A sobering piece on the deliberate randomness and brutality of organized state terror, by @mashagessen.bsky.social.

I really wish someone/anyone at @caltrain.com could find a way to honor the GoPass purchased by my employer. Or at least instruct their conductors to stop harassing me when it doesn’t show up on my card until they can fix the problem. #clippercardnightmare

Increasingly convinced that “nothing new under the sun” arguments are not only lazy but intellectually dangerous.

Mirror for the sun…

I think the misogynist contempt that’s evident as a motivation in the murder of Renee Good makes her killing by a state actor more similar to so-called private violence—eg domestic violence homocides—than some arguments that rely on a firm distinction between state and private violence can sustain.

“a torrent of untruths, half-truths, smears, and innuendo has been unleashed by the White House”

In 2026 I want all of the decent people to remember one thing. You aren’t meant to be this disciplined, this self-sacrificing to survive. The environment is supposed to support good living. We can have that. You are not a failure. That is politics. That is all.

Mamdani: For too long, those fluent in the good grammar of civility have deployed decorum to mask agendas of cruelty

Wish for 2026: “Come healing of the reason / come healing of the heart.” - L. Cohen.

This is way better than the CA high-speed rail I voted for in 2008. 🙃

Might have isolated the only sunny spot in the Californias this morning.

Important thread, about the pernicious difference between what we might be inclined to call “new media” in our time and earlier print and digital forms.

Update: gato is fully settled in.

Annual x-mas road trip with the gato (now a connoisseur of hotel linens).

People are out here proudly announcing that they intend be authors and that they have no interest in writing, that they deserve a large-audience of readers but they themselves only read to extract from the actual artists they plan to usurp. Baby, the cogs have learned to TALK. Wild times.

Did my annual Christmas shopping @greenapplebooks.bsky.social. And noticed this mural for the first time. Might be a creationist now…🍏😂

i don't think this is even a real statistical anomaly anymore. it seems like there's someone in the crowd at every mass shooting who has been through it before. this doesn't have to be our shared cultural experience.

Tfw you miraculously find your earbuds after a week of soul-crushing silence at the gym.

I knew all along this book was partly a rewriting of Invisible Man, but am frankly moved to see Ellison appear in this way in the end.

#ucla noir.

In case you were under the impression that California fall had peaked in November. 🔥

"I’ve concluded that instead of teaching students to read and write, I should be teaching them how to prompt AI better. If only I’d had a better education in AI prompt writing, I’d be able to get AI to create more AI-proof teaching materials for me."

Porcini for stuffing / onion for scale.

My absolutely favorite artwork for today, capturing the holiday more poignantly than any other: Alice Neel, Thanksgiving, 1965

Fire and archives: reposting this piece for your Thanksgiving reading. Such an honor being a part of the inaugural issue of @contrastsmag.bsky.social, on the timely theme of Portals.

so, so good. run it as a political ad.

Leo is clearly winning.

Its near "super intelligence" "replacing professionals" in the PR rounds, then once everyone is convinced and uses them for legal and medical advice, following the deceptive marketing, they slip it in the terms of service that you shouldn't do that. buttondown.com/maiht3k/arch...

Might be the most useful discussion of “what fascism is” I’ve encountered, especially its status as a “scavenger politics.”

Timeline cleanse.

Sailor’s delight. #sf

NEW: San Francisco’s “compassionate” RV permit program is failing the people it promised to help. A months-long investigation by @eltecolotesf.bsky.social reveals a rushed, chaotic rollout, leaving hundreds at risk of losing their homes.🧵 Here’s what we found: bit.ly/47LB1sc

The Mayor of Larkin Street. #caturday

Finally a form of techno-optimism I can get behind.

Happiness really is shocking sometimes.

Feeling more optimistic than I have in a year.

Going with Vice.

So much for my belief in the Easter Bunny. #sanfrancisco

Excited to share this new piece, out today in the inaugural issue of ContraSTS, about the dubious Vesuvius Challenge competition, where participants supposedly used AI to unroll charred scrolls from a buried Herculaneum villa. Basically my position statement on AI. contrastsmag.net/article/the-...

In case you needed a segue.

Gatoscuro. #caturday

Now *this* is what the internet is for.

Hell of a speech.

BRILLIANT.

#Caturday uselessness.

stop calling everything a distraction youtube.com/shorts/yyFjN...

TIL this etymology. Feel like I should have known this.

Headline writer finally gets it right: ‘Extortion’: Newsom Threatens to Sue After Trump Fines UCLA $1 Billion www.kqed.org/news/1205152...