"As was custom, Sophia was granted an annuity of 40 thalers by the Estates of Friesland, and three noble ladies, also named Sophia, were appointed as her godmothers." That's a highly specific custom but - ok. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_...

Clearly the biggest problem the left faces today is too many on the left stampeding to support Tucker over, say, AOC. But we musn't let the bigness of that problem blind us to the almost-as-bigness of the knock-on problem of leftists overcompensating by leaning the other way & supporting, say, AOC.

You could also call it Monkey's Paw Textualism. It's anti-purposivism. Which is a bizarro philosophy of legal interpretation that any judge would be ashamed to confess to actually employing, just to ensure the rhetoric of reaction comes true, legally.

You could turn the reavers into reivers.

i have been writing about the virginia supreme court decision with a certain amount of analytical detachment but if i’m being honest i’m also fucking furious i took the time to go vote and then my ballot got tossed out by these dipshits

"Participants described reacting emotionally first, discussing stories with peers second, and verifying details later, if at all. What looks like credulity from the outside is something more sophisticated from the inside." No! That's not sophisticated! It's really, really bad!

Waiting for Godot and Grogu.

Reboot Batman with insistent, gay, Bronze Age 'bright knight' blossoming spring theme, honoring authentic Gotham aesthetics. Harry Helagabulus, billionaire rival to Bruce Wayne, drowns victims in cherry blossoms (not roses) & threatens to engulf the city. Lean on Alma-Tadema & Aparo for reference.

When superficial people yell ‘why aren’t you being profound through superficiality?’ the effect is not exactly profound.

Funny things still happen over at the bad place This guy put a prompt in his LinkedIn and now AI recruiters are writing him in Old English and calling him "my lord"

Just calling balls and strikes.

That time Doc Samson pent up all of the Hulk’s libidinal energy artificially so he could fire it all out of a huge cannon in a stream at Betty Ross.

In her Wild Youth the Old Cat would never sit on any lap and only I was even allowed to pick her up. Now? I can’t sit down without being deprived of the use of my right arm for hours.

Alito’s argument that the VRA is semi-unconstitutional is an argument that it has become so over time. So: a ‘living constitution’ argument that takes (we can now say) ‘what has in fact happened won’t happen’ as a major premise. Without that it doesn’t fly. So his legal argument is provably wrong.

Thanks to Katie Carr on Threads, I just learned: in 1996, the cast of the newly-launched “Star Trek: Voyager” got together to do a feature for Parade magazine about the power of late-’90s technology. Behold its fabulously unhinged glory. 1/

Yes, and I’ll add this: there is ofc a double standard, one being imposed by the most powerful people on the planet. THEY get to behave as violently and lawlessly and corruptly and pathetically as they so desire. But if they execute your spouse in the street and then spend the next days and weeks…

'Oh he's an antisemitic drunk.' We all knew that guy in college. He wasn't antisemitic. But get a few beers in him ...

I didn’t know ‘quashal’ was a word. But if anything ever deserved quashal it was this sort of lawless dishonesty from DOJ.

I am an iridescent model tapejarid pterosaur With pychnofibre pigments unrevealed to science heretofore A Chinese team uncovered me and now there is this spot of fuss Magenta picnofiberous bedazzling Sinopterus. Gilbert and Sullivan would have been good at this.

André Domin (1883-1962), Les Fleurs du mal, 1920

She profits from a monopoly on being Beyoncé.

10,000 losses. That's the Trump admin's track record as federal judges have ruled against ICE detention practices in roughly 90% of cases, a POLITICO analysis revealed. 🔗 politi.co/4nuxJB5

I'm Gooning For Cocoa Puffs

They are no longer making new photos of Nigel Farage in which he doesn't look like a Victorian spot illustration of an egg with a face, screaming in mania, joy, and/or malice-tinged triumph.

The future is shoggoths chasing pennies.

That Barrett offers SUCH a bad argument is telling. If there were any good ones, the likes of Barrett would have a good one. Also, her argument isn't a legal argument. She's postulating there is a kind of selection bias effect on the 'big case' set. Nonsense, as @stevevladeck.bsky.social shows.

Aleksander Lindeberg (1917-2015)

Veni vidi in theory vici.

Has there been follow-up to this reporting? Either confirmations or denials? It seems credibly sourced - recordings! - but it’s made-for-tv-movie loopy even by Trump era standards. english.elpais.com/internationa...

I also did not know.

😐😬😣😞

Callais is an elegant statistical reductio on blanket permissibility of partisan gerrymanders. You can't have party memberships as get-out-of-the-constitution-free cards. That can't be right.

These instructions anticipate any would-be deployer of a fulminating spider, creation of which this manual contemplates, may encounter no especial obstacle in the acquirement of hollow glass spiders, formed after the usual manner & thusly liable to impregnation with a 1/3 grain of to-hand silver -

unfortunately, kim il sung's clothes hang a lot better

Whew. That's a relief. Something good!

The Principle of Sufficient Reason basically says: nature abhors a segue.

Usage check. A mountain range 'segue'-ing into another is comically wrong to me - but not to Mirriam-Webster or Mother Jones? I would never say 'segue' save in a musical setting, to denote abrupt but smooth transition. Or, on close analogy, abrupt but smooth conversational topic shift.

People make fun of the shift from 'UFO' to 'UAP', like that makes it better, but letting the 'object' drop out and focusing on 'phenomena' worked for Kant.

This 1952 memo from the Pentagon UFO files is superb There is no point preparing for aliens ‘because no one of consequence is going to take this rubbish seriously unless it happens. At that point, our policy will be determined in the traditional manner of grand panic.’ 🤣 www.war.gov/medialink/uf...

Old Cat says it’s too big outside today. #caturday

So I guess we are just in a forever war with Iran now? And the Strait of Hormuz, like the Lincoln Center, is just closed for renovation indefinitely?

A few months ago, editor and book publisher @glennf.com pitched me an idea around my Mister Gotcha cartoon. We launch That One Matt Bors Comic on Kickstarter on May 12. Sign up here for an alert: www.kickstarter.com/projects/gle...

"The Master & Margarita", illustrations Gennady Novozhilov

Italy and Germany are fake countries created by liberals

Same energy. fortune.com/2026/05/07/j...

Laika just dropped a new teaser for Wildwood and I really am in pure awe and excited to see this magic in store. It's amazing to see these years of hard work on the screen with this incredible stop motion and I can't wait to see it in October!

Pavo and the Princess - by Evaline Ness (1964). Ness worked with a varied mix of materials when illustrating her books. Woodcut, ink, serigraphy, among others. #wardsmorguefile

I think taking seriously that the president is an honest-to-God deranged gangster, and every lawful institution meant to stop that from happening has failed and has no real prospect of functioning, is so unsettling that a lot of folks have just decided to retreat into fantasy as a coping mechanism.