Electricity rates in my (very cold) area are going up an average of 25% beginning Thursday. Happy New Year, everyone!

Given Kennedy Center president Richard Grenell's recent post, now seems a good time to point out that the true purpose of art is to comfort the disturbed and to disturb the comfortable. It has never been about "being for everyone" and needing to correct that demonstrates how unqualified he is.

There is a culture of immediate gratification that isn't satisfied by rigorous fact-gathering and editing. The internet runs fast and shallow.

For two whole days Trump's comments on local NYC talk radio just hung in the air without question. The President of the United States claimed a strike on a country with whom we are not at war, and 48 hours passed without a peep. That says a lot about our media environment.

"Just shut up and play"? No way.

Bird Photography is trending at the moment. Wonderful reminder that not everything is horrible.

less than two weeks ago marjorie taylor greene introduced and successfully passed a bill that will get trans kids killed. she did it right before christmas to maximise the cruelty.

Appeasement.

Rich people own media. Rich people who get big tax cuts from Republicans. Rich people who want to depict the acquisition of enormous wealth as a noble crusade. Look at the Murdochs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, the Sinclair TV chain and the Ellisons acquiring CBS and trying to grab CNN too. 2/10 🧵

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The piano world is mourning the great Gary Graffman, who died yesterday at age 97. He was as fine a teacher as he was a performer. Yuja Wang was among his students. RIP, Maestro 🎹

It's that glorious Obama portrait that broke the racists' brains.

Have Bari Weiss and Elise Stefanik ever been seen together in the same room? 🤔

Lord, please grant me the confidence and the six "beefy, chiseled" male bodyguards of a mediocre, soulless white (Jewish, lesbian) woman. Never thought I'd be writing this version of things, but here we are. 🤪

ICE is planning 7 massive human warehouses holding 5,000 to 10,000 people … with a smaller facility holding up to 1,500 people in Woodbury. wapo.st/4axtwZ4

As Trump increasingly enables plutocrats, his kids, and other allies to take more than they give, this formulation seems like the inversion of reality, except insofar as Trump, his children, and Elon Musk are themselves immigrants or the children of immigrants.

”shedding”?

. 1,200 immigrants that were held at alligator Alcatraz are missing… No paper trail no record. Families can’t find them at all. #AlligatorAlcatraz .

Sure would be nice to be able to declare any little thing that bothers you a national emergency.

Greenland is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark – a sovereign nation. Venezuela is a sovereign nation. Panama is a sovereign nation. Canada is a sovereign nation. Mexico is a sovereign nation. Ukraine is a sovereign nation.

. We are now getting our news illegally across an international border, which is what people do in North Korea. #CBS #EpsteinFiles .

Good.

Seems to me that the cartoonish attempts to (literally) black out the Epstein files and pave them over/under is creating its own Streisand effect. May it be so.

Dear Media, When JD Vance says "take the country back," what do you think he means? What would the party that controls the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court, and various state goats—plus leading businesses, media orgs, and more—take back? Take what from whom? Thanks, Anti-bigotry Americans

Breaking news: Trump is citing “national security” to halt all active work on offshore wind projects Five giant energy projects, countless jobs at risk My story explains how the argument has legal weaknesses and comes from an anti-wind policy doc I reported in January

Curious to learn more about CECOT? Hear Juan, Andry, and Wilmer share firsthand how the Trump administration branded them as gang members without evidence and deported them to the brutal El Salvadoran prison. This @pbsnews.org documentary is available on YouTube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lku5...

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I think maybe just maybe Bari Weiss's spiking that CECOT story might have, I don't know, backfired?

CBS didn't run the 60 Minutes segment on CECOT, but over here at @propublica.org we've been working on the story since March, including finding out who each and every man sent to that maximum security prison was. You can see our reporting here: www.propublica.org/series/depor...

via @james_grissom

If you think switching which corporate owned legacy media outlet you consume is the solution, you don't really understand how deep the problem is. It's not just ABS, CBS, WaPo or the LA Times. It's the system in which they work. The only solution is to support pro-democracy