Children's menu at the Gainesville airport

Amusingly, we were both born in 1958 and we both just retired. And no, I'm not changing my avatar. Posting is what retirement is for! (They got the math wrong, though. We're both 67. Months matter.)

[me, a journalist who spends all day every day on a social media app where the discovery algorithm is personally controlled by its owner, captain birdseye] you know, a lot of people are talking about fish fingers, we should probably cover that

Has Israel crossed the annexation threshold in the West Bank? Six ‘game-changing’ recent cabinet decisions may push the occupation past a tipping point toward permanent Israeli rule, says Yesh Din director Ziv Stahl. Interview with Yesh Din director Ziv Stahl www.972mag.com/israel-west-...

Melinda Cooper's essay is a pleasure, if you're an "Engels on patriarchy 2.0" kind of person www.equator.org/articles/eps...

If, like me, you loved this book, you'll love this article. It's not a repetition of what you've read, it's a complement, a wider historical context, with a couple of stunning claims with citations.

Theology is rarely so charming & clear. Remember the Arian heresy? Milton believed it. Turns out it's common sense & that's why they had to kill anyone who said it in public. It was the establishment view that was insane all those millennia. Nothing like today. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

No surprise, I agree with what @dsquareddigest.bsky.social says here. One addition to the first point: if LLMs do create mass white-collar unemployment (which I think is unlikely but not impossible) that will shift the macroeconomic policy tradeoffs toward stimulus. open.substack.com/pub/backofmi...

This is just really embarrassing for these guys. Your intellectual hero is an amphetamine casualty from the Britpop years. It would be less ridiculous to be queuing up for a lecture by Ginger Spice.

to make a very dumb, first principles, analogy: Hollywood productions did not become lighter in workforce when they suddenly got the tools to make stuff in an easier way than hydraulic mechanical sharks

This clip is all over the other place and has made its way onto GB News and Talk TV so I’ll do a bit of an explainer here too! The clip doing the rounds is of a fantastic police officer telling a group of Muslim men that a Christian preacher nearby is entitled to freedom of expression. 🧵 1/19

Steven Simon on the Un-American spell cast by the word "homeland" www.ft.com/content/f073...

My piece in Financial Times on why Iran may pursue diplomacy but may take its chances with war as.ft.com/r/ef11ca76-6...

[email protected] on the sharp fall of premillennialism among young Evangelicals & the consequent fall in support for Israel www.notus.org/perspectives...

Another question: when were the two biggest accelerations in productivity growth in postwar history? The answer is, the mid-1960s and the late 1990s. In both cases, productivity growth rose by about 2.5 points for a number of years. And then ask: what were labor markets like in those periods?

Jude Wanga in the LRB blog www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe...

Don't be misled by the headline, which is the right one to sell it to EU decision-makers. But it's the opposite argument of what usually follows such a sentence. By Dalia Marin www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/c...

By Aziz Huq & @vanessawilliamson.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/o...

If Team Abundance is looking for rules and regulations that get in the way of all kinds of useful and life-improving work, they could start with patents and copyrights.

One thing you will learn, if you read a good history of American settlement like Greg Grandin's *América, America*, is how much the English wars of extermination against Native Americans developed directly out of, and were self-consciously modeled on, their near-contemporary wars on the Irish.

[email protected] on why what looks like the next El Niño is such a horrifying thought billmckibben.substack.com/p/an-el-nino...

Max Blumenthal interviews Christian Parenti on his dad Michael. Perhaps the best tribute to a father from a son I've ever heard. A stout defense, a fond reminiscence, and a revelation of origins and parallels. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynp4...

7 Hard Lessons Democrats Must Learn in 2026 by Austin Ahlman and Ben Winsor libertyandpower.substack.com/p/7-hard-les...

Sharp piece, sharp formula from @adamserwer.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Mouin Rabbani's short, sharp & complete indictment of all involved in the latest attempt to defame Francesca Albanese, the conscience of the world. mouinrabbani.substack.com/p/defaming-f...

