My phone: 🤖"Earthquake detected! Expect shaking soon."

Me: Huh?

All of the land in Northern California:

👩🏽👨🏼🧔🏿‍♂️"Mekka, are you getting out of the swimming pool soon? You've been in there for 4 hours. You're getting all pruney, and we're all going to dinner soon."

🧔🏿‍♂️"Never!"

👩🏽👨🏼🧔🏿‍♂️"Bro, get out."

🧔🏿‍♂️"No! Mekka will never give up the pool again!🤡"

👩🏽👨🏼🧔🏿‍♂️*Whispering* Why is he like this? Is this a US thing?

Can we get back to not being such a weirdo country soon please?

I can't keep getting cooked in the group chat like this.

"America will never give up the moon again.🤡"

What an embarrassing statement.🤦🏿‍♂️

What a scathing indictment of the childishness and futility of an anti-science nation being in a space race.

What does "give up the moon" even mean?

Other countries sending scientists while we angrily hug a moon flag.

@mekkaokereke

Reminds me of too many debates about racism in Germany.

"Nazis are racists. I am not a Nazi, therefore I am not a racist!"

@mekkaokereke Wow, that is small. 139 inches! I thought my kiddo's Veloster (166 inches) was wee.

Perfect about town car, and EV is exactly what you want for that.

edit - oh, I was looking at the dimensions of the first gen. Latest gen is 166 inches, too. That's small, though. Veloster looks ridiculous parked in a garage.

@mekkaokereke my dream vehicle/form factor is an electric Kei truck with a bed that can just hold a full sheet of plywood.

Small enough to commute to work as needed but can carry the home owner/woodworking hobby stuff I want

I don't need it to haul a yard of mulch or whatever. Just me, a passenger, and some stuff in the bed as needed

I didn't need a Sherman tank sized vehicle for that

@mekkaokereke @johnefrancis @jeffmcneill

You know, that is exactly what I'm thinking! 😎

@mekkaokereke My BYD Dolphin cost 569,000 Thai Baht. That is around 17,500 USD. It is a compact car (not subcompact) and it is a joy to drive. Why does a decent electric car cost nearly twice that in the US? Clearly they've lost the plot.

This car costs $8500. Not a typo. Less than 10 racks. And you don't have to put gas in it.

But we can't have it in the US, because we'd rather have racism and argue about solved problems like birthright citizenship, and should Black people be allowed to vote.

So you get Cybertrucks instead. Enjoy!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZqRnLp_htE

@mekkaokereke
Related to your point, here's a good follow-up article on some of the fired workers from #EHRP and #HammerAndHope.

https://economichardship.org/2026/03/what-happened-to-black-women-trump-purged-federal-work-force/

@mekkaokereke yes, and the more we say "well the rest of the world is like this and I can't fight them" the more likely we are to let ourselves be like that.
Whether it's racist, greedy or whatever, what we expect and tolerate from other people becomes what we expect and tolerate from ourselves.

@mekkaokereke ‘Some Top Democrats’ believe that the only viable strategy is to alienate the voters who most support them in pursuit of voters who will never support them…

@mekkaokereke I suggest Alex White if you’re looking for a cool transfem nonbinary author with excellent world building and big spacey stories, including some Aliens books and original series.

@mekkaokereke In the Wisconsin Democratic primary race that's shaping up here, the two candidates leading in early polls are a Black man and an Asian woman

It's remarkable how many nice white progressive homeowners in steadfastly liberal Madison WI have expressed to me (I think in foolish hope I accept such confessions) how good their policies are, how they like what they are saying...and how they have concerns about their electability because out there in the red rural there is a lot of racism

Periodic reminder to white Democrats:

You can't fight racism by adding racism upstream from the original racism. That's just more racism.

And that's not the GOP being racist. That's you being racist.

And you make more people racist. Because some other fool will try to be upstream racist from you.

@mekkaokereke When we first moved to Silicon Valley from Canada, we chatted with a woman in a Meno Park park ... the subject of schools came up and she boasted about how they had been able to set the elementary school district boundaries to keep East Palo Alto out. Not quite KKK hoods, but close. (There's racism in Canada if course but more discreet)

@mekkaokereke I saw a lot of this in 2019 and 2024 when people argued that a Black woman couldn’t win because people wouldn’t vote for a Black woman. “Other people are racist. I’m not, I’m just saying.” It’s circular logic.

Racism persists in the United States in 2026, because most people don't even know what it looks like.

Everyone's looking for some mythical hyper-racist person with a klan hood and a burning cross and Nazi tattoos, yelling the N word repeatedly.

But racism is not that. It's this.

If I say, "Black people in tech face racism." you can tell people I said that.

But if you use that to write an article saying "Some tech leaders' strategy: only hire white men.🤡 The conversation spilled into the open when Mekka said that Black people in tech face racism."

We will have a problem.

The article framing is trash because it tries to use Michelle Obama and Jim Clyburn's Black faces to launder the super racist idea that we should strategize against the Black woman that is leading in all the Dem polls because she is not a white man.

They did not say that. That is not their strategy.