I’ve long admired “LTI” but I finally got around to reading his diaries — what a treasure for history, and what a likeably cranky character for biography!

Waiting for the Hantavirus

what's that name for the literary aphorism where if an author shows you something with a clear function early they should make it be important later on

“…NOT…”

just stumbled upon what might be the funniest graffiti i've ever seen

I think if I were Taiwan looking at The State of Things I would conclude that a) middle powers can very credibly hold up the military might of the great powers and actually deny them victory, and B) this does not actually stop the Great Powers from invading anyway. Wouldn't feel great.

the basic logic of plessy — that the constitution has no bearing on social inequality — undergirds every roberts court ruling on the state’s ability to deal with the effects of racism from parents involved to calais.

I wonder if we try a nuke or a petroleum export ban first.

Welthauptstadt Miami

We’re so lucky that the guy has got zero religious imagination; if he were actually trying to found a cult we’d be much worse off

babe wake up the president is anti-christ posting again

As the last snow melts, A scent of cherry blossom. NO FUN — NOT WORTH IT!!

You might be thinking: "How did a guy with no campaign experience end up running against Lindsey Graham?" Well, when you're the chairman of the SC Democratic Party, who's going to stop you? "How did he get that job in the first place?" By having the sort of resume DNC types call "experienced."

Big day—the NYT published an opinion piece arguing that moving to the center might not work www.nytimes.com/2026/05/05/o...

Stalin-coded imo

this is like an arrested development bit

aw shit we’re gonna be hearing a lot about Agamben again, aren’t we

So like if someone asks you if what’s happened in Gaza is a genocide,

Entire tech sector is converging on Hitler but let me give you a level headed explanation on why you shouldn’t inherently question their capex across the country, those light industrial developments are my emotional support growth stock

In this one case it’s ok to use the word “distraction”

I got the “Muskism” book you’re all excited about but I don’t think I can keep reading it.

Does anyone actually buy land at these things, or are they just about owning that libs?

I hope they fuck up the internet and computers generally so bad that they become like ancient magic in a Square game where people all more or less agreed to forget how to use it after it ruined everything🤞

It’s technically true that the popes have opposed nuclear proliferation since before nuclear weapons existed. (Pius XII was briefed on developments in nuclear physics in 1943 and expressed his wish that nobody should use that stuff to build a bomb.)

Magnifique

Along “Slopulist” lines it would probably be good for us promote a synonymous term that everyone agrees isn’t about what kinds of trucks or clothing one buys.

Like most debates about “college,” this one only makes sense once you understand that they’re only talking about half a dozen colleges.

Part of what makes AI image generation look distinctive is the use of tags like "masterpiece," which target actual training metadata. "World class expert in all domains" would likely activate parts of the training corpus where bullshit like this is common, so linkedin posts and business books.

You could wait to see what Leo’s letter says about “ai,” or you could check out my attempt for @commonwealmagazine.org to anticipate what it might say:

Of course “hindsight is 20/20,” but at the time, those of us who wanted a more aggressive approach were constantly told to pipe down and trust in the wisdom of our betters.

A detail I didn’t know: “The Herald entered the Epstein series for a Pulitzer Prize that year, but it was not a finalist. Alan Dershowitz … who helped broker Epstein’s original deal, wrote a letter to the Pulitzer committee that year, urging them not to honor Brown’s work.” share.inquirer.com/THMiUZ

breaking with tradition, trump boldly names animals not listed on dementia test by eric lipton

Why do you need the US? Aren't you the regional hegemon who can strike anywhere at will? If you want to strike, strike. Fight the war yourself, on your own terms, without us. You're capable of that, right? Right?

I think the main reason Israel is suffering from an unprecedented crisis of global negative perception is because Israeli soldiers post photos and videos of themselves doing things like this, and far worse things, every hour of every day, every week, every month of every year for the last 3 years.

The clashes between Leo and the Trump administration underscore how U.S. Catholics have come to behave as though they are religious authorities unto themselves. @gibsonwrites.bsky.social: 'Leo vs. the Americanists'

my bro was cooking with this (extremely prescient!) passage way back in 1911

This got a sensible chuckle from me

Vote Blue No Matter Where

“The Claude Delusion”

Bad news for Hegelians

Like St Paul in his basket! 🙏🕊️

Holy Family, c. 1450 The carpenter St Joseph exercising his culinary skills. (Albertina, Vienna) 1 May is the Feast of St Joseph the Worker.

"if Democrats never draw a hard-line against the bad faith of their opposition, they will resign themselves to governing under the current rules, fully rigged for the GOP. If they won’t take easy shots across the bow like this, would they really do bigger more important things that need to be done?"

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This is why you basically can’t trust “anti-Trump Republicans” — they believe (wrongly) that they’re going to inherit the party when the big guy dies, and so they want it to be in as favorable a position against the Democrats as possible.

They think you're stupid

At the very least we can say that the guys who earn their bread by pretending there’s a “conservative intellectual tradition” are gonna have a lot of work to do.