I say this many times in this respect: ancestors of mine have lived in the territory of the United States for over 300 years. And for over 200 of those years many of them spoke some dialect of German.

Enjoy this article from a Minnesota newspaper in 1882 noting that Scandinavians love their home countries so much that it will take them generations to assimilate into America. www.loc.gov/resource/sn8...

I hope Rick Scott is as humiliated as he looks when he has to wake up every morning and put on that idiotic red tie

Bill Maher's career trajectory is as inexplicable and depressing as Tulsi Gabbard's

Trying to avoid spoilers, but I after a few Wordle guesses today I couldn't help but think of Rob Saka

30 years for moving some zines www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

I'm part of the very specific fragment of the population for whom this image is the best joke of the week.

I just can’t even

We were the only UNIONIZED employees he’d ever had, too. I am broke as hell now, but I’ll never regret saying this: EAT SHIT, YOU PATHETIC TWERP. No matter how much cash you accrue, you’ll never know the joy of solidarity. Your life is empty, and you’ll be remembered as a warning to children.

Me when thinking about De'Aaron Fox today.

Last image from tonight (short film in the morning): this brother out here with his Singer sewing machine, gifting people a custom embroidery on their jerseys and hats with the name and the date, was more artistic than anything at Burning Man and ad gorgeous as a Caravaggio. Magic! Goodnight.

The point of American zoning is to put the most people in the worst places for residential, so they don't inconvenience the people rich enough to live in the best places for residential.

Jalen Brunson: “You’re allowed to think about the worst possible scenario. But you gotta go out there and do something about it.” A good mantra for fighting fascism too.

GRAND JUROR is my hero

Gordon Wood died yesterday at 92 after being struck by a car in East Providence. He was my Phd advisor and I recall some experiences with him. talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/gordo...

The danger of sports is that they can set you up for crushing disappointment, for instance if the Knicks come home to MSG for game three, up 2-0, and the entire arena isn't chanting "JEFFREY EPSTEIN, JEFFREY EPSTEIN" for the whole first quarter I will be devastated

Plus James Dolan is going to comparing your face scan with his list of people who gave his band two stars on Amazon

How is this anything but straight-up sabotage?

You have to imagine an environment wherein the specter of raising taxes on the wealthy presents a greater, more dire threat -- a threat that must be proactively rejected & condemned -- than the actual, real life fascism destroying the democracy around them.

RIP Rick Adelman, coach of possibly my favorite NBA team, and definitely my favorite poster

It expresses my distance from NYC journo gossip that I spent the morning thinking that Nick Bilton and Nick Denton are the same person (derogatory)

Heartbreakingly wise message from a friend in Iran after months of internet blackout and war. "Sometimes it feels like life spends more time teaching us to be strong and brave than teaching us to be gentle and sympathetic. Sometimes I think that I really wanted life as a friend, not as a teacher."

Once again: German universities were the envy of the world before the Nazis rose to power and took an ideological wrecking ball to the entire enterprise. If you want to know how long it took for German universities to recover… they haven’t.

To be clear, it’s disheartening that not only is the New York Times super into lists now, but some of the lists they’re running aren’t even curated. “Here’s what will be popular” (maybe) is so different from “here’s what’s good.”

I've basically had one item on my bucket list, to see my favorite live band one more time, so I hope it's not

Prove you are human before you can proceed to the next page. Fuck....

Pick a Bond villain from the pictures you already have on your phone.

“My wishes for the planet in 2024: No killing. No killing. Don't kill anyone, anywhere, for any reason. -S.R.” Tweeted by Sonny Rollins on Dec 31, 2023

YOU’RE LISTENING TO SISYPHUS FM, THE HOME OF NON-STOP ROCK

RIP

Got a couple of books I learned about from the Phinney Books newsletter. (Subscribe to some good bookstore newsletter, folks! You’ll learn about books you didn’t know! (Then you should buy those books from that store, of course.))

Having just learned that Martin Short based Nathan Thurm on an SNL makeup artist, I think there should be a show just about makeup artists

Trump is putting no effort into becoming less unpopular but a TON into putting elements of a coup in place. Some of them may remain invisible, but the ones we can see point to his general approach: violent intimidation + corrupt judges + executive branch and congressional coconspirators + bribes.

"your hand can't hit what your eyes can't see", claimed muhammad ali, but this is not the case. i just knocked a load of books off the counter while gesticulating to demonstrate where our natural history section was and i definitely did not have them in view at the time

Have you been injured? #slushfund

I still think these two paragraphs from Ganz are the most important contemporary political writing

One of the VERY FIRST things done after the Constitutional Convention in 1787 was to have the text of the new Constitution translated into Dutch and German, which were at the time the two largest non-English language spoken in the United States. Here's the National Archives making this point:

interesting the way the VRA is presented as some kind of imposition from above, and not the product of one of the greatest social movements this country has ever seen

the pitch deck to sponsor sec. of transportation sean duffy's family road trip reality show (obtained by POLITICO) is as stupid and corrupt as you'd expect: static.politico.com/74/6e/5da7a1...

I wish I didn’t know as much about the end of Reconstruction as I do. If you understood what is being unleashed now, how it will touch every aspect of our civic life, and how difficult it will be to undo it, you wouldn’t be able to think about anything else.

I read Foreclosure Gothic in two hours last night. Terrific writing, so sharp and clear. About a guy who winds up buying and selling houses after a semi-successful short career as an actor. Great characterization, creepy and also moving moments. Excellent detail about houses. Highly recommend. 1/2

Len Bias

This is an amazing video.

Oh man, someone I actually trust with this precious material. Who will be "sporty" enough to play Vicki Kugelmass, or drearily (and delightfully) pompous enough for Mr Thwaites?

Ok, name your top 15 TV shows ever, gut instincts only— 30 Rock The Wire Arrested Development Zoom Sesame Street Fawlty Towers Monty Python's Flying Circus Reservation Dogs Late Night with David Letterman Batman Twin Peaks The Mary Tyler Moore Show The Superstars What's Happening!! Jeopardy!

Alito flatly ignoring congressional intent in Callais — Congress specifically clarified that you do not need to prove racial intent when bringing a racial vote dilution claim because it's so hard to do. If the effects of the map are discriminatory, that used to be enough. No longer