There's plenty to criticize Democrats for, and I do it here all the time. But criticizing them for telling people they have to vote is so counterproductive it borders on malevolent. If in 2026, you don't get how important it is, you are as much a part of the problem as anyone you're angry at.

Years ago I talked to a woman at Sesame Street whose kid had spent an afternoon being filmed talking to Elmo for a promo, and her kid’s only complaint was that the other guy who was hanging out with Elmo wouldn’t take a hint and leave.

Also Cole Escola Jane Krakowski Billy Joel Bad Bunny

People who should host The Muppet Show: Quinta Brunson Mel Brooks Connor Storrie Chelsea Perretti and Jordan Peele Stephen Colbert Fiona Apple

Anybody who thinks DC isn't a cultural hub needs to shut their mouth. You probably think that because Black culture isn't real to you. We have a local great music & arts scene. For us. Maybe it's not international class to you. And that was the point of the Kennedy Center. Art accessible to us.

Just a great reminder that these clowns don't understand cultural production at all, never mind art, because DC is a major cultural hub, in no small part BECAUSE OF THE KENNEDY CENTER

somewhere Alan Dershowitz is crashing out

IMPORTANT OLYMPIC NEWS: THE POLISH FIGURE SKATING TEAM HAS A PLUSH PIEROGI

The new appointee in charge is learning the costs of politicization. He has no criminal justice experience. The people who know what they are doing are leaving. Actual criminal prosecutions are not being done. Authoritarianism inevitably bends towards incompetence.

This creates an environment where people like Greg Bovino rise, and say things like “We’re going to put it down" about the demonstrations. No fear of real accountability, no sense of duty or obligation to the public. He assumes the King will protect him.

You should read this. It is the type of detail that experts in authoritarian regimes see as telling. In this case, state agents are offered impunity from higher ups, and the legal system is rendered inoperative as a mode of accountability. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/07/u...

The Washington Post layoffs were a bigger bloodbath than you thought. New figures reveal 44 to 47.5 percent of the paper's newsroom was eliminated during last week's cuts.

Democratizing the arts looks like universal income, low-barrier grants for both emerging and working artists, well-funded municipal arts & recreation programs, vibrant third spaces, and a well-funded public school system with progressive curriculum. Not a free pass for corporate-owned slop engines.

Brett Goldstein.

Back to this transcript this morning bc I’m befuddled. This exchange between the judge & the lawyer could be a case study for the brain-hooked-on-AI. Instead of correcting/writing a new brief w/out AI, he decides to write something which wouldn’t use citations at all - but still uses NotebookLM!

I’m running out of ways to describe how unfathomably badly this is going

Public comments needed! The admin wants to define grad programs in many "helping" fields (social work, nursing, teaching, etc) to no longer be "professional" degrees. This would mean major student loan restrictions: only $20,500/year. Tuition alone is often more. Please comment by March 2!

It's under the brand name 'Yeztugo,' and it has a 100% success rate in women and a 96% success rate in men even after a year - which means that it's far more forgiving of a weird schedule, and still highly effective if you delay your booster.

I have yet to see any evidence that there is a market for AI-generated books outside of people being tricked into thinking they are not AI-generated books. AKA, it is a project of scamming and deceiving people, and really should be treated as fraud

Please sign my petition to start an Autumn Olympics where all events empty into a pile of delightful leaves and whatnot.

'Who's going to win," she says after explaining that she can't even mention the pen names producing books because it will tank what pitiful sales she gets if people know she's using AI to produce them. LOL. Hear yourself.

And the thing that will have the most value for me is that people will see my name and know that a human being worked on this book and did her best to make it the best, and most meaningful, book she could.

Like, it's just really easy to see that I am not going to be able to keep up with the LITERAL REST OF THE WORLD in output. Even without AI. The way people like me win is by writing memorable books that relate to the human experience.

I'm going to win.

I don't think the Olympics and the Superbowl should happen at the same time. What if a parent had a kid in each? You know they're going to the football game and not the cross country skiing. And that makes me sad for that skier I just made up.

