This message hits hard.

GEO, Core Civic and others have horrific records of treatment of prisoners. They were declining until Trump. Fascist corporations need to be held accountable.

Between raids like this and the stubborn abuse of Jim Comey and Dan Richman's 4A rights, it's clear the remedies for deliberate abuse need to be expanded.

Today in the archive I found this letter in which Oregon senator Mark Hatfield politely told Jimmy Stewart to go fuck himself. The film he refers to at the end is The Cheyenne Social Club (1970) which is indeed about a brothel.

She was fired for teaching what she was hired to teach. She was fired for doing what she did not do. She was fired for breaking a law that does not exist.

Scorsese on Reiner is as good as it gets. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/25/o...

I think the ICE agents work hard and deserve a nice little Kavanaugh Snack, as a treat

"This remains the problem with Blanche’s actions and everyone else’s. They’re misunderstanding that this is the scandal they rode in on." @emptywheel.bsky.social www.emptywheel.net/2025/12/26/m...

That movie sucks. Even if he, like totally changes and isn’t an asshole in the ending like you said, he did plenty enough that his wife shoulda dumped his ass a long time ago. And is there even a follow-up? Bet he’s a jerk again in less than a month. To hell with that dude.

so, apparently molly has never seen “it’s a wonderful life” all the way through. we tried last night (didn’t finish, lol). these are the last two texts she sent me:

This has nothing to do with faith or observance btw. It’s just about establishing an official hierarchy of citizenship where they are on top. bsky.app/profile/mark...

Hi, David, yes, it is. btw. It was great to meet you and Sarah in Glasgow. A treat.

As a Jew, it’s fun watching the administration post Christian nationalist messages while also saying they are doing everything they can to curb antisemitism.

Same to you, Harry! I’m so glad I asked about Hegel. You’ve got me seeing things differently *and* wanting to read more. Is that yer favorite Kristeva text?

also, I now see it's almost 3.00am here in the early hours of Christmas Day. May you and yours have a truly happy time.

I find that same blend of everyday relatability and rigorous theoretical discussion, for instance, in Kristeva, in Powers of Horror, where she talks about the sense of revulsion we get with a warm milk drink when we find the skin in our mouth. Simple human response, with intellectual rigour.

So, much as I like Marx, and everyone should at least read Capital 1, I think his line about looking at Hegel and seeing him as 'the wrong way up' is mistaken. Hegel's just fine the way up he is - determinedly opposed to materialistic reductionism.

What it's not is any of the 'thesis-antithesis-synthesis' stuff which some people see as the be-all and end-all. That, IMHO, is really not much different to Plato's notion of dialectic (which, in the Cave, I go back to again and again).

It's the sheer ordinariness of that reflection, the relatability of it. Then b) .. you shift to the Phenomenology of Spirit, and you realise he's still asking that same question. Only, with deep consideration, even spirituality.

Where he had me was a passage in the introductory lectures on the study of world history. He talks about standing in the ruins of a once-great city, such as Ephesus. You look around you and wonder, what was the point of all this. You ask about history, Where is it going? So .. a) ..

sure

I think facing the face is getting down to business with & giving voice to my own experience which is, in one sense, my face. Have you heard this? m.youtube.com/watch?v=NS3n...

*nods* I hear that. I don’t read “You might say Hegel was Kierkegaard’s Trump” as Marsh saying “Hegel is Trump. I believe Marsh is just noting that K found H upsetting the way M finds T upsetting. I think you’d like M’s book. May I ask you a question?

David, this piece seems very hard on Hegel. I haven't read much Kierkegaard, so I can't speak to his critique of Hegel and whether or not there is anything substantial behind the palace jibe. The author doesn't really establish that. This isn't the Hegel I've read. To call him a Trump seems unfair.

Wheaton theology professor Daniel J. Treier has died from lung cancer at the age of 53. carmenjoyimes.substack.com/p/an-office-...

