Professor Furious

@professorfurious

Unprofitably principled anarchist. Your problems are capitalism all the way down, people.

3.668 Folgt2.025 Follower6.161 Posts

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Professor Furious@professorfurious· 5d

"Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky on Capitol Hill earlier this year." Once again @nytimes.com finds an old picture to imply they photographed Mitch McConnell alive today. At least this one has a caption.

McConnell Announces Discharge From Rehabilitation Center
The Kentucky Republican has been absent from Congress for nearly two months after a health episode. He said he would continue recovering from home.

Photo:
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky on Capitol Hill earlier this year. Mr. McConnell was hospitalized in June after falling unconscious in his home.Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

Professor Furious@professorfurious· 5d

You'd have to be completely bonkers to work for the federal government after this farce. The USA now has a federal system designed to exclude expertise in favor of lying sycophants.

A NY Times headline reading "Trump Administration Live Updates: Committee Votes to Hold Fauci in Contempt of Congress" above a photo of Dr. Anthony Fauci appearing recently before Congress.

Professor Furious@professorfurious· 26d

Anthony Winter

Many thanks!!

"If such there breathe, go, mark him well;

For him no Minstrel raptures swell;

High though his titles, proud his name,

Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;

Despite those titles, power, and pelf,

The wretch, concentred all in self,

Living, shall forfeit fair renown,

And, doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust from whence he sprung,

Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung."

Sir Walter Scott, "The Lay of the Last Minstrel"

Professor Furious@professorfurious· 26d

Yes, I remember his manly bed wetting sprint away from his own followers:

Josh Hawley sprinting away from J6 insurrectionists.

Professor Furious@professorfurious· 27d

Just your regular reminder:

In his essay ‘The Education of a Libertarian’ (2009) for the Cato Institute, Thiel wrote:

I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible … Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women – two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians – have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.

Professor Furious@professorfurious· Jul 9

A deep ethnographic study of American conservatives. They support democracy only if it imposes their beliefs on the minority. If they're the minority, they want minority rule. This fracture with pluralist democracy cannot be reconciled, and it will never end. conservativestudy.redassociates.com

The conservatives we met believe democratic institutions have abandoned their own founding values. In their view, the American government is and has always been conditional on a moral foundation organized around Faith, Family, Freedom, and Place, and the purpose of democratic government is to protect and uphold this foundation. Now, however, the very institutions built to protect it have become disconnected from, or even threatening to, that moral foundation. Support for democratic norm deviation is therefore not experienced as a rejection of democracy by our participants; rather, it can be a logical response often driven by an impulse to restore democracy.

Professor Furious@professorfurious· Jul 7

Samantha Power
@SamanthaJPower

Starting in early 2025, Elon Musk and the Trump administration began terminating USAID's programs and firing its staff — with Musk himself boasting about "feeding it into the woodchipper." One year ago today, USAID was officially dissolved, its remaining programs haphazardly folded into the State Department. Amid all the lies and misinformation that have followed, some facts about what has actually been lost:

• USAID saved more than 3 million lives a year at a cost of less than $10/month per American. That is what was destroyed. On purpose.
• According to Boston University's Global Impact Counter — which tracked deaths attributable to the cuts until it stopped operations in February 2026 — an estimated 781,000 people died preventable deaths in the first year, including 518,000 children.
• Global child mortality (the number of children who die before their fifth birthday) rose in 2025 for the first time in 35+ years — by 200,000 additional deaths.
• USAID's 50-country disease surveillance network — the system that cut outbreak response times from 2 weeks to 48 hours — is gone. We are now watching an unprecedented Ebola outbreak unfold in real time — with the highest first-month caseload and death rate in modern history.
• Programs reaching 93 million women and children were cut 92%. TB programs cut 56%. Water and sanitation cut 86%. Over 2,000 health facilities permanently closed.
• 25 million fewer people received humanitarian assistance in 2025. The overall humanitarian budget was slashed 74% — from $14.1 billion to $3.7 billion.
• 363 million people face acute hunger in 2026. The famine early-warning system that would have seen it coming went dark for five months.
• $1.7 billion in democracy and governance funding (election monitoring, anti-corruption work, support for independent media and civil society) was terminated.
• 360+ independent media outlets lost funding. Hundreds of legal clinics closed.
• Far from saving money, the …

