Dear Concerned Friend


Dear Concerned Friend,

Thank you for your kind note letting me know that you’re worried about me, and you wonder if I realize I’m coming across as angry lately.

Your assessment is correct, and yes, I do realize it.
I am angry.
I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry for that.

I understand your discomfort, as I can imagine I’m not all that fun to be around right now, and that from time to time my words may come across as combative or abrasive or unhelpful. I’m probably more than a bit of a downer lately.

You’re going to have to bear with me, as I haven’t been sleeping well for a bit. Admittedly, I’m not at my best these days, so please forgive me because I’m chronically overtired. I’m exhausted from having to give all the sh*ts about people that you’re supposed to be giving, along with my own.

I’m worn out from keeping up on legislation and watching hearings and staying on top of details and remembering deadlines and imploring action, while you go about your day as if such things are an annoyance, as if they are a disruption to your plan, as if the expiration date for my outrage should have long ago passed.

I am absolutely burnt out from trying to make my voice loud enough to counteract not only the bad people’s incredible volume but your deafening silence. Both of these things are doing similar damage right now, sadly.

Believe me, I understand that my activism is a problem for you. Please know that your inactivism is similarly problematic for me. It’s part of the reason I am as angry as I am; because I’m not only having to fight against those who seem furiously bent on hurting people—I’m having to fight against those who don’t seem give enough of a damn that they are doing so, to say anything.

Look, I get it, I really do. It’s difficult to see so much bad news, to fully face the relentless flood of terrible, to try and wrap your brain around seemingly boundless cruelty around you. It’s tiresome to spend so much time with a closed fist. I know it’s even a pain in the rear end to endure the continual rantings of people like me on your news feed and in your timeline and across the dinner table and in the break room.

I’m tired of me, too.
I’m over the fight, as well.
I’m sick of the sound of my own voice.
I’d rather not be doing this either.
I’d much rather prefer to forget about it all and just enjoy life, to only post pictures of puppies and my kids and to simply ignore all that “political stuff” that you ignore.
But that is what privilege looks like: to even believe I have such an option, to have the great luxury of living without urgency because I can seemingly shield myself from it all.

That is what the bad people are counting on. They’re counting on good people being too tired, too apathetic, too selfish, or too oblivious to sustain their outrage. I am not going to give that gift to them.

As long as they’re fully invested in putting people through hell, I’m going to be as invested in pushing back against it.
I think the people I love are worth it.
I think you and the people you love are worth it.
I think people I’ll never meet are worth it.

And that’s the rub here: love will often look a lot like rage as it fiercely fights on behalf of those who are being brutalized.

So yes, angry is not all that I am, but I am rightly and quite angry.

And it would be really helpful if we could carry the load of outrage right now.

That would actually be a source of rest and joy and breath for people like me.

Friend, if you really want me to be less angry, you might try being a little more angry yourself. We’re all in this together.

I am angry, concerned friend.

I wish you were angry too.

 

Midweek Tiedrich


loyal and patriotic citizens, please stand by for a message of the utmost importance from the President of the United States, Supreme Ruler of the Western Hemisphere, Lord-Emperor of the Sky Above and All the Planets, and God’s Own Avatar on Earth.

ready? here’s the message:fuck you.’

Trump makes obscene gesture, mouths expletive at Detroit factory heckler

“As far as calling him out, definitely no regrets whatsoever,” the heckler told The Post after a video captured Trump twice mouthing “f— you” and raising his middle finger.

here’s how that shit went down: Donny’s handlers got the bright idea to let him out of his gilded bordello, so he could tour a Ford factory in Detroit — and that’s when factory worker TJ Sabula won himself the Nobel Heckling Prize by shouting “pedophile protector!” at Dear Leader.

Out of frame in the video, a person can be heard yelling “pedophile protector” just before Trump mouthed the insult — an apparent reference to the Trump administration’s handling of the investigation into the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

‘an apparent reference’ — oh, Washington Post, you’re adorable. never change.

did Donny simply ignore the taunt and get on with his life, as any dignified leader would? of course he didn’t. the fragile dipshit just couldn’t let it pass. he replied ‘fuck you’ twice, and then gave Sabula the finger.

another day, another perfectly presidential performance from our Toddler-in-Chief.

by the way, Ford has suspended TJ Sabula, ‘pending an investigation.’

