John Carroll
john.gobirds.online
John Carroll
@john.gobirds.online
The Mastodon Legend
Reposted by John Carroll
very specific to DC complaint here but when trump is threatening to take over the city's historically significant public golf courses so he can privatize them and make them another getaway for the 1% i don't think going "well maybe they shouldnt be golf courses to begin with" is helpful or realistic
December 23, 2025 at 4:39 PM
Reposted by John Carroll
if you don't play or follow golf (or just don't get why so many people love it) this probably isn't on your radar but it should be understood as both a naked land grab and an attack on a part of DC's black history
December 23, 2025 at 4:48 PM
Reposted by John Carroll
really cannot be emphasized enough that bari weiss has literally never done journalism. i don’t mean that in the pejorative sense. i mean that in the “has never performed the job she was hired to do” sense
One explanation for Bari killing the story is that she did so as a public act of fealty to the administration. But another is that, as an inexperienced journalist, she doesn’t understand that a refusal to go on the record is a kind of comment in and of itself
December 22, 2025 at 2:19 PM
Reposted by John Carroll
In my day, the whole point of being an antivaxxer was to exist as a herd immunity mooch amongst the vaccinated. If you convince everyone else around you to also be herd immunity mooches, there’s no herd immunity for anybody. It’s dumb guys all the way down.
Vaccination rates are plummeting across the country, as part of a larger, troubling trend of growing vaccine hesitancy that is fueling a resurgence of preventable diseases, an NBC News and Stanford University investigation found.
Whooping cough cases soar as vaccination rates drop
In an NBC News data investigation of 31 states, about 70% of counties and jurisdictions fell below the target vaccination rate needed for community protection.
nbcnews.to
December 18, 2025 at 12:50 PM
Reposted by John Carroll
Dan Gelston’s Hall of Fame ballot is almost perfect. But points off for the penmanship.
December 18, 2025 at 3:34 PM
Reposted by John Carroll
the weird two-year stretch in which i was older than every nfl quarterback is finally over. hopefully that will never happen again
The Colts will start QB Philip Rivers on Sunday against the Seahawks, sources tell The Insiders.

Age 44, out of retirement, after a full week of practice, Rivers is a go.
December 13, 2025 at 4:46 PM
Reposted by John Carroll
scanning the @sundance.org lineup: hmm, interesting, might be good, sure why not, :loses entire fucking mind:
December 10, 2025 at 5:04 PM
Reposted by John Carroll
my baby would be dead.
RFK Jr: "All of the ingenuity of corporate America has not produced an infant formula that is superior in nutrition and all the qualities that we want to the infant formula that God made, which is the infant formula in a mother's breast."
December 8, 2025 at 10:29 PM
Reposted by John Carroll
I'm actually pro 5 corporations owning everything, but those 5 corporations have to be Wegmans, Wawa, the Philadelphia Toboggan Company, Sid & Marty Krofft Television Productions, and Vlasic Pickles.
December 5, 2025 at 10:46 PM
Reposted by John Carroll
When this criminal was jailed, the judge told David Gentile and America: ‘This is a warning to would-be fraudsters that seeking to get rich by taking advantage of investors gets you only a one-way ticket to jail.’ I guess not
November 30, 2025 at 9:27 AM
Reposted by John Carroll
This is fundamentally Nazism. The idea that different peoples than the favored races carry degradation in their very genes, that they cannot strive to become better because biology compels them to be worse. It’s not just repugnant, it’s a bald faced lie.
November 28, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Reposted by John Carroll
Whether this was random street crime or targeted political violence, I think it was bad for the president to unnecessarily put the National Guard in harm’s way like this. They simply don’t need to be there.
November 26, 2025 at 8:41 PM
Reposted by John Carroll
I need everybody to read this and understand what’s going on. These are spouses of US citizens in the country legally. They have entry clearance and green cards, they’ve passed background checks and have no criminal records. ICE is taking them anyway.

Gift link:

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/u...
Green Card Interviews End in Handcuffs for Spouses of U.S. Citizens
www.nytimes.com
November 26, 2025 at 8:40 PM
Reposted by John Carroll
Thrilled to make my debut in @newyorker.com today with this piece on Trump’s new foster care exec order, which pairs an initiative to help kids aging out of the system with efforts to put the religious rights of foster parents above the civil rights of LGBTQ+ youth: www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...
For Trump, “Fostering the Future” Looks a Lot Like the Past
By putting the religious rights of potential foster parents above the civil rights of L.G.B.T.Q. youth, a new executive order reënacts the original sin of the child-welfare system.
www.newyorker.com
November 23, 2025 at 2:52 PM
Reposted by John Carroll
Unfortunately still true bsky.app/profile/adam...
American politics makes a lot more sense when you realize that the GOP is afraid of pissing off the GOP base, and the Dems are afraid of pissing off the GOP base, but neither party is afraid of pissing off the Dem base.
November 10, 2025 at 12:09 PM
Reposted by John Carroll
like this is basically it, the melts melted under pressure
November 10, 2025 at 4:27 PM
Reposted by John Carroll
i think this is key. taking the deal would amount to taking the blame. it would turn a clear political victory into an unambiguous defeat.
If the Dems blink after all of this, for a deal that all but ensures no ACA subsidies in 2026 anyway, then what was the purpose of letting the shutdown go for 40 days in the first place?
November 10, 2025 at 12:56 AM
Reposted by John Carroll
Once you start thinking of AI as a war on humanity, on human thought, on human inquiry, on human labor, on nuance and critical thinking, it slots in pretty seamlessly with the right wing ideological project, oligarchical political projects, big tech's political projects, etc
November 6, 2025 at 4:48 PM
Reposted by John Carroll
RFK Jr's response to someone collapsing nearby him was to haul ass out of the room as quickly as possible
November 6, 2025 at 5:45 PM
Feels unfair that the Phillies got bounced but I’m still watching Phillies relievers.
November 2, 2025 at 3:53 AM
Baseball is great but really needed a walk-off grand slam there to put Joe Carter footage to rest.
November 2, 2025 at 3:42 AM
Reposted by John Carroll
I have a lurid fascination with interviews that become trainwrecks.

One of the best I have read was recently published by the New Yorker.

"Why Biden’s White House Press Secretary Is Leaving the Democratic Party."

Karine Jean-Pierre interviewed by Isaac Chotiner www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...
Why Biden’s White House Press Secretary Is Leaving the Democratic Party
Karine Jean-Pierre feels that Democrats were so mean to Biden that she is becoming an Independent.
www.newyorker.com
October 29, 2025 at 6:38 PM
Reposted by John Carroll
It's wrong to call this "the Justice Department." He wants $230 million from the US taxpayer. Federal dollars. DOJ isn't some private company or NGO.
Breaking News: President Trump wants $230 million from the Justice Department for investigating him, people familiar with the matter say. Any settlement might ultimately be approved by senior department officials who defended him or those in his orbit. nyti.ms/4hmIi5X
October 21, 2025 at 10:07 PM
Reposted by John Carroll
Reposted by John Carroll
this rocks. when indiana edu killed the student newspaper, Purdue stepped up, printed the forbidden issue, drove it to Bloomington and stocked the boxes.
October 18, 2025 at 6:27 PM