Happy Hanukkah, the holiday where we celebrate the defeat of a large cosmpolitan empire by a small determined group of militant religious fanatics

The person who helped locate the Brown shooter is an immigrant. The person in Sydney who tackled one of the shooters is Muslim. Sometimes the people who are most willing to help others are from communities that know first-hand how much hatred threatens the values we need to live together.

Every year for Hanukkah I like to share panels from this special holiday comic I edited when I was on staff at Marvel. There remains a dearth of specifically Hanukkah stories in comics and this one only ever appeared in print once. Every year I am proud to share and celebrate the light of Hanukkah:

Compare the statement about the antisemitic terror attack in Australia by the Israeli Prime Minister with the one by Zohran Mamdani, and ask yourself who more truly cares about condemning antisemitism, as opposed to using it to promote unrelated politics.

The government is very deliberately NOT trying to deport Mr. Abrego Garcia. Since August, he has been asking them to deport him to Costa Rica, yet the Trump admin keeps refusing to do it (and lying about why) because they want to send him to Africa to punish him. Here's how Judge Xinis summed it up.

They used to "laugh and call him names." Now they're all dead

Using a horrific antisemitic attack to spread vile, hateful Islamophobia, harms Muslims while doing nothing to help Jews. Especially given that the hero who disarmed a shooter, Ahmed al Ahmed, is a Muslim immigrant to Australia.

Horrific, disgusting, inexcusable, antisemitic

Extraordinary courage from Ahmed al Ahmed, a Muslim, 43-year-old father of two, who bravely risked his life to save his neighbors celebrating Hanukkah. Praying for his full & speedy recovery. And so deeply inspired by his example.

WATCH: Bystander disarms active shooter at Bondi Beach in Sydney

so if you personally pay donald trump you get a fast track to a green card

This is a textbook case of political asylum.

This x 1,000,000

Happy birthday to Jane Austen, and to this very on-brand Economist chart www.economist.com/christmas-sp...

What a legend

Australian news reporting that the hero bystander here is named Ahmed al Ahmed. Muslim, father of two.

Hero.

www.thetimes.com/uk/obituarie... A lovely tribute to the brilliant John Carey, whose work I return to again and again and again.

So much terrible writing and thinking about race and racism starts from trying to invent special rules for race and racism, rather than accepting the broad principles of “am I not a man and a brother?”.

Still laughing at this. Cannot imagine a more self-discrediting argument for socialism than “under socialism, you should be able to gesture to your crotch, tell a customer to suck it and keep your job”.

This story is my best attempt to convey the reality of what's happening in Manhattan's immigration courts right now. It is, as one regular court accompanier told me, "not a space to be in." talkingpointsmemo.com/feature/new-...

'Complete nonsense.' Met Police Chief Sir Mark Rowley rubbishes Donald Trump's claims about violence in London under Sadiq Khan.

World Health Organization reaffirms there is no link between vaccines and autism -- contrary to theories being propagated in the United States u.afp.com/S78r

one thing that doesn’t get enough coverage or comment with regards to this administration is it how much it hates the actually existing united states

Yeah we have more Revolutionary War history than Boston or Philadelphia. No, we don't make it our whole personality nygroove.nyc/nyc-revoluti...

Indiana’s Senate has voted AGAINST the GOP gerrymander that’d have locked in a 9-0 map. This keeps the 7-2 map in place, saving two Democratic seats heading into 2026. The vote failed big, 19/31. The MAJORITY of the GOP senators opposed it!

SKULL OF THOMAS AQUINAS: TAKE A LEFT NOW PRIEST: No, the GPS says we have to keep going— SKULL: I KNOW A SHORTCUT PRIEST: Do you remember the last ti— SKULL: FOR THOSE WITH FAITH, NO EVIDENCE IS NECESSARY; FOR THOSE WITHOUT IT, NO EVIDENCE WILL SUFFICE

His photographs are immediately recognisable. From Britain to North Korea, here are six of Martin Parr’s best images

"At least as outlined in this document, the administration’s agendas for Europe seem to be “Make Europe white again” and “Make Russia great again.” It’s not just abdication from leadership of the free world; it’s an open embrace of the forces of unfreedom." open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...

I can’t help thinking that when, in future, people ask what UK political leaders said as it became undeniable that US saw European liberal democracy as its no1 strategic foe, Starmer and others will regret that the answer is “not much, shuffled awkwardly, looked at their feet”.

Terrific thread

♥️ “ICE looked at that school, saw a community standing up for families, and decided it wasn’t worth it.”

They're using the confinement box, one of the most horrific methods of CIA torture in the post-9/11 black sites, against migrants now. This is the direct result of the lack of consequences for the architects of the torture program. Either there will be criminal penalties for this or it will expand.

As with everything he says, this is wildly uninformed. Formula keeps getting better and saves lives. And modern research indicates that outcomes are roughly the same. There are reasons to breastfeed but your child isn’t suffering if you don’t

America should be building a lot of new electrical infrastructure — yes it’s good to use infrastructure efficiently, but there’s no way around the need for actual new physical investment. www.slowboring.com/p/a-bolder-v...

cannot begin to tell you how happy I am to have stumbled upon the Paris building shared by metal music fans and the union for metal workers, what a delight

www.ft.com/content/b127.... “Just because it’s stupid doesn’t mean it won’t inherit the earth” should be the official motto of the 21st century.

“The brain is just the weight of God, For, lift them, pound for pound, And they will differ, if they do, As syllable from sound.”

“…So / They did, the freed ship sailed, and the man climbed back / Out of the marvellous, as he had known it.”

It's the 160th anniversary of the United States' refounding, the ratification of the 13th Amendment.

Prison rape is wrong. Jokes about prison rape are wrong. Eliminating protections against prison rape is wrong. If another country sentenced a criminal to be raped, we'd consider it a crime against humanity. BUT A large segment of Americans regard prison rape as a de facto part of the sentence.

As artificial intelligence changes childhood for better and for worse, society must rethink the business of growing up

This is lovely - RIP

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) said earlier today that seeing this video was "one of the most troubling things I've seen in my time in public service." "People will someday see this video and they will see that that video shows ... an attack on shipwrecked sailors."

Our visual guide to how a bust that rivals the dotcom era could wipe out 8% of Americans’ household wealth

They were 8 and 11 years old

A new post by a Republican state Senator in Indiana, saying she will "not cave" on redistricting as she shares that she was just the target of a pipe bomb threat to due "DC political pundits."

I love the Nixon-to-China aspect of this long-overdue deregulatory push coming from a DSA mayor

This is a legitimately terrific podcast -