Joel Engel
@joelengel
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Long-ago journalist for the likes of the NYT and LAT. Current author/co-author of about 20 books who thinks sarcasm is the highest form of patriotism.
Southern Calif
Joined September 2009
“I’m pardoning my son because he was targeted as the son of the president. And also the pardon is retroactive to seven years before I took office.”.
President Biden grants Hunter Biden a sweeping presidential pardon for any crimes between 2014 to 2024
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This guy is safer walking down the street than Orthodox Jews are.
Now imagine it's 2001 and dude is strolling down the street wearing a shirt that reads "Bin Laden 11."
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@Reuters ACLU, 1977: "We'll take this all the way to the Supreme Court to ensure that Nazis get to march in Skokie, home to thousands of Holocaust survivors.". ACLU, 2022: "It's dangerous to say mean things online.".
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1975: Two assassination attempts on President Ford. in 17 days.
Two Assassination Attempts on a Former President in only Two Months, this is where we are now as a Country.
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@MarlowNYC "Entertainment editor"⬆️thinks you can pick up and move 25,000 acres, with hundreds of million$ in infrastructure, the way you strike a movie set.
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What happens if billionaires stop buying yachts, which are built by middle-class people? Aren't you old enough to remember what happened in the early '90s to sales of planes, boats, and cars that were subject to a 10% luxury tax? It was regular folk who lost businesses and jobs.
This billionaire NFL owner just paid $100M for a "superyacht" with its own iMax theater. I'm pretty sure he can pay my new #UltraMillionaireTax to help the millions of yacht-less Americans struggling with student loan debt.
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@SenSanders And the working-class people who build those yachts are well paid for the job. But because you've never actually earned a paycheck outside government, or met a payroll, you have a microscopically limited understanding of how the economy actually works. Also, you own 3 homes.
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Twenty-five years ago 4 Orthodox Jews sued Yale on 1st Amendment grounds for requiring all students to live in coed dorms. They said it violated Jewish law on chastity and modesty. The school told them to suck it up, and a CT judge dismissed the suit.
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Oh, they'll be sorry when Greta Thunberg shows up. Wait, she's *not* going to China?.
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You have to think that the terror attacks upped the odds of Kash Patel getting confirmed.
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This kid didn't fall through the cracks. He was standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon, waiting for someone to keep him from jumping.
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@realDonaldTrump @JammieWF .Just what I want in a potus: someone who can't see that calling people haters and losers on 9/11 makes him both.
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@HamiltonMusical @BrandonVDixon Hilarious. On one hand, ditch the Electoral College. On the other, be inspired by the man who started it.
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California, the world's 5th largest economy, can't meet its citizens' energy demands.
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Come on, 52% of Americans can't name a single justice.
POLL: 52% of Americans think Justice Breyer should retire this year, only 23% say he should stay on.
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Vin Scully was better at his job, and for much longer, than anyone else has ever been at a job, any job.
Vin Scully, the voice of the Dodgers for more than six decades, whose folksy manner and melodic language made him a beloved figure in American culture, has died. He was 94.
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@JStein_WaPo A blue collar making $75K and struggling to put food on the table and gas in the tank but having to pick up the tab for someone making twice that much?. Working 20 years to pay back your college loans and now being told you're SOL?. Only Liz Warren thinks this is smart politics.
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Of all the weird things that happened this year, the weirdest is that John Fetterman established himself as the most normal person in politics.
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The teachers' union president not knowing basic American history. You can't get more on-brand than that.
The American Revolution was about leaving Britain. If America’s founders questioned slavery there would not have been the heinous “3/5 compromise “ in the US Constitution, which was drafted and enacted AFTER the American Revolution. This is basic history….
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Cops: “Did you try to kill him?”. Perp: “I tried to stab him, shoot him, drown him, bash his head in, and smother him. But he always fought me off and I failed.”. “In that case, you’re free to go. Just don’t do it again.”. “Can I send someone else to do it?”. “Yes, that’s fine.”.
Hi Joe, always good to hear your thoughtful & intelligent contribution to global debates. Israel nullified 99% of the missiles. It’s time for calm heads to prevail to avoid a wider war in the region, and for war-mongering, ignorant & inflammatory twerps like you to pipe down.
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Aspiring comic actors: If you want to master the facial language of fake sincerity, study this with the sound off.
Gov. Gavin Newsom apologizes for attending party at French Laundry: "We're all human. We all fall short sometimes."
