I converted to Catholicism last week. Here’s why it’s necessary for the United States to invade Vatican City and install its own pope.

Another solid win for the US! The Houthis are going to start doing this soon, just you watch.

The former Chairman of Denmark’s Defence Committee Rasmus Jarlov makes a good point: “United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea prohibits coastal states from charging tolls for passing through straits. If the USA and Iran now believe they should charge a toll in Hormuz, others might follow.”

America has proved by experiment what was only known through economic theory and war-game simulation: Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz and the dependence on hydrocarbons makes the world economy fragile. Who says The Don is anti-science? That’s a solid research result!

Smoking ruins and dead aside, there’s no better friend to the Republic of Iran than the USA. They just spent $120B and set the world up for an energy crisis so that Iran could resume nuclear weapons development, end sanctions, and have total control over the Strait of Hormuz. That’s love, baby!

This is the SAME USA that impeached Bill Clinton for lying about a blow job, yeah?

In Korea, when the president declared martial law after midnight and erected barricades in Seoul, congressional reps from all parties ran into the streets, yanked ak47s from the army at the barricades, broke down the locked door to Congress, repealed the martial law order, and arrested the president

“A coup attempt is not at all unthinkable; Trump has done it before…Knowledge of history can change the future. If we remember what history shows us is possible, we can prevent a coup from succeeding — and turn any such attempt against its instigator.” open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p...

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...

Super sharp essay by Silvaria Lysandra Zemaitis. “Conservatism doesn’t merely exist to defend the hierarchical social order—the hierarchical social order produces conservatism to defend itself against liberal and egalitarian attacks on its components.” www.liberalcurrents.com/it-was-fasci...

Ahem…may I introduce you to orcas wearing fish hats, or to, well, Dada? Forget the A.I. Apocalypse. Memes Have Already Nuked Our Culture. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/06/m...

Facing the reality that brutality and cruelty also have tradeoffs and are not a secret weapon that facilitates an easy victory, they are furious at being embarrassed by their lessers and seeing their theory of the world publicly discredited (not that they would ever acknowledge that)

I think the opposition party widely expected to make historic gains in the next election(s) has an obligation to explain how they'll stop this and prevent it from happening again or it's reasonable to conclude they don't plan on doing those things, which raises more uncomfortable questions

NASA releases a new look at Earth 🌎 📷 Artemis II

One huge obstacle to effective democracy is a national media that asks bad questions based on faulty premises.

Also, a major part of his rambling speech the other night was that we don't need the oil, we don't want the oil, who said anything about oil?

Seeing Roz Chast's "City Beasts" New Yorker cover arrive in my mailbox makes me want her to do more printmaking/photoshop like this. It's so much fun!

The great Roz Chast

If you’re in Montreal and you haven’t seen them already, the paintings of the late Janet Jones at Patrick Mikhail are excellent. www.patrickmikhailgallery.com/exhibitions/... www.janetjones.ca

Water, in contrast to the ice, is rendered so beautifully here.

Today’s Canadian painting is “On Lancaster Sound by Dundas Harbour” painted by Alan Caswell Collier in around 1972.

I'd just like our nation's great institutions to show a smidge of the courage we've seen from our great children's entertainers.

Everyone with half a brain knew this would happen: if you erode trust you drive up costs. The story leans heavily on the Chinese control of rare earth minerals, but this is sure to spread as a strategy because it’s clear it works. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/02/b...

Outlook: as effective in orbit as it is everywhere else!

Fucking hell these people are off their tits

If The Don actually cared about being president, as opposed to being the host on a game show, he’d have something new to say when he addressed the nation. Does he really believe that forcing the country to look at his mug for 22 minutes is enough to turn things around?

Trump speech is implicit recognition that Iran war is not going well & US options for escalating its way out are bad. 1/

It’s deeply weird Trump just play acts at being president. For him the job is perks: the Sharpies and military snuff videos. The useless speech just gave is a fine example of this. He’s in deep trouble, yet he doesn’t care enough to make any real case. It’s all just low-stakes improv to him.

Just so you understand, this is as if you prepared for argument in front of a panel that included Cookie Monster, and Cookie Monster asked you a question about cookies, and you had not thought about cookies in advance.

This makes me want to cry it’s so lovely. And I say this as a dog lover.

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.

Trump’s AI video of himself dropping feces on American citizens remains the most honest message he has ever delivered

I guess there was more than a grain of truth to the 1619 project after all. Huh.

Holy shite yes. What’s wrong with the Ds leadership? This is a five alarm fire.

Raising my first round of capital funding for a site identical to Bluesky but in order to open an account you must mail in a blue book essay about Marshall McLuhan.

Great essay, and great art, too. Is It 1914 in America? www.nytimes.com/2026/03/29/o...

A lot of people are being way too casual about what a prolonged Strait of Hormuz closure means. This is not “glass half full / glass half empty.” If 11–12 MMbbls/d of liquids supply is offline, it’s offline. That’s not framing. That’s physics. www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-econom...

It brings me great pleasure to inform you the word "blurb" is named after a made-up woman named Belinda Blurb whose job is to tell everyone how great a book is

This has been the GOP's "starve-the-beast" scheme for nearly 50 years. Meanwhile, millions suffer and struggle to get ahead as the rich get richer. See the problem here?

Lydia Polgreen’s pieces are usually excellent, but she makes an especially good point here: It’s Not Trump. It’s America. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/o...

So fun, and a real appreciation for the craft of the non-news slices of journalism: overcast.fm/+AAymrsRm0qo

Owning the libs feels so good!

Jacek Yerka- Polish (b.1952) Gardeners Garden. 2002-2012. acrylic on canvas. #Surrealism

Think voting doesn’t matter? 766 votes.

Donald Trump has been President for 2% of America’s history. He is responsible for 25% of our National debt.

Why Trump dominates: politician brain.

When the global financial paper of record says the market is fake and being manipulated by the President you just know we are entering the Cool Zone

Depressing, to be sure. But since 1980 the question, “do you believe that the GOP cares for the little guy?” is a quick substitute for a cognitive assessment.

None of this is is to say that there's nothing at all newsworthy in that big pile of stories. Just that the specific strategy of this kind of spaghetti-at-a-wall type media approach is intended to confuse. This is just the latest example of how that works and how everything gets mainstreamed.