The best essay about this film that I've ever read, and I've not only read dozens, I've written a few myself. Hooray for Mary!

The decline in spin and rise of our and out lying in politics is bad. Campbell respected his audience and expected them to buy what he was selling. The Betting and Gaming Council don't care this is ridiculous.

I try to avoid Nazi comparisons because mostly I think they're not useful but the great leader getting heavily involved personally in bizarre war machine design is very Hitlerian

At some point maybe moderate Republicans have to say... something? Around the time the president is renaming buildings after himself, or when he accuses the New York Times of being THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE?

"free speech warriors"

I just wrote an article about this and decided not to publish it yet. It is in the DOJ files (file got renamed after originally published and taken down. It’s online now). But too many unknowns about whether the letter itself is real or not. Some additional info though:

Call me old-fashioned. But I don't think you can find out what C1 women living in East Midlands market towns currently think about, say, benefit reform without going and asking C1 women currently living in East Midlands market towns.

Trump is now calling the New York Times a national security threat and says they “must be dealt with and stopped.”

ICE agents illegally break into a woman's bathroom in a NY nutrition bar manufacturing plant. "Pull up your pants," says a male agent. The agents only had a warrant to review employer documents. They didn't have a warrant to search for, detain, or arrest anyone there.

if I had started pocketing a nickel every time we as journalists conceded a bad faith argument in good faith in order to appear objective but ended up actually deferential… actually yeah I’d be rich

Canadian TV network bravely airs dissidents’ report on U.S. abuses after political commissar orders its suppression

Can anybody explain why Dublin at 10 Celsius feels so much colder than Chicago at -10?

While we were on tour a lot of folks asked if The War on Cars is our full-time job. It is! It takes a lot of work to keep the podcast going, produce live events, and more. It's all possible with listener support. Thanks for whatever you can pitch in!

A big part of the story is how big chunks of the US economy (especially the 2 big ones that drive people nuts—healthcare & higher education) are organized on the ancient principle, “For you my friend, because you are my friend, I make a special price.” www.wsj.com/health/healt...

Absolutely not trying to say that this is a good system. But the most important thing anyone has ever told me about American healthcare is that... you can just not pay your bills, and then eventually negotiate them to vastly less

Excellent progress on Plan 2025’s Viktor Orban-inspired effort to subject America’s main media organs to political control, by having friendly billionaires buy them and install obedient editors www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/b...

When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.

Skilled-worker visa holders who traveled back to India this month to renew their US work permits are now stranded far from home after their appointments were abruptly canceled by U.S. consular offices and rescheduled for months later.

ProTEct truSTed LocAL nEWS This isn't even designed to wind people up and hope they share it. It's just an exploitation of Birmingham Live's privileged position on Google Discover/Apple News. The whole point is to deceive people into clicking. An industry built on total contempt for its audience.

I am in a cafe in Dublin and they're selling the coffee in "12oz/16oz" and the credit card machine asks for a tip. Americanisation has gone too far

BREAKING: At least 16 files from the Epstein release disappeared from DOJ's webpage, including a photo of Trump, with no explanation.

What could go wrong? www.wsj.com/world/putin-...

In the wake of the tragedy at Brown, online conspiracists rushed to pin the horrific mass murder on an innocent Palestinian student. One of them was Shaun Maguire, a partner at leading VC firm Sequoia Capital. www.fastcompany.com/91463942/seq...

Basically this is the thing. With just a southern leg, HS2 will add lots of capacity for commuter trains to the south and literally make trains to Manchester & the North West slower

Canceling the northern leg of HS2 was an act of insane self-harm

"Nenko was arrested by ICE on Sept. 23 when he showed up for an interview to discuss his green card application at the USCIS Chicago office... Nearly three months later, the day that his wife was notified of Gantchev's death - Dec. 16 - was the couple's eight-year wedding anniversary."

U.S intelligence report. So correct, so obvious, and still beyond the comprehension of the U.S. own government.

"Fascinated by this. [Among] people your age, how widespread are these views? Should older people be thinking: you think the Overton Window has moved in the last ten years, just wait until you guys come up on the rails?" How Harry Cole responded to CT saying all non-Christians should leave the UK

New Jersey Transit: for when you want trains as crowded as those in London but as well run as those in Chicago

This is a great bit of reporting from @noturtlesoup17.bsky.social who has been diligently following Greg Bovino all over the country: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

The Kennedy Center re-naming SEEMS clownish — but it’s “the latest assertion of a particular kind of presidential authority over truth itself.” @thebulwark.com www.thebulwark.com/p/screw-it-l...

Death recorded

Putin, taking a question from Steve Rosenberg of BBC News, just said he thinks President Trump is right to sue the BBC

It almost goes without saying, but this is illegal. The name "John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts" is established by law and the board doesn't have the power to change it. 20 USC 3 §§ 76h - 76s.

Does this to adults too

It turns out vehicular traffic does something else, too, more subtle but equally pernicious: It changes the way children see and experience the world by diminishing their connection to community and neighbors. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Very cynical thought here but I almost wonder if this isn't as much about jamming up USCIS to slow the approval of new immigrants as it is about actually denaturalising anyone www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/u...

Bovino back in a familiar hunting ground – the Uber lot at O’Hare.

To quote Hemingway, "The English talked with inflected phrases. One phrase to mean everything." Perfect example

This is horrible. Trump and his crew shut down USAID, which has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and they had no idea what they were doing or what would be the consequences. Completely immoral. (From the VF story on Susan Wiles.) www.vanityfair.com/news/story/t...

Just a reminder that at least 600 Americans were fired for failing to show sufficient respect after Charlie Kirk's murder.

byproduct of the general parental paranoia of our age, but at the very least by the time kids are in middle school they should be going to school by themselves unless you live in the middle of nowhere

This drove me insane. A parent tried to responsibly trust his kids to ride the public bus to school unsupervised, and some busybody phoned the government to complain about him. He eventually won in court, but I can’t imagine the happening when I was a kid (gen x). vancouversun.com/news/local-n...

It me

One citizen said that federal agents in Idaho pointed guns at her children, ages 6 and 8, and dragged her 14-year-old daughter out of a truck and zip-tied her. The mother told investigators that an agent threatened to “fucking blow your head off.” By @nicolefoy.bsky.social

An underexplored point is that this is also crucial to understanding the pressures around immigration. If the tax take is skewed heavily towards higher earners then it’s much harder for lower earners to be net fiscal contributors, and that includes lower paid migrants.

I am off work for the next two weeks and feeling anxious today that I should be covering this story instead of going on holiday

Armed ICE agents trapped US citizens in a restaurant and demanded their papers. Federal agents walked into East African restaurants in Cedar-Riverside, MN. They closed and blocked the doors. Then they demanded to see everyone’s papers. Every person present was a US citizen.

what trump is doing to the somali-american community is deplorable.