My relationship with my parents has been strained since I was 19 but over the past year it's almost at its breaking point My sister has already gone no/low contact with my dad and mom respectively so I've become the daughter that they expect to just forgive them & allow them in my life

I mean, I'm working on Xmas Eve anyway; I'll be with my patients who obviously have it worse than I do & management has arranged for food for us & if I'm completely honest I kinda wanted it this way this season?

I'm spending Christmas alone for the first time in my life I'm not really complaining about it since it would be incredibly awkward this year if I were at home for the holidays but there is a part of me that wishes I was around people I knew

The student paper is often the only coverage of what's happening in Ann Arbor, a town of 125,000.

I believe so. Facing the face without getting lost in it (as in over-identifying with it)? But then, whose/which face is doing the facing?

It does. & “final say” gives language 2 what I have Nmind. We are each born not asked with no say (That I know of) in our DNA & our points of origin, but…we each get to make our witness out of what happened. The happening that what was/is me. Facing the face or something like that. Know what I mean?

It's actually our tax money.

But to answer your question... Perhaps I now think of "amor fati" as neither a rejection of, nor a clinging to, anything that was, is, or will be. Facing things as best one can, while not allowing any of it to have the final say in who one is. Does that make sense? 2/2

All the feels, like emotions? I recall encountering the concept as a teen & struggling with the idea (taking things very seriously at that age, perhaps too seriously, like WTF is this fate b.s.), but didn't consider what (I think) you're proposing. Say more, if you're up for it. 1/

FALSE CLAIM: "If we lose the House majority, the radical left will impeach President Trump." TRUE CLAIM: "If we lose the House majority, the radical left, the moderate left, the center-left, the center and a few on the right will impeach President Trump."

those of us Native New Yorkers *of a certain age* remember Fruity G to be a corrupt POS his entire miserable life. like Dubya, 9/11 attacks gifted Rudy his fluke, fake-branding opportunity you heard me.

Is this kind of editorial specificity ever demanded on stories? How can a news operation operate with this level of top-down control?

15. Wait, one more! If you want more thoughts from me on Pynchon, go here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjsR...

14. And I can't help but note that Jack Kirby (the son of immigrants) himself mocked this type of "Heritage American" hubris in the form of his Loyalist LARPing villain William Taurey (i.e. Tory). From Captain America #194 (Feb. 1976). The End.

7. For Pynchon, the great divide is between elite secret societies & the spontaneous anarchy of the people -- another variation of the elect vs. the preterite. Like his great-great-great-great grandfather, Pynchon is on the side of the preterite, those damned by theology (or the system) but free

I'm only 1 chapter in, but I'm loving it so far. A lot to think about.

Great question. Leaning into the/my feeling function. Dory gave me a bracelet that reads "Amor Fati." I think of it as taking all the feels (which are like no one else's feels) & giving them the form only I can give. Here's more on "Amor Fati." What do you make of it? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amor_fati

I am! The introspective quality of David's work is engaging on a lot of levels.

Now reading. #BookSky

A definitional element of extremism is that harming an out-group is inseparable from the success or survival of the in-group. For extremists, such harm becomes an intrinsic need. They come to believe that denying them the right to harm out-groups is the same thing as denying them the right to exist.

6. Thomas Pynchon is very mindful of his family's history. William Pynchon is recast as William Stothrope in Gravity's Rainbow. More broadly, Pynchon's work pervasively grapples with Calvinism, presenting history as a long battle between the supposed elect and the preterite (the supposedly damned)

4. The relation between Thomas Pynchon and his great-great-great-great Grand Father William is not merely a biological one. William Pynchon was the author of "The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption" - a fierce critique of Calvinism & the first book banned in the Western Hemisphere.

3. The first Pynchon to arrive in the Western Hemisphere was William Pynchon, in 1630. He was the great-great-great-great-grandfather (give or take a great) of the author of Gravity's Rainbow.

Listen.

This is the now deleted teaser for the 60 Minutes report that was supposed to air tonight on the CECOT torture prison in El Salvador that Donald Trump sent hundreds of migrants to. CBS is officially a mouthpiece for the Trump administration thanks to Bari Weiss