George Saunders has a new novel on the way! Sad to see Phoenix/Tempe isn’t on the promo tour, but excited for the book nonetheless. He claims it’s his craziest! 📚💙🖋️

On top of the now 78 year drought and the ‘97 and ‘16 game 7s, losing to the team you beat in the regular season, who only made it b/c MLB owners realized they could get more money by letting in extra wild cards, money that they don’t use upgrading the roster, is a dick punch and a half #guardsball

For the record, there already was a Major League III. It stars Scott Bakula and a young Walton Goggins, and it’s incredible. 📽️🎬🎞️🎥 #mlb #guardsball

A Rangers pitcher plunking a guy with the bases loaded to eliminate the Astros is objectively hilarious #Guardsball

Anybody else think of this?

If I was Tylenol I’d rebrand to “Raging Fever Killer,” or RFK for short, and see just how scientific yesterday’s announcement really was

Ooh the #booker shortlist came out today. Who’s winning?

So many people skeeting “I told you so” about the rapture like it’s already midnight

Today, the president of the United States of America said that the country's current pediatric vaccine schedule was "too much liquid... going into that baby" and then issued a decree announcing that anti-fascism is terrorism

The line that gets me is: “I’ve been so into this issue for so many years because I couldn’t understand how a thing like this could happen.” It’s spoken by a man who leads a country with more than a million doctors capable of answering the question.

I don’t know what upsets me most: (1) the announcement itself (2) the realization that now they proclaim to know autism’s cause, they’re going to set their sights on another group of marginalized people (3) they’re going to start blaming neurodivergence on mothers

My son is autistic, largely nonverbal. He reads a lot, is smitten with all things Lego. He excels in school. He finds his ways to communicate. There’s nothing wrong with autism. The rhetoric drives me mad. It’s on us to make the world easier for neurodiverse folks, not to push them to conform.

The baseball gods get distracted by the Browns game. The Guardians immediately poop the bed.

This is a US president *cheering on* the silencing of voices he does not like. It’s hard to think of anything more profoundly unAmerican.

The remarks weren’t “about Charlie Kirk,” they were about how this administration is using Kirk’s death as an excuse to shut down critics … and they responded by proving him completely correct.

Big essay out by @sdileonardi.bsky.social in @publicbooks.bsky.social today, drawing on 100 years of translations and bestseller data to show that the US has seen three waves of translation: European; Latin American Boom; Nordic Noir. And what this means for us. www.publicbooks.org/how-translat...

Pynchon, Atwood, McEwan, Rushdie, Zadie Smith. There are some truly legendary names with new works this fall. Whole list is worth a read! 📚💙🖋️

Is it strange to prefer these long list drops over finding out who wins the actual awards?

Just gonna put out there for the record that assassinating people is bad no matter how much you disagree with them

This AP report about how US tech companies essentially built a Minority Report-style police state for the CCP is a must read. It’s the kind of detail the “things were way worse in ‘68” crowd misses—that today’s institutions possess vastly superior tools of suppression. apnews.com/article/chin...

On the bright side, the Browns performance today confirmed I made the right call not buying Sunday ticket this year

It doesn’t matter if you feed your kids organic foods, MAHA moms. It doesn’t matter if you lift every day, bro. It doesn’t matter how many supplements you consume. When polio, diphtheria, measles, mumps, and whooping cough come a calling, all that matters is if you are vaccinated or not.

wtf is this nonsense? He thinks he can understand kid’s “mitochondrial challenges” just by looking at them? This is an insane person.

You’re not dropping a single, asshole. If you’re actually knew anything, it would be criminal not to reveal it now. But of course, this is a bullshit publicity stunt.

Google appears to be letting AI summarize baseball box scores now #guardians

From now on whenever somebody asks about a book or movie I didn’t particularly like I’m describing it as “too milk forward.”

This is great. Thank you for posting.

they literally fired the people curing cancer

In a summit meeting with the countries that are still nominally US allies, discussing the largest war in the world in 20 years, the largest in Europe in 80, between the largest and the second-largest country in Europe, with geopolitical consequences that will last at least decades:

Name a non-LOTR character who could resist the One Ring. It seems obvious to me…

When Ted Chiang first brought to my attention that Meta had used the archive Book3 to train AI, I looked into the matter and I also looked into what LibGen had at the time, and how easy it was to grab the archive of pirated eBooks. /1

U.S. District Judge Carlos Mendoza in Orlando said in Wednesday’s ruling that the statute’s prohibition on material that described sexual conduct was overbroad. Mendoza, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, also said that the state’s interpretation of the 2023 law was unconstitutional.

I'll say it again, as this is ramping up: if you gave access to the archives of goverment data and information, it is your moral responsibility to make sure that untouched versions get preserved, now. There are people worh archival expertise who can help you, if you don't have it yourself. Start now

PSA: a library card and hoopla app gets you streaming capability, in addition to ebooks and audiobooks. In the past week or so I’ve watched Ken Burns’ The Vietnam War and Big Night. I also read two Jim Shepard novels and listened to How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr. All free!📽️ 📚💙🖋️

"The neural net was troubled, for it had known no man; it had never known scale, nor even touched a TPU."

Word-for-word, it’s been a long time since I highlighted as many passages as I have in Rachel Kushner’s “Creation Lake.” Such gorgeous prose. 🖋️📚💙

Having now flown with my own children I’m surprised the McAllisters only lost one 📽️

Send me patience #homecooking 🍽️ 🧑‍🍳🧑‍🍳

Just finished Ottessa Moshfegh’s “Lapvona” and my instant reaction is: “Holy. Shit.” 🖋️📚 💙📚

Ty Van Burkleo is maniacally laughing in his grave #guardians

also, the enormities of T***pDarkAge are just overwhelming. trying to report on each outrage is just not possible. when focus is one thing--"Hillary's emails!"--media can obsess on a political figure; but T***p is virtually immune to criticism at this point.

I’m calling this agenda the Hate Society until I hear a better term.

I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE. This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined. It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.

If a sitting president can openly muse about arresting and disappearing someone who is likely to become mayor of the country's largest city, while also getting the funding for a massive secret police, it'd be hard to find sufficient evidence to qualify that country as a democracy.

Drew just sent me this

More fake ICE agents doing horrible things. Everyone should be speaking up about this. Masks and no ID required is a ridiculous recipe for horrors. @MarshaBlackburn & @SenJohnson & Sexton should be banning it, not protecting it.

Imagine if the Browns were 4-4 coming off an AFC Championship appearance. I hardly think people would be clamoring for the whole coaching staff and FO to be fired. #guardians

At least MLB has remained liberal in one regard: their interpretation of the meaning of the words: “No Blackouts”

Finally checked out the NYT movies list. I’ve seen 86. Liked a large majority of them, so can’t really take issue with the selections. Biggest miss is “Sideways” IMO. Don’t see any Alexander Payne movies, actually, which is surprising 📽️

“It confers on the reader the best privilege fiction can afford, the illusion of ghostly proximity to other human souls.” - Marilynn Robinson’s blurb for Paul Harding’s “Tinkers.” Even if “AI” gets good at creating this illusion, it doesn’t, and will never, have a soul. 📚💙🖋️