What sounds like dystopian fiction is their planned ideal: "The post exhorted the US to reinstate a military draft, saying that “free and democratic societies” need “hard power” in order to prevail. It also predicted a future dominated by autonomous weapons..."

'SWIMS' upside down is still 'SWIMS.'

"Countless businesses are verging on insolvency. Governments are taking on enormous debt to slow inflation. By year’s end, in the most dire projections by the United Nations and others, millions across Asia could be pushed into poverty."

Apparently the Pope has read Baudrillard.

"Independent bookstores make quiet comeback as big chains dominate retail" "About 422 indie bookshops opened in 2025, up 31%, defying predictions of retail consolidation"

The Entire Archives of Radical Philosophy Go Online: Read Essays by Michel Foucault, Alain Badiou, Judith Butler & More (1972–2022)

“I am inordinately proud these days of the quill, for it has shown itself, historically, to be the hypodermic that inoculates men and keeps the germ of freedom always in circulation.” E. B. White’s 1940 essay “Freedom” as a comic by Noah Van Sciver:

In its tech and in its eugenics, Silicon Valley has such a sad mechanical notion of what intelligence is, one bereft of moral beauty, emotional intelligence, intuition, etc. But in a more meaningful definition of intelligence the titans of industry would discover their own bereftness and dimness.

NASA just dropped the closest image ever taken of Jupiter...

I’m sure this is unrelated to the fact that last month data workers revealed they were asked by Meta to review video from Meta Ray Bans of user’s intimate moments like having sex or using the bathroom.

“In Beirut, we hear explosions that kill our neighbours and endure the relentless hum of the Israeli drones... I hear… see this war, but I’m not covering it. What good would it do? You, dear reader, don’t give a damn.” www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Ship of Fools from the Nuremberg Shrovetide Carnival (1449-1539). Schembartsbuch, c 1590-1640

Future generations to suffer for our negligence: "A collapse would shift the tropical rainfall belt on which many millions of people rely to grow their food, plunge western Europe into extreme cold winters and summer droughts, and add 50-100cm to already rising sea levels around the Atlantic."

This village uses its solar income on free communal lunches, buses and other communal efforts.“If you divide money as individual income, people feel disconnected. People who didn’t know each other for years now get to know each other within days” I love everything about this.

Since Viktor Orbán’s approach to governance in Hungary was cited by the Heritage Foundation as their blueprint for #Project2025 (kettering.org/the-global-d...) it seems like a good time to re-up this piece in Aug '24 piece in @thebulletin.org: thebulletin.org/2024/08/proj...

Mexico—a nation with 1/17th GDP of USA—is rolling out universal healthcare to its 130M citizens. Starting April 13, Mexicans 85+ will have access to universal healthcare. By Jan 2027, Mexico will expand universal healthcare to all people, with full coverage of drugs, lab tests, etc by 2030. 1/2

Watching Brazil, South Korea and Hungary get rid of their authoritarians

In the country of my ancestry and my heart, my books have been shrink wrapped and considered pornography because they contain gay characters. He controlled books and the media, shuttered universities, and was a foot on the country’s neck. There’s a long road ahead — de most, a pezsgő. 🍾 🇭🇺

Winning campaign slogan here if anyone wants it.

‘Everything is gone’: Israel destroys entire villages in Lebanon

According to the latest count from the Lebanese Ministry of Health, released this morning, since March 2, Israeli bombings in Lebanon have killed at least 2,020 people, including 165 children, 248 women, and 85 health workers, and injured more than 6,000. www.naharnet.com/stories/3194...

More villages in South Lebanon being detonated by Israel. Israel is the one sharing these videos. They are proud of their war crimes.

It won’t solve the problem, but ensuring that book editors have ample time to thoroughly edit every single book on their lists would help. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/10/b...

Picasso's depiction of a fascist massacre, a murdered family unceremoniously tangled together under a dining table. [Pablo Picasso, The Charnel House, 1944-45]

It's not fair to say that Trump's Iran War accomplished nothing. It made a ton of money for these oil executives: www.wsj.com/business/ene...

