bjbates.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

500K Mexican-Americans served in the U.S. armed forces in WWII, as did millions of 1st and 2nd-gen immigrants, and 109K noncitizens. Mexican immigrant Macario Garcia won the Medal of Honor in Normandy. When he returned to the US, he was was arrested for trying to eat at a segregated restaurant.

submitted 2 days ago • 1933 comments

BIG BUG BIG BUG BIG BUG BIG BUG BIG BUG BIG BUG BIG BUG (huge violet ground beetle, Carabus scabrosus)

submitted 1 day ago • 34 comments

Lengthy examination of doge’s destructive tactics at NEH.

submitted 15 hours ago • 0 comments

Under 65 years old? No Novovax COVID vaccine for you this year. As expected, the Republicans have enabled RFK Jr. and his coterie of antivax grifters to take away your right to make your own medical decisions in consultation with your doctor. Gift Link: www.nytimes.com/2025/05/17/h...

submitted 1 day ago • 152 comments

Updated this piece about how the Trump admin removed images of women and persons of color from websites. The good news is that the webpage about a NASA employee overcoming adversity was restored after she posted about it. The bad news? NASA then fired her. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/whitewashi...

submitted 13 hours ago • 33 comments

At least 27 are dead in Missouri in Kentucky after severe weather alerts were delayed overnight because of DOGE cuts. www.mesoscalenews.com/p/tornado-wa...

submitted 1 day ago • 280 comments

This quote from Grammarly’s head of education should include a guy in a hot dog costume next to it. www.wsj.com/tech/persona...

submitted 1 day ago • 6 comments

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.

submitted 65 days ago • 1356 comments

It's #DigitalFriday ! This is my routine appeal to #skystorians & all academics prepping for teaching to share any software, hardware, online resources (primary, secondary, teaching tools, blogs), tips and tricks that they've found useful this week! #AcademicSky (pls boost to any relevant feeds)

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

BREAKING: Voting rights groups sued Louisiana over a new law that forces voters to show proof of citizenship without saying what counts as proof. The plaintiffs call the law a “solution in search of a phantom threat.” From: @yuniorarivas.bsky.social www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

submitted 3 days ago • 11 comments

I made this point in my inaugural. Lack of specialist training will mean fields like mine disappearing from all universities except the very wealthy. This has knock on effects for widening participation. 1/

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

This is a ROGUE ONE post, but it applies to other shows for obvious reasons. During development, we called it 'The People's Star Wars', because for every singular hero that gets folklore about them for, say, destroying the Death Star, there are untold stories about so many that made it possible.

submitted 4 days ago • 16 comments

How many of these stories involve parents/grandparents actively caring for kids? Abrego Garcia had his 5yo in the car, the man at the gas station was taken and his two kids left in the car, two women in Walthman were taken, leaving kids behind. We seem to be focusing on the most dangerous: parents

submitted 4 days ago • 2 comments

Republicans are saying that these cuts will be reinvested into Medicaid for people who "deserve" it. If that were true, the budget would stay the same. But that's not what's happening. Why? Because down the hall, they are trying to finance tax breaks for billionaires.

submitted 4 days ago • 209 comments

Sure, AI may be an environmental disaster and produce mid outcomes in cases where it doesn't straight up lie, but at least it's extremely unprofitable.

submitted 6 days ago • 51 comments

NASA staff putting one of the Tesla ‘I bought this before I knew he was a Nazi’ stickers on a Saturn V

submitted 6 days ago • 13 comments

the trump admin just going all in on “we only want the whites” is still a shock to actually witness in real time

submitted 6 days ago • 63 comments

It is bracing to reread the Framers’ bone-deep fears about foreign corruption of the presidency and realize Trump is exactly what they were trying to prevent. slate.com/news-and-pol...

submitted 6 days ago • 65 comments

My daughter’s speech therapist went out of business because Medicaid reimbursement rates were too low. We do not have Medicaid. I’m going to keep posting this until people understand that when Medicaid gets cut everyone loses services.

