John Grady Cole
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punko.me
John Grady Cole
@punko.me
Denver. Cloud architect and engineer by trade. Let's just take care of each other and explore the universe. Solidarity forever.
Pinned
Being loudly empathetic in your professional life is not going to fix everything in the world, but it is something that you can feel good about doing while working to pay bills during constant societal trauma.
This guy runs a prescription drugs company that wouldn't exist in a healthy society and is constantly surprised that other people understand that fact.
No shock. This app has turned my mentions, and others, into mostly hate. But there are a few people worth connecting with

CRAZY how it's easier these days to have a real discussion on X, or threads, than on here.
December 25, 2025 at 1:34 AM
Reposted by John Grady Cole
This is quite a thing from the people who brought you a copyright extension act that strains the rule against perpetuities. Actual human artists can't tell stories with your characters for decades to come, but Sam Altman's toy can put them into porn, no problem.
Please treat our treasured IP like trash
December 11, 2025 at 2:23 PM
Reposted by John Grady Cole
It may sound radical, but if one guy has so much wealth and power that he can use the large newspaper he owns to publicly threaten to ruin a service we all rely on, presumably as a bargaining tactic to get lower rates, we probably need to tax that guy until he can't do that anymore.
Exclusive: Amazon has long been USPS’s top customer, providing over $6 billion in annual revenue in 2025.

But Amazon may give up its long-standing partnership with USPS to deliver packages itself, which could spell disaster for the mail agency.
Amazon explores cutting ties with USPS, building its own delivery network
Amazon looks into expanding its nationwide delivery network and giving up its longstanding partnership with the U.S. Postal Service.
www.washingtonpost.com
December 4, 2025 at 3:19 PM
Reposted by John Grady Cole
That is patently false: not only do immigrants score better than native-born Americans in tests, the mere presence of immigrants improve test scores for all students, when factoring in white flight

sesp.northwestern.edu/news-events/...
December 9, 2025 at 9:21 PM
Reposted by John Grady Cole
Tim Walz and other democrats should claim that Trump’s growing dementia is causing him to verbally attack female reporters. Make the media debate whether it is Alzheimer’s or whether Trump is just an asshole.
The other reporters in the White House press corps are apparently waiting until the president actually takes a swing at one of their female colleagues before they say anything
December 9, 2025 at 4:24 PM
Reposted by John Grady Cole
One thing about "original intent" is that the original Constitution was so hostile to the President that their rival was made Vice President, but now we have SCOTUS "originalists" happily giving the President absolute power over everything.*

* So long as they're a Republican.
the whole structure of this argument — independent agencies are politically unaccountable therefore the president must have removal power — treats congress as if it were a total nullity, or as if only the president truly represents the public.
December 8, 2025 at 4:50 PM
Reposted by John Grady Cole
i think to understand the meaning of the birthright citizenship clause to the framers of the 14th amendment, you have to understand significance of dred scott to the civil war republican party. dred scott wasn't just a bad ruling, it was understood as a rejection of the declaration itself.
December 6, 2025 at 6:03 PM
Reposted by John Grady Cole
The hepatitis B vaccine had been recommended for all newborns since 1991.

