Thank you Don! Also, for those who are starting their own Admin Nights: Report back please! I'd love to hear how it goes.

Thanks Anna! Admin foreva!

I invented a thing called Admin Night and I've come to recruit for it. Get hip to the tiny obligations grinding us down, isolating us and stealing our time! Wake up to the structural reasons why! Get shit done! Admin Night is fun and funny and helpful! Start your own! www.wsj.com/lifestyle/re...

The Post editorial page may be falling apart, but their coverage of administrative problems in Social Security has been excellent.

The brazenness with which they lie is something that is hard to metabolize, even now

Hear @romanmars.bsky.social and me discuss sludge, sabotage and the state of Fuck It. Bonus life-improving idea at the end!

"Moonlight poured through a hole in the roof, bathing the floor in a pale blue and illuminating a column of dust. In normal life, I struggle to summon visuals in my head; here I was Rembrandt." @chriscolin3000.bsky.social for @nytimes.com: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/m...

Who turned out the lights? (Me.) Thanks to the nature of existence and Seth Meyers slicing blue cheese for the cameos. In this Sunday’s NYT Magazine. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/m...

ICE has been deployed to *provoke* civilians, not to protect them. They want to throw tear gas canisters and get people on the streets riled up, all to create footage for Fox News and Newsmax, et al., that will be used as a pretext for imposing martial law to lower voting rates in Democratic cities.

I confronted Benioff in 2019 about Salesforce not paying taxes, and lobbying for the Trump tax cuts. Maybe he was chipping in for the Nat'l Guard on the side? www.wired.com/story/gospel...

IN!

Thinking today of this old Tobias Wolff story, and a bitter man seeing for a split second all the ways his life veered off-course. www.newyorker.com/magazine/199...

Zillion $ idea: A special edition of the @nytimes.com featuring only boring and unworrisome news, available 1-4am.

Am certified serious grownup, need proper headshot. Otherwise unreserved about sharing this interview I did with the swell @jimrutt.bsky.social, who among other things let me curse on his show.

Just passed a distressed-seeming person walking east out onto the Bay Bridge, on the skinny shoulder. Watched three cops pass. Tried to flag one down, he drove right past. (Then tried flashing lights behind him, nothing.) Got thru to highway patrol and they took down the info. I have questions!

Really good, and really important.

Probably the hottest convo about administrative friction and average handle times you'll hear all day.

Sometimes sludge is an explicit policy, sometimes it’s just a handy confluence of decisions and agenda. When FEMA fires call center workers, people lose faith in the federal government, which is always Trump’s play. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/c...

Call in! You’ll get through — no sludge!

I'm still gathering sludge stories! Wanna talk about your time working at a call center? Or a memorable battle you waged with some sludgy entity? Perhaps there’s a sludge-like phenomenon adjacent to sludge, which I should know about?? Get in touch!

"The bill includes the most aggressive assault on climate action of any legislation in history. In fact, it represents a profound shift in policy. Trump and Republicans are not just ignoring climate change — they’re actually trying to make it worse." — @paulwaldman.bsky.social

Also, special shout-out to the excellent @pamherd.bsky.social and @donmoyn.bsky.social, who kindly let me interview them *while driving* and *while on spring break.*

I wrote about my car, our collective sanity and the state of Fuck It. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Remember all the gun humpers who vociferously attacked any hint of a gun registry? Awfully quiet about a registry with *all* your data.

CONGRATS MOJO!!!

Our flight just landed in Hawaii so shockingly hard that a big piece of plastic broke off over seats, but everyone was so good-natured and relieved to be ok that they just clapped and set about trying to fix the plastic thing.

My child just asked if “in” is short for “inside.” Not gonna google it, just gonna enjoy it.

now that they’ve finally won will they at least tell us what was under bush‘s suit jacket during the debates?

I feel like we need to form a League of Relatively Normal People, and our agenda should be things like: --Canada's cool, leave them be --Lot of smart people at universities, that's a plus --We're scared of getting cancer, so let's research it --Fewer floods and wildfires would be nice

These fuckwits can't even do bigotry right

WTF is happening? What do we do about it? (Also: Sup with book no. 2?) I sat in for José Andrés on his podcast this week, and got candid with the excellent Samin Nosrat. If you're in the mood for some wise words about this moment we're in, click da link. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...

Put signs like this everywhere

Look at all these beautiful people! Lines along both side of the street. Chanting, honking, drumming. There were only 6 ppl here 2 weeks ago! Tesla protest Brooklyn. @bkindivisible.bsky.social @indivisible.org @teslatakedown.com #teslatakedown

I don’t know what’s weirder, claiming to do this or doing this.

I’ve said this before and I will probably say it again, but we forget so easily that everyone from history we look back on as the face of some movement had something else they wanted to do with their lives. I think every day about the fact that all Fred Hampton wanted was to play for the Yankees.

Call your rep. Demand a town hall. If they’re GOP and won’t give one, invite a Dem to your district in their place. Congressional switchboard: (202) 224-3121

Always glad to have Clara in fight club

very good dog interviewed (thru spokesperson) by @clarajeffery.bsky.social

protest at tesla, san francisco. come on out bay area! forgive imperfect signs! solidarity!

Possibly narrow reason to get back into social media but doesn’t it look like mid-‘80s Jonathan Richman found his way into a NYer cartoon?

We're hitting the 5-year mark on Covid. Did a story for @99pi.org about the fight to remember the pandemic, but also memory in general and privilege and disenfranchised grief and yeast. Sad but also funny! Safe 2 click! 99percentinvisible.org/episode/dont...