Great episode. You don't necessarily expect an episode on this topic to include the line "now we're walking past the Sci Fi/ Fantasy dildo section" (it's set partly in the Smitten Kitten, a Minneapolis adult/sex shop that is doing a lot of mutual aid work)

Me to university tenure/promotion committee

I wish the team well -- it's quite an underdog sports story -- but for some counter-programming and a broader context for Indiana University's appearance in the championship game tonight, check out this excellent doc, "Freedoms Under Assault" comforty.vhx.tv/products/fre...

Enjoyed the most recent @marcmaron.bsky.social special (“Panicked”). Maron is giving Ian McShane in Deadwood

The failure of a faux university in which “Niall was the mind, Bari was the media and Joe was the money,” is arguably not a "tragedy worthy of the Greeks"

Gina Birch, “I Am Rage:” Rage, I am rage I'm a burning cauldron of rage It fires it howls Its red burning red I hear the howling sound of my rage You say you are nice You say you are fine But scratch the surface and you like me are rage

“Why can’t we have new bad things?” he asked me at one point. “Like really new, really bad things?”

🧵 The autoworker at the Dearborn Truck Plant is a proud member of a strong and fighting union—the UAW. He believes in freedom of speech, a principle we wholeheartedly embrace, and we stand with our membership in protecting their voice on the job.

All free text fields about "what would make it easier for you to teach civil discourse" got filled in "less state censorship."

“I am a hater, and I will not be polite. The machine is disgusting and we should break it. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself. AI cannot be a hater, because AI does not feel, or know, or care. Only humans can be haters. I celebrate my humanity” ❤️

At my kid’s college this year they had a showing of the Holdovers for students staying on campus over thanksgiving- loved that

“Yeah, but would America really buy a n**** winning?” Trump said. From @emilynussbaum.bsky.social’s CUE THE SUN

“Anti-democracy measures do not simply arrive and takeover healthy democracies. They are workshopped first – most often on the most vulnerable communities.”

Loved this essay (about a permanent grad student in the UCLA history department who “was our truth-telling hermit, able to turn a mirror on historians’ follies”). But am concerned that a flaunt/ flout error in @nplusonemag.com may be sign of end times? 😳

"Some, too, applaud the swift extrajudicial execution with a bullet to the head of a young mother for not moving her car out of the way quickly enough. Such is the rich tapestry of our diverse, argumentative country!"

“One thing is important: human dignity. Please don’t destroy it. Please don’t humiliate.” Not a bad aesthetic/ political credo (Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr’s)

“i want back my rocking chairs, / solipsist sunsets, / & coastal jungle sounds...” A poem by Renee Nicole Good, who was murdered by ICE earlier today. lithub.com/renee-nicole...

😯 “"We have asked for Maduro to leave, to retire, for President Donald Trump of the United States to be able to remove him, and we have visualized that next year this will happen,” said shaman Ana María Simeón" (article dated Dec 29)

Jeffrey Isaac in @commondreams.org: "US hypocrisy about 'making the world safe for democracy' was bad, and sometimes very bad. Trump’s geopolitical brutalism is worse. Much worse."

Trump obviously thinks this is akin to Loews “running” Home Depot after a corporate takeover. (Or Pottery Barn)

“Now that Trump has announced without euphemism a conquest of Venezuela, resistance to it is to be expected. The U.S. has, once again, entered the Fuck Around phase and, once again, expects it to be eternal” @attackerman.bsky.social

Im seeing discussions about consultations with congress, authorizations of force etc. I have to say this transcends any of what I would call sub constitutional technicalities. The president has gone to war with a foreign power and, it seems, kidnapped a foreign head of state on the basis of nothing.

Mayor Mamdani already delivering results to his city

Sylvia Townsend Warner hilarious: “Beneath all concessions to broadmindedness,” Mr. Fortune’s views “on oiling were positive and unshakable. Oiling, and all that sort of thing, was effeminate, unbecoming, and probably vicious. It was also messy.”

Loved Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent. Plot turns out to revolve partly around a corrupt right-wing functionary who shows up at a university & dismisses all the research being done there as useless bullshit. So that hit home!

Ok…?

My friend and I were shooting hoops on Bleecker Street court in 1991 when we realized the other guy also shooting was Keanu Reeves. Soon some schoolgirls spotted him and he ran off

Nell Zink gives an entertaining interview. “American sex workers are an even scarier organized affinity group than translators. (I mean scary in the social-media sense)”

Yes (with an extra fillip of hate and disdain directed at certain humanities disciplines)

Katherine Hepburn asking “What shall we hang, the holly or each other?" brings the right kind of Christmas spirit

It is happening here

Just discovered this Bernie Sanders banger (Smithsonian Folkways 1979) on Spotify. How does it only have ~2500 plays per track?! @dchiasso.bsky.social

I pledged to We're Not in Harlem Anymore - a new short film by Tarik Rashaan Davis on @kickstarter.com

I would hope Ross Douthat deplores the Harvard Salient’s move into open fascism but he should take responsibility for paving the way with his own Salient pieces that, e.g., defended Pinochet

Perfect album cover art

Don DeLillo: “It’s important to write against power, corporations, the state, and the whole system of consumption and of debilitating entertainments” @nybooks.com

Good thing Lovecraft didn’t know about Alewife ? 😲

This seems like sort of retrograde framing? “”Originally, Harry and Sally didn’t get together,” he told The Guardian in 2018. “But then I met Michele and I thought: OK, I see how this works.” Mr. Reiner reworked the movie’s ending — Harry and Sally had to marry each other”

“As the deadly attack unfolded at Brown University, leaving students hiding under desks and reeling as gunshots rang out, the scene was eerily familiar for at least two students. Years earlier, Mia Tretta, 21, and Zoe Weissman, 20, had both survived school shootings.”

This is such a strange take on the Sacks story to me. You think LLMs hallucinate? It turns out human beings also can make things up!

This site is off the hook

Great lede: “Revenge, it turns out, is a dish best served with evidence”

Sacks “cool[ing] his penis by putting it in orange jello” will stay with me (just to mention one detail)

Krasznahorkai Nobel speech is great- “To Patti Smith, for she is the eternal warning: never submit to anyone… To the last wolf in Extremadura…” among many others

all i'm saying is that there were better options

Scholars of Sexology Fellowship. $5,000 per fellow to support a 4-8 week research visit to the Kinsey Institute in Bloomington. Research may be for a thesis or dissertation

Hiring a “strong-jawed white man” as a news anchor? SO SUBVERSIVE my head is spinning!

Admit, you’ve been wondering, What all goes into creating juicy projectile vomit that looks believable and not too ridiculous?

when I wrote this panel last week, I didn't *literally* expect him to say that questioning his health is tantamount to treason, but I didn't *not* expect it