I have a question: pending an investigation of what? is Ford going to investigate whether or not Donny protects pedophiles? because we’ve already sussed that shit out.

fact check:

should anyone really be surprised by Dear Leader’s infantile behavior? after all, Donny’s been giving us the finger for years now, on a daily basis.

what, you want sane governance? fuck you. you want peace and justice? fuck you. you want coherent economic policies? fuck you.

you want honesty and accountability? fuck you. you want a president who doesn’t lie straight to your face? fuck you.

you want a president who doesn’t use the government to enrich himself? fuck you. you want a president who doesn’t see you as a rube to be fleeced? fuck you.

you want to be able to walk down the street without getting assaulted by masked and armed government thugs? fuck you.

you want to see those Dead Pedo Bestie files? fuck you twice.


here’s Preznit Fuckyou on his way to Detroit.

reporter: “the premier of Greenland said today, ‘we prefer to stay with Denmark.’”

Donny: “who said that?”

reporter: “the premier of Greenland.”

Donny: “well, that’s their problem. that’s their problem. I disagree with him. I don’t know who he is. don’t know anything about him. but that’s gonna be a big problem for him.”

‘that’s going to be a big problem for him’? what the fuck? this isn’t how a head of government talks. this is how a gangster talks. Donny’s answer could have come straight out of the mouth of Tony Soprano.

what, you want a president who doesn’t sound like a mob boss? fuck you.

you want a president who at least bothers to learn the names of the people who lead the countries he’s so horny to invade? fuck you.

you want a president who doesn’t destabilize the world just to feed his ego, and shit all over decades-old alliances? fuck you.


Donny didn’t just tour that Ford factory during his playdate. he also gave a speech to the Detroit Economic Club.

naturally, he used the occasion to rehash every batshit grievance — real or imaginedrattling around in his big dumb pumpkin head.

“how about the swimming records? I mean you could go to sleep during the time the man comes in and the woman. you could go take a nap for a little while. how about the long-distance race that took place not so long ago? long long distances. marathon deals. they had top men, top women. man came in. THE WOMAN CAME IN FIVE HOURS AND FOURTEEN MINUTES AND THIRTY-SIX SECONDS behind the man. think of it. you’re waiting. the man comes in. now you’re waiting five hours. what do you do? you can go home and sleep for a while. who the hell wants that? it’s so demeaning to women who are great athletes. demeaning to them. and it’s right now in the Supreme Court. I can’t believe it would even go to the Supreme Court.”

what the fuck is Donny gibbering about? what does any of the fever-swamp nonsense that just seeped from his rancid anus-mouth have to do with economics?

what, you want a president whose rotting brain doesn’t pinball incoherently from one subject to the next? fuck you.

you want a president who doesn’t obsess over stupid bullshit? fuck you.

you want a president who doesn’t manage to be both transphobic and misogynistic at the same time? fuck you.


what, you want a president with an ounce of empathy for the woman who was gunned down by one of his own armed thugs? fuck you.

“one of the reasons they’re doing these fake riots— I mean they’re just terrible. I mean you see it’s so fake. ‘shame! shame! shame!’ you see the woman. it’s all practiced. they go practice. they go to— there is— they take hotel rooms and they all practice together. it’s a whole same. we’re finding out whose funding all this stuff, too. we pretty much know.”

once again: what the fuck is this lunatic babbling about? none of that shit is happening. nobody is ‘rioting,’ they’re peacefully protesting — and what even is a ‘fake riot’? women aren’t practicing in hotel rooms. nobody is getting paid to protest. We the People loathe Donny so much we’ll happily protest for free.

this the stupidest shit you’ll hear all day, and Donny believes every word of it.

what, you want a president whose brain hasn’t been pickled from marinating in the dumbfuckiest of conspiracy theories? fuck you.


the ‘fuck your feelings’ crowd is sure having a lot of feelings right now.

