Our Gen X kings Wes and PTA are in full daddy-daughter mode this year and I love it. Building the core emotional stakes around Zsa Zsa, Nubar, Liesl and her mother /// Bob, Lockjaw, Willa and Perfidia. #OBAA #PhoenicianScheme

I worked with the reporters at @unraveledpress.com and the Chicago Reader's @mulchy.bsky.social yesterday to cover a brutal day of ICE activity in the Chicago suburbs. By day's end, immigration agents had killed a man and, only a few miles away, subjected protestors to tear gas and pepper balls.

Apparently there is a guy named Ron Miller who has been painting the iconically styled Detroit brick storefront signs since 1978 and I need people to understand that this one man is worth more to us culturally than 10,000,000,000 pieces of AI slop and more to the community than every ICE agent ever.

It should be obvious now that their project is white Christian nationalism, erasing the growth and progress of The American Century to reinstate a nastier, poorer, more brutally constricted society. It's their governing ethos, often stated as such.

Wes Anderson is my favorite film director and has a direct line to my soul, and THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME is an absolute delight. It took me until the 4th viewing to clock that the old-timey boys agree to "play 2-on-2" and then ... play H-O-R-S-E. Korda does acknowledge he's not much of a sportsman :)

The answer is: Hell yes, trans kids should be able to participate in sports according to how they identify. The emotional damage done by rejecting a kid’s identity is the real concern here. Not the bigotry of a busybody parent trying to bully that one kid.

But it’s important to recognize that most of the time, for most people, the legal system looked normal. You could plan your affairs. You could go about your business. The arbitrary violence was for someone else, somewhere else. And that was crucial to the regime’s power. End.

Haven't been this ashamed of being a UVA alumnus since a similar group of abominable white people tried to do this to the previous university president 12 years ago.

We were told we lived through The End of History and the solving of racism, but it was actually just a Reconstruction period before a particularly vile band of racists got into power to try reinstituting Jim Crow.

Free universal childcare should sound no more radical than free public elementary school. It just involves lowering the age at which the government is willing to step in and provide care. www.currentaffairs.org/news/they-al...

Great list. RIP Jessica Walter RIP Andre Braugher RIP Michael Kenneth Williams RIP Maggie Smith RIP Naya Rivera

Gave a little money ($15) to Wikipedia yesterday. Felt good because it was overdue. They never bug you unless you visit their site (which I do frequently) + while they are not an unimpeachable source, their info stands up really well. Plus when you give they get rid of the pitch for $ on the page.

In all of these end-of-year raves for FURIOSA, I'm not seeing anyone grapple with the stark fact that it is *significantly* more unpleasant than FURY ROAD.

sesame street isn't supposed to make money. the post office isn't supposed to make money. not everything is supposed to MAKE MONEY

This is what's so baffling about so many suggestions for AI in the humanities classroom: they mistake the product for the point. Writing outlines and essays is important not because you need to make outlines and essays but because that's how you learn to think with/through complex ideas.

"Who can we shoot?" John Steinbeck had something to say about this in The Grapes of Wrath, when a bank worker is knocking down shacks on foreclosed land and a farmer thinks a rifle will fix things.

A MAN ON THE INSIDE is absolutely lovely, a great follow-up from THE GOOD PLACE crew that's funny and thoughtful in similar ways. And to the naysayers, yes, sure, there aren't tremendous dramatic stakes — I mean, unless you count the existential challenge of living, and dying, and doing both well.

Increasingly enamored by ARCANE as something like ANDOR-for-teens, with the visual verve and style of the SPIDER-VERSE.

If I were interested in the horrible, stupid thing that guy said, I would follow his ramblings directly. You do not need to share it with all of us.

everything is covid. lack of trust in science & institutions, covid. inflation, covid. decline in quality of urban governance, covid. antisocial behavior, covid. sports gambling and non btc crypto proliferation, covid. migration patterns and labor force impact, covid. descent of higher ed, covid.

not saying anything groundbreaking here, but I really think "politics as a form of content to be served up and consumed like all other forms of content" has been an enormous, underrated disaster in terms of giving folks the illusion of being informed while essentially being gamed like a drug addict

retvrn to charging a reasonable fee for a good service that delivers real value

starbucks barista: order for cathy lou cthulhu: (visibly incensed) i guess that's me

Margot Robbie is just so good in her one scene in ASTEROID CITY. Plus a heartbreaking motif from Alexandre Desplat.

Same for Uline and the Chicago Cubs, comrades.

Artist be like: Illustration Illustration_edit Illustration_color Illustration_color_new Illustration_color_newNEW Illustration_color_Final Illustration_color_FinalNew Illustration_color_FinalNewnew Illustration_color_FinalNewnewFINAL Illustration_color_FinalNewnewFINAL_FINAL

This is not a very nuanced or insightful bit of film criticism, but I just watched Klute and it's crazy how beautiful even normal studio movies used to look. I know that's never really coming back for a bunch of reasons but this is a real Look What They Took From Us thing for me.

still cant get over how perfectly this describes vance. from harpers, 1941 "who goes nazi?"

Happy 70th Birthday to Ruby Bridges, who at the age of 6 desegregated the New Orleans public schools. She’s younger than 36 senators and only 7 years older than Barack Obama. The past isn’t past.

My initial read here is that the Tribune and Illinois Answers Project got really excited to find $444,000,000 in errors ... without the perspective that it represents 0.22% of what the county says is $200,000,000,000 in taxable value. Million vs. billion strikes again! #JournalistsNeedMath

Dear Lord, do we need more male role models like this.

Can't believe we've completely memory-holed the verb "forget."

Add me to the list of Americans who are absolute embarrassed by the behavior of my collegiate alma mater. #UVA fails again. Breaking a campus rule against tents does not necessitate violence from "state police sporting tactical gear and riot shields ... using tear gas and sheer force."

Let's add Better Help to the list of companies (SimpliSafe) whose ad dollars allegedly progressive podcasts (True Hoop, Crooked Media, etc.) should stop taking. @jarodhector.bsky.social mentalhealthmatch.com/articles/for...

This is a really impactful way of telling a difficult story that a lot of folks would otherwise skim or ignore.