The only true thing Christopher Rufo has ever said was when he lamented a few weeks ago that conservatives were deluding themselves that their on-message alternative to the Bad Bunny Super Bowl Halftime Show was better than the real thing.

Sheriffs across the country make it a point to publish booking photos of every person they arrest and they run them in the local paper.

The Onion’s 2026 Oscars Best Picture Guide https://theonion.com/the-onions-2026-oscars-best-picture-guide/

I can't even find the words to express how repugnant and despicable this post is. People who spew such Islamophobic bile don't belong in the United States Congress. The job of elected officials is to combat hate, not fan its flames. (1/2)

The Strait of Hormuz is open for transit.

Jesus this is insightful banger after banger.

The radical anti-tax activists have driven up our national debt to make themselves richer. It's the same playbook private equity has used to get rich killing companies. It is time to build our future instead of looting it: bethfordemocracy.com

Just so we're all clear, this is a war crime and would be punishable by life or death under U.S. law.

One of my high school classmates came out not long after Caitlin Jenner did, around the same time as Tangerine and Transparent. Having these figures and stories visible on a national level really moved the needle in ways that can be neither measured nor overstated.

One of the problems in a concentration camp regime is that institutions tend to respond to authority the way they always have, and are often incapable of shifting gears to acknowledge in any panoramic way exactly how bad the situation as a whole has become.

Can't really disentangle this from culture war issues. Complaints about wokeness began bubbling up in 2012-2014, when social liberalism had apparently won and become the new mainstream. Transgression of liberal cosmopolitanism is reaction.

This week @benverschoor.bsky.social and I dig into the messy but charming The Bride! from Maggie Gyllenhaal. We open with the Italian horror film Frankenstein '80 and I subject Ben to triple jeopardy. miseenscreen.libsyn.com/episode-35-t...

we’re doing the meme ourselves now

Someone should do something

I have a new piece up at @rockpapershotgun.bsky.social — it’s about when I got hacked in Dark Souls 2, used hacker tools to unhack myself, and then talked to my hacker years later

This (extremely NSFW) Oglaf comic is over a decade old

Virginians, if you don't want to see data centers continue to grow like kudzu, call your delegate (and maybe the governor) and tell them to accept the Senate's budget amendments. The lobbyists are doing their dirty work, legislators need to hear from actual constituents.

If you replace "Donald Trump" with "AI" it's still accurate. Hallucinations as confident declarations.

Most accurate portrait of modern culture currently available

THREAD: I got laid off from NYMag/Vulture after 14 years. The family lost 75% of income + medical. Now mzs.press bookstore, once a side project. is do-or-die for Judith & I. I feel weird telling you this because others are doing much worse. But if you could like or share this, we'd be so grateful!

this is like the thesis statement of our times

Viewed in (alien) isolation and on a craft level Alien: Romulus is basically fine, but in the context of its series and the broader film industry it's one of the most creatively bankrupt franchise endeavors I've ever seen, and I've seen Aliens vs Predator: Requiem.

The @federalreserve.gov just granted a crypto company—Kraken—access to its public payment services for the first time. More evidence that crypto’s success is not as an *alternative* to the existing financial system but to capture the existing payment infrastructure. www.wsj.com/finance/regu...

It's been so sad to see the situation in Ecuador deteriorate over the past three years, and I feel this is going to make it even worse.

There's been a lot of debate within the Democratic establishment about what rhetoric to use via ICE. Well, an incumbent doesn't lose by 48 percentage points very often—and her vote on collaborating with ICE was the defining issue here.

You don't have to love all of these movies, but you do have to understand that a studio that makes Sinners and One Battle and Mickey 17 and Wuthering Heights and The Bride and Weapons grasps its responsibility to filmmaking and its own history and tradition in a way that David Ellison does not.

Imagine Jim Messina on his deathbed, pondering how he spent his precious later years, and he looks off into the middle distance, takes a pitiful breath, and mutters as he closes his eyes for the last time, "all my apes gone"

"The proposed deal has attracted a lot of criticism, largely because it sucks. That’s a broad statement, so let me be more specific: It only sucks for every affected industry, the United States, and humanity as a whole."

@number8axel.bsky.social 's tears make me stronger

Calling AI "slop" has been one of the most effective instances of the public rebranding a product and it pisses them off.

The English can testify to how well this strategy works

I can't stress enough how eager (what remains of) local media are to have a man-bites-dog story. With just some research, organization, and gumption, a standard "Platner says yada yada yada at local diner" headline becomes "Platner grilled at local diner about Nazi sympathies"

I can't stress enough how eager (what remains of) local media are to have a man-bites-dog story. With just some research, organization, and gumption, a standard "Platner says yada yada yada at local diner" headline becomes "Platner grilled at local diner about Nazi sympathies"

Are people on the ground in Maine sharing this with mainstream dems? Do offline resist moms know about this stuff? I just can’t understand the polls when this man is so open about his Nazi leanings.

I think the best chance of this being stopped is the regional oligarchs deciding they don't want to sacrifice their shiny, expensive citadels. Surprised that MBS is going along with it given how much blood money he's spending to turn Saudi Arabia into a cultural destination.

Last year's plain-to-see, but still largely ignored news story concerned China's big (as in $7 billion USD) 2025 box office. This year it's something like: Why the Chinese Box Office Doesn't Really Need the US Audience. I've pitched that story, but somehow it's not popular yet.

People are dragging Klein, but there's an important implication here that should not be discounted: if a story is only circulating online, particularly here, and not breaking through in standard coverage, then the people who are not very online (read: the vast majority of people) have no idea of it.

The Robotic Duplicate of Dorian Gray

No one should be using ChatGPT or partnering with OpenAI for anything.

Thinking about this quote from Persepolis creator Marjane Satrapi again.

TBH a NYC-DSA SIO should announce that they're primarying Schumer today.

The dumb name is literally the most trivial part of this horrible new development, but how long will it be before we get the first Operation Epic Fail meme/headline?

This is enraging, not least for how this man was failed by the every level of government every step of the way.

Absolutely criminal that the 80th Academy Awards gave three best song nominations to Enchanted but couldn't spare one for this absurd banger from Southland Tales, performed by by Sarah Michelle Geller's porn star-turned-pop-musician-talkshow-pundit Krysta Now

This week @benverschoor.bsky.social and I have experienced probably the worst movie of our lives thus far and go hard on it and its maker, but the episode is saved by the excellent The Secret Agent and our discussion of that grand film. miseenscreen.libsyn.com/episode-32-t...

Social media should have a Vent button, significantly larger than Post, which deletes the long angry screed you wrote and plays a pretty sound and particle effects as it congratulates you for now being able to get on with your day