Laura Ingraham: “there was one dimwit in the scene who screamed something about Epstein. Trump flipped him the bird. I hope it was the thunderbird.”

hey, Laura, you know what? fuck your feelings.

good lord. if Joe Biden had ever flipped off a factory worker in public, the entire wingnut outrage-industrial complex would have shit a massive brick, and turned it into a month-long scandal.


here’s a fun post from Lincoln Square Media.

Our Detroit staff has received reports from Ford workers that the President’s body odor was ‘like bad breath mixed with feces — I can’t describe it, but I’ll never forget it.’ yikes.”

is it true? who the fuck knows? it’s certainly believable.


and lastly, let me leave you with some words of wisdom.

live your life in such a way that when you die, your obituaries don’t open with how you were such a ginormous racist asshole that you fucked your own career straight into the shitter.


this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.

Sunday Tiedrich


it’s been nine days since Prenit Fuckwit waged his glorious Three-Hour War against Venezuela, declared permanent victory and preened for the cameras.

now that Maduro — the thieving rat-bastard who had the temerity to steal Donny’s slick dance moves — has been kidnapped from his Caracas home and chucked into some hellhole jailhouse in Brooklyn, I’ll bet Venezuela has become a paradise on Earth. I’ll bet its grateful citizens are throwing flowers at Americans right now, and hailing them as liberators. it’s probably a—

oh dear.

The United States has urged its citizens to leave Venezuela immediately amid reports that armed paramilitaries are trying to track down US citizens, one week after the capture of the South American country’s president, Nicolás Maduro.

how awesome. both the government and citizens of Venezuela are super fucking pissed at us — and are out for revenge. here’s what the State Department posted to Elon’s Nazi Bar and Child Porn Emporium:

lovely. by acting first and thinking never, Donny and his merry band of warmongers have painted a target on the back of every American in Venezuela.

“There are reports of groups of armed militias, known as colectivos, setting up roadblocks and searching vehicles for evidence of U.S. citizenship or support for the United States.”

oh, huh. that seems bad.

how did the shitwits who cooked up the cockamamie scheme to kidnap Maduro not foresee this? they removed exactly one person from Venezuela’s repressive regime — and left everyone else in place. what in the hallowed name of Magical-Thinking Jesus did they imagine would happen? the national guard, the army, the national police, the intelligence service — they’re all still run by Maduro loyalists. did Donny’s flunkies think they could just click their heels three times and all that shit would go away?

it’s so obvious that there was no planning whatsoever for dealing with any of the fallout from their actions. not one of these shit-kazoos bothered to ask ‘and what happens next?’ — it was just ‘grab Maduro and hope for the best.’ and now, as a result, every American down there has to run for their lives.

newsflash: this isn’t reality TV. this isn’t The Apprentice, where the producers could just edit out every disastrous decision of Donny’s, and make it seem like he was some kind of business savant. this is the real world. you can’t hide the dumbfuckery.

look at Little Donny Fuckface. he has no idea that he’s no longer part of some stage-managed entertainment spectacle. he’s still imagining that he can pretend everything is hunky-dory, just by saying so. here’s what he was posting at the same time the State Department was issuing its warning.

“I love the Venezuelan people, and am already making Venezuela rich and safe again. Congratulations and thank you to all of those people who are making this possible!!! President DJT”

on what fucking planet is any of that happening? oh, my dear sweet lord. shitting out hallucinatory nonsense on his crappy app doesn’t make it so.

you look at the collection of oddballs and chowderheads running our government and that famous line from All the President’s Men keeps running through your head.

the truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.’

except in our case, the truth is that these people are complete fucking imbeciles, and everything is getting out of hand. lucky us.

and for what? Venezuela’s oil? ha fucking ha. it’s becoming more clear with every passing day that Big Oil wants very little to do with Donny’s plans to steal all that crude. it’s too expensive to extract.

