Learn to play bagpipes, banjo, accordion, or tuba. Practice indoors at your friends house.

The sheer terror this man felt. We, being capable of agency and morality, should never willfully bring about this terror on another person. That's really all I can say here. I'm glad they didn't get him, but he still has to recover from that terror.

Sunday morning Josh time

My saturday night is me watching a slo-motion video I took of myself hitting backhands trying to diagnose how I can get it better. What a weird, and honestly enjoyable Saturday night.

I have no opinions on the quality of the Taylor Swift album. But to all Swifties who feel this is a bad album: artists do have bad albums sometimes, and they can comeback to make a good one the next album.

Yikes. The NYT has a profile about someone I sorta knew in college and her work in the Trump admin. This gives me lots of feels. None of them good

I think what 20 years of social media and 30+ years of online forum posting has taught us is: “Dear Penthouse was the zenith of posting and we never should have tried other things.

These AI Google Cloud commercials doing “statistical analysis” about baseball are ironically a great example of the weakness of these AI models. Yes the models spit out information to you, but they aren’t actually able to give you knowledge because all the info given in the commercials is spurious.

Swing and rural districts: Places notoriously immune to discussions of federal overreach.

Roberts: First they went for the immigrants and I said yes because I am not an immigrant and kinda want those immigrants to be deported too, except for my nanny. Not her Then they went for the people sending foreign aid, and I said yes because fuck people in other countries

Can Thiel and Vance just do their coup already? Those two are awful but they have no juice, so their evil will be somewhat contained by the fact no one likes them.

My ex called her a loaf the other day. A LOAF!!!! Can you believe that?

Here’s the thing. Roger Marshall is with rural hospitals closing, so long as he is not invested in that particular hospital.

I think it’s time we burn down Silicon Valley (and Seattle just to be safe)

of all the things about ta-nehisi coates’s philosophy i wish people would internalize the main one is: sometimes you lose

What is the best movie of all time and why is it Kindergarten Cop?

“After careful consideration and listening to the residents of…those most directly impacted — my office will not support this proposal,” This is just an extension of the idea of tying voting to land ownership. You can’t be impacted if you don’t own land because you don’t count.

“Everyone has receipts now. I see surveillance culture leaking into nondigital interactions. You can’t even sneak out of your house now because your parents have you on Life360.” One of my last years of teaching my students told me about this. They all seemed to think it was normal. I was horrified

Donald Trump can take the Department of Justice’s independence and its commitment to the rule of law. But he can never take its norms. by Merrick Garland

Not sure if the complaint here is that these acts are not actively making billboard top 40 music so why bother or that people have no interest in their music anymore, even their old hits. Either complaint is crack smoking stupid.

I’m basically on Swift’s side her because the NFL has long leeched off the performers, but someone saying Taylor doesn’t need the Super Bowl but the Super Bowl needs Taylor is insane. The NFL will not struggle to find huge names perform. U2 was willing to do it.

This photo actually really triggers me. Brilyn probably spent 1 summer caddying at his dad’s country club with a $400,000 membership fee and a $50,000 minimum spend per year and he KNOWS he knows shit about the world. Just absolute useless paired with complete access to anything he wants.

The thing most holding me back in my life is I will never have the unearned confidence and shamelessness of a grifter. Oh the things I could accomplish.

Alderperson’s prerogative is a helluva drag

Some amazing gay history. Listen up kids.

there's a good article to be written somewhere about the context and history behind "a joke," not in the sense of "a remark meant to be amusing" but as in "a remark that can retroactively be declared insincere and therefore insignificant"

As the Democrats rebrand, they must look at Biden's failures not must as the man failing, but as the entire political approach failing to meet the moment. Any serious 2028 nominee needs to wrestle with this dilemma or risk running for office using yesterday's playbook 5/x

I’ve never met Cernovich, but he is married to a family friend, an Iranian woman, and my parents met him. The family has basically been asked “wtf” about him. And the parents in law are just like “he treats our daughter well” but don’t say anything nicer than that about him.

I’m starting to think marrying your high school sweetheart is probably the best dating strategy.

I do love that all the replies are basically "thank god Seagal dies so early in the film"

Let it be known from this day forward that the most powerful force ever seen by humanity is: Adults who are really into Disney

Not that it matters to Incel Lex Luther, but how is one supposed to ensure states aren’t using funds to promote communist ideology without a federal workforce engaged in monitoring and enforcement?

I look at this photo and wonder “how much does Melania get in the will?” My basic theory of her is that she hates him, but is an awful person herself for different reasons. All of this is just her waiting out the days until she can get her assets in the will.

College football being normal

Grindr somehow ruined dating for everyone.

An actual millenial complaint in my joke here is that there was a time (aka 2007) where smart phones solved an actual problem. People often carried a phone, an mp3 player, and a digital camera as separate devices all at the same time. Your pockets were bulky and uncomfortable. Add internet access

RETVRN to having a phone, a music player and a digital camera be separate devices all sitting in your pocket at once.

It is deeply unfortunate that these old-guard unions are no longer a reliable part of the Democratic coalition but, given that their membership is actively voting to destroy the institutions and hurt themselves, it's probably time for Democrats to just cut them loose

My basic theory on Nate is he has no friends and this has no one to tell him to shut the fuck up and grow up

Screenshots of future past

I signed the Harper's letter to show I was brave enough to stand up to the left on free speech. But I've decided that I'm not brave enough to stand up to the right about it.

“Get Smart” premieres 60 years ago tonight, on NBC. “I was sick of looking at all those nice, sensible situation comedies,” Mel Brooks said. “They were such distortions of life. .. No one had ever done a show about an idiot before. I decided to be the first.”

It is a little weird that the guy from The Man Show lost his job in this world. If Carson Daly is next, I’m gonna start asking why the worst 90s tv hosts are the ones who stood up to Trump.

I had friends say to me, look, we can oppose political violence without whitewashing this guy. I spent some time thinking about that over the weekend...and my reaction honestly is that the only possible solution is to surrender even harder

No one asked for a Nathaniel Rateliff cover band to become a Democratic think thank.

trump’s numbers are tanking and there is a palpable desire in the electorate for a real alternative and yet the only money in democratic politics is for doing starmerism

Many years ago, a friend of mine built a trebuchet with his brother and dad. They mostly use it to fling bowling balls at pins 50 or so yards away.

If you are doing the YMCA, do you mime the C to your right or to your left?