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

Pro-natalists: you need to have at least 10 kids Normal people: why, are you expecting half of them to die before puberty due to lack of modern health and sanitation? Pro-natalists: you're never gonna believe what we also advocate

submitted 6 hours ago • 15 comments

Tomorrow’s going to be a good stress test of the press. El Salvadoran President Bukele will visit the White House. At the press availability, every Q ought to be about Abrego Garcia: where is he now? Did US ask you to return him? etc. WH will hate, maybe try to prevent, so all should band together.

submitted 20 hours ago • 1311 comments

THREAD: The Trump administration's DOJ has removed a study from the NIJ website that found that immigrants, and particularly undocumented immigrants, commit crimes at significantly lower rates than U.S. citizens. The study is at odds with the Trump regime's propaganda about immigrants & crime. (1)

submitted 1 day ago • 133 comments

"oh no, this'll make the right wing mad!" Buddy they get into a frothing rage over like, cereal mascots and cartoon characters and the mere existence of gay people and what oil a French fry is cooked in and women knowing how to read, etc. They'll get mad anyway, no matter what. Tell em to fuck off

submitted 1 day ago • 13 comments

“In one video… a voice claiming to be Zuckerberg says that “it’s normal to feel uncomfortable or even violated as we forcefully insert AI into every facet of your conscious experience. And I just want to assure you, you don’t need to worry because there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.””

submitted 1 day ago • 3 comments

A 26-year-old lives in a small town, has always wanted to live in a big city, and has a remote job and a few friends in New York. Should she move there? slate.com/advice/2025/... Advice on @slate.com

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

there is simply no amount of child death that will move RFK to change his mind because he is a predatory narcissist who cares less about health than the gratification of his own ego

submitted 1 day ago • 1043 comments

"What we are seeing is a purge—of the administrative state, of the universities, of expertise—that is consistent with events like the Cultural Revolution in China in the 1960s and ’70s, or the dismantling of the tsarist civil service after the Bolshevik Revolution" www.thenation.com/article/soci...

submitted 1 day ago • 18 comments

I feel like one of the great culinary divides is between ways to make bread crispy (croutons, toast) or soggy (stuffing, bread pudding) and I am firmly on Team Crispy. Anybody else love one but not the other? (With apologies to everybody who is abstaining from leavened bread for Passover)

submitted 1 day ago • 38 comments

"My boss only responds to maybe 75 percent of my emails and when she does respond, it’s so vague." Here's some work advice about getting your boss's attention and managing up slate.com/advice/2025/... on @slate.com

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

I do think that we are 100% dealing with people who DO have sinister evil overarching plans and are ALSO incredibly stupid and incompetent.

submitted 2 days ago • 51 comments

there’s a style of reporting that’s basically like “the left hasn’t been duped by the transparently bad faith framing of the right, but I, the reporter, very much have.”

submitted 2 days ago • 78 comments

I'm not saying journalists should never interview admitted propagandists. There are journalistic reasons to do so. But if we do, we must be prepared to -- in fact it is our duty to -- challenge vociferously all unsubstantiated claims. Otherwise, we ourselves become propagandists.

submitted 2 days ago • 203 comments

Signs of spring, ranked.

submitted 3 days ago • 41 comments

Is Katy Perry really going to be an astronaut? This is a fun explanation of the all-female Blue Origin flight scheduled for Monday. slate.com/technology/2... by @shanpalus.bsky.social on @slate.com

submitted 2 days ago • 5 comments

Just a reminder that Germany led the world in science until the Nazis came to power and fired, exiled, and/or killed all the non-Nazi scientists, which was most of the scientists 🧪 www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

submitted 2 days ago • 26 comments

For @slate.com Plus members: What can you do if two team members are constantly sick from toddler germs? Bonus advice from our GOOD JOB column. slate.com/advice/2025/...

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

yeah man, please make my 85 year old great aunt prove her citizenship to vote in rural georgia, this definitely isn’t reminiscent of anything in the american past

submitted 3 days ago • 839 comments

Of fuck off, #BrokenTimes. Children are dying because of his disinformation but because he wears jeans and hiking boots, he's "stoic," "nervous," and "hitting his stride." Save your empathy for those he is killing.

submitted 4 days ago • 102 comments

I say this as a historian — history will remember you utterly failing to meet the challenge of this moment. At the rate you’re going, “Schumer” is going to end up somewhere between “Chamberlain” or “Quisling”

submitted 3 days ago • 131 comments

Spoilers!