Professor Furious@professorfurious· Jul 5

A banger from the NY Review (web archive link): archive.ph/Qzqyj

Space Oddity
Mark O’Connell
Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff’s Muskism examines how Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, by selling a vision of the future that very few people would want to inhabit.
July 23, 2026 issue

Professor Furious@professorfurious· Jul 3

As always, evergreen: outsidetheinterzone.blogspot.com/2009/10/of-s...

“The salient fact of American politics is that there are fifty to seventy million voters each of whom will volunteer to live, with his family, in a cardboard box under an overpass, and cook sparrows on an old curtain rod, if someone would only guarantee that the black, gay, Hispanic, liberal, whatever, in the next box over doesn’t even have a curtain rod, or a sparrow to put on it.”

Professor Furious@professorfurious· Jul 2

I'm so old that I remember that when people said "global warming" Conservatives said, "Al Gore is fat and he rides in jet planes. Checkmate libtards."

Weather map of the northeastern United States showing air temperatures by location with color shading. Temperatures range from the upper 60s along parts of the Maine coast (67–69°F, shown in blue-green) to 100–104°F across the Mid-Atlantic and Ohio Valley (shown in orange and red). Southern New England is in the upper 90s to around 101°F, with Connecticut reaching 101°F, while much of Vermont, New Hampshire, and inland Maine is in the low to mid-90s. Cooler conditions persist along the immediate Atlantic coast, especially in eastern Maine, Cape Cod, and the islands, where temperatures are mostly in the 70s. The map highlights a sharp inland-to-coastal temperature gradient across New England.

Professor Furious@professorfurious· Jul 1

There's absolutely no grift here. Profits for one business almost exactly matched by the losses of all other investors is how business works!

Line chart titled "Trump Crypto: Family Gains vs. Investor Losses" comparing estimated cumulative gains and losses from Trump-linked cryptocurrency ventures from February 2025 to May 2026 (in billions of dollars). A blue line representing the Trump Organization rises steadily from about $1.0 billion to +$2.29 billion. A red line representing investors starts near +$2.6 billion, fluctuates during 2025, then falls sharply after November 2025 to −$2.28 billion by May 2026. Annotations mark key events including "Meme coin price jumps after launch," "Meme coin price drops," "World Liberty confirms token to become tradeable," and "ALT5 Sigma share price drops." The chart emphasizes the divergence between growing Trump Organization gains and mounting investor losses. Source: Reuters; graphic by Steve Rattner.

Professor Furious@professorfurious· Jun 30

The thing to understand from these latest SCOTUS decisions is that the USA has at last transcended "a nation of laws" to become "a nation of Calvinball".

A four-panel Calvin and Hobbes comic. In the first panel, Calvin excitedly asks, "It's Saturday! What do you want to do?" Hobbes replies, "Anything but play an organized sport." In the second panel, Calvin asks, "Want to play Calvinball?" Hobbes enthusiastically answers, "Yeah!" In the third panel, the pair run across a yard dotted with arbitrary game markers while Hobbes declares, "No sport is less organized than Calvinball!" In the final panel, Calvin invents a rule on the spot while running: "New rule! New rule! If you don't touch the 30-yard base wicket with the flag, you have to hop on one foot."

Professor Furious@professorfurious· Jun 26

We used to know how to punch Nazis.

Captain America punching noted fictional Nazi The Red Skull.

Professor Furious@professorfurious· Jun 22

www.wired.com/story/data-c...

An electrician named Dante tells WIRED that he has worked on data centers operated by Intel, HP, and Amazon. “Nobody judges me” for data center work, he says, because “we're almost always working for the worst possible people in the end, but we all need a paycheck because of the unlivable world that those same rich people have created for us.”