Child at the podium: “A woo woo woo.” Mamdani: That’s how I felt when we came up with this plan. Together, we will expand the idea of what is possible in our city—and what sounds and noises we can make at a press conference.

Once again, it turns out “fully autonomous” means “a guy in the Philippines.”

One of the reasons I so greatly dislike the “can men and women be friends?” nonsense (yes, full stop, shut up) is that it casts suspicion on people with opposite-sex friends instead of where it more often belongs: on people with no opposite-sex friends.

I don't know if non-lawyers understand how insane this statement is. I honestly can't think of anything remotely comparable in non-lawyer speak. I guess the closest would be a surgeon saying "Imagine if I had to wash my HANDS before doing surgery!"

Do they all get deported now? Is that how this works?

At the same time, the extent of the Washington Post layoffs highlight how it didn't matter how hardworking, loyal, smart, collaborative, award-winning, competitive, knowledgeable and devoted so many of the staff were. It wasn't enough to prevent being laid off by one of the richest men in the world.

It doesn't matter what the women said or did, how educated or successful they are, how faithful she is to her partner, anything. The Epstein files explicitly detail how these men (and their allies) emailed each other for advice and strategy on sex with girls and women, as well as helping each other.

the Epstein files are really devastating because they remind me of how many girls and women miss out on professional opportunities, mentorship and careers because of how many powerful, rich and influential men only view girls and women — and interactions with them — through the lens of sex

My brain started dissociating as I read it because I have to be functional and teach soon so I started thinking of the titles to a dissertation studying his email and came up with "Sexism Aside: How Parentheticals Reveal the Quotidian Workings of Systemic Oppression"

This is so awful I don’t know how to express how awful it is.

Here's a really tiny violin, and it will play the tune of "maybe if you can't handle habeas cases you shouldn't kidnap people off the street with no due process and fly them to Texas, you fuckers"

The world factbook was an invaluable resource in asylum petitions—a place where the federal government acknowledged in writing that, for example, Tibetans face systematic repression in China. I don’t like to have it vanish.

They were never going to get to their stated deportations goal with due process. So they're phasing it out. (Part 2)

Democracy dies in oligarchy.

What Judge Blackwell said ought to make news outlets reconsider and drop the word “crackdown“ from headlines and stories Crackdown implies legitimate if severe use of authority Versus “what you cannot do is to detain first, and then sort out lawful authority later”

He probably could have just posted this screenshot though.

Judge Blackwell continues: "Having what you feel are too many detainees, too many cases, too many deadlines, and not enough infrastructure to keep up with it all, is not a defense to continued detention. If anything, it ought to be a warning sign."

The Washington Post and CBS aren’t intended to succeed. They’re intended to fail and as they fail any sort of power or influence they have over public opinion will demonstrably wane until it disappears. It’ll happen over and over again until there are no impediments for the wealthy.

Everybody has it backwards. Billionaires aren’t buying up these institutions to make money. They’re buying them to kill them. Same as the oligarchs destroying government and social programs and things like weather forecasting and regulatory bodies. They’re creating a world they control completely

13/ “[A]s many as 69M women who have taken their spouse’s name don’t have a birth certificate that matches their legal name. ‘The legislation does not mention the potential option for these Americans to present…a marriage certificate in combination w/ a birth certificate to prove their citizenship’…

The GOP’s new Voter Suppression bill, the so-called “SAVE Act,” would disenfranchise many of the 69 million women who took their husbands’ last names, as explained in my summary. It proposes *no penalties* for erroneous voter purges but potential *prison time* for erroneous registrations. WTF?! 1/

When Jeff Bezos bought WaPo, he immediately took control of the opinions section. Now, he's laying off hundreds of journalists, including those covering Amazon. This isn’t a coincidence. It’s the result of billionaires with vested political agendas taking over our media.

What's that you say! It was all just fear pushing by bad faith groups and that trans women pose no threat to cisgender women. www.independent.co.uk/news/science...

This is a fascinating story. ICE tried to buy a warehouse in VA from a Canadian company, to turn into a detention center. One of the company’s advertising partners basically told them that if they sold, they could kiss their ads goodbye. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/01/u...