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Watched: Happy Gilmore 2 🍿

It was 2 hours of cameos and enjoyable silliness. Just what I was looking forward to watching tonight.

We're in the middle of a rolling coup

I’ll admit that during the first Trump administration I was disappointed in his ability to get elected, but figured he wouldn’t get much accomplished due to our institutions. There’s still two and a half years left of Trump 2.0 and I’m terrified about what we could have at the end of it–if it even ends.

We’re in the middle of a rolling coup. That’s not hyperbole. It’s not being dramatic. It’s not Trump Derangement Syndrome. It’s the truth. It has been carefully planned and is being systematically executed to slowly destroy institutions that have been meant to protect our Democracy. Any other explanation is from someone with their head in the sand.

From the article:

On September 25, 2025, the president signed a directive called a National Presidential Security Memorandum known as NPSM-7 (titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence”). Its language designates as targets of federal counterterrorism authorities Americans whose sponsors are labeled “anti-American,” “anti-capitalist,” “anti-Christian,” or “hostile to traditional American views on family, religion and morality.” No statute authorizes the federal government to treat protected political speech as terrorism; NPSM-7 does it anyway.

and

…he is seeking yet more funding for what appears to be his private army of ICE and Border Patrol agents to be deployed in numerous target states, at airports, and at urban polling places in the states he lost in the 2024 election, where he has now begun to seize voter rolls and ballots.

and

Political prisons, a domestic army, control of the military’s legal apparatus, the seizure of voter rolls, and much more presage the potential declaration of a national crisis and the implementation of various of the President’s Emergency Action Documents (PEADS).

We’re all frogs slowly boiling in ultra conservative, christo-fascism water and probably much closer to that boiling point that the vast majority of us realize. Scary times.

At the end of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked what had been created. “A republic, if you can keep it,” he answered.

I’m not so sure we have the political will or want to keep it anymore.

✅Signed up for pride event
✅Signed up for league
✅Signed up for Urban Open
✅Bought axe raffle tickets for charity

This has been a very expensive week for axe throwing.

*Insert Tiger King meme*

Post-voting stop at Ale Mary’s for some natty bohs. đŸș

I’m an Apple Music user for 95% of my music listening needs, but at work I use Spotify. The names for the daylist mixes are always something. This morning’s is one for the books:

Human brains were not designed to deal with an endless supply of bad news.

Via Kottke:

“We are the same species as we were thousands of years ago. What’s changed is the size of the world it’s asked to scan for threats.”

From the linked article from The Conversation:

Some researchers have introduced a clinical framework for what happens in this instance called Problematic News Consumption (PNC) — a pattern of news engagement that results in preoccupation, dysregulation and disruption to daily functioning. In their 2022 study, the researchers found that 17 per cent of American adults qualified as having severe levels of PNC. Among that group, 61 per cent reported feeling unwell quite a bit or very much, compared with six per cent of those who didn’t.

This is how I was feeling back at the beginning of the year when I deleted Instagram off my phone. It was exhausting and depressing. I still feel like I’m missing out on updates from friends and family, but you find different ways to stay in touch. I still have FOMO and feel like I’m not as connected as I once was, but my mental health is better so I’d say it’s a net positive.

The Caller

I’ve been listening to Criminal for years and a lot of episodes illustrate the failings of our justice system. This episode more than others show how it is subject to the same perverse forces of the rest of the world—“How can I enrich myself?” There’s too much junk “science” being used to incarcerate innocent people. It’s disgusting.