Cast Iron Brains finds itself somewhat adrift this week, but we manage to sound more or less precisely like ourselves in the process. Language and subject matter occasionally extra salty this week—you’ve been warned!

Here’s Amanda Gorman’s thoroughly optimistic, slightly Lin-Manuel-Mirandian poem from the inauguration.

Here’s the considerably less inspiring Face the Nation interview with Deborah Birx.

New York is running out of vaccine doses.

West Virginia is doing a pretty good job in vaccine distribution, relatively speaking.

Here’s CNN’s Chris Cillizzilliizza, who is OVERPLATFORMED, on Rob Portman’s decision to leave the Senate.

Get a load of this absolutely insane shit from Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who wants to be the governor of Arkansas based on her willingness to fight the CULTURE WAR.

How Raphael Warnock used not-his-dog to win a United States Senate seat, because people really are as dumb as the advertisers think they are.

Ron Watkins, one of the more influential Q-Anon people, thinks that maybe Q was really just all about the friends we made along the way, and less of a global satanist pedophile ring.

Speaking of the world being extremely dumb, here’s a VOX EXPLAINER about the Lauren Wolfe and Glenn Greenwald and New York Times controversy.

The Sunday shows were even more of a bummer than usual, with GOP Senators finally crawling out of their holes to bravely insist that holding Trump accountable for his actions either stupid or unconstitutional. These people are bad. Just bad. Marco Rubio here, Rand Paul here.

Henry Aaron, one of the greatest baseball players—and arguably the greatest hitter—of all time, died. Slate talked to the woman whose job it was to open and read his mail, which was often less than pleasant. The Hammer’s autobiography is worth reading, too.

There was probably more, but you’ve got Google!