Matthew LaPointe

@matthewlapointe.bsky.social

354 Followers 161 Following

Runner. Occasional triathlete. Sci-comms / web / marketing @jcvi.org. Views my own.

NY Times headline: White House Will ‘Definitely’ Host a U.F.C. Fight on July 4, U.F.C. Head Says The event would take place on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Screen shot of Drudge Report home page. Pictured: National Guard in front of White House. Headlines read: TRUMP'S AMERICA FEDERALIZED POLICE DEPLOYING TROOPS ON DC STREETS MAYOR SLAMS NYC, LA, CHICAGO NEXT? WIDESPREAD DISCONTENT AMONG GUARDSMEN PENTAGON PLANS 'REACTION FORCE' FOR CIVIL UNREST
Screenshot from article that reads: Maxwell, 63, is currently serving a 20-year sentence at a low-security prison in Tallahassee and is the only person serving time behind bars for Jeffrey Epstein's child sex crimes.
I used to downplay how much I cared about running. Not because I didn’t care, but because I did. A lot. Like, build-my-life-around-it care. Plan-my-weekend-long-run-first care. Spend-more-on-gels-than-groceries care. And caring too much felt dangerous, and extremely silly. How do you explain to your adult friends with mortgages, toddlers, and diversified investment portfolios that you’re trying, sincerely and earnestly, to be slightly above average at jogging through the woods in a hydration vest that smells like fermented gummy bears?
From the New York Times "The Morning" newsletter: Trump compared Russia and Ukraine to kids in a meeting with Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany. “Sometimes you see two young children fighting like crazy,” he said, adding, “You’re better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart.”
It came just in the nick of time for Mr. Walczak, sparing him from having to pay nearly $4.4 million in restitution and from reporting to prison for an 18-month sentence that had been handed down just 12 days earlier. A judge had justified the incarceration by declaring that there “is not a get-out-of-jail-free card” for the rich.
Screenshot from the article: Carroll says, for troops, seeing leadership share attack plans in advance on Signal but so far suffer no consequences is toxic to morale. But that double standard is so common, he adds, that there's a phrase for it in the military: "different spanks for different ranks." Carroll points out examples from both political parties where senior officials' mishandling of classified information went mostly unpunished: Hillary Clinton, Sandy Berger, President Joe Biden; Richard Armitage, former Vice President Mike Pence, and of course Trump. But several current and former military prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed there is no precedent for a secretary of defense willfully divulging operational plans against a hostile military force in real time.
New York Times screenshot headline: Hegseth Said to Have Shared Attack Details in Second Signal Chat. The defense secretary sent sensitive information about strikes in Yemen to an encrypted group chat that included his wife and brother, people familiar with the matter said.
Speaker Johnson doom scrolling Drudge.
Truth Social Post from from Trump on January 26, 2023: "IF I WERE PRESIDENT, THE RUSSIA/UKRAINE WAR WOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED, BUT EVEN NOW, IF PRESIDENT, I WOULD BE ABLE TO NEGOTIATE AN END TO THIS HORRIBLE AND RAPIDLY ESCALATING WAR WITHIN 24 HOURS. SUCH A TRAGIC WASTE OF HUMAN LIFE!!!"
Headline: Trump isn't attending dignified transfer of soldiers who died in Lithuania...Instead he'll be attending a LIV Golf dinner reception in Florida.
Oompa-Loompas-orange Trump at mic.
“I think they should make sure it never happens again. I wish they’d tell us, ‘It will never happen again.’ It’s the first strike in the early stages of an administration,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “Don’t let it ever happen again.” “I don’t know how many strikes you get. In baseball, you get three. Maybe this is worth two,” he added. “If mistakes like this continue to happen, we’ll deal with them as it happens. My hope and my expectation is that it won’t.”
There is not an officer alive whose career would survive a security breach like that. It would normally result in instant consequences (relief from command, for example) followed by a comprehensive investigation and potential criminal charges.
Screenshot from a Washington Post email declaring "Trump has a plan to remake the economy. But he’s not explaining it very well."
Trump behind the wheel of a truck at the White House in his first term making the face we all make when looking at him.
The Daily Telegraph had its own cameo moment in the secret talks. Its stringer in Pakistan, MFH Beg, spotted Kissinger at Islamabad Airport being smuggled on to a Pakistani Boeing 707 with Chinese navigators and headed for Beijing. He put through a breathless call to the editor, who spiked the scoop of the year, thinking Beg must be drunk.
“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit,” Musk said. “There it’s they’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.”
Photo of a Virginia "special" license plate for Elon College with the plate number "GOELON". Caption under the photo reads: Reader submitted photo: After we published a story about Tesla owners feeling buyers’ remorse, Fairfax resident David E. Scango — who’s proud of his alma mater — sent in this pic of his license plate (on his Honda) with this brief note: “Please people — read the whole license plate before giving me the finger!”
Screen shot from the DOGE.gov website that reads: Savings Let's balance the budget! DOGE's total estimated savings are $55 billion, which is a combination of fraud detection/deletion, contract/lease cancellations, contract/lease renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings.
Screenshot of an email soliciting you sign a Valentines day card to Trump to show how much you love him.
Text that reads: “These unlawful injunctions are a continuation of the weaponization of justice against President Trump," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Tuesday.
Ben & Jerry's Cool Britannia ice cream container.