This is all true on the historical context, but also, if you look at the passion narrative and try to pin blame for "who killed Jesus?" on somebody other than humanity as a whole, very much including yourself individually, you're directly rejecting the most fundamental tenet of Christian belief.

can you imagine for a second how funny it would be if history books 50 years from now said that the inflection point in defeating MAGA was the Jimmy Kimmel cancellation

The US has had a lot of inept, corrupt, or malicious attorneys general, but Merrick Garland’s failures are looking like the most consequential of them all

A month after my last skeet, the subreddit "My Boyfriend is AI" now has 88,000 members and is the subject of an MIT study that found that "AI companionship emerges unintentionally through functional use rather than deliberate seeking." arxiv.org/html/2509.11...

the bargain of, let’s say, fairly stable, small-d democratic capitalism is that the average person gets better living standards and wages and doesn’t have to think very much about politics, and i think everyone involved in politics will come to regret the choice to change the terms of the agreement

dudes rock

it is very important to be able to separate degrees of bad! lumping everyone who sucks on any level into the exact same bucket is deeply unhelpful to understanding what we're facing and how to fight it

Bad news: The U.S. government is looking to weaponize space. Worse news: They're gonna rely on Elon Musk to help get it done.

do we think it's good that entire economy is based on the same entities passing money back and forth on speculative investment without anyone making anything that someone outside the loop is buying

it would be political suicide to do it but like 60% of the developed world very badly needs a poltician willing to talk to them like adults and say “listen, you can let in Rahul to work and pay taxes, you can pay more taxes, or your pension can be cut. those are the options. you need to pick one.”

The left loves to talk about “lived experience” and “learned wisdom”, but when it comes time to represent America’s silent majority of people who love dirt on their food, only one courageous Democrat shows up

H1B thing is just example 486 of how republicans can't deal with Real Problems. The system is flawed, it is a Real Problem. They are not interested in reform to do things like streamline the process and reduce the potential for fraud, they are interested in being racist to Indians.

A disorienting moment: Trump is consolidating autocratic power in areas where there's an easy path to do so. But in other areas he's facing deep institutional resistance and people are refusing to abandon the rule of law. Here he's weak and failing. Thoughts on that: newrepublic.com/article/2006...

The United States also already has a major physician shortage, which is bad now and projected to worsen to pretty extreme levels as Boomers continue to age. Making H1-B visas dependent on a $100K bribe is going to cause thousands of medical students & residents to stop coming here every single year.

It is not wrong to highlight the horrors awaiting many minority groups under fascism, but it’s also important to make it clear just how bad it also is for the majority that is also going to be under the boot of a violent authoritarian minority faction dedicated to preserving it’s own power.

The @washingtonpost.com story on Tylenol & autism leaves out a MAJOR 2.5M sibling-controlled study of children in Denmark, which "found no evidence that acetaminophen use during pregnancy was associated with children’s risk of autism, ADHD or intellectual disability." jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Not to be contrary but I think that's the same America or at least the same Disney. They were eager to jump in the direction they thought power was going 2019-23 in order to make profit and now in 2025 they think power is going the other way, they jump the other way. There was never a spine there.

“We need workers, we need great workers, and this pretty much ensures that that’s what’s gonna happen,” says Trump while signing an anti-skilled-worker proclamation that will ensure the literal opposite. youtu.be/YA0pwZWeESc?...

we have gone from a world in which we were told not to cite wikipedia because it was unreliable to a world where wikipedia might be the only reliable source left on the internet and we all owe a lot to the pedantic nerds who got us there

Baseball is alive and well in Oakland!

I mean, this was in fact how Tolkien and his wife conducted their romance.

Reform are now coming after people with permanent residency. It'll be citizens next. No one is safe from authoritarian governments.

"I’m free today because of this advocacy,” Soliman said. “Don’t underestimate your voice."

Get. Off. Twitter.

Incredible image. Also incredible that the vast majority of white Christians in this country align with the men in camo.

the Brazilian right is attempting to pass measures through the legislature to shield Bolsonaro and other legislators from the legal consequences of the failed coup, for which Bolsonaro was recently sentenced to 27 years. these photos are of the massive protests in response.

I do find it funny how so much male gaze pop culture history about Rome is obsessed with painting them as inspired military geniuses when the real lesson of Roman expansion, including in the Punic Wars, is that military genius ultimately fails against an infinite supply of reliably average soldiers.

Acetaminophen/paracetamol use in pregnancy doesn't cause autism, no matter what RFK says this week. This is not an unsettled question. Evidence summarized here: sciencebasedmedicine.org/tylenol-and-...

I am convinced that the WaPo editorial board is just Shadi Hamid sitting on Megan McArdle’s shoulders under a trench coat.

lot of people immediately able to grasp why this is bad still making excuses for posting on twitter

For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law

It’s heartening to hear many principled voices argue that those in office should wield political power in a way that they would be happy to have it wielded when they’re not in power. But it’s worth saying this clearly: the current administration is not acting as if it intends to be out of power.

Mix in a “racism over,” and you’ve got a very cool highest court in the land right there

John Roberts's "there's no such thing as corruption" and "the president has the right to use the DOJ as his personal law firm" jurisprudence is really working out well for us.

the best part of that argument is essentially just openly admitting that they want their powerful friend protected from any consequence even if he’s guilty

I re-read Letter from a Birmingham Jail the other day and I was struck by just how stunningly brilliant it was not just in writing but strategic thinking. Like, not news, it's a modern classic for a reason. It's just a remarkably clear vision of a strategy to achieve change.

I do not regret to inform you that we are going to win (h/t @miriamposner.com) www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

the funny thing about the constant misappropriation of MLK is that the guy left a massive body of writing specifically aimed at explaining his views of those of the movement he represented to the broad public. it is extremely easy to know what the guy thought on a variety of subjects and yet

the biggest lesson of the last seventy-five years of politics is that the democrats should have done a lot more ratfucking

I‘d actually very much love to live in a world where I didn’t feel obligated to Vote Blue No Matter Who because there are multiple things I’d change about the Democratic Party if I could, but every presidential election for the rest our lives is a referendum on whether Groypers should have nukes.

somebody proposed this a while back, but a comedy where Iranian, Russian, and Chinese agents are simultaneously trying to work Trump would be ... well, probably a factual portrayal of 2025.

It is very hard for me not to cut and paste passages from my book into posts at this point. I have been told by my editor not to give away the goods. That said. The difference in scale of outrage between Attiah’s firing and Kimmel’s suspension proves a whole point about canaries and coal mines.

We love a lively bookshop!!

To recap, Trump signed a proclamation saying that after midnight tonight, no one with an H-1B visa may enter the US unless they have paid $100,000. However, anonymous White House officials are saying it doesn't apply to people with current H-1B visas — yet there is NO official guidance! None!

They like Trump and want to help him

Oakland lost every single one of its big league sports teams. So a pair of fans built Oakland an independent pro team of its own. Now the @oaklandballers.bsky.social are competing for the Pioneer League World Series before sell-out crowds. Coolest story in sports.

Right wing crazies want me arrested because they know I won't back down. Too bad.

"Neither Trump nor the MAGA right wants to discuss or deliberate; it wants to dominate. American politics is no longer a fight over policy; it is a fight over the character of the nation itself," writes @jamellebouie.net. Exactly. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/o...

Every elected official who dares to stand against criminality & injustice deserves to be praised for it

last point on H1B visas. seeing so some folks say that they “had it coming” because the community votes R. so here is your reminder — with good data — that indian americans consistently and overwhelmingly favor the democratic party. carnegieendowment.org/research/202...