More performance and signaling of virtue would be GOOD, actually

I really wish we could take some of the negative valence off of “performative” because performance is tremendously important right now especially

I keep thinking again, in light of the latest Epstein files dump, about how MeToo “went too far.”

At the corner of Fuck Ice and Abolish Ice. Dolores Park, San Francisco, January 30, 2026. Photo credit my daughters’ beloved preschool teacher

No (negative)

(from www.instagram.com/nobodyssweet...)

More hallucinated case citations: www.law360.com/corporate/ar...

Transformative work of the day, f/sf edition

this isn't The Big Win but it is a big win and people should feel great about it.

He's just a ray of g.d. sunshine, I think he's so swell.

I concur on both instances of “Yikes!” and also “Cite check the brief”

This is from the NYT masthead editorial about the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The highlighted line invalidates not just the editorial, but the very idea of newspaper editorials crafted by the consensus of a board. Better to publish nothing at all than to publish a line like this.

I read @lydiakiesling.bsky.social on anything but especially culture media! “Machines are as pitiful as we are but, unlike us, they can’t feel shame.”

TRUMP: honk honk honk, I'm a big goose. everyone tells me whenever I enter a room, that's the biggest goose I've ever seen and I say yes. I'm a big goose. in a good way. a lot of Somalians are small stupid gooses but I'm a big goose BBC NEWS: a disciplined Trump sticks to the script on the economy

jack asked if i would sketch up a poster to tell people in nearby neighborhoods about the partnership between flock and ring, and this is what i came up with. it can be printed on an 8.5x11 sheet of paper.

I felt like making some art last night/today and could have made something beautiful and/or meaningful but I made this instead. It's a Barbie Yaga Malibu Dream Hut. No regrets. Can't defeat fascism without joy.

The SPEAKER implies. The LISTENER infers. The DUDE abides.

I will read every interview with Heated Rivalry writer and director Jacob Tierney because his quotes are truly a reporter's dream: www.rollingstone.com/music/music-...

Remembering today that having your heart broken is a necessary step on the path to becoming fully human. Whichever heartbreak is your first, it’s probably critical that a state break your heart so that you can develop a political imagination. If this is your first, I’m sorry and also welcome.

what this should make clear to everyone in this country is that it does not matter who you are, there's no "it could never happen to me" you can be a white woman who drives around with stuffed animals in her car, and they will still kill you in cold blood and call you a domestic terrorist

The Lowdown is the best damn show not enough people are watching. I can exclusively report that FX has ordered a second season of the delightful Ethan Hawke comic mystery series: www.whatsalanwatching.com/the-lowdown-...

Merry Christmas from my neighbor’s dog!

“It turns out that banishing the slur from public discourse was, in fact, important. Because now it’s back and it turns out that it does matter when subtext becomes actual text, when terrible people enable open hatred and bigotry, encouraging others to emulate them, degrading us all.”

Some of the best (I think) material in Five Came Back is there because a librarian saw what I was working on over 3 days and asked me if I'd like to take a look at a box of old George Stevens papers that had not been catalogued yet. So no, for a ton of reasons, AI cannot "do the research for you."

I saw it today at the Roxie in the Mission in SF. A theater full of delighted folks and a true holiday wonder.

There IS no better analysis.

If we are banning cell phones for kids we need to be talking about banning chatbots for boomers www.persuasion.community/p/my-chatgpt...

If you’re casting about for a Rob Reiner tribute to listen to: the audiobook of As You Wish, the Cary Elwes oral history of The Princess Bride, includes Reiner reading his own foreword and many other contributions. It’s really wonderful and hearing his warmth will make you smile (and cry).

Probably the single most important rule of writing is that you need to know the rules well enough to know when and why you're breaking them. Doing it by accident is almost never going to work out; doing it on purpose and with reason is the key to all great writing, imo

Not a “good guy with a gun” — a brave soul who *took* a gun from a murdering fool who may imagine *he’s* the “good guy with a gun,” and then the real hero did not use it for more killing but *put the gun down.* Let’s put the fucking guns down. Every last idiot bang bang stick in the world.

Each semester I think about this. The trade off of natural light versus visual exposure to someone walking through campus with a gun. How many students could I fit behind the lectern. What’s our quickest path out. I hate it.

WOW; a DEEPLY corrupt move by the immigration courts; clear collaboration with Trump admin officials to produce a specific result with zero notice to the party and ALSO in a situation where the judge facially lacks jurisdiction; the judge had denied a motion to reopen and the case is on appeal.

The titular wokeness being rolled back is the Civil Rights Act of 1964

team ai hater includes Bong Joon Ho, Guillermo del Toro, Vince Gilligan, the Pope, and me

Cool update to last week’s story on why language doesn’t equal intelligence: a Michigan judge cited it to justify imposing sanctions over a ChatGPT-assisted filing that mentioned real cases but misstated their facts. Congrats to author @benjaminjriley.bsky.social!

a load-bearing component of “the magic of Christmas” is the invisible domestic labor of moms you are now realizing how much she was doing for you and instead of just thanking her you’ve decided it’s about the decline of civilization

If you had a kid in SF in the last 15 years, you probably spent many hours watching Claude not move (and if you were lucky, a few moments watching him swish through the water with those prehistoric turtles). An icon of Bay Area childhood and a real-life magical creature.

this is mesmerizing

i’m not crying you’re crying xkcd: Fifteen Years

First of all, this judge is a hero. Secondly, my god this is egregious conduct. Imagine being this judge, driving this poor kid home, only to have ICE threaten to smash your car windows on your way out of the lot??

“Ha-ha bitches, I got a new scooter!” Truly the rallying cry we need in late 2025

#BREAKING: Former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers will immediately leave his role as an instructor at Harvard while the University investigates his ties to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Dhruv T. Patel and Cam N. Srivastava report.

Left without comment. www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

New: Reuters has tallied job losses, suspensions and investigations stemming from the reaction to Charlie Kirk's Sept. 10 assassination. Its findings: More than 600 Americans have been punished, and the figure is likely to be an under-count. www.reuters.com/investigatio...

Hey authors! Check to see if Anthropic stole your book to train their slop generator on. You’re entitled to $1500 per stolen Work. Look up your work, and if you’re in the database, file a claim secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup/

"Things happen" sometimes, like when you walk into an embassy to apply for your marriage license while your bride-to-be waits outside, but then you get bonesawed to pieces for having exercised freedom of speech as an US-based journalist and have to be carried out in a series of suitcases.

I got this useful bon mot from a middle school teacher recently. In response to, “I DONT UNDERSTAND,” he calmly said, “okay what steps have you taken to understand?” And that’s when I realized that a lot of folks have no steps.

Somewhere in the multiverse there is a Warren Presidency, and I wish I could verse-jump to it. #everythingfeministeverywhereallatonce

This is Goose. His stick didn't fit through the door at first. But Goose believed in himself, and more importantly, so did his doorman. 13/10 (TT: bigstickgoose)