Wired is great anyway, but this illustration, by "Coldwar Steve," is amazing.

I'm wondering if they're going so hard against South Korea for removing President Yoon Suk Yeol. I also hate to inform everyone, but the average Trump supporter really does believe we "had no choice" with the tariffs because the world "was ripping us off!"

Tonight, we're going to party like it's 1929! (Grim amusement here that the "silver lining" of this story is that people made a fortune in 1929, up until October.)

Guys, you’re not going to believe what I saw on the Upper West Side!

We don’t have to argue with the bot.

Okay, so when we see the smoke coming out of the FOX News building that means they've elected the next Charlie Kirk, right?

We've had the screener copy around the apartment so long I'm finally watching it.

Democrats picked up a seat in Northern Virginia, which is not entirely surprising, since I'd imagine there are plenty of newly unemployed government workers there.

It's a bit of a digression, but I've been thinking lately that conservative politics will always have the significant advantage of running against the unbearable lightness of being (Kundera's idea, not the novel itself.)

Rhythm. (Although not this time apparently)

How many republicans does it take to screw in a lightbulb? -That's not funny!

Ah, so now it’s cable networks putting people on “indefinite hiatus” for saying things that are not conceivably offensive to anyone but right wing fanatics.

Skeet surfing would not surprise me in America.

The problem is Americans tend to vote for policies and think they're voting for people. Which will make it easy for the next Republican to run on "I'm what you wanted all along, but not so erratic and unfocused."

It was so weird, y'all. Part of me thinks every movie should be like this, and the other part thinks it should really have been three separate movies.

A lot of people are shocked when they hear that China already built a restaurant on the moon. Reports are it's got great food, but no atmosphere.

It's always interesting to hear people's workarounds for free speech. Yesterday, I heard speech protections don't apply to things said on corporate media. The usual one is some variation of "it's not free speech if it's really mean."

Mykel Board had a heart attack last week. The good news is he survived and thought it was food poisoning at first. They gave him a stent and I said he should record an album called "Boy with a Stent," although I guess it wasn't that funny a line.

I *think* the Family Dog episode of "Amazing Stories" and the full series that spun off it are included in this playlist. Still entertaining decades later.

Hey! Don't demonize the demonizers.

“We have driven through town after town characterised by tumble down and rubble-strewn lots, abandoned businesses and houses, and piles of scrap cars…the lots must belong to someone but they’re just abandoned and there is no one about.”

Yeah, that was a heck of a thing. I felt like it was three very effective surrealist horror movies crammed into one, but I still enjoyed it. It was also nice seeing the great singer/songwriter/composer Nino Ferrer in a main role.

When Trump got reëlected on an authoritarian platform in November, I predicted we’d definitely see war and state control of media, which go with the territory. Anyway, hate to say I called it.

Neo Nazis forming fight clubs to meet in gyms and parks. I really don’t get what gym let’s them do this. If they tried it at mine, it would go very badly for them.

Hey, maybe they're right. I'm just not sure it's smart politics to take a fairly popular American profession that is being majorly fucked over by Trump, in a generationally altering way, and say fuck them because you consider farmers to be your political enemy now.

Trying to find the point in this clip where it says he was a MAGA Trump voter like everyone responding to it here says he was.

I showed two Canadians around NYC today and tried to avoid all of the crowds and somehow I still walked them into the San Gennaro Festival anyway! We had a great time though, and I did not ask them if America is the hottest country ever or not.

Disney imagineers scrambling to develop more compliant AI Jimmy Kimmel to appease angry viewers and launch the spinoff "Kimmelverse."

Book #98 for 2025: A classic East Village novel about the sport of feuding with your landlord and avoiding junkies. With jokes and one-liners sprinkled throughout.

They tell you to dance like nobody's watching, and then they haul you before a judge!

I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't laugh at this.

I gotta say, considering the wild and pivotal youth movements that arose in prior repressive times in American history, I'm a little disappointed with the youth.

Some people, you give 'em everything they want and they're still not happy! So, the percentage of Republicans who think the country is going in the right direction has fallen dramatically in recent months, while the percentage of me that gives a shit remains unchanged.

Well, cool. If we're in an epistemic bubble, why not get to dreaming up crazy pie-in-the-sky utopian fantasies without having from the sour puss fascists about how a better world isn't possible (but a worse one always is)?

"What era of music do you like most?" Oh, you know, that time in the late 70s where the vocalists all did this bombastic Fred Schneider voice.

An 18% year-over-year increase in nationwide foreclosure filings is not catastrophic, but it sure ain't great.

Playing all the greatest hits- bringing back McCarthyism while re-invading Afghanistan.

People got things wrong in the immediate aftermath, which is what always happens at that point, and why I didn't say anything. I still feel like briefly thinking the shooter was a groyper, whatever the hell that is, is less bad than directing the FBI to designate trans people as a terrorist group.

Following up the assault on free speech with what Drudge, correctly, labels a “Nazi style persecution of entire group.” These assholes have to be stopped and driven out of public life.

Book #97 for 2025: A deep look at one of my favorite activities with Sadie discussions of Thoreau, Rousseau, my beloved Nerval, and others. A good reminder of things we all know intuitively.

Tonight, I saw the pretty amazing restoration of about 30 minutes of Harry Smith's lost Wizard of Oz and two other shorts, with live music by John Zorn, Ikue Mori, Ches Smith, and Jorge Roeder. It was one of the great moviegoing experience of my life.

Probably not the best time to chasten the brits for hosting a leader who doesn't honor free speech the way they do.

A liberal view of America would start by calling attention to all the other stories out there. No, they’re not all mutually coherent, and they sure as hell don’t all point to one great leader. You get narrative coherence or freedom with a side of intellectual humility, those are the choices.

One of the non-political issues I’ll go on all night about is the oft-forgotten weird alien brilliance of Laura Nyro.

I’ve heard this from a couple of these dumb dumbs now, so as much as I don’t want to know, why do they hate nurses now?

I think one way we could restore sanity to the discourse is to stop hedging our bets with “MAGA republicans.” They’re just republicans at this point; this is how the party has evolved. I respect never-Trump conservatives, but the Party left them.

It’s been about eight months, which is shocking, but also maybe let’s keep some perspective on how final all of this is.

I'm sorry, I get that we all have our own s**t but it's incredibly weird that anyone ever thought this quote was meant to stoke the embers of violence, found it to be a radicalizing moment in their life, or is still angry about it a decade later.

I’ve read a lot of “they shouldn’t have to do this,” which is true. But what they’re doing is looking to ruin Candace Owens, and that should be fun.

Again, I’m going with “blacklisting.” It’s not remotely new in America.