According to a new court filing, the Trump administration has a six-page list of banned words that Head Start locations are forbidden from using when describing their programs. Among the censored words: "disability," "race," "women," "trauma," "Gulf of Mexico." Short thread with the full list. 🧵

Discovering the Ellington/Strayhorn Nutcracker three years ago has been a Christmas miracle. It’s astounding to me that this composition isn’t better known. It’s Christmas reimagined, from 65 years ago youtu.be/xslI86VqX78?...

This is the insecure energy of the worst high school teacher you ever had. Having no clue about how to inspire good work, he goes about micromanagement with still no clue about what is actually essential to accomplish.

This Priest lived and preyed in my neighborhood for years. Catholic Bishops knew of his crimes and hid them from law enforcement, moving him to another state where he violently abused more children. This was at the time I was in Catholic elementary school. apnews.com/general-news...

Reminder that victims of sex abuse by Catholic priests, victims of the bishops’ and the archbishops’ and the cardinals’ and the Popes’ conscious enablement, are very much still present as our neighbors and family.

My 3 year old is thriving, healthy, and causing all of the headaches that a 3 year old typically causes for his parents. 3 years ago, when he was less than a month old, we spent a week in the ICU because, as we later found, he was hit by this viral epidemic. Fuck RFK www.nytimes.com/2022/07/19/w...

Midterm seat loss, 1862-2022 open.substack.com/pub/charlesa...

“Sea Monsters are Real” has been a pleasant scientific discovery to observe (from land) over the course of my lifetime

Reading through American history you really do get the sense that we were, at one point, a relatively peace-loving nation. Not uniformly, not always, but it was a big part of our cultural identity -- "unlike those European imperialists and royalists, we don't do wars of conquest or revel in death"

I grew up in San Francisco as a Giants fan. Nobody ever thought of Kent as a Hall of Fame player. Nevermind the Bonds business, this is an insult to Mays, McCovey, and Marichal (and Bumgarner and Posey).

This article opens with a 3-year-old forced to represent herself in court. We live in a fundamentally sick country.

On Aug 24, 1869, Ohio Rep. John Bingham, principal framer of the 14th amendment, gave a remarkable speech on “Equal Rights-Impartial Suffrage,” in which he said of those who sought to reject the principal of birthright citizenship, “no greater political atrocity than this can possibly be committed.”

NPR News brings this vitally important story to us despite enormous financial and political pressure. Compare to what CBS and Washington Post are doing. If you have the means, please consider joining me in making a year-end contribution.

Chicago Pope has to issue periodical reminders that he despises half of God’s creation, because that’s what Catholic leaders do

Stuck behind “Big Sexi” at the railroad crossing in Downers Grove, Illinois.

Dudes rock

The fact that a second strike like that in an armed conflict is definitely a war crime should not completely negate the fact that *there is no war* and ALL the strikes are cold-blooded murder. The whole chain of command are murderers.

It’s Christmastime and people who want to buy Nintendos for their kids won’t buy them because Trump’s tariffs raised the price to $450.

“Once framed as” is an interesting choice given that the company is named “Meta Platforms, Inc.” today.

READ THIS

This might be the most disgraceful thing American military leadership has ever publicly done.

our understanding of how all the dinosaurs died is so recent that that guy who invented the hypothesis is still working as a college professor

After becoming a congressional leader, a politician’s stock portfolio beats out those of peers by 47 (!!!) percentage points a year through trades timed around bills and firms that later get government contracts www.nber.org/papers/w34524 via @florianederer.bsky.social

Actually, the likelihood is 100%. In US jurisprudence, accused people are innocent until proven guilty. Hegseth's victims were not proven guilty; they were not even tried. Therefore they were ALL, to the last man, legally innocent. Hegseth ordered the murders of several dozen innocent men.

You know the "Mississippi miracle" where the state hauled itself up in the educational test rankings and spent practically no money doing it? Maybe not so fast. Could be they just flunked a bunch of kids and didn't let them take the test.

🥲 www.kqed.org/news/1206576...

To be clear, we're talking about a *literal* take-no-prisoners approach. This is not a metaphor. We're describing the Secretary of Defense in literal terms as a guy who is genuinely committed to doing war crimes

Easy work by the People Magazine digital platforms photo editors here

A few more from the dogwalk tonight

It’s a marshmallow world

I don’t know what the NFL overtime rules are and it appears this broadcast crew will not attempt to explain them to me. They appear to have changed since I last watched, because nobody is acting like this game is over?

I wrote this piece about one player's allegations of "hazing" (racist and sexual abuse) on Pat Fitzgerald's watch. In all, 34 former players sued the school, and they hired Loretta Lynn to investigate. And now Fitzgerald has another prime coaching gig. It's unbelievable.

Kind of lucked out with the scheduling of our visit to the Morton Arboretum light show. It was closed yesterday due to the storm; everything covered in a coat of fresh snow today.

What the fuck is going on here?

The culture rebuild at MSU under Pat Fitzgerald will be quick, efficient, brutal, and in no way under the purview or with the tacit approval of head coach Pat Fitzgerald.

It appears this is the choice that Michigan State is making

After Biden commuted the sentences of 37 men on federal death row last year, the Trump administration is retaliating by sending them to the supermax. Prisoners are locked in cells smaller than a parking space 22-24 hours a day. One prisoner told me he fears he won't make it out alive. My latest:

Wild to see the Wall Street Journal do a glowing profile on my quiet little childhood neighborhood. PS the smart money is in 94132.

Love to take my dog for a walk and come across a crowd of middle schoolers sledding after dark. Dudes rock.

Live view of my Chicagoland goldfish pond. For reference, there was zero (0) snow here at this time yesterday. The aerator pump keeps a hole open in the ice/snow.

Chicago, lacking any nearby mountains for skiing as well as any sizable ponds for ice skating, has gotten creative with outdoor winter recreation activities… I’m playing tennis in a blizzard.

How did the @nytimes.com editors let this sentence appear? "Critics have likened Mr. Trump’s approach to extortion, while others have chalked it up as a cost of doing business with this administration." www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/u...

There are Friday news dumps and then there are 6:20 pm on Thanksgiving Friday news dumps www.northwestern.edu/leadership-n...

Navy spends millions each year on the SEALS program as like an advertisement for enlistment. “Join the navy and you can be an elite specially trained troop” but now they’re just showing the whole world that the Navy sits at computers and does murder by keyboard. Gotta suspect that hurts recruiting.

Thanksgiving dinner at 5pm makes perfect sense. We had a great party, I got home, ‘cousin walked’ the dog, and put the kids to bed all before 8 o’clock

Donald Trump has less than five hours left to end his stupid tariff on Japan and deliver the Black Friday Nintendo Switch 2 Miracle that millions of American families like mine are dreaming of. Too bad the old man is already in bed.

In the richest city in the richest country on the planet, the thing we can’t afford is to forget those who are left hungry.

So much to be grateful for this year.

Rested for a bit, got even crispier and I think the cream absorbed into the potato

An investigation by ProPublica and @texastribune.org found more than 60 instances of nepotism, self-dealing and conflicts of interest among 27 private schools that likely would have violated state laws had the schools been public.