From 1990-2019, acute hepatitis B infections reported among children and teens fell 99 percent. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/16/w...
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 3:47 PM
Reposted by John Grady Cole
I mean this is straight up white supremacy:
December 5, 2025 at 3:51 AM
Reposted by John Grady Cole
I was assured that REAL ID was the only way to stop terrorists but apparently they'll also take $45?
The TSA has announced that any traveler going through airport security without a REAL ID or passport will face a $45 fee starting Feb. 1.
December 2, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Reposted by John Grady Cole
Feels really significant that the Trump admin is making a concerted effort to force colleges to undo policies that made campus safe and accessible for trans people, because for so many trans people college is the first place they ever get to be themselves.
November 29, 2025 at 3:50 PM
Reposted by John Grady Cole
Again, every elected Democrat needs to put out a video stating exactly what Kelly and the others said. If ever there were a line to draw in the sand, it’s here. The military is not the president’s Praetorian Guard.
“Within the White House, Trump and his lieutenants aren’t planning on letting up…Trump has told some advisers that he wants RICO prosecutions and conspiracy charges leveled against the six Democrats, a source with direct knowledge of the matter tells Zeteo…
zeteo.com/p/how-we-gre...
November 24, 2025 at 7:30 PM
I had a computer in my bedroom in the 80s and I'm bad at school.
What’s the lore behind choosing your career path ?
November 22, 2025 at 11:29 PM
Reposted by John Grady Cole
Anyone who thinks our beef with Venezuela is about drugs is in for a crude awakening
Bessent: "If something happens down in Venezuela, we could really see oil prices go down even more."
November 21, 2025 at 1:51 AM
Reposted by John Grady Cole
we are returning to the state in which the framers intended for the legislature, in which the lower chamber and the upper chamber absolutely despise one another
The House has voted unanimously to repeal the provisions in the shutdown package which allow GOP Senators to sue the federal government and get as much as $1 million in damages - because the feds looked at their phone records in the Jan. 6 investigation.
November 20, 2025 at 2:54 AM
Reposted by John Grady Cole
Mamdani is going to bring him that snowglobe that plays "Memories" from CATS and we're going to get government grocery stores nationwide
November 20, 2025 at 2:05 AM
Reposted by John Grady Cole
I urge members of the legal profession to realize that prosecuting individuals who seek to overturn the constitutional order is not "retaliation" in any normatively significant sense.
November 17, 2025 at 2:23 PM
Reposted by John Grady Cole
If the Teamsters were worth a shit, weren't labor aristocracy and weren't aholes that shit on indy and immigrant truckers, the whole country could be shut down over this.

www.kqed.org/news/1206398...
California Is Revoking Licenses of 17,000 Immigrant Truckers Amid Federal Pressure | KQED
The commercial licenses expire in 60 days, but labor groups contend that the courts have temporarily frozen the federal rules restricting which foreigners can drive trucks.
www.kqed.org
November 15, 2025 at 4:04 AM
Trying to decrypt my birthday card from Grandpa:
Why is he capitalizing so many words
November 15, 2025 at 3:42 AM
Reposted by John Grady Cole
My right side is absolutely killing me

You need an appendectomy

How much is that

Umm … $47,285

How much without the anesthesia

Ok we can do that for $36,210

I don’t think so

What’s it going to take to get you into this OR today

I’m going to shop around

Hold on, my manager is coming over
TRUMP: We’re going to give Americans the money to buy health insurance

REPORTER: But won’t they buy it from
Insurance companies?

TRUMP: Ahhh. Some may. I mean they’ll be negotiating prices
November 15, 2025 at 1:58 AM
Reposted by John Grady Cole
Important to understand the Epstein stuff and the fascism and the corruption are, in a lot of ways, really all the same story from different angles: powerful men who can and do abuse vulnerable people around them because they can, and because systems of elite accountability catastrophically failed
November 12, 2025 at 9:14 PM
Reposted by John Grady Cole
Neutrality and objectivity are not the same thing and are, in fact, often contradictory goals. The objective truth is often not neutral in its political implications, and it would be a useless exercise if it was.
Got turned down on a piece about ICE in Chicago for an international news org because they believed I couldn’t be objective about my neighbors getting kidnapped. And well, guilty as charged I guess.
November 12, 2025 at 5:33 PM
Reposted by John Grady Cole
In the century leading up to 1975, nearly 6000 freighters went down in the Great Lakes.

The Edmund Fitzgerald was the last.

The last. In 50 years, not a single commercial freighter has been lost in the Great Lakes.

Why?

It's NOAA. Of course it's NOAA.
November 11, 2025 at 1:50 AM
I always wanted to negotiate for my own health insurance and spend time entrepreneuring my way through an intentional maze of rent-seekers and bureaucracy. This is great.
Trump: "I want the money to go into an account for people where they buy their own health insurance. It's so good. The insurance will be better. It'll cost less. Everybody is gonna be happy. They're gonna feel like entrepreneurs. They're actually able to go out & negotiate their own insurance"
November 11, 2025 at 12:40 AM
Reposted by John Grady Cole
poor children literally went without food. people lost jobs and went into debt and got evicted and sold their cars they need to get to work. people who otherwise would have lived longer will die younger because of the stress of this. people did things for money they can't undo
November 10, 2025 at 3:02 AM