i love the story about LaKenzo, who got famous for collecting discontinued crayola dandelion crayons and made the crayon so popular that crayola brought it back and made her the face of it they flew her to the factory she got to make crayons and box them up and they treated her like royalty

Swalwell’s lawyer: “The credibility of your accusations is fatally undermined by your voluntary and cooperative relationship with Mr. Swalwell over the course of many years following the period in question.” Just so everyone knows: that’s not how it works.

Good penultimate episode of The Pitt on a structure level, but I was full body cringing over the uncharacteristic dialigue- a lot of folksy quippiness and strained pop culture references. Not sure what happened, because writers' rooms are complex, but the episode credit went to Noah Wyle...

Sometimes people don't use the identical strategy to deal with current bad thing because it wasn't successful (or successful enough) at dealing with recent bad thing. That's not a moral failing; that's actually what happens when you take yourself seriously as a political actor.

It's hard to comprehend in advanced adulthood, but in the two year period since Spring 2024, roughly half of all undergraduates are no longer at the schools where Gaza protests took place. Both sympathetic and critical arguments about campus protest tend to skip that part.

I am very grateful to Helen DeWitt for low-stakes discourse after the ladt few days. I am of 3.5-5 minds about her post after reading half of it. I agree with and disagree with everyone's take simultaneously, and feel no need to resolve my feelings. A blessing.

ft reader having just finished the uncorrected article straightening his tie, removing himself to his study, and writing "Dear Brené Brown,"

Hall of fame FT correction

I love ALIEN’s vision of the future. Yes, everyone is still working shit jobs for shit corporations for shit pay. But the good news is they’ve successfully made robots full of milk that are bitchy little fruits

So, automatic voter registration and tax filing are possible too.

When Victory Gardens Theater re-emerged with a new mission—“New work. Boldly.”—we at American Theatre had a lot of questions. Emily McClanathan sat down with new leadership to find out where the company is headed since its implosion. www.americantheatre.org/2026/04/08/c...

A Wisconsin Supreme Court election:

The stated objective of Trump's defused threat- re-opening the Strait of Hormuz- was the status quo earlier this year. That's Trump and Netanyahu's war strategy in a nutshell: on one hand, incomprehensible evil, but on the other hand, no benefits whatsoever to their own countries and allies.

Nothing very insightful to say about it, but My Undesirable Friends is on Mubi, and it is worth 5 hours of your time.

Realistically, though? The more common Die With Zero route is a sequence of, say, falls or diagnoses along with a cascade of morbidities and reductions in activities of daily life (ADLs), which necessitate nursing home care, which EASILY eats $100K/year.

Generational Discourse Is the Last Refuge of the Brain-Poisoned, exhibit #1,026

I'm starting to see posts from 38 year-olds complaining about "gen Z" making fun of their socks again. A delusional discourse- imagining that 23 year-olds are noticing and thinking about you at all.

I think The Pitt's 15 straight episode model is ideal for shows that would have on broadcast networks in the past. It's a natural progression- broadcast seasons shrunk down from 30+. A lot of other streaming shows could benefit creatively from 13 episode orders, like the early cable series.

A lot of people trying to Google-manifest something...

"Don't worry about that part" seems like a losing rhetorical strategy before the Supreme Court.

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.

I made mashed potatoes and a pork chop for lunch. Still thinking about it.

Only 23% of government workers believe they “can report a suspected violation of a law, rule, or regulation without experiencing retaliation.” That's way down form the share the prior year (72%) who said they could report suspected illegal activity without fear www.thebulwark.com/p/two-more-g...

‘Succulent Chinese meal’ speech added to Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive

I would love to know the actual stat, but I have anecdotally encountered roughly the same number of Californians and British people in Chicago.

The movie we saw in theaters was the Lord and Miller cut. They refer to the longer one as "embarrassing." From this quote, and Drew Goddard's ScriptNotes interview, sounds like the cuts were artistic decisions. Hopefully some can be released can be released as "deleted scenes" (remember those?)

The liberal-leftist dichotomy is just not very useful anymore.

Found poetry.

I was born in 87, and movies released around that year have a special aura. They're too old for me to have been seen them in their first run, but recent enough that I can draw connections to the era from my own memories of the following years. It was also a great era for craftmanship. So '86-90.

"Did you know that 32.7% of year 2 emergency residents in urban American hospitals abuse sugar free Red Bull, which is up from 19.3% only 5 years ago and 59.2% higher than similar cohorts in Western Europe?" -A The Pitt Character, probably

Hellraiser is young adult fiction if your parents are cool.

I watched two John Sayles movies this week, Matewan and Lone Star, and they are both masterpieces. The latter, in particular, speaks very directly to our current moment. I need to watch all the rest now.

This is so strained. He's been the Senate's most bloodthirsty warmonger for decades, so the premise makes no sense to begin with. I think Michelle was onto something, because most Democratic politicians suck at "going low," so they should stop trying.

I was leaning towards the Potter series being an unstoppable juggernaut, but if this is how the legions of people who never moved on to other books are reacting to the casting, maybe it will blow up after a few seasons.

$55,000 a year! Why would someone with that amount of money to spend on their kid's school choose this?

It's been 5 days since I have seen a wild take about IL-09. Nature is healing.

look at this baby beaver and feel better briefly (@ wildheartrescue on TT)

A world awash in bad, amateurish art made for people, businesses, and organizations who don't have the budget or skills for good art is way better than a world where you can't tell fifteen different mobile mechanics apart because they're all using the same logo generation tools.

Every time I get an email from a robot claiming to run a book club, I think this can’t be the future dippin’ dots was the ice cream of

It's really interesting that there was a COVID-era surge in stated affinity for suburban style living, which has since declined without going back to pre-pandemic levels. [2019- +6 2021- +21 (!) 2023- +15 2026- +11]

11,000 Japanese citizens stormed their parliament demanding their PM stop following Trump into war. 82% of Japan opposes this. Protesters surrounded Japan's National Diet building today chanting: "Japan's FUTURE is not in Washington. Stop bootlicking Trump."

For the record, the Nazis are spreading terms like “zio” and “zog” into leftist spaces intentionally as an on-ramp to fascism. This is what cryptofascism means. They explicitly talk about doing this on their forums and telegram channels. You’re being played.

Lots of social media pseudo-leftists coming out of the woodwork to size up the future of the Skokie mayoralty and the 13th Cook County Commission district. All the North suburbs voters apparently hate the same 28 year-old they do, and will hold that grudge forever.

Holy fuck Lost Girls Vintage had their storefront destroyed by a driver plowing right through it. Fortunately they were closed and nobody was hurt. But nah, we don't need to do anything first safer streets in Chicago. www.instagram.com/p/DWCTlJ3Dkg...

Alderman elections next year, let's go! (Glad I can vote to re-elect my current rep, @leniann.bsky.social)

generally i think it is always the job of the candidate to win, not of other candidates or voters to help any given candidate win. if you think the latter, you will always be mad when you find the masses don't care about your made up rules

The greatest "let them fight" moment in the history of letting them fight.

I only made it halfway through the Cesar Chavez story. Incredibly sad. I can't imagine how hard it is for the women interviewed to have held those stories for so long. People who are badly affected by sexual assault details should mute his name here and turn off their news alerts, I think.