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@SenWarren Actually, it would help a lot more if you, as a sitting senator, were to demand that a former senator and SecState be indicted.
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Have been without power all day. But, because we have a gas stove, a natural gas water heater, and a wood-burning fireplace, we’ve been able to cook, shower, and stay warm. The politicians in my state are intent on outlawing all three.
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It would take the median U.S. worker 7 years to make as much as you do for "teaching" 2 one-hour university classes a week. Unlike @elonmusk, you don't employ 1000s of well-paid, highly skilled people, nor do you produce products that people obviously want. You create nothing.
Elon Musk's wealth surpassed $200 billion this week. To put that into perspective, it would take the median U.S. worker 4,815,216 years to make that much.
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Paul suffers from high self-esteem. You could take a thousand random high school grads who know where the period goes in a sentence, and they'd cover the news more honestly than his paper that has been slathering itself in ignominy by pushing narratives instead of news for years.
Someone invented the phrase “citizen journalism” a few years ago to describe amateurs doing the work of pros. Yes, it occasionally works, but probably no more often than “citizen cop,” “citizen attorney” or “citizen soldier.”.
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Old Woody Allen joke: "It was on this very site that Tiffany Moskowitz lost her virginity for the third time.".
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The Los Angeles politicians responsible for road diets are going to be hearing from a lot of angry people who are gridlocked trying to flee the fires.
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"And to show my ironclad commitment to lowering my own carbon footprint, I will not be flying all over the world in a private jet to meet with other leaders to discuss carbon emissions. I will be doing it all via Zoom. Wait, who the hell wrote that? Scratch that last part.".
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Lindbergh flew the Atlantic at 25. It was challenging. Alexander became king of Macedon at 20. It was challenging. Martin Luther King began leading the civil rights movement at 26. It was challenging.
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1971: NY Times runs stories on the Pentagon Papers. Nixon and AG Mitchell accuse the paper of violating the Espionage Act by releasing classified docs. NYT fights the injunction and prevails. 2020: FBI tells Zuckerberg to throttle stories on FB. Zuck says yeah, okay, and does.
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"One-way hallways. Students lunch at their desks. Children could get one ball to play with — alone.". L.A. County parents right now Googling: "How can I begin to homeschool my child?".
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2021 in a nutshell: Eric Clapton is raging against the machine, and Rage Against the Machine thinks he's evil.
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@BRyvkin WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION.by Kamala Harris, grade 4. What did I do on my summer vacation? I did many things on my summer vacation. On my summer vacation, I did many things. Many of them were things that people do on their summer vacation. I did them on my summer vacation.
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1 Per agreement with L.A., developer keeps rents below market for 30 yrs. 2 The 30 yrs ends soon. Developer plans to raise rents. 3 To prevent that, L.A. wants to invoke eminent domain. In unrelated news, L.A. begs developers to build low-income apts.
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All those videos of shoplifters brazenly filling bags and meandering out? You didn't really see them. All those sidewalk "stores" set up with the stolen goods for sale with the original Walgreens price tag still on them? They're mirages.
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Standing on subway tracks. while wearing a covid mask. You cannot get dumber. Can't be done.
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"Their reputation is ruined.". Doesn't matter that Jones Day lawyers spend about 150,000 hours a year doing pro bono work on woke causes, nor that the firm represented Gitmo inmates also pro bono. We're breaking down some norms that we're going to be fatally sorry to see gone.
"No more lawsuits! No more lies!" We're outside the Jones Day offices in Manhattan calling them out for peddling Trump's lies in court. Their reputation is ruined. #DemcracyWon
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@jessesingal @varadmehta At no point in history before now was the sum of human knowledge available instantly to everyone with a few clicks, yet at no point in history were more people more stupid than they are now.
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Uh, Soledad, New York NEVER had an anti-miscegenation law.
Yeah, my mom and dad's interracial marriage was illegal until I was a year old and then--later--they struggled to buy a home in their Long Island community because people didn't want to sell to a Black lady. Good times!
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Banned books for sale in a bookstore are not, by definition, banned. This is getting tiresome.
A few banned books in Judy Blume’s Key West bookstore x
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What's the carbon footprint of a zillion cars stacked up for miles in near-gridlock traffic because car lanes are remade into bike lanes used by 20 people an hour?
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These are dangerous times. Gangs of Boy Scouts are roving the streets, looking for little old ladies to help cross at the light. Be careful!
