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jfallows.bsky.social

Reporter and writer: https://fallows.substack.com/ and https://www.ourtownsfoundation.org/ One-time speechwriter, long-time pilot, longer-time husband of linguist/writer Deborah Fallows. Note same wristwatch in the two photos, more than 50 years apart.

2,618 posts 130,555 followers 1,109 following

Posts 25 Comments 25

Last night.

submitted 1 day ago • 11 comments

No joke, Trump has to fire all of them now. They're a sabotage risk to the administration.

submitted 1 day ago • 202 comments

I'm just glad one of these men has the nuclear codes and the other has all our personal data.

submitted 1 day ago • 1691 comments

I understand that "Dems in disarray" has a rhythm that "GOP in disarray" doesn't. But in 40+ years there's been no Dem-disarray remotely comparable to Trump/Musk/Leo/etc fratricide. Has there been even one "GOP in disarray" big headline? Maybe I've missed it.

submitted 1 day ago • 63 comments

Good God. These people (first pic) look like they're ready for Fallujah. It's actually ... the Twin Cities. COWARDS. It's our new Gestapo, "HSI." Remember the famously brutalizing Alabama police of the Selma March in 1960s? Second pic is how they looked. Now, cosplayers and cowards.

submitted 2 days ago • 38 comments

Old enough to remember when USMC/Army most revered experts in urban occupation, counter-insurgency, and so on taught that the most effective forces went in w the LEAST body-armor, visible weaponry, and other tells of insecurity By their measure, these ICE cosplayers are terrified of the public

submitted 2 days ago • 16 comments

This is money already authorized, committed, and being spent to invest in a long-term essential project for the nation's most populous and productive state. Yet one more example of "rule of law" as a polite fiction.

submitted 2 days ago • 12 comments

Have known Gov. Walz from before he came onto the national radar. He is a mensch, and the real deal.

submitted 2 days ago • 11 comments

Shades of the Iran-Iraq war, of the 1980s. With more immediate and lasting consequences for the US.

submitted 2 days ago • 6 comments

Here is an interesting graphic display: Detailed, interactive map from "The Impact Project" of Trump/Doge layoffs and grant-terminations, by regional effect. (County by county.) theimpactproject.org/the-impact-m...

submitted 2 days ago • 34 comments

There’s a whole batch of these right-wing pseudointellectual grifters whose primary function is performing a stupid person’s idea of a smart person, with the content of that performance being sort of secondary.

submitted 3 days ago • 27 comments

Thread recapping this very illuminating Yarvin piece, by Ava Kofman in @newyorker.com (Previous posts removed for tech reasons.) —If you've lived in a small town, you know the character of the "barroom savant." Knows the inside story on everything. Knows what "they" are covering up.... 1/n

submitted 4 days ago • 31 comments

Very good story in @sfgate.com, by Erin Rode, on a civic failure I've witnessed first-hand for decades. Plus the emerging civic success that surrounds it. By me on same theme a dozen years ago: www.ourtownsfoundation.org/a-citys-turn... www.sfgate.com/bayarea/arti...

submitted 4 days ago • 4 comments

Big media's sane-washing of "the New Musk" is appalling to behold. "Oh, everyone was so mean to me. It was so unfair. Now let's just move on, and focus on the Real Me." @owillis.bsky.social taking no prisoners: www.oliverexplains.com/p/elon-musk-...

submitted 4 days ago • 20 comments

This is the ur-NYT column, the template, the holy mountain on which their ideal columnists are all born: of course we don’t endorse what these nasty fascists are doing but if you think about it they have a point and (inhales deeply, turns to camera) It’s Complicated.

submitted 4 days ago • 43 comments

Excellent @nytimes.com story by @liyuan6.bsky.social on value of having Chinese students at US univs, and idiocy of shutting them out. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/b... Ongoing saga of Times headline writing: Story makes crystal clear that visa ban WILL backfire on US. Headline says "could."

submitted 4 days ago • 7 comments

Actual question: Why don't more (all) charities/NGOs/universities/etc allow online donations through ACH bank transfers, rather than credit cards? Sparing themselves and donors the 2%-3% dead-loss cut taken by Visa/Mastercard? Are there hidden costs in bank-transfers?

submitted 4 days ago • 32 comments

Thinking of old labor union anthem (and title of great book by Tom Geoghegan back in the day): "Which Side Are You On?" www.wsj.com/us-news/law/...

submitted 4 days ago • 4 comments

My “you’re over 30” advice is hold onto the bannister. Stairs will kill you and not even look back

submitted 5 days ago • 5 comments

Yes, this is very much worth reading. A summary of engineering gap between Musk's longtime promises to land people on Mars by next year, and real-world explosive results. Also, why clunky old-tech NASA/Apollo had a much better record.

submitted 5 days ago • 24 comments

This @NYT Opinion essay by Jillian Weinberger is excellent on what has long been wonderful about living in Wash DC—and is so different from the pure-politics cage-match portrayed in 99% of the news. And on the soulless carnage being inflicted now. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/o...

submitted 5 days ago • 4 comments

Yes.

submitted 5 days ago • 3 comments

The movement goes on. (Alexandria VA, matching moves across the region, in DC and parts of Maryland.) Very interesting and detailed story by Sydney Kodama alextimes.com/local-news/a...

submitted 5 days ago • 11 comments

Anecdotal backup: Recently we were at a small regional airport with vast, Sahara-scale extra parking. Parking areas on the order of a pro-football venue were full, wall to wall, with unsold Teslas. As in the photo below. And these were "normal" Teslas, not the ludicrous Cybertrucks.

submitted 6 days ago • 20 comments

Random info dept: Emil Bove, Trump loyalist and fitness devotee, is one year older than Pete Buttigieg. And three years younger than Ashton Kutcher. Like a reverse picture-of-Dorian-Gray. (h/t ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/can-you-do... )

submitted 6 days ago • 64 comments