I don't (but I usually push celebrations to the weekend after), but I also wouldn't find it childish. Most of the time there's just work obligations, but considering I'm the sort that spent my birthday working while having a migraine, I'm probably not your best example!

there have been some rumors about ramaswamay having an affair with a married woman and a lot of racism mostly from other republicans but not enough mention of what a loathsome piece of shit ramaswamy is

this is the problem with the populist left. it's easy to talk about solving all our problems by taxing billionaires and bringing out guillotines. but the reality is that every single thing we need to do has painful trade-offs somewhere and we're going to have to convince people to make them.

I’m old enough to remember when NPR did their annual recitation of the Declaration of Independence in 2017 and a bunch of Trump voters called it anti-Trump propaganda because we live in hell

Zero respect for her. The fact that she’s spinning this as “female empowerment” is just gross. I guess Reese’s book club is going to consist of AI-generated books now?

Feels important to uplift Rep Pressley's leadership. She puts in a lot of work on issues that others often don't see as a priority. I've appreciated her anti-criminalization work over the years. She's a worker.

I don't know if young people these days understand that this kind of grotesque gutter racism was simply not acceptable in public... not that long ago!

For the record, it is shocking to me that we haven’t already started doing air supply runs. It should never get to this.

Today’s word is SATURATION.

THE HOUSE JUST VOTED TO EXTENDED TPS FOR HAITI!!! Thank you, Rep. Ayanna Pressley for your leadership on this. Proud to help co-lead this effort for our Haitian brothers, sisters, and siblings. What a day.

Canada actually had a mutiny in modern times. When I trained naval officers I repeated the 3 golden rules that EVERY officer must learn if they want to stay alive. 1) Don't fuck with the crew's pay 2) Don't fuck with the crew's mail and no matter what 3) Don't fuck with the crew's food

We should have never doubted this man

Just a reminder to the readership in passing: when I say "I'm working on an idea about [X]", PLEASE DO NOT send me links to other people's ideas about [X]. I'm sure they're great, but I don't want to know ANYTHING about other folks' takes. PLZ and THANK YOU. 😅

yeah, this is interesting. (I do have some quibbles with Chun-Li's costume, but that might be expecting too much.)

This is why "but what do we do with the sexual predators?" doesn't work as a response to abolition. THIS IS WHAT WE DO WITH THEM NOW: WE MAKE SURVIVORS WRITE THEM APOLOGY LETTERS.

I'll be happy if either El-Sayed or McMorrow wins in August.

Even blocking randos whose replies don't spark joy or are even just meh is absolutely fine because they're the equivalent of people in the pub who butt in on your conversation *even when you're talking out loud with anyone-can-interact* on. You don't owe randos anything!

I like the mental image of jd vance standing barefoot in the snow at Canossa, begging for Leo's forgiveness.

I know it's not the most important thing here but Quentin Tarantino didn't even write the fake Bible verse. He stole it from an old Sonny Chiba movie. And something about that last extra layer of bullshit really adds something to this whole thing, to me

These things have caused real world damage to real people, NOT TO MENTION making folks mad at Warren & Sanders! SORRY IS NOT ENOUGH @grahamformaine.bsky.social. Meet privately with disabled rights grps, progressive Jewish grps, & SA advocates. Publicly share your learnings. Then keep doing it! 3/3

It's not enough to say you're "endeavoring to improve every single day" @grahamformaine.bsky.social You badly bumbled a facially dishonest effort to explain away a Nazi tattoo at a time of WILDLY rising antisemitism; you used a hateful slur, constantly; you said SA victims share blame for the SA 2/

The biggest internet swindle ever perpetrated was scumbags like Zuckerberg and Dorsey-- two of the absolute worst people who walk the earth-- somehow convinced us all to abandon our blogs and websites for their sites. And we all went along with it, like dumbasses. And now here we are.

Non-agricultural people are being ignorant about the difference and uses of hay and straw in my mentions as a result of this discussion so let's break it all down in broad strokes but finer than these to explain why no one is using hay for a mattress in a medieval setting.