Paul Krugman has written an excellent post about all of this.

the long-story-short of Krugman’s post is —

    • Venezuela’s oil infrastructure has been fucked to hell, and will take years and many billions of dollars in investment to restore.
    • it would be insane to invest that much time and money in a politically-unstable country.
    • Venezuelan crude is damn near worthless, because it’s difficult to extract and difficult to refine.
    • there’s an oil glut right now. the world doesn’t need more oil.

you can’t explain any of that to Donny. his brain is stuck in the 1950s.he doesn’t want to know that the world has changed. all he wants is for his lizard-brain to be fed. he wants all the power, all the money and all the attention — and now you can add to it all the oil. it doesn’t matter that it’s worthless. he just wants to show it off, just like he wants to show off all the hideous golden tat in the Oval Bordello, and the future Epstein Dance Hall. it’s just another totem of wealth.

and it’s going to be the same deal with Greenland, too, should that clusterfuck-to-come ever happen.

“Greenland’s harsh environment, lack of key infrastructure and difficult geology have so far prevented anyone from building a mine to extract the sought-after rare earth elements that many high-tech products require. Even if President Donald Trump prevails in his effort to take control of the arctic island, those challenges won’t go away.”

as with Venezuela, there’s a reason all of Greenland’s resources remain buried — it’s just too fucking expensive to extract. and in Greenland’s case, it would be an ecological disaster.

Another concern is the prospect of mining rare earths in the fragile Arctic environment just as Greenland tries to build a thriving tourism industry, said Patrick Schröder, a senior fellow in the Environment and Society program at the Chatham House think-tank in London.

“Toxic chemicals needed to separate the minerals out from the rock, so that can be highly polluting and further downstream as well, the processing,” Shröder said.

but again, you can’t explain this to Donny. he’ll just wing a ketchup bottle at your head and scream at you to get it done.

Donny’s destabilizing the entire planet — and destroying decades-old alliances — all because he has a toddler’s understanding of how the world works.

we really do live in the stupidest fucking timeline.

by the way, you have to love this line from the State Department’s warning.

“Venezuela has the highest Travel Advisory level – Level 4: Do Not Travel – due to severe risks to Americans, including wrongful detention, torture in detention, terrorism, kidnapping, arbitrary enforcement of local laws, crime, civil unrest, and poor health infrastructure.”

did your irony detector just start shrieking? mine did — because you can replace ‘Venezuela’ with ‘Minneapolis’ and not have to change one word in the rest of that paragraph.

ace job, you assholes — you’ve turned an entire American city into a South-American-style banana republic.


loyal and patriotic citizens, please stand by for a message of the utmost importance from the President of the United States, Royal King of America, and God’s Own Avatar on Earth.

“The New York Football Giants should hire, without question, John Harbaugh – And John, a great guy, should TAKE THE JOB!!! President DJT”

Christ on a corkscrew, with all the chaos and crises going on — all the result of his own fascistic overreach — this is what Lord Fucksnot is focused on: the hiring decisions of the ‘New York Football Giants.’

that’s it, his brain is cooked. 25th Amendment — now. I’ll take my chances with Couchfuck McGee.


here are your heroes of the day: We the People of the United States of America. massive, peaceful anti-ICE protests took place across the nation yesterday. let’s just briefly sample a few.

here’s what went down in San Francisco.

and in Portland.

and in the rain in New York City.

and, of course, in Minneapolis, the scene of the crime.

thank you, everyone, for keeping it peaceful. Donny and his minions are super fucking horny to invoke the Insurrection Act and declare martial law. we must not give him reasons.


this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.

Vomiting It All Up

Sorry…I’m cleaning out my downloads folder today.

Screenshot

Screenshot
Screenshot
Screenshot
Screenshot
Screenshot
Screenshot
Screenshot
Screenshot
Screenshot
Screenshot

Screenshot
Screenshot
Screenshot

Screenshot
Screenshot
Screenshot
Screenshot
Screenshot

Screenshot
Screenshot
Screenshot
Screenshot
Screenshot
Screenshot
Screenshot

“Fuck You, Make Me” Without Saying The Words

Elizabeth Lopatto, writing at The Verge, “Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai Are Cowards”:

Since X’s users started using Grok to undress women and children using deepfake images, I have been waiting for what I assumed would be inevitable: X getting booted from Apple’s and Google’s app stores. The fact that it hasn’t happened yet tells me something serious about Silicon Valley’s leadership: Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai are spineless cowards who are terrified of Elon Musk.

