mississippifreepress.org
December 6, 2025 at 4:46 PM
Reposted by Michael Stanford
still poleaxed by the idea that you could oppose birthright citizenship and still think of yourself as a liberal in any sense of the term.
December 6, 2025 at 5:35 PM
Reposted by Michael Stanford
This is great. Very few people want to go to jail, get disbarred or die for this regime. Make them fight you. They will cave.

www.ms.now/news/minneap...
Minneapolis police chief warns officers: Stop unlawful force by ICE or lose your job
Chief Brian O’Hara says he’ll fire city police officers if they don’t intervene when immigration agents use unlawful force.
www.ms.now
December 6, 2025 at 1:51 PM
Reposted by Michael Stanford
This, the coin, his name being engraved in the US Institute of Peace, these are all first attempts at establishing a more robust and open personalist rule than we have ever seen in this country.
When I saw the story in passing I thought it was the same dumb bit as the army parade, the fig leaf of using Flag Day because it happens to also be his birthday. But no, Trump's birthday as such is now an official commemoration for NPS free admission days.

www.nps.gov/planyourvisi...
December 6, 2025 at 1:46 PM
Reposted by Michael Stanford
political science
Found when sorting an old drive. I still, very occasionally, say 'not many badgers in the House of Lords' and this is why:
December 6, 2025 at 12:47 PM
Reposted by Michael Stanford
This is a fucking nightmare and right now I am very, very angry with the people who put Trump back in office.

More and more kids are going to die from preventable diseases.

As I have said for months, RFK Jr. has more power to singlehandedly kill more Americans than any other cabinet secretary.
Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Begins Process to Align U.S. Core Childhood Vaccine Recommendations with Best Practices from Peer, Developed Countries
ALIGNING THE CHILDHOOD VACCINE SCHEDULE WITH INTERNATIONAL BEST PRACTICES: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum to begin the
www.whitehouse.gov
December 6, 2025 at 2:12 AM
Reposted by Michael Stanford
I do not post this to dunk but to underline: Woke 2 is going to require actual civic engagement from people whose primary pursuit is competitive demonstrations of incapability and insecurity. It's going to be a lot more about rebuilding a functioning social order than catering to crybully types.
December 6, 2025 at 2:26 AM
Reposted by Michael Stanford
*did not win a popularity contest decided solely by members of his own household in which his opponent was Elon Musk
December 6, 2025 at 2:28 AM
Reposted by Michael Stanford
cannot stress enough how bad it is to give teenage boys a "see this person naked" button. massive, multi-axis disaster
December 6, 2025 at 12:20 AM
Reposted by Michael Stanford
this story is just absolute, abject nonsense. where did the nitrates come from? the farms. what did the datacenters have to do with it? somewhat increased the aquifer draw pulling the nitrates the farms let run into the groundwater into the aquifer.
There is very real water problems with AI and data centers. These centers can and do exacerbate water quality problems. They can contaminate water supplies just like fracking or anything else

thefern.org/2025/11/the-...
December 6, 2025 at 12:15 AM
Sitting down at a tournament across from an actual child is the fucking worst because they’re always a couple of hundred points underrated and smug as shit about it.
December 5, 2025 at 10:50 PM
Reposted by Michael Stanford
A court with a normal-ish conservative majority would have been tolerable. I'm not eager for court packing, impeaching justices, and other such options. But this court sticking around post-Trump is untenable. They've already torched their own legitimacy, the only question is what do we do about it.
December 5, 2025 at 9:11 PM
Reposted by Michael Stanford
My theory, fwiw, is that Supreme Court Justices are not immune to Twitter brain poisoning. I suspect all six have horrific information environments and have therefore lost the ability to understand the people who don't agree with them.
The part that I can't figure out is what John Roberts thinks he is doing. He used to seem to be a judge who was very attentive to appearances, I think on a theory that you can't draw too much attention to yourself without undermining your ability to continue to shape the law.
Every legal story now is either