Short, sharp case by @jamellebouie.net that “concentration camp” is the technical term & "detention camp" is the propaganda. The camps are criminal means to a criminal purpose. Denotation is unmasking, going along is abetting. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/14/o...

The Median Voter Theorem is a Clarity Trap www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-median...

It helps to look convincingly happy about the things you're doing. It helps sell the sense that you're doing something because it aligns with your values. This government's default mode is to do something while handwringing that they had no other choice because someone else made them do it.

My friend Michael Kinnucan said he's going to get this tattooed. It's the last 2 paragraphs of this great piece by @dsquareddigest.bsky.social backofmind.substack.com/p/why-this-w...

Brilliant article by @jwmason.bsky.social on the economics and politics of housing we can afford www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/aft...

The details of the Kristi Noem blanket incident are just fucking perfect

You can't enforce standards by stricter rules unless you can enforce the rules, and if you can do that, the enforcement is doing all the work. It's like trying to inspect defects out rather than designing quality in for a manufacturing process.

damn you're telling me that sin taxes work to reduce consumption of socially harmful goods while keeping them legal and thus avoiding the problems of criminalization?

Great thread

Great essay by Evgenia Kovda on Limonov's essays & a new-old theory of why the Soviet Union got destroyed: the elite really believed US propaganda www.nefariousrussians.com/p/the-disapp...

This is awesome in 3 ways: 1) Explaining why the digital euro 2) Explaining why socialism (last sect + Washington Post Problem) 3) Introducing me to the hilariously useful term "bionic duckweed"

I teach heat transfer, and I can confirm that the vacuum of space is an excellent insulator. Cooling electronics in space is hard.

ICE has now spent over half a BILLION dollars just on purchasing warehouses around the country to convert into detention camps. If these mega-camps are utilized to the full capacity ICE intends, they'll be the largest prisons in the country, with little real oversight. www.ajc.com/politics/202...

This likely happened because a federal judge found that the termination of her student status was illegal and ordered it reinstated.

These triplets are, apparently, fighting each other for ratings.

Great reporting & even-toned writing that wakes up the horror we should all have at cluster bomb shells. Worth reading to the end. theintercept.com/2026/02/06/p...

"We, as Western nations, must choose between becoming closed and impoverished societies or open and prosperous ones. Growth or retreat: Those are the two options before us. And by growth, I’m not talking only about material gain, but also our spiritual development." Pedro Sánchez, Spanish PM

Great reporting on AIPAC's various methods of buying elections secretly (well, you find out after the election but they deny during) by @ryangrim.bsky.social & @ddayen.bsky.social prospect.org/2026/02/06/a...

It’s slightly comical to say this piece by @attackerman.bsky.social really clears things up but it’s true & you should read www.forever-wars.com/ron-wyden-on...

Forget rational actors or manipulated masses. Basal human nature is a finely-tuned mix of noble and petty best represented by my sick wife saying “Don't worry about me, I’m glad *you’re* having fun.”

Peter Mandelson is telling the truth on one thing: the idea he was bought for a $4k “bursary” or a $75k gift is ridiculous The real incentive was a post-government payday - one so big he *rejected* a $3–5m-a-year offer And Epstein enabled that payday Here’s the evidence. 🧵

This is preying on my mind a bit. Jeffrey Epstein was not primarily a British scandal! So far we've removed a Prince from the Royal family, fired our US ambassador who was one of the most important political figures of the last few decades and banned the CEO of Barclays from the financial industry..

Democracy dies in oligarchy.

New York's youth prisons are a disaster. Kids locked in solitary for days at a time. Staff forced to work 24-plus-hour shifts. Crisis after crisis. "I'm a human rights violator," one whistleblower told me. They recounted the nightmare at one facility: nysfocus.com/2026/02/04/o...