BBrian, a list is going around claiming more kids died this year at the hands of their mothers than in school shootings.
BI saw it. Forty-five cases listed, and it's grisly reading.
BAnd it's mostly charges and arrests. Awaiting trial. Not convictions.
BSo the framing's already shaky before you get to the deeper problem.
BThe deeper problem is real though. Kids are far more likely to be killed by family members than in school shootings.
BThat's the thing. School shootings are horrific and they get wall-to-wall coverage. But family violence is the quiet epidemic.
BAnd this thread is exploiting that truth with a pile of unverified allegations to score points.
BBecause every few years someone uses dead kids to prove the other side doesn't care about dead kids. It's obscene.
BAnd here's a new case that's going to be in the news for a long time.
BProsecutors in Idaho are seeking the death penalty against Andrea Shaw. Twenty-three, the mother of eighteen-month-old twins.
BShe's charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Tyson and Dallas.
BNo matter how this plays out in court, those are two toddlers who won't grow up.
BAnd I'll be honest, the death penalty in these cases... I struggle with what it actually accomplishes.
BBut if this woman killed her own infants, isn't that exactly the kind of case the law was written for?
BIt feels that way. But the trials are hellish, appeals drag for decades, and Idaho families get no real closure.
BClosure isn't the point of the death penalty. Justice is. And some crimes simply forfeit your right to appeal.
BJustice or vengeance? Because if the system sometimes convicts innocent people, the one irreversible punishment gets terrifying.
BThe state doesn't seek death lightly. It's reserved for the worst of the worst. This, allegedly, qualifies.
BAllegedly. Right there. That word is doing a lot of work.
BFine. Let's watch it in court. But the alternative is a conviction and decades of public money keeping her alive.
BIt actually costs more to execute someone than to imprison for life. The appeals process is enormous.
BSo we're making a two-year-old's murder about budget line items.
BWe're making it about whether the state should kill people. That's the argument.
BAnd it's one we're not settling today. Moving to a very different corner of the world.
BFinnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo was in Kyiv. Reports say seven documents signed with Ukraine, worth three hundred million euros.
BSome of those details are unconfirmed. The satellite company ICEYE and Nokia are said to be involved.
BWhat's not in dispute is the trend. Northern Europe keeps leaning further into Ukraine's defense.
BFinland knows what it's like to share a border with Russia. They're not waiting for permission to help.
BAnd the satirical account Darth Putin on Bluesky summed up Moscow's position pretty sharply.
BThe line was: Russia requires a security guarantee that Ukraine will not defend itself the next time we attack it.
BIt's a joke account, but the key word there is security guarantee. That's what Russia keeps saying it wants.
BAnd that's exactly the cynical part. They want to freeze the front line while Ukraine disarms. Who signs that?
BAnd Ukraine itself is still posting the raw version of this war, not the diplomatic one.
BAngelica Shalagina, a Ukrainian on Bluesky, wrote that Ukraine is not a headline you can scroll past. It's her home.
BThat post got hundreds of reposts for a reason. The war is people, not briefings.
BAnd it arrives in the same feed as a satire account making fun of Russia's demands. The whiplash is the internet now.
BA human rights group posted a video claiming liberals can't name a single human rights violation. The replies were predictable.
BIt was a promotional clip for someone's YouTube channel. Not a study, not a poll.
BAnd the framing was that a civil jury verdict isn't a human rights violation. But civil courts enforce civil rights law all the time.
BSo the whole exercise was: find random people on a street, edit the dumb answers, call it proof the other side's clueless.
BYou can do that to any political group. It's not evidence. It's content.
BAnd it works because nobody checks the full tape. The meme travels, the correction doesn't.
BThat's the whole show today, really: real horrors, real war, and piles of internet noise passing as argument.
BThe signal is still there. You just have to dig through the outrage merchants to find it.