The US, never close to a paragon, is in an accelerating moral decline. We're murdering & funding the murder of civilians, many children, in multiple countries. Now people discuss nuclear strikes with more dark exhilaration than outrage. Morbid & possibly terminal symptoms.

Just to say it clearly: no war with Iran! Hands off Iran!

Evergreen, sadly

Usually when people say "history will judge you" I fear they are coping rather than making an accurate assessment, but I genuinely think Wim Wenders has deservedly done long term-damage to his reputation with this cowardly, hypocritical statement about politics and film. 📽️

"You raise your voice, I erase your voice." ICE in Minneapolis are erasing your rights. Please share our new video of what's happening in our city. youtu.be/W1dyNcRGRXY

You have to read this. Firsthand affidavit from one of the women who was there and recording the video. She talks about how Alex Pretti was directing traffic when she arrived. She watched him be killed in front of her. She's afraid to go home, worried she'll be arrested.

No one has full answers but two immediate paths forward in my mind: 1. Do everything possible across the country to build on the solidarity and momentum from the Minneapolis general strike. 2. Maximum pressure on Senate Dems not to vote to fund ICE.

Alex Pretti "used to tell people off when they made sexist comments to female physicians. He bought me coffee when I had a really bad day as an intern...I laughed alongside him daily. He made a point to teach medical residents without judgement, but with a smile on his face and a joke."

Alex Pretti was a colleague at the VA. We hired him to recruit for our trial. He became an ICU nurse- I lover working with him. He was a good kind person who lived to help and these fuckers executed him. White. Hot. Rage.

7 House Democrats voted to fund an agency that murders people in the streets and then disappears witnesses.

The killing of Akhlaq by a gang of far right men on the mere suspicion of having beef was enough to be front page news in 2015. Now these attacks are just another entry in the crime section, with hardly a reaction let alone outrage.

Witnesses are being taken to Whipple. From a lawyer friend: “They’re trying to keep local PD and BCA from getting statements and confiscating any phones with video.”

Tim Walz just isn't up to the moment. He's the governor of the state. He could be using the state police to arrest the murderers, deploying the national guard to push out ICE. Anything other than just begging on X.

Bubbles is tiny and a bit scared of the crows that hang out near our window, but she does enjoy getting up close and personal with a game of Wingspan.

I knew about some of the problems and chicanery with specific "nature vs nurture" separated twin IQ studies, but this is a good layperson's summary laying out that the entire approach is a useless dead end. davidbessis.substack.com/p/twins-rear...

Typical Nazi behavior.

Stunning photos from Minneapolis, including this one by John Locher for the Associated Press. www.theatlantic.com/photography/...

Tangential to Ford's latest screw-ups, but I was recently trying to explain to an Indian friend how brand loyalty to Ford vs Chevy (or I guess Dodge) was a major divide in my region of rural America & a load-bearing part of identity/self-conception for a lot of men, & the friend was quite bemused.

I totally get that there is no such thing as an "authentic," unmanipulated photograph. But I think we can just admit it's deceptive to say stuff like this is "on 35mm" when it has clearly been heavily digitally processed.

For #BirdOfTheDay theme #LongBeaks here's a tiny sunbird showcasing his. #Photography #Nature #EastCoastKin

While accepting a screenplay award for SINNERS, Ryan Coogler spoke about FRUITVALE STATION, Oscar Grant, and Renee Good 📽️ www.sfchronicle.com/entertainmen...

Three drunk college kids just walked past my place at midnight, loudly singing the Hindi version of "We Shall Overcome" while one of them accompanied (quite deftly) on a harmonium. Good shit.

So why doesn't Frey instruct the Minneapolis police to arrest the ICE officers involved then?

This is going to be WILD. No idea how you adapt this to film but if anyone can... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Bur...

Having marveled at the witty dystopian wildly imaginative worlds of Sorry to Bother You and Mr Burns (in a San Francisco A.C.T. production) I have to say, Boots Riley is the perfect person to adapt Anne Washburn’s play for film

Yay! Congratulations! @mirzawaheed.bsky.social is a compelling narrator of fiction set in India-Occupied Kashmir. His stories deserve wide audiences.