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@BetteMidler Your bigotry is showing. California has the lowest literacy rate in the nation. WVA's is 10 points higher. California is 12% of the U.S. population but 33% of its welfare recipients. As for OD's, California is rapidly catching up. Please research before tweeting ignorance.
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We (unlike the English) used to be a society that honored successful risk takers. But this is what happens when you make victimization aspirational.
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The @nytimes editorial perspective is built around the notion that the world is divided between people with agency and people without agency who can't be held responsible for the triggers pulled by people with agency.
Note: It is the POSTERS THEMSELVES that "ignited a firestorm," not the sociopaths who are ripping them down.
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If you have a millennial child, and your millennial child agrees with this, you are history's greatest villain.
Millennials would rather give up sex, alcohol than lose Amazon: survey
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Banish gas stoves?. I've been through countless power outages thanks to earthquakes, floods, fires, and wind. Not once has there been a gas outage.
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@RitaPanahi @RQA .In the '60s and '70s, the left complained that the shah wasn't modernizing quickly enough. Now it defends the hijab.
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Amazing that Meryl Streep never heard word one about this.
I was warned from the beginning. The stories were everywhere. To deny that is to create an enviornment for it to happen again.
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People have either forgotten or never knew how the FBI was typically feared/distrusted, thanks to J. Edgar Hoover. Google "FBI black bag jobs.". The trope about his being a cross-dresser became accepted wisdom overnight because he was so hated.
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Remember when we used to be glad that we no longer lived in those obviously backward, superstitious societies that sacrificed people in hopes of appealing to the weather gods, either to make it rain or make it stop raining?.
Florida refuses to acknowledge "climate change," despite streets turning into rivers and @GovRonDeSantis vetoing crucial infrastructure projects in vulnerable communities. Welcome to the Free State of Florida! 🙄.
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Civil War, Pearl Harbor, and the assassinations of four presidents could not be reached for comment.
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@Surgeon_General So you're intimating that if the house is large enough, a sick five year-old should be isolated from her parents? . I wouldn't do that if we lived in a castle, even if my child had ebola. U.S. Monster General.
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"If Rome had had social media, it would've been all over by 50 A.D." -Edward Gibbon.
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@omriceren CNN: Tibet is a "region in mainland China.". Also CNN: "Israel is widely considered to be an occupying force in the territories.".
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Please tell me that surfers who live in the valley but want to surf Malibu have been added to the anti-hate resolution.
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This approach only works with people who can logically talk through their opinions and beliefs. It's not for people can't articulate them but nonetheless demand that you believe the same. Or else.
If I wanted people to change their beliefs about an issue I cared about, and they invited me to a dinner at their home, I would use the occasion to try to persuade them with polite conversation, rather than protesting in a way that angered and alienated them.
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"In my administration," says the man who's polling at 0.0%.
Beto O'Rourke speaks in Milwaukee, WI: "In my administration, we are going to make sure that no one is criminally prosecuted for being a human being."
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@lindastasi @NYDailyNews .Using words instead of bullets = "just as bigoted." Please, lady, seek help. Seriously.
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"But she wonders sometimes why the system seems so broken.". Sorry, but if you have three kids before you can reasonably afford them, it's not the system that's broken.
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Let me be as clear as I can: Your wife enticed thousands of students to go into debt with nothing to show for it.
Let me be as clear as I can: It is unacceptable that millions of college graduates cannot afford to buy their first home.
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Dear Dan Rather,. Remember when you were at CBS and knew something was amiss with LBJ's Gulf of Tonkin explanation but were told to hold your tongue by Fred Friendly, so you did, allowing the juggernaut to proceed? . Thanks for nothing. -Everyone.
Dear Supreme Court, .Thanks for nothing. - Planet Earth.
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Attention @GavinNewsom.
The US has 276 million motor vehicles, the UK 31 million. Electrifying all US vehicles alone would need 18 times current global production of cobalt, nine times the neodymium, three quarters of lithium & half the world's copper & rare earths. China dominates all these markets.
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Having trouble defining irony for your preschooler? Simply explain that a man who voted present 129 times wants to make voting mandatory.
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@SlaughterAM And while we're at it, let us all commit to expect mothers to fix stuff around the house with the same competency dads do.
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@JRubinBlogger You don't have to pay him anything to stay here. You just have to drop the blue check. If not having that objectively meaningless badge and the status you've decided it affords you is more important to you than access to the platform, you'd be telling us quite a bit about you.
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Do you realize you just argued against yourself?