“Either I'm wiring up a lumber mill or a Dollar General warehouse or a data center or an Amazon facility or whatever else,” Dante says. It’s “essentially the same kind of work—all for already extremely rich pieces of shit to use for the exploitation of the working class so they can get more rich.”

Professor Furious@professorfurious· Jun 8

Professor Furious@professorfurious· May 18

I have now literally lost count of how often I have needed to post this callback: outsidetheinterzone.blogspot.com/2009/10/of-s...

Professor Furious@professorfurious· May 17

Professor Furious@professorfurious· Apr 11

I'm old enough to have watched the first Moon landing live, but nothing in that mission was as inspiring to me as this image from Artemis II. As a species we can do incredible things. Let's stop with all the psychotic carnage and do more of this.

Professor Furious@professorfurious· Apr 10

Fascinating that this particular editorial link doesn't unfurl with a preview, @nytimes.com

"Trump Is Turning America Into a Psychotic State" headline over a drawing of a crazed eagle wearing a red tie madly scribbling amid an oil drum and parked missiles.

Professor Furious@professorfurious· Apr 5

Fair point:

Money, money, money, money, money [6x]
Some people got to have it
Some people really need it
Listen to me y'all, do things
Do things, do bad things with it
You wanna do things, do things
Do things, good things with it
Talk about cash money, money
Talk about cash money
Dollar bills, yall

For the love of money
People will steal from their mother
For the love of money
People will rob their own brother
For the love of money
People can't even walk the street
Because they never know
Who in the world they're gonna beat
For that lean, mean, mean green
Almighty dollar, money

For the love of money
People will lie, Lord, they will cheat
For the love of money
People don't care who they hurt or beat
For the love of money
A woman will sell her precious body
For a small piece of paper
It carries a lot of weight
Call it lean, mean, mean green

Almighty dollar

I know money is the root of all evil
Do funny things to some people
Give me a nickel, brother can you spare a dime
Money can drive some people out of their minds

Got to have it, I really need it
How many things have I heard you say
Some people really need it
How many things have I heard you say
Got to have it, I really need it
How many things have I heard you say
Lay down, lay down, a woman will lay down
For the love of money
All for the love of money
Don't let, don't let, don't let money rule you
For the love of money
Money can change people sometimes
Don't let, don't let, don't let money fool you
Money can fool people sometimes
People, don't let money, don't let money change you
It will keep on changing, changing up your mind

Professor Furious@professorfurious· Apr 5

I'm not sure I would call "Born in the USA" nationalistic, given its lyrics. Anguished, perhaps:

Born down in a dead man's town
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground
End up like a dog that's been beat too much
'Til you spend half your life just to cover it up now
Born in the USA
I was born in the USA
I was born in the USA
Born in the USA, now
Got in a little hometown jam
So they put a rifle in my hands
Send me off to a foreign land
To go and kill the yellow man
Born in the USA
I was born in the USA
Born in the USA
I was born in the USA
Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man said, "Son, if it was up to me"
Went down to see my V.A. man
He said, "Son, don't you understand, now?"
Oh, yeah
No, no
No, no, no
I had a brother at Khe Sanh
Fightin' off them Viet Cong
They're still there, he's all gone
He had a woman he loved in Saigon
I got a picture of him in her arms now
Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I'm ten years burnin' down the road
Nowhere to run, ain't got nowhere to go
Born in the USA
I was born in the USA, oh
Born in the USA
I'm a long-gone daddy in the USA, now
Born in the USA
Born in the USA
Born in the USA
I'm a cool rocking daddy in the USA, now

Professor Furious@professorfurious· Mar 16

We don't have a "core democratic process" in the USA. I cite the Senate. I cite the Electoral College. 42 million people in LA county have less representation than 300k people in Utah. There's no need to mythologize a system designed to preserve slavery, which is still legal:

Thirteenth Amendment
Section 1

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Professor Furious@professorfurious· Mar 11

Every gesture is a choice.

