Captain Stringbean

The people demand a Samsung dryer that plays a melancholy tune

🚨New paper. 🧵Our baseline estimate implies that preserving trust in the integrity and quality of official statistics generates economic benefits of about $25 for every $1 spent on the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics's budget. cc: @nickbloom.bsky.social, @ericagroshen.bsky.social, #econsky

Wife just told me this one: What’s the difference between Iran and Vietnam? Trump had a plan to get out of Vietnam.

kind of darkly funny that "gender studies" is the stereotypical "useless degree" because gender studies will help you understand a large and important chunk of the current psychosis in american life

They’re telling me a great empire will be destroyed if I attack Persia. Even the oracles who don’t like me very much, very nasty, they all said to me, “Sir, it’s one of the great empires, and it’ll be destroyed. And all because you attacked Persia.” That’s what they’re telling me.

I've been struck by a spiffy criminal

white people work so hard. even their restaurants are open on chinese new year

"There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes." Ernest Hemingway It really sucks to be living at a time when this quote is relevant.

Good morning to Brazilian reporter Manuela Borges, who’s been waiting eleven years for this petty moment. ❤️ 🇧🇷

oscar the grouch, the curious green creature who makes a trash can his home and positively revels in his life among the filth, has made of me a cuckold

Use of the word "evil" in official congressional e-newsletters, over time, by party

Leavitt without a trace of irony: "When you have a totalitarian regime, you have to save face. I think any common sense, open-minded person knows the truth about the precision strikes on Saturday night. They were wildly successful."

Huh. It is almost as if the people who work in government aren't subhuman idiots incapable of doing efficient work, and that there is reason why they do things the way that they do.

Some interviews and shots of protests in Kanab, down in Southern Utah with a population of about 4700 people

So I don't have the energy to redo the entire thread about the papal conclave but I will redo the part about the Latin nerdery: the announcement of a new pope is always in Latin, and uses a very traditional form.

it really is astounding that a presidential administration crashed the growth trajectory of the wealthiest country on the planet in basically two months

Describe what is uniquely American about Walt Whitman's poetry in 500-1000 words. Consider both substance and style.

Without downloading any pics, where are you mentally?

*Laudato Si* was a crucial factor in getting Georgetown to divest from fossil fuels and is, on its own, a document of humane generosity that focuses on the power of the poor to determine the just course of the world. RIP Francis. A terrible loss. 🌿

Jesus Christ JD you killed the pope!

watch this space

"We have nothing to lose but our chains." -- David Brooks, 2025

As David Brooks has said, we’re approaching civil disobedience and national strikes phase of defending our nation.

What a fucking timeline man

I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance. I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love. I look forward to providing a full update upon my return.

Constituents to Chuck Grassley: "Are you bringing back that guy from El Salvador?" Senior Citizen: “If I get an order to pay a ticket to pay $1200 and I just say ‘no’, does that stand up? Because he just got an order from the Supreme Court and he just said ‘screw it’” “I’M PISSED!”

I don’t really give a shit how much of a conservative this makes me sound like, but the United States has suffered an existential collapse in the civic virtue of our citizens necessary to sustain a liberal democracy.

A 1903 version of Bluesky that despises techbro Thomas Edison for electrocuting Topsy the elephant, and cites this as proof that electricity as a technology is an unqualified evil.

Hiding boxes of new iPhone Airs inside my bags of fentanyl to sneak them across the Canadian border.

Rare example of a Burkean conservative protest sign.

The Sopranos is probably the Rosetta Stone of modern American reaction: it consists of people who bemoan the loss of an imagined past they mainly got from movies, claim victimization based on identity but hate when others do it, and view the people who build the society they prey on as suckers.