‘Were you thrumming with anticipation for last night’s big Freedom 250 rally, checking your local TV listings to make sure you wouldn’t miss a moment of FBI Director Kash Patel’s pretend country star girlfriend bellowing out the national anthem?

Of course not, because no one watched this thing. Hell, no one even attended this thing. Even The Washington Post, which keeps kissing President Donald Trump’s ass, couldn’t spin this.

“The crowd thinly covered an area about the length of the National Museum of American History, smaller than some summer outdoor movie screenings,” it reported….’ (Lisa Needham via Daily Kos)

‘Adesultory, grievance-filled speech on what should have been a joyous occasion. The last-minute cancellation of a rare bipartisan bill signing in favor of yet another push for doomed, unpopular legislation. A loud confrontation with members of his own party followed by sneering remarks about some of the nation’s oldest allies. And a nonsensical accusation that, if we have it right, blames the algae-filled Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool not on his rushed renovations but on knife-wielding vandals … and maybe Barack Obama.

And that was just yesterday….’ (Jonathan Lemire via The Atlantic)

‘“We’re done being treated like shit.”…’ (Will Sommer via The Bulwark)

‘There is a quietly shocking idea emerging from modern neuroscience: the end of consciousness might not be a slow fade to black, but a sharply timed neurological event. Not just a vague moment when “the lights go out,” but a measurable shift in brain activity that marks the final instant when subjective experience is still happening. It sounds almost sci‑fi, yet it is grounded in real operating rooms, EEG traces, and patients hovering at the edge of anesthesia or even death.

What makes this even more gripping is what appears to happen right before that cutoff: brief surges of highly organized brain activity, strange patterns that look less like shutdown and more like an intense last burst. Are these patterns connected to the final fragments of awareness, or are they just the nervous system’s last mechanical twitches? Scientists are not all in agreement, but the clues they are uncovering are starting to narrow down both the timing and the texture of our final conscious moments….’ (Sameen David via discoverwildscience)

‘People Are Convinced These 30 Catastrophic Events Could Reshape Society Over The Next 10 Years, And Their Reasoning Is Terrifyingly Valid. “Society is absolutely not psychologically or legally prepared for that level of epistemic chaos.”…’ (Lily Grossinger via BuzzFeed)

‘The former director of national intelligence — and MAGA member — allegedly took orders on politics from her guru…’ (Heather Digby Parton via Salon.com)