Pete Hegseth works a Nazi salute into his press conference.

Professor Furious@professorfurious· Mar 4

Dubai. newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

If you try to humanise the place you will lose your mind. If you ask yourself what the woman at the hair-braiding stand left behind to be here, and why, you will lose your mind. If you accept the kindness of the staff with whom you make a paltry effort to speak each morning as they clear your dirty breakfast plate, you will lose your mind, because your tip is the only kindness you can meaningfully offer in return. Trying to attend to your own towel by the pool might cause the man who stands for hours in the ferocious sun to do so for you to lose his job. Being served makes us cruel infants. It demeans us all.

Professor Furious@professorfurious· Mar 3

I understand that I live in New England in the Spring but this is just bonkers:

A weather forecast showing hours of snow today and 54 degrees Fahrenheit as a high temperature tomorrow.

Professor Furious@professorfurious· Mar 2

A woman drinking a cup of tea while looking at the viewer, saying, "I can't believe it's already he's-gonna-start-WWIII season! I still have my holy-shit-he-fucked-kids decorations up.

Professor Furious@professorfurious· Feb 28

Um, no. Here, I fixed it for you: "Speaker Johnson should call the House into session immediately to vote on a bipartisan motion to impeach the President for this illegal action."

MALDEN, MA – Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (MA-5) issued the following statement:

“Donald Trump campaigned on the promise of ‘no new wars.’ Under the cloak of night, without congressional authorization or even a clear rationale, he broke that vow to launch a massive military operation against Iran.

“Iran’s violations of human rights and sponsorship of global terror are well documented. But our Constitution is clear – the power to declare war lies with Congress. Trump has refused to seek authorization from the People’s House before rushing into another military conflict in the Middle East. All while acknowledging his actions pose grave danger to our service members.

“Families do not want another war. They want a reasonable cost of living. They want health care they can afford. They want an end to ICE’s terror in their neighborhoods. And they do not want their sons and daughters placed in harm’s way by a reckless President. The people of this country deserve better.

“Speaker Johnson should call the House into session immediately to vote on a bipartisan War Powers Resolution. If not, House Democrats will force a vote. Now is the time to stand with the American people and the Constitution.”

Professor Furious@professorfurious· Feb 26

A longer version of the quote from DeviantArt:

From the internet…

“I’ve said this before, but the enormity of how stupid and childish Trump is, and the inexplicability of him winning not just once, but twice (after committing insurrection!) is so overwhelming it won’t ever be explainable. The fact that he has been president warps reality in a gravitational sense; the fact of his power means that society, in telling the story, can’t actually conceptualize him as so unserious and stupid, because by definition he has been elected twice and so he is, by definition, important and serious. Power justifies itself.

But of course that’s a fiction. He’s as evil, stupid, venal and unfit for the role as he was 10 years ago, when it was a cosmic joke to think he could ever be President. The fact that 10 years later has has been President twice doesn’t change who he is and what he is. He is the most terrible person in every possible way to even run for president, let alone win. This fact about him warps reality. It’s crazy-making. It’s society-wide gaslighting. I don’t know how I will ever be able to explain this to my children.

Adding to my befuddlement is the fact that he’s every single stereotype of a loathsome shitheel from the last one hundred years of popular culture, all at once—the ignorant blowhard at the end of the bar, the entitled silver spoon trust fund asshole, the clueless boss who does nothing but create crises for his employees to clean up, the lecherous old man, the vapid self-important celebrity, the penny pinching miser who stiffs the honest working man, the oily corrupt politician, the cowardly bully, the draft-dodging faux-patriot, the scumbag crook who gets off on a technicality. He’s almost literally every repugnant trope from generations of literature, movies, and TV shows. This is the man— the clown, the ignoramus—who ends our Republic?”

— Brandunaware

Professor Furious@professorfurious· Feb 17

Captain America punching the Red Skull who is wearing a swastika and saying, "So much for the tolerant left."

Professor Furious@professorfurious· Feb 10

What's it going to take for someone to throw a net over this guy?