submitted 6 days ago • 163 comments

"impeachment or losing an election is the only way public officials can be disciplined for literal crimes" is not how literally any political system has ever conducted itself

submitted 6 days ago • 65 comments

I think people’s imaginations really fail in terms of grasping how much the gates of hell opened and desperately need to be slammed shut when it is shown that political violence to seize power will not be punished and will be legitimated with minimal pushback once you seize power.

submitted 6 days ago • 6 comments

Some sad confirmation from @bcgl.bsky.social while I was at UW last week—the National Digital Newspaper Program—which builds Chronicling America—has been shut down Historical newspapers are probably the archival material most used by the general public—for genealogy, local history—it’s such a loss

submitted 6 days ago • 44 comments

I just want to stress: In any rational society this'd be enough to summon antitrust regulations like a bat out of hell. They literally evaluated their own market control and decided they could provide an inferior service because of their de facto monopoly. Execs used to have nightmares like this.

submitted 6 days ago • 6 comments

It’s especially galling that AG Pam Bondi personally wrote the memo approving the gift of the Qatari airplane. Her last job was as a lobbyist for Qatar! efile.fara.gov/docs/6415-Ex...

submitted 7 days ago • 1080 comments

The cost of Grok: "I can't breathe at home, it smells like gas outside. How come I can't breathe at home and y'all get to breathe at home?"

submitted 8 days ago • 123 comments

Major expose of deep sea mining's lasting damage and huge risks. www.bbc.com/future/artic...

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

‘We had the same moral panic about TV’ is a common refrain when people bring up social media, but like, in terms of social-political impacts, it’s hard to not see the ‘moral panic’ about TV as at least partially vindicated! A reality TV star is president! He’s filling his admin with Fox News hosts!

submitted 7 days ago • 72 comments

But remember, you can only have two dolls and five pencils

submitted 7 days ago • 142 comments

"The judge overseeing the case against the Defense Department's firing of transgender service members revealed that the military spends eight times more on erectile dysfunction medication than on gender affirming care." www.newsweek.com/us-military-...

submitted 8 days ago • 532 comments

Masked thugs kidnapping people off of the street are not heroes.

submitted 7 days ago • 97 comments

The foreign emoluments clause was written to prevent exactly this. Blatantly unconstitutional

submitted 7 days ago • 757 comments

Holy shiitake! Trump fired Shira Perlmutter, the Director of the US Copyrights Office apparently because she refused to let Elon Musk raid the place to steal author’s intellectual property rights democrats-cha.house.gov/media/press-...

submitted 8 days ago • 137 comments

The Administration has arrested a judge in WI and a mayor in NJ, and is threatening to arrest federal lawmakers. In any other country we would say the strongman's security forces are locking up political opponents. We need to treat it exactly that way here. www.axios.com/2025/05/10/t...

submitted 8 days ago • 45 comments

I just think you should have to read this out loud to yourself before you're allowed to post whatever stupid AI feature is trending this week

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

You’re allowed to argue that black people and women are genetically inferior. But you’re NOT allowed to argue they are NOT inferior because that’s divisive. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/09/u...

submitted 8 days ago • 138 comments

YIKES @soundcloud.dev no thank you

submitted 9 days ago • 169 comments

Removing trans service members does not enhance readiness or lethality Instead, it just demonstrates to our friends that we don’t actually believe in our values and shows our enemies that we can be easily divided by hatred. We are stronger together. Full stop.

submitted 9 days ago • 6 comments

At the start of this year, three of the institutions most important to American cultural preservation—the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History—were run by women for the first time. As of today, Trump has fired two of those three.

submitted 10 days ago • 41 comments

This is America.

submitted 10 days ago • 213 comments

So, if I’m reading this right: They gutted the office that runs the government’s award-winning, in-house HR and staffing software, and now they’ve inked a sole-source, no-bid contract so that a private company on proprietary software can do what the office of civil servants did on in-house software

submitted 10 days ago • 87 comments