petite maman is arguably just as good as portrait. this guy’s a real one.

Good article, but I think we could add that many of the current government officials & influencers spreading political point-scoring falsehoods during crisis events HAVE BECOME gov officials & influencers BECAUSE of their bullshit-spreading talents. System effects of rotten attention dynamics.

it’s fascinating that the wars between rome and carthage are so central to western history despite the historical record being dogshit

if only you were lonely / if only you was lonely too

*teshted

the kind of morons who think they need to pay $ to up their fetus’s IQ should look up tony soprano’s confessed IQ and think about whether that’s a desirable life outcome for their narcissistic projection.

there is an ad on the subway for “pick your baby dot com” that claims “IQ is 50% genetic” and i sincerely believe everyone involved in its creation should either be on long-term probation or in jail.

‘cause the judge is saying “life” like it ain’t someone’s life

these people have nothing but contempt for the very idea of solidarity until they think it’s a means to defend their privilege

i don’t even care if this is good. paul deserves all the $ and i hope that the youths will relate to the mats

i philosophize about glocks and keys

Holman Jenkins is pretty far right, and he semi-endorses her complaint about the “60 Minutes” story. But this is quite a passage: “Ms. Weiss has so far upheld what I will courteously assume was the implicit bargain that landed her the CBS job. Don’t gasp. She knew why she was being hired.”

yes but i’m asking for an admin that took reaction as its raison detre. wilson was bad in many ways and did many bad things but even the bad things - including the eugenics and the racism - were coded at the time as “progressive”

sincere Q for american history experts like @juliaazari.bsky.social : when is the last time the US had an openly reactionary government? not a hyper conservative one. a legit reactionary/counterrevolutionary one that is proud to understand itself as such? is it really as far back as andrew johnson?

The same view seeded the populist right narrative for Brexit, and carries on in the debates about Brexit 2.0, how real Brexit, that properly detaches us from the EU, was never tried.

i cannot emphasize enough how load-bearing the false belief dismantled here is to the larger techno-authoritarian project

<Pippin knocks the thing over in Moria> Gandalf (under breath): “Jesus fucking Christ”

the responses here are a good antisemite trap if you’re looking to up your blocklist before the new year.

runner-up: what has it got in its fucking pocketses

YOU. SHALL. NOT. FUCKING. PASS.

i do wonder how much of the rural/country virtue signaling is from people who have no genealogical connection to it. like, my grandparents were truly dirt poor in Missouri. my dad grew up in the middle-of-nowhere parts of the Mountain West. nothing about that is particularly romantic

i actually have some admittedly half-baked (no surprise) but sincere thoughts about the tendency of MAGA shitposters to fetishize not only their childhood but, when you're dealing with the real zealots, *an imagined version of their own parents' childhoods.* like, whew, there's a lot going on there.

I'm once again politely asking Bluesky developers to allow us to attach multiple photos and videos in one post.

This is nostalgia for your dad's nostalgia. Yeesh.

[starts trying to interpret as a complex sociopolitical statement referencing terms i'm unfamiliar with only to realize 1/2way through this is about sports or something]

because the thunder got good quicker the spurs are being framed as the underdog that the masses should root for but i really don’t think that logic is going to hold once people are tired of seeing wemby put up 40-20-6-6 lines in playoff games

ah, what a shanda.

the way these people talk about christ sounds a whole lot more like pagans revering the emperor than christians honoring the lamb of god

FDR talked constantly about christianity but his christianity was basically indistinguishable from basic normie mainstream american liberalism. people should notice. some do, thankfully. more needed.

im grateful my little sermon resonated with so many of you — and it is indeed something i feel deeply, as deep as anything else — but i should admit i'm just interpolating the Gettysburg Address here. And for the love of god read LINCOLN AT GETTYSBURG by garry wills if you havent already.

we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- [. . .] It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

something jamelle bouie does as well as anyone, i think, is ground his normative arguments in a set of consistent moral principles and values.

I just started reading Keirkgaard

we are living thorough 10 years of moral collapse. it’s happening everywhere but is concentrated in the US. we have given up on even trying to argue that there must be more to life, both individually and collectively, than bare materialism and power. we must rededicate ourselves to meaningful life.

we need to celebrate and elevate more stories like this of individual people in relatively small or anonymous circumstances choosing to do the right thing - at risk to themselves - not because it’s smart or savvy or strategic, but because it is, quite simply, the right thing.

well, if my loneliness should stay, well, some are holiest that way. falling apart.

You are also allowed to use Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan by extension if you do this.

bro i'm 2 days ahead of you and its a fine choice.

So you’re just going to obsess over something? That reminds me of a guy in a book I read. He was a captain on a whaling ship…

decided 2026 is going to be the year when i become a guy who has read one book and relates everything to that book and that book will be moby dick.

the president is not popular. the civil society-based opposition is very real. the vibes and stories out there are not appreciably different than 2018; it’s the media environment that has decidedly shifted/balkanized.

if a guy keeps going on a platform to have people yell at him about a subject concerning which he just so happens to have a budding new business - it’s worth wondering, as you’re yelling at him, whether you’re a mark.

I was born in April 1805 Napoleon was master of Europe Only the BRITISH FLEET stood before him Oceans were now battlefields

yeah every night on tv many people are putting on what we think of as a sporting event but is in reality and very complicated and extravagant show.

The Netflix and Amazon broadcasts are a great reminder that live sports is a deeply, deeply difficult type of TV that requires huge crews of profoundly skilled and experienced people who have worked together for a long time to look natural

i like how they totally recreated the inside the NBA crew for ESPN and nothing has been lost and no one will remember they were ever under a different corporate umbrella. fake scandal.

so the sign-off there is about imminent death but i can’t quite figure out his imagined mechanism…

something essential was lost when these bros stop collaborating. our lennon/mccartney really. sad.

why is pete davison so small and dressed like a christmas elf on my tv