Ancient Circuit Judge Delivers Crystal Clear 100 Page Rebuke To Trumpist Overreach

or

In Unsigned Shadow Docket Decision, 6-3 Majority Declares Trump Can Hunt People For Sport
December 5, 2025 at 8:09 PM
Reposted by Michael Stanford
The thing about conspiracy theories is that you never end up believing just one, you keep going until you believe in all of them. It's a great reason not to start!
POLLING CALL CENTER: "Now I'm going to read you some conspiracy theo— …"

MAGA RESPONDENT: "I don't need to hear them, they're all true."
December 5, 2025 at 8:34 PM
Reposted by Michael Stanford
I've said this before but left-of-center bullying takes the form of "we're special and you're not allowed to sit with us" while right-of-center bullying takes the form of "we're normal and you're not allowed to sit with us"
Just a corrolary but a "meanness" on BlueSky is still very fem-coded. "Look at this neoshitlib, you know all his friends are in a group text where they make fun of him."

There's "Biff Tannen Bullying" and "Regina George Bullying". Both "mean" but received differently.
December 5, 2025 at 7:47 PM
Reposted by Michael Stanford
"All is lost" narratives are popular because people generally do not want to take action. Taking action is tiring so if all is lost, you are off the hook. Nothing is more seductive than not having to do anything.
December 5, 2025 at 4:35 PM
Reposted by Michael Stanford
Nurgle cult infiltration
Breaking: After contentious debates and three failed attempts at a vote, a federal vaccine committee decided on Friday to end the decades-long recommendation that all newborns be immunized at birth against hepatitis B.

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/h...
An End to Hepatitis B Shots for All Newborns
www.nytimes.com
December 5, 2025 at 4:32 PM
Reposted by Michael Stanford
One thing that’s pretty consistent in American history is elites getting away with it
imagine US political culture if Ford hadn't pardoned Nixon, and instead he went to jail
December 5, 2025 at 12:45 PM
Reposted by Michael Stanford
Just a reminder DOGE stole just about every government database. Perhaps we’re starting to see the fruits of their theft
I wrote this for the @nytimes.com: Scammers are calling seniors more than 50 times a day. Some who get scammed wind up with weird charges on their Medicare and mysterious packages on their porches
Medicare Scammers Are Calling Seniors 50 Times a Day, Trying to Trap Them
www.nytimes.com
December 5, 2025 at 1:38 PM
Reposted by Michael Stanford
What's changed is that the Court has become more transparent in its corruption. There's not even an argument here beyond the implicit one which is: how do you expect us to hold the House without those seats?
#BREAKING: Over dissents from the three democratic appointees, #SCOTUS puts Texas's new House maps back into effect for (and, presumably, through) the 2026 midterms.

The three Democratic appointees, in an opinion by Justice Kagan, dissent.

I'll post the ruling shortly.
December 4, 2025 at 11:34 PM
Reposted by Michael Stanford
Democrats can retaliate against these GOP gerrymanders with new maps in Illinois, Maryland, Oregon, & Virginia.

They could flip 7 GOP seats to make up for this & new GOP maps in Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, & possibly soon Indiana.

Imposing costs is the only way to deter the GOP from doing this
December 5, 2025 at 12:12 AM
Reposted by Michael Stanford
On the 50th anniversary of #HannahArendt’s death, we revisit this essay on one of her incisive, and quietly radical, challenges to modern life. In a world obsessed with authenticity and the search for a supposedly fixed truth, Arendt offered something far more demanding and liberating: ‘the will’
What Hannah Arendt proposed as an alternative to authenticity | Aeon Essays
In her final unfinished work, Hannah Arendt mounted an incisive critique of the idea that we are in search of our true selves
buff.ly
December 4, 2025 at 1:30 PM
Reposted by Michael Stanford
This is like if Tyson stopped selling consumer chicken. RAM is about to cost as much as a brand new pc. The cost of everything from tablets, to phones, to laptops will skyrocket. All because AI data centers are consuming all the available RAM they can get.

www.pcgamer.com/hardware/the...
Crucial memory will soon be a memory itself as Micron abandons consumers in favor of AI data centers
The RAM crisis is just getting started.
www.pcgamer.com
December 4, 2025 at 10:12 AM