Lopatto’s outrage and righteous anger are justified, but I think mostly misdirected. Apple and Google — and thus, Cook and Pichai, as the men who sit behind the desks where the buck stops at both companies — are culpable. But this is ultimately not about them, and not about Musk. It’s Trump, as president, they fear. Not Musk. And they are correct to fear Trump.

Year one of Trump 2.0 has crystallized what had become — after decades of deliberate restraint after World War II, and even more so after the end of the Cold War — overlooked. The Presidency of the United States bestows upon its officeholder enormous, unparalleled, power. No one was afraid of Trump after he lost to Joe Biden in 2020. The man was convicted of 34 felonies in a cold New York City courtroom in May 2024, a mere 19 months ago. Trump expected and asked for riots outside the courtroom. He got nothing but pathetic support from a handful of kooks. A year earlier, he lost a humiliating sexual assault civil lawsuit to E. Jean Carrol. Trump, just a year and a half ago, was a buffoon getting his mug shot taken. Today he’s arguing that his power is unchecked by anything other than his own sense of morality.

No other president has ever abused (or, if you support him, wielded) the powers of the office like Trump has. The power and influence of Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai, CEOs of two of the top five companies in the world, isn’t merely superseded by Trump’s power and influence as president. Their power and influence are dwarfed by Trump’s. Any credible argument about how they should act must acknowledge that profound imbalance.

Lopatto, in her closing:

I never want to hear any moral grandstanding from these boys ever again. The next time Tim Cook says “privacy is a human right,” the only possible response is to laugh in his face. I mean, Apple and Google are fine distributing an app that has created an undressed image Grok made of Renee Nicole Good, the mother who was shot by ICE in Minneapolis. How do you plan to defend getting rid of the ICEBlock app while allowing X to generate degrading images of a woman ICE killed? Can Apple and Google even identify their values beyond their commitment to “shareholder value”? What’s your fucking endgame here, guys?

The profound power imbalance here is frustrating. But also terrifying. It’s folly to think these CEOs should steer their companies into direct confrontation with Trump. It would do no ultimate good for Apple or Google to burn themselves to the ground in protest. These men aren’t beholden to shareholders, per se. They’re doing their duty to institutions they’ve devoted their lives to. Companies that are worth preserving and protecting. Perhaps not in your estimation, but certainly from theirs.

But abject obsequiousness — which more and more seems the path Cook and Pichai are choosing — is no more justifiable a response than corporate suicide. The situation is not binary: acquiescence or war. There is a broad middle ground, founded on principle.

Disney’s response to the Jimmy Kimmel controversy a few months ago shows the way. Defend the company’s principles while simultaneously defending the company from Trump’s demented wrath. You can take the position of “Fuck you, make me” without ever saying those words. Objection is not confrontation. Do the right thing and enforce the App Store and Play Store guidelines, and remove X and Grok from the stores. Make Musk object. Make the Trump administration object. Make them defend the indefensible — in public. Make clear why the apps were removed from the app stores and force Musk — and Trump, if he chooses — to argue that those things are A-OK by them. In court.

The judicious path for Apple and Google (and every other U.S. company) may well be to obey the law, even when the law is being actively corrupted. But the correct path is not to obey in advance. Stand behind the law while the law still exists on your side. Disney resisted Trump’s preposterous demand that they fire Jimmy Kimmel without lasting controversy, simply by standing firm in their conviction. Apple and Google could certainly do the same regarding apps that are being used to generate CSAM and deepfake harassment, regardless if the apps are part of the private fiefdom of Trump’s ally Elon Musk. It’s wise for Cook and Pichai to pick their battles. This one, I think, is worth picking. This is a moment when the App Store and Play Store can stand firmly on the side of longstanding and correct societal norms.

[source]