When ideological purity and loyalty to the regime displace experience, expertise, and all other considerations: Exhibits A and B

Cruelty cubed

Much has been said about Musk's appalling social media posts. Joyce Carol Oates takes a moment to notice what he *doesn't* post.

Great read: "No matter how unhinged the position you’ve taken, or paid someone marginally credentialed to sketch out on your behalf—“Can Woman Think?: We Investigate,” “Is the Negro a Man: A Reconsideration”—that opinion will...possess all needed evidentiary gravity for the [NY] Times": is.gd/jeMYql

P.S. Say, what ended up happening to Ceaușescu, the corrupt, narcissistic Romanian dictator? Oh, that's right. He was eventually arrested, tried, and executed.

Killing usually requires dehumanizing one's victims. One of the most vital services the press can perform is to rehumanize them. Profiles of some of the Venezuelan villagers recently murdered by the U.S. military at Trump & Hegseth's direction (and the loved ones left behind): tinyurl.com/28m5muh5

Either that or they believe that Islam is an irresistibly attractive religion

Short answer: Lord, let's hope not! Long answer: This is the kind of framing that capitulates to Big Tech (rather than exercising our critical faculties to ask whether we should be buying what they're selling) and that I challenged in this essay (is.gd/acOSmQ) & this podcast episode (is.gd/LOxdlR).

It shouldn’t be forgotten that a big piece of Mamdani’s campaign was simply “cities are cool and lots of people enjoy living in them” which in and of itself dismantles alot of rightwing talking points

"We are at most a few years away from the mainstream media becoming controlled top to bottom, with a few very exceptions, by...right-wing and libertarian billionaires who want quite simply to destroy the idea of the public weal": newrepublic.com/article/2025...

Close your eyes and imagine a leftist's heavy-handed caricature of American capitalism. Now open your eyes.

Let’s hear more of the dangers of democratic socialism under Mamdani

Empathy and compassion personified

The claim that Mamdani is anti-Semitic rests entirely on the idea that well, surely he *must* harbor those beliefs secretly because of his religion. That's an approach that has itself fueled a lot of *actual* anti-Semitism and is deeply dangerous to push.

Jaw-dropping: Of 102 "U.S. government investigations into universities over antisemitism allegations...including 92 that led to the opening of investigations," would you like to guess how many actually concerned criticism of Israel? The answer is 101. tinyurl.com/24ctn8t9

MAGA comes in two versions for your convenience: (1) Those who embrace authoritarianism, racism, homo- & transphobia, sexism that can shade into misogyny, Islamophobia, and antisemitism. (2) Those who embrace all but the last, piously denouncing antisemitism (along with any criticism of Israel).

Middle East Studies Association and American Association of University Professors: report on US govt investigations into universities "According to the report, only 1 of 102 antisemitism complaints the authors reviewed raises antisemitism claims unrelated to criticism of Israel." shorturl.at/xUeBz

To be absolutely clear, by any reasonable moral standard - and according to international law - the Trump regime has the same right to overthrow the Maduro regime that the Maduro regime has to overthrow the Trump regime -- i.e., none whatsover.

Any time you hear people make a dismissive reference to "DEI," take a moment to reflect on what that says about their character and values. Apparently they're opposed to the very idea of diversity (vs. homogeneity) or equity or inclusion. (Or else they just mean "I'm a racist bigot.")

Maybe pundits should spend more time in densely packed, left leaning urban areas where the "real Americans" live

Wow it turns out the entire country is not permanently reactionary because Trump won an election by 1.5%

This imagined defense by Cheney ("What I Got Right About the Iraq War") from The Onion in 2023 ought to run as a sidebar to every obit that's published this week: is.gd/mzdB9j

From @fotoole.bsky.social's essay in the current Atlantic: "The pleasures that Trump offers his followers are sadistic ones, predicated on his invitation to enjoy the pain of others. His happiness is a zero-sum game: 'Real' Americans can experience it only if others are miserable."

This is funny but not entirely off-base. Research finds the moralism of religious people is harsher about breaches of conventional sexuality/reproductive issues than breaches of prosocial morality; "conservative stances toward sex are close to the core of what it means to be religious."

Murdoch stands for only the highest-quality journalism

Why our kids get too much of a bad thing: A look at what the research really says about homework - and why it's regularly assigned anyway, even in the primary grades - on the latest episode of Kohn's Zone: www.alfiekohn.org/podcasts/

Debates over whether "fascism" is an apt descriptor of MAGA policies and "genocide" of Israel's mass killing in Gaza seem to have been resolved less by the quality of someone's argument than by the increasing extremism of the actors, which eventually eliminated any doubt that the term applies.

We can rest easier knowing that the quality of the Washington Post's investigative journalism is equal to the challenges we're facing these days.

That AI is likely a huge bubble in the making - and already rife with risks & harms - doesn't trouble the key players b/c the goal in our system isn't doing good or even doing well; it's winning. Big Tech cos. pursue dangerous nonsense b/c what each most fears is losing market share to its rivals.

You can't make this up.

A new episode of my podcast, Kohn's Zone, just dropped -- "Making Kids Work a Second Shift": Is it time to stop focusing on how much homework kids are assigned and take a step back to ask whether research, logic, and values support requiring any homework at all? www.alfiekohn.org/podcasts/

Last night, some ominously disguised (and probably unemployed) short people came to my door in what appeared to be an elaborate extortion scheme involving a demand for free candy. Fox News is right: The work ethic in this country has been replaced by entitlement, probably due to DEI.

This is a good start, but people should also be free to drive on whatever side of the highway feels appropriate to them.

Can't overstate how fucked up it is that unraveling what is arguably the greatest achievement in the history of humanity is now a motivating issue of one of the two dominant parties in the U.S.

"The Voting Rights Act is the most important piece of legislation in U.S. history...It makes this country a democracy instead of a white, male, apartheid state....American democracy cannot survive the S Ct's attacks on the VRA b/c American democracy did not really exist before the VRA": is.gd/lj1lTH

The right-wing assault on academia in the name of curbing antisemitism is about antisemitism in the same way their assault on immigrants in the name of reducing crime is about crime -- i.e., not at all.

It takes a (depraved) village

Elie Mystal on why the GOP needs the illusion of a Trump third term

So the antithesis of Amazon et al. would be a company that rejected speculative AI in order to preserve jobs?

*cough* kissinger *cough*

In today's example of "If you read about this in another country...."

The Projector-in-Chief has kindly offered a fresh example for my latest essay, "Seeing What Isn't Out There: A Meditation on Various Forms of Projection" (in which I also show how the phenomenon underlies the tendency to anthropomorphize). Read it here: is.gd/O0HzoM

This is exactly the same argument — and, in parts, even the same language — that segregationists advanced to argue that white people had a “right” not to live next to people who were different from them.

Nobel Peace Prize update: Israeli soldier killed, possibly by Hamas. Israel retaliates by bombing residential areas in Gaza, killing 100+, including 40+ children. Area Peace Prize candidate approves. www.bbc.com/news/article...

The assumption seems to be either he doesn't really mean it (in which case why bother criticizing him or calling attention to what he's said) or he *does* mean it (in which case why antagonize him since it's safer to stay on his good side)

Useful chart listing the most invasive apps. Meta products are the worst offenders by far. Full story here: www.pcmag.com/explainers/t.... (Even worse: AI-powered browsers: www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...)

Here's a response to anyone horrified about the number of people who will suffer and even die due to the aggressive ignorance of MAGA's antivax ideology: "Well, not just people." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/s...

We're looking for a few good fascist sociopaths.