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

Everybody's washing their hands after using the restroom at work, right? RIGHT? slate.com/advice/2025/... Here's some advice about what to do if your coworkers don't @slate.com

submitted 4 days ago • 2 comments

Given that the diagnosis methods changed, we know why numbers went up. My concern is what important things they will ban and what crackpottery they will promote based on their charlatanry.

submitted 4 days ago • 32 comments

Just send the interns. White House press corps doesn’t mean what it used to.

submitted 4 days ago • 3 comments

What should you do when your coworker won't wash his hands, your manager can't manage, or you're deciding whether to move to a big city. Work advice from me on @slate.com slate.com/advice/2025/...

submitted 4 days ago • 6 comments

Congratulations to the current administration and its allies. This kind of detention was a defining feature of Soviet Gulag barracks and holding cells. Also, reminiscent of improvised concentration camps during the first months after the coup in Pinochet's Chile, as described here (from my book).

submitted 4 days ago • 6 comments

“They were careless people…they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness…and let other people clean up the mess they had made…” -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (April 10, 1925).

submitted 4 days ago • 610 comments

So from my uniquely weird perspective after living in the UK through Brexit, being in India during Modi's demonetization, and living in Brazil when the real tanked during the Bolsonaro administration, I can confidentally say that Americans do not and can not understand how bad this is going to be.

submitted 5 days ago • 142 comments

in so much news coverage there’s still this sense of propriety and decorum in the face of an outright assault on our civil and human rights. i just want to remind journalists that your politeness will not save you—so you might as well say what you really mean.

submitted 5 days ago • 80 comments

This new White House executive order says that the US Attorney General is going to prevent states from implementing democratically passed laws regarding climate change and clean energy. It scarcely needs stating at this point that this is wildly, unambiguously unconstitutional. Dictator shit.

submitted 5 days ago • 287 comments

I'm gonna be clear: "de-extinction" isn't about dire wolves. Or mammoths. Or anything else. It CERTAINLY isn't about ecology or conservation. It's about US. It's about the animals we want to gawk at. The zoo that could have been. teamtrash.substack.com/p/is-it-a-di...

submitted 6 days ago • 3 comments

I just learned that the entire press team at the FDA was fired last week. The entire press team. It's difficult to grasp how bizarre this is. To wrap my brain around the idea, I made a list of things the FDA is responsible for, and that reporters now have no one at the agency to ask about... 🧪🛟

submitted 6 days ago • 95 comments

NEW: The Supreme Court took 6 months to decide immunity, but just 6 days to effectively strip the rest of us of due process. My latest: www.muellershewrote.com/p/the-corrup...

submitted 6 days ago • 834 comments

I think the Supreme Court got the law badly wrong tonight. But beyond that, it’s just incredibly ominous that Roberts would throw Boasberg under the bus and hand Trump this big win when his administration has conducted this case in EXTREME bad faith from the start. slate.com/news-and-pol...

submitted 6 days ago • 216 comments

Supreme Court goddam

submitted 6 days ago • 6 comments

the terrible man theory of history

submitted 7 days ago • 1 comment

Seems like a bad environment where our fates are tied to an economic system with a history of melting down and now it can swing wildly because of absolutely fake information on a social media site that exists solely to amplify fake information.

submitted 7 days ago • 9 comments

Here are some of the things CDC employees were working on before they were fired: drowning prevention, asthma, smoking reduction, worker safety, injury prevention, infant car seats, concussions, pregnancy outcomes, gun violence, Alzheimer's disease 🧪 wapo.st/3YhbJhC by @lenasun.bsky.social

submitted 7 days ago • 8 comments

Immunotherapy for cancer is one of the biggest medical advances of our lifetimes. It gave Jimmy Carter another decade of life. A new trial shows how it could treat solid tumors, but Trump's cuts to HHS and NIH are disrupting this work 🧪 wapo.st/4j8Hwd1 by @carolynyjohnson.bsky.social

submitted 7 days ago • 7 comments

Trump putted while global markets burned. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

submitted 7 days ago • 4 comments

In books the cops always stake out the funeral in case the serial killer shows up

submitted 8 days ago • 74 comments

they are segregationists, it has been obvious from the jump, and i think that pundits who dismissed the charge as hyperbolic should explain why they couldn’t see the fact pattern

submitted 8 days ago • 167 comments

I am a perfectionist, I can't help it... I present the new and improved music video promo for THE INTERMEDIARIES--celebrates DORA RICHTER, #trans #transgender, #transrights and #LGBTQ --we have always been here. We #resist. Thank you to Susan and Mya, singer songwriters (see credits). HER OWN GIRL

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

goddd the number of things that turn out to be caused (at least partly) by infectious, vaccinatable diseases. apparently some dementia is actually "long chickenpox"? www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

submitted 8 days ago • 21 comments

This is like O.J. attending Nicole’s funeral (which he did, and for the same reason).

submitted 8 days ago • 57 comments

On Brain Worm Man attending a child funeral: "This is like O.J. attending Nicole’s funeral (which he did, and for the same reason)." I refuse to unpack that (especially since that child's death is an explicitly white on white crime), but Bluesky you are NEVER beating the allegations.

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

I just learned a new word from my college-age niblings: A "darty" is a party held during the day

submitted 9 days ago • 3 comments

A lot of creative folks are demoralized right now. Hell, I'm one of them. Maybe some of them are helping you through this rough time. If so, do me a solid: Share their stuff. Drop them a kind word. Tip their Ko-fis, or join their Patreons. It seems like nothing, but it's everything right now. 🤘

submitted 11 days ago • 53 comments