AND EVEN MORE CRITTERS
THE PERSON who MAKES the FIRST COMMENT WILL GET TWO CRITTERS
EVERY PERSON WHO COMMENTS WILL GET A CRITTER
RULES IN THE DIARY
WHEN YOU FIND SOMETHING in the DIARY that you LIKE
YOU CAN REPOST IT AS COMMENT in the DIARY
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PostingADiary
CritterHerding
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Does MAGA still adore Trump? Check out the poll numbers after the recent shutdown (which was blamed on the Democrats.)
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That coincided with open enrollment, when many people got a shock that did not bode well for Republicans. Expect Trump’s and Republicans’ poll numbers to drop steeply if ACA subsidies cannot be restored very very quickly.
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Trump isn’t building a ballroom. He’s trying to build a gilded warehouse that will overshadow the historic White House.
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At last, the haphazard sinking of Venezuelan boats is getting appropriate attention.
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But the president is expanding the battle. First he sent a notam to American pilots not to fly in Venezuelan airspace. Now he claims to have closed their airspace to flights to and from everywhere.
And he warns the military to prepare for land war.
Why act as though Venezuela is such a danger to the US?
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in an era with almost no constitutional protections for immigrants. Manufacturing an external conflict in order to invoke it is a textbook Miller tactic: create a crisis, use the crisis to claim extraordinary authority, and then apply that authority to carry out hardline domestic policy goals.
— Alt National Park Service (@altnps.bsky.social) November 29, 2025 at 12:03 PM
Some people theorize that this is his reaction to courts denying his use of the Alien Enemies Act to detain immigrants. That act does not legally apply if the nation is not at war. It may be why he’s trying to create a war.
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But, as MTG points out, he lacks that authority. You don’t have to like MTG to like this.
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In other Republican breaking of ranks, there’s new doubt about the wisdom of converting many government functions to AI.
The populist wing of the Republican Party is beginning to worry that its embrace of artificial intelligence and efforts to shield the tech industry from regulation could backfire, leading to massive job losses that will empower billionaires over the working class.
The warnings from prominent voices within the MAGA world about AI adoption are coming as President Donald Trump works to aggressively expand the industry in a high-stakes race against China. The president this week ordered the nation’s science agencies to deploy AI as part of a broader government-wide effort to remove regulatory barriers for the industry. His administration is also reportedly considering issuing a controversial executive order that would restrict individual states that are tired of waiting on Congress to act from regulating AI. (Huffpost)
You saw that coming. Finally the Republicans see it too.
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Biden built, Trump breaks.
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In 2022, Biden earmarked billions of dollars to help former coal communities. It was the largest investment in Appalachia since LBJ's 1960s’ war on poverty.
But Trump won West Virginia 70% to 28% in 2024. And now he's taking away the funding Biden gave them.
When are they going to learn?
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— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin.bsky.social) November 29, 2025 at 9:26 PM
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We didn’t realize how bad Trump’s Biden-derangement syndrome really is. The first analysis found that he mentioned “Biden” an average of 6.32 times per day. That number has since climbed it’s now just over seven times a day.
— Alt National Park Service (@altnps.bsky.social) November 30, 2025 at 10:02 AM
At least we don’t have to listen to “Crooked Hillary” and “but her emails!” Not as much, anyway.
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In the battle between red and blue gerrymanders, Trump is losing Indiana.
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In the battle to punish blue cities, he’s already doing badly in New York.
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Federal immigration enforcement officials called off a planned raid on Canal Street today shortly before it was slated to begin.
New Yorkers who heard about the raid showed up at the garage where the feds had gathered, and as federal agents tried to leave, the NYPD cleared the way for them.
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— Hell Gate *subscribe today!* (@hellgatenyc.com) November 29, 2025 at 12:34 PM
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He’s bound to get tired of losing.
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He can still write energetic and increasingly wacky social media screeds like this though. No, wait, this one isn’t his.
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Sunday Science
Does a fever kill a virus? Maybe. It depends on the temperature of the fever and the temperature that the virus prefers.
When the team turned up the heat, a key difference emerged. Mice infected with the heat-resistant strain got sick, but those infected with the normal strain seemed relatively unscathed, suggesting the heat itself helped fight off the flu.