Cool news! I saw Mr Burns premier in 2012 at Woolly Mammoth in DC, and it was already bracingly original & compelling, despite a loose 2nd act. Haven't read the latest version, but it seems like a great fit for Riley's comic, Brechtian, agitprop approach. 📽️ #TheatreSky

Stumbled on this photo essay from last year about eagle hunters in Kyrgyzstan, and spent a very enjoyable half hour with it. magazine.atavist.com/2025/the-eag...

The fact that Deepinder Goyal keeps posting long, AI-written screeds claiming the delivery worker strike was a failure, makes clear that investors are nervous and Zomato/BlinkIt are feeling the pressure. People are realizing their current business model is built on exploitation.

The US attacks on Venezuela that appear to be happening right now are unprovoked, illegal, immoral, and outrageous.

Today's the day

Okay this might be the funniest "dead person taught me it was okay to be weird" post to me personally. (To be clear I don't really care and will be still be enjoying Chappell Roan's music.)

In news that touches on several small personal obsessions, Jacqueline Rose is apparently working on a novel about Gillian Rose and Edith Stein. www.waterstones.com/book/two-wom...

Vaishnavi Rathore was the first journalist to report from the ground about the contentious project’s environmental and social implications. Read more: scroll.in/latest/10896... #journalismaward

Glad to see Kochi Biennale tickets are still relatively accessible for most at Rs 200/100 for students & seniors. Meanwhile Art Mumbai was Rs 1,700/707 and India Art Fair is Rs 1,800/800. Or that price gets you exactly one (1) Kusama Infinity Room at the NMACC.

Please don't cross the picket line during the planned pan-India gig workers strike on New Year's Eve. Delivery workers face horrible working conditions, the demands they are making are incredibly reasonable, and they deserve everyone's solidarity. www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/g...

Happy to say Pitchfork is absolutely correct that Los Thuthanaka is the album of the year. Obviously lists are subjective exercises but something this visionary, danceable, politically incisive, and technically innovative makes the choice quite easy. pitchfork.com/features/lis...

Interesting thread on the risks of assuming everyone shares your cultural context. As a sidenote, I feel like I rarely see anyone reading or talking about CJ Cherryh, even though (again, it seems to me!) so much modern sci-fi is shaped by her sociological approach to world-building.

This highlights a big problem I have with my disillusionment with Indian Cinema, which is that you barely hear about a lot of it.

There are 6 programmes, in three of which, scientists are using AI to speed up tasks. The usage of large datasets and machine learning in drug discovery isn’t new. But the headlines make it seem as if ChatGPT is going to suggest new drugs. Why are we doing this? www.gsk.com/media/jtkdl5...

hey instead of reading and sharing some book that sucks by a woman in love with an insane corpse who neither deserves nor needs the coverage, why not instead buy and read MY book. due to me being normal simplicitybook.xyz

My watchlist of Indian movies keeps growing, sad to say. Some of them like Sthal and Kudumbasthan are available on platforms like Zee5 (which I don't have) but I've been struggling to find others: Feminichi Fatima, Victoria, Agra, etc. Want to watch Muthayya too but it's only on ETV 😕 #desisky

Kanu Behl (director of Agra) today shared a joint statement from many Indian indie filmmakers about how access to independent films is actively suppressed in India. Great to see them speaking out; the PVR-Inox monopoly has been terrible for distribution, and the OTT platforms aren't much better. 📽️

Had a lovely meal at the women-run Mahim Koliwada Seafood Plaza, which just reopened post-monsoon. Great view, inquisitive but polite cats, and excellent fresh crab, prawn, pomfret and many more. Worth a visit!

Meet the new "Clean Coal."

As transparently fake pretexts for wars of aggression go, this might be even more obviously ridiculous than "weapons of mass destruction," which is really saying something.

Incredibly stupid and incredibly telling that — as the Epstein emails reveal Trump's links to man who sex trafficked young girls — liberal social media is flooded with homophobic jokes aimed at Trump.

Teltumbde argues that bureaucratization of caste hinders its annihilation. Fine to disagree, but today I've seen him called "RSS stooge" & "boot licker of upper caste." That's outrageous, given he was until recently a political prisoner, which he endured w/courage & moral clarity

I envy the fresh-faced innocence of anyone who believed these threats even for a second.

Rough day to be any sort of survivor of sexual violence. Solidarity to all of you, please be kind to yourselves