#Didyouknow 61% of perpetrators who killed police officers w guns in WA were prohibited from owning guns but were still able to obtain them?.
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No one thinks journalism doesn't matter. The issue is what journalists do and don't want us to take a gander at.
If you think journalism doesn't matter, take a gander at Harvey Weinstein today.
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Convo 10 years ago with a University of California geologist who, because of his research, had developed quiet doubts about humans' effect on the climate. Me: "What would happen if you published a paper saying that?". Him: "I'd never get another grant."
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@AlexThomp Remarking on her four-month tenure, Meghan said, "The significance of the passage of time, so when you think about it, there is great significance to passage of time. There is such great significance to the passage of time.".
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Am convinced this account is run by free marketers to make Marxism look as idiotic as it is.
Capitalism’s apologists are throwing around economic concepts like inflation, recession, labor shortages, and supply chain shortages to justify ripping off consumers, raising rents, and depressing wages. Don’t ask them to define their terms.
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Arguendo, let's say that's correct. Now explain how the story was illustrated with a photo of a bombed building that was NOT the hospital (which is still standing).
No, NYT didn't botch this. They reported that Palestinians had said it was an Israeli strike, not that it was one. When news is breaking fast, all you can do is report what the key parties are saying. The Times has amended its reporting as the smoke has cleared.
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United CEO concerned that he will be forcibly removed from his seat.
BREAKING: United CEO apologizes for treatment of passenger dragged off plane, saying "No one should ever be mistreated this way.".
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@RealJamesWoods Absolutely not. To go off the rails means he was, at some point, on the rails. And there's zero evidence of that.
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In a world without presidents, who has the power to pardon?
imagine a world without presidents 🤔🌈💕 #WeGotThis.
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Dred Scott's holdout year was a real nail-biter.
Jerry Jones benching protesters reminds @mosesbread72 of Dred Scott: “You're property; so you don't have the ability to be a person first.”.
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@mattbramanti @MelissaTweets You mean people who for 50 years had that money taken out of their paychecks for people who’d had almost that long to accumulate wealth.
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@sallykohn You realize Hitler wanted a war, too, don't you? He declared it on us. Your analysis isn't worthy of a grade-school speech.
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Two reporters walk into a bar. The first one says, "People just don't believe us anymore. We should stop and consider why.". "Nah," says the other. "Yeah, you're right," says the first. "Eff 'em.".
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Why don't you just pay for your wife's anxiety medication and treatment instead?
Has someone put together a list of dem challengers I can donate to to oust republicans in swing districts?.
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@thedailybeast Some critics argued that it was inappropriate for John Hurt to rely on prosthetics and makeup instead of finding another actor afflicted with Proteus syndrome to portray The Elephant Man.
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It's not at all suspicious that you insist Israel stop fighting before the job is completed but never demand that Hamas surrender and release the hostages. Very strange moral compass for an alleged human-rights org.
#Gaza: Calls for a ceasefire – on human rights and humanitarian grounds – are getting louder by the day, and must be heeded. There is simply nowhere left in Gaza for Palestinians to go – @volker_turk.
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"This is a good start, but just think of how much money we can save if we offed everyone over 80.". "Eighty? Why not 70? Hell, 60.". "Say, have you ever seen Logan's Run?".
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Please, lord, let there be video or at least a transcript available to the public.
VP Harris will meet with the CEOs of four major companies developing artificial intelligence to discuss the risks they see in current AI development.
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In 1790, James Madison who'd co-authored the Constitution sat at home in Virginia sipping coffee, pleased at the idea that Virginia and Rhode Island each had two senators, though Virginia had eleven times as many people.
good morning! just sitting here drinking coffee and thinking about how the state of wyoming has two senators and a total population smaller than portland, oregon. hbu?.
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Our children are high stepping around used needles, human feces, and homeless bodies. That’s the mess you’ve made.
It shouldn’t be our children’s job to clean up the mess made by previous generations. They’re inheriting the worst effects of climate change. We must act. NOW.
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Would you have made this public if the man had been Harvey Weinstein?
I merely smiled at a TSA agent and he asked for my phone number. To live life as a woman is to live life on the defense.
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@derektmuller @SoquelCreek Academic friends in the humanities probably know that Lear was performed about the time the quarantine started. It had been written as many as three years before.
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BREAKING:. @SpaceX just managed to catch the Starship booster with the “Mechazilla arms” on their first attempt. A fully reusable Starship is now really close. It would bring the U.S. a strategic advantage is the space industry and make colonization of Mars possible.
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