People are clowning on this or saying "just meal prep" but I tell you hwat, besties, I do not have the spoons to stand in my kitchen cooking all day Sunday and when I've thrown an entire week's worth of cooking in the bin because my autistic brain decided "we can't eat that", it's less rewarding.

Tax the rich.

The thing about Platner is that he'll screw up, make some statement, and it's supposed to be fine. Has he met with disabled folks in Maine? Met with advocacy groups? Understood the harm of the word and how the disabled are under attack? He never does the work required to be worthy of redemption.

I across the board hate stan culture of politicians.

Platner apologized for using the r-word in a recent interview. I was the first journalist to criticize this usage in my article, so I do take some credit to bringing attention to the problem. www.wmtw.com/article/grah...

I just sent out a new Public Collectors newsletter. Among other things, it details upcoming travel to Syracuse, NY; Madison, WI; Ann Arbor, MI; and Seattle, WA. If you live in these places, I want to see you! Here's the news: mailchi.mp/11be2df47805...

I truly doubt this happened

there's a Reddit review of a book that gave me these exact thoughts, especially since it also ignored the more problematic behavior that was at the center of the conflict imho

I've been saying this for years! Maybe the problem is that, because cultural criticism has been dying a slow death, people don't know how to with art & pop culture anymore? I remember a time where cult crit was useful for answering the q's you made at the end of your skeet.

I would argue opposing cultural criticism is actually quite reactionary and right wing.

BREAKING: Elizabeth Warren has introduced a bill that would allow you to file taxes for free directly with the IRS. The bill has support on both sides of the aisle, and would bring back and expand the free taxing filing program that the Trump administration killed off.

At Pentagon worship service today, Pete Hegseth again read a violent prayer to bless the Iran war. But this time his prayer was apparently borrowed from 'Pulp Fiction.' I promise I'm not writing for @theonion.com now: publicwitness.wordandway.org/p/hegseth-bo...

JFC!

That night when Toad went to bed he thought the biggest thoughts that he could think. Toad thought about giant sunflowers. He thought about tall oak trees. He thought about high mountains covered with snow.

one of the things that got me into cultural criticism in the first place was the metastatic growth of harry potter & disney fanfic reskinned and sent down the booktok "new adult" pipeline for the presumed enjoyment of people i'd never cross paths with. this piece is everything i wanted then and now

it's a bad sign when disliking or criticizing a particular IP or artist is seen as counterrevolutionary

Surely sending every writer who has ever focused on review, criticism, and critique death threats couldnt have caused this right?

I don't see how anybody telling the truth about her is responsible for somebody (some vague somebody who is defensive about this, nobody in particular and obviously not you) having a guilty conscience. Feeling shame is supposed to encourage you to change your actions from antisocial to prosocial.

If you speak out against a man, even people who believe you will find you annoying and embarrassing. He may not even be someone you know, but it will be treated like you're talking about your husband's farts at a dinner party. As if mere gender obligates you to keep a man — any man's — secrets.

I just want to put my little observations out into the void, talk to my friends, and make friends with their friends. I want simple controls over who sees what, so I can post "who wants to come over Saturday?" only to local friends, or share personal things to a smaller group. I want LiveJournal.

WARREN: I want to understand how slashing healthcare for families so Meta gets a $3b tax cut is a 'really good outcome for the American public' IRS CEO BISIGNANO: I don't see the two as correlated W: Those tax cuts were paid for by pushing people off their healthcare. Did you not follow that?

It's really wild that we are currently in a place where criticizing art and pop culture is seen as... bad? As if cultural criticism hasn't been a companion to art and pop culture for literally as long as art has existed.

“Let people enjoy things” has done a number on us, and it’s not just a male-coded or gamer specific phenomenon.

This is because of a new "interagency security initiative" at multiple military bases around the country. At Camp Pendleton, federal judges keep finding that they're wrongfully detaining folks, but ICE keeps doing it.

It is also possible to criticize art that you enjoy, or find partially successful, because you love art and appreciate it in all of its expressions, and want to see the best from artists you admire!

JD Vance telling Tom Brady how to throw a tight spiral

New rule: Don't write pseudo-medieval romantasy if you don't know that hay and straw are two. Different. Things.