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zachprague.bsky.social
MN transplant in CZ. Hopefully knee-deep in a cold river somewhere. Work in foreign policy/int’l media.
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Gene Hackman...man. I know his work in Unforgiven and a bunch of other top-tier films is the stuff of lore, but Royal Tenenbaum is maybe my favorite character ever.

Seems like an Appointments Clause issue that someone other than the Senate-confirmed secretary of state is currently running the State Dept.

NEW: At least three people linked to Elon Musk’s DOGE task force have access to NIH systems that control budgets, procurement, and more, according to records and internal documents viewed by WIRED. @mattreynolds.bsky.social with the scoop: www.wired.com/story/doge-i...

3 years ago this morning, I was on an overnight train to Kyiv, returning from a week-long reporting trip in Ukraine's Donbas. Around 5 a.m., I stirred, vaguely aware of cell phones buzzing, chirping, up, down the train car, hurried, hushed conversations, in the hallway. /1 🧵

At least spring training has started. Please, baseball gods, let “Big Sugar” happen. Just an all-time baseball guy nickname. Rooting for “Big Sugar”

NEW: Last year, @johnnyryan.bsky.social made a website for a fake company using a photo of Russian soldiers to purposely elicit suspicion. A US data broker offered him access to thousands of lists of American devices anyway. Many lists targeted US leaders and defense contractors. Our latest:

REVEALED: we identified the operator of an overtly racist X account, "GlomarResponder," as ICE Assistant Chief Counsel James Rodden, based on an overwhelming number of biographical details matched through publicly available documents, other social media activity, and courtroom observation.

Want to go visit the national parks this year? Sorry. The reservation system is shut down, EMT personnel are gone, so don't get hurt or lost. No one can clean the bathrooms or cabins, so they'll be closed. Rangers are fired. www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...

Here's a list of DOGE staff, assembled and annotated by my colleagues at BI. Whatever you do, please don't share it. www.businessinsider.com/doge-staff-l...

NEW: USAID source says staff are scrambling to save archived copies of US regulations before they're gone & are being actively locked out of systems, including a publicly available database of USAID documents. WIRED has built software to systematically check the status of 1,374 government domains.

Fed source to me re: this news: “ten alarm fire”

This is appalling

🚨 Elon Musk and his surrogates seek access to the Treausry Department’s sensitive payment systems (which processes your benefits and tax refunds among other things), prompting a senior official to resign www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

A while back I asked folks why they’re joining Bluesky and the most common response I saw was, “I just want a good place to get my news” and, yall, no. Bad. GET YOUR NEWS FROM THE NEWS PBS Newshour is FREE FOR EVERYONE. youtu.be/PMOYN8JWdUk?...

Mike Sweeney adding to the Ichiro mythology

Listening to The Architects on a particularly gloomy day to be an American. "The Devil is Near" is such an apt song for...all of this. "This is where tragedy is bought and sold" indeed.

Having represented the senior leadership of USAGM during Trump 1.0 & having to deal w/Michael Pack, I feel bad for what this agency is about to endure yet again.

This is such a good discussion about comedy and LA and getting older etc w/ Craig Ferguson and @pftompkins.bsky.social. Ferguson not being TV anymore is such a bummer…am I reminded of that whenever he has a really good podcast guest like PFT.

Another one for the rapidly-filling "yeah man no shit" folder

NEW: My staff just got ahold of this memo from House Budget Committee Republicans. It's lengthy and hard to digest but it tells us exactly how Republicans plan to sell out the American people for another round of tax cuts to the rich. We're breaking down the highlights as we go:

Every Marc Andreessen interview/discussion/podcast is just some version of him being like, "The internet came, I built a browser that worked, I sold it for a ton of money, I've funded a bunch of startups and made billions more, and yet I am not roundly adored and admired. WTF?" It's pretty sad.

Happening now, the first anti-trans hearing of 2025 in the United States. HB121 in Montana is a full adult bathroom ban in publicly owned buildings. It targets all trans adults and the trans reps Zooey Zephyr/SJ Howell. I am covering it live. Watch with me: sg001-harmony.sliq.net/00309/Harmon...

NEW: I've obtained internal Meta docs revealing an array of sample posts that are now allowed under new hate speech rules. Examples include calling children "trannies," “Jews are flat out greedier than Christians," and “immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit” theintercept.com/2025/01/09/f...

happens a lot but going on X this AM (for my job) & seeing it filled to the absolute brim w/ people culture warring over the LA fires and using the disaster to score political points before the thing is remotely contained activates the full doomer instinct in me. the black heart of american culture.

This is excellent, the real primo Scocca stuff. (It's a gift link) defector.com/how-crazy-wa...