One of the writers best explaining Trumpism right now is not a full-time writer, but @donmoyn.bsky.social, an academic and professor. The Times should give him a column. But for now, you can read his great stuff via his newsletter. Another sharp piece here. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/purge-merg...

Back to Graham Greene again for my #sundaysentence this week: "Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in the human situation."

The future of AI

She’s the best.

"no more superficial individual expression"

Judge Young is (rightly) horrified by masked ICE agents - but he also finds them cowardly:

You know, Toni Morrison said, “Absorbing the lies, untruths, both transparent and nuanced, of governments, their hypocrisy so polished it does not even care if it is revealed, can lead to a wearied and raveled mind.”

Climate-stressed fault system to join struggle in war-torn PDX?

> @macfarlanenews.bsky.social

Hahaha! I already can’t imagine a world in which I ever sign up for Disney again

It’s likely that this happened to them, in which case, again, this should be much bigger news. We can’t just disappear thousands of people without notifying anyone www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

More than 1800 detainees are missing after the closure of Alligator Alcatraz. Their families and lawyers can’t find them and they’ve vanished from the ICE database. Feels like this should be a much bigger story www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

It's not the corruption. it's the low sum. 50k? russian street level punk money. So? Racist, corrupt and stupid, classic Trump team

Where the separate divisions of ANTIFA landed on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944:

These are precedented times and the precedent is a loud ass warning www.nytimes.com/1939/02/04/a...

BREAKING: Eric Swalwell just told the FCC chairman to hire a lawyer and preserve records because they will be held accountable in 2027 when democrats take the House. Oh and he’s wearing a Jimmy Kimmel hat.

Horrible but useful distillation of blackpoll/groyper ideology

Huh an awful lot of rhetoric shifted from Old Testament to New Testament over the past few hours

Checking literary references on Wikipedia this morning…

“awful people don’t deserve to be killed, but they don’t deserve to be praised, either” is apparently a thought too complex for the pundit mind

Enough.

his father was unavailable for comment

I don't want to start a thing so I'll just say that there will never be a good argument for privatizing USPS. That would be like privatizing libraries. The aim of services isn't to be run for profit, they are for serving the greater good, which USPS has been extremely successful at.

My god…

This is “we’re a republic not a democracy” logic

Natalie Shapero

[stares in developmental pediatrician]

Among all the other things, "The President has screwed things up so badly that the world's other rich countries won't deliver mail to us anymore" really should end it immediately.

Madeleine Thien’s beautiful threshold, The Book of Records. www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/738431...

Soldiers in MRAPs rolling around Union Station—blocks from the Capitol—seems silly, performative, and useless. But it raises a much darker question: What would Trump have done on Jan. 6, 2021 if he had possessed then the kind of control over local law enforcement that he seeks to acquire today?

Can’t believe Neil Young outlived him. I always assumed it would be… (puts on sunglasses) ..Neil before Zod.

This right here. My blood boils just thinking about it.

One of the things about this strain of the Canadian right is they aren't original thinkers in anyway. They are derivative of the US and will echo whatever MAGA talking points or slogans.

Buried in the regime's political takeover letter of the Smithsonian is the worst bit. Unlike exhibits, which are non-destructive towards primary materials, temporary in nature, and reversible, the foundational collections are irreplacable. They want to be able to throw stuff out.

While we’re still figuring out life on Earth, Voyager 1 is 15 billion miles away, cruising on 69KB, an 8-track, and 1977s Fortran like it’s nothing.

Ignorance is how we got here. Sigh.

For those who wondered just how much gaudy gold garbage could fit in one room.

This whole thread, exactly. Same with writing fiction—there’s no secret password, there’s only doing the work, reading and thinking, making the thing better. (And AI offers nothing that can help you make art; it can only summarize Proust, which we’ve been making fun of for quite some time.)

One miracle lifetime on a planet of abundance in a void of nothing, all to ask a data center to summarize an email thread and then generate your response? For this we left the sea? For this we developed language and spirituality? But the grass still grows and there are still crickets, I guess.

This is the way.

Unexpectedly good politics from Thomas Kinkade's family! www.kinkadefamilyfoundation.org

I think the really important thing about the "trans sports debate" is that it's NOT REAL, the things that people are fearmongering about are NOT REAL and are NOT HAPPENING. Cis women are not competing at a disadvantage against trans women, cis men aren't transitioning to win at sports, IT'S NOT REAL

"In every human Breast, God has implanted a Principle, which we call Love of Freedom; it is impatient of Oppression, and pants for Deliverance," —Boston poet Phillis Wheatley *from the book Democracy Awakening by Heather Cox Richardson

The thing this is exactly the kind of thing Trump would think was funny. He loves “secrets.” He also cannot help but talk about the illegal things he does. And, especially years ago, he really believes he’s clever. Vile.

Shouting the quiet part to the rooftops.

The Catholic Church is authorizing parishioners to indefinitely skip Mass out of fear of ICE raids😕

One Year Later: Rioting continues unabated for the third straight week after fighting broke out between Nominalist and Platonist prison gangs over the metaphysical existence of ideal forms.

1 in 4 nursing homes will shut down. Who will take care of all those people? Are you ready to do 24/7 home heath care for your aging parents and grandparents? This is what the Republicans are putting on us.

Someone tut-tutted me recently for being unhelpfully alarmist when I predicted that AI use would lead to psychosis. Anyway...