"This study reinforces the idea that temperature alone is an important and effective," part of the body's attempt to respond to infection, says Daniel Barreda, a microbiologist at the University of Alberta who wasn't involved in the research. But he says the study doesn't rule out that fever also helps the immune system work better, which could be important for fighting off viruses that aren't as sensitive to temperature as influenza. (NPR)
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On Earth lightning forms in thunderstorms and volcanic eruptions. Does lightning occur in Martian dust storms?
Recently, [Ralph Lorenz] and some colleagues were reviewing audio picked up by the Perseverance rover, a car-size robot that's been trundling around on the red planet since 2021. It's got a microphone, and a few years ago scientists reported hearing the sounds of a whirling dust devil passing over the rover.
Besides the wind and the hiss of the dust, Lorenz says, there was a brief sound of a snap or crack in the middle of the encounter. "We just assumed it was a big sand grain or a small gravel grain just, you know, hitting the structure," he says.
But then the team suspected electrical discharge.
The electrical arcs would feel and sound like strong static electricity sparks, says Chide. If an astronaut was on Mars, it might be possible to see them, although "small discharges are hard to see in strong sunshine, and it's the sunniest times of day that have most dust devils and maybe most of the strong discharge events. (NPR)
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This study may have observed the first direct evidence of dark matter in gamma rays from distant galaxies.
Dark matter was first described in the 1930s, when the Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky noticed that distant galaxies appeared to be spinning faster than their mass allowed. The observations led to the notion of dark matter, a material that neither emits nor absorbs light, but exerts an unseen gravitational pull on the galaxies it surrounds.
One of the many theories of dark matter postulates that it is made from so-called weakly interacting massive particles, or wimps, which are heavier than the protons found inside atoms, but barely interact with normal matter. When two wimps collide, they can annihilate one another, releasing other particles and a burst of gamma rays. (The Guardian)
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Today is the birthday of...
Oliver Winchester (1810-1880) - Founder of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910) - Author who wrote The Adventures of Huck Finn and went by the pen name Mark Twain.
Martha Ripley (1843-1912) - Physician who founded the Maternity Hospital in Minneapolis, MN.
Jane C. Wright (1919-2013) - Oncologist who is credited with using human tissue to test the effects of drugs on cancer cells
Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005) - First Black woman to be elected to the U.S. Congress.
Dick Clark (1929-2012) - Host of American Bandstand.
Abbie Hoffman (1936-1989) - Co-founder of the Youth International Party.
Robert Widlar (1937-1991) - Engineer who invented linear integrated circuits.
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On this day in...
1782 - Britain signed an agreement recognizing the independence of the U.S.
1866 - Work on the first underwater highway tunnel (Chicago) began.
1950 - President Truman threatened China with atom bomb.
1954 - A meteorite crashed through a roof of a house and hits a woman taking an afternoon nap making her the first person to be struck by a meteorite and survive.
1972 - The White House Press Secretary announced there would be no more public announcements regarding American troops in Vietnam.
1993 - President Clinton signed the Brady Gun Control Bill.
1995 - Operation Desert Storm officially ended.
2022 - OpenAI launched ChatGPT.
2006 - Sugaring Off, a painting by Grandma Moses, sold for $1.3 million.
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It’s National Meth Awareness Day. The US Department of Justice still offers a web page of information on meth.
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It’s also Computer Security Day. Here are holiday checklists for securing family members’ Windows PCs or Macs. Or your own.
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It’s Stay Home Because You’re Well Day. When that falls on a Sunday, can we observe it on Monday?
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It’s National Second Hand Sunday. Great timing, too, considering that we’re not buying from Amazon, Home Depot, and Target. What’s your best second hand find?
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It’s National Personal Space Day, a reminder that when you see someone wearing the peach symbol, forego the hug or handshake.
And National Mississippi Day, celebrating the state and the river.
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It’s National Mason Jar Day!
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Also National Mousse Day! Here’s a classic battle of cat and mousse.
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Tomorrow is National Pie Day. (No thank you. I couldn’t eat another bite.)
How was your holiday weekend?