Trump lost this war in every possible sense — morally, legally, politically, economically, reputationally, and strategically.

Total Eclipse of the Sun, 1882. Chromolithograph after a pastel drawing by astronomer, artist, and amateur entomologist Étienne Léopold Trouvelot. Learn more about his life and see a collection of his stunning astronomical art here: https://buff.ly/2ENtY5g #eclipse #solareclipse

A big part of the authoritarian playbook is war. War takes over the news. War blots out criticism. War divides a nation’s people, subjecting those against it to being called unpatriotic. War grants leaders all sorts of emergency powers. War consumes everything else. We mustn’t let this war do so.

This is insane.

The first image we get after comms come back is us. All of humanity is in this shot. And I’m crying again. 🧪🔭 📸: NASA, annotations by me

Total solar eclipse! Solar corona! From behind the Moon! #Artemis

"Private equity funds and related asset managers own water companies, apartment blocks, student accommodation, care homes, children’s homes, funeral parlours and more" This debt-driven parasite must be stamped out if the UK wants its public services to survive www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

People should actually be very alarmed that while AP's business model is shot to bits, Americans are still very much reliant on the news it delivers. The alternatives in some cases are inferior or non-existent. apnews.com/article/news...

The reporting on OpenAI and Sam Altman I've been working on for the past year and a half, for @newyorker.com, with Andrew Marantz: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Judas Iscariot was paid 30 pieces of silver for turning Jesus Christ in to the Roman authorities. But he made nearly 10 times that amount by placing a Polymarket bet accurately predicting the day of Christ’s death.

The horse op-ed is an instant classic. I can't tell you how much joy this piece gives me. It should be taught in every introductory writing class in no small part because the horse arguments are so compelling. "I have noticed that human children get to eat cake. But I am bigger than the children."

Brown University is home to George Orwell's original manuscript of 1984. Most of it is marked up heavily in Orwell's hand-writing but this untouched page caught my eye.

"They pay lip service to innovation but hate the deep mental work and creativity that produces novelty and original thought. They care about such things only if they can be turned into a $20-a-month subscription service and then parlayed into mission-critical enterprise software."

This is my favorite climate change chart. Japanese monks, aristocrats, and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years and accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset.

The Mayor’s Scholarship Program will allow full-time city employees to apply for financial assistance to pursue associate and bachelor’s degrees, in addition to advanced degrees: gothamist.visitlink.me/E8Vbfy

As Hossein dug, he thought of the other girls, small bodies curled beneath the wreckage. “Even though my daughter had been found, many others remained trapped,” he says, remembering. “It didn’t matter whose child I rescued. They were all like my own daughters.” www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

A remarkable photo from #NoKings in DTLA from Connor Sheets of @latimes.com www.latimes.com/california/l...

if you’re trying to “save time” as a writer by using AI, i suggest you find another profession. it takes time to write well, time to write exciting books. it takes time to write one good poem. i’ve spent years on a single poem. the time spent learning one’s craft is everything

Jonesy

"Our fossil fuel economy is a house of cards and Trump's war in Iran is about to topple it. The need for a clean energy transition has never been clearer" | My new commentary for @livescience.com: www.livescience.com/planet-earth...

Old, dying. New, cannot be born. This time … of monsters!

If we made the green energy transition this war would be unthinkable and these authoritarians wouldn’t be in power — not in the US, not in Iran, not in Saudi Arabia, not in Russia. Hydrocarbons are killing our freedom and just plain killing us.

What is Emmanuel Grégoire, the new Paris mayor, planning for the city over his new term in office? —60,000 new social housing units —15 express bus routes —Completion of city's full bike network —Transformation of ring highway into a boulevard —1000 new pedestrian streets —300 new hectares of parks

Maybe quit fossil fuels and wasteful data centers? "It could become a major risk multiplier on top of the broader climate crisis already affecting Southeast Asia, with potentially serious consequences for the environment, the economy and food security across Thailand and the wider Asean region."

"The war and the Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz are pushing more people to recognize that fossil fuel is politically as well as environmentally devastating...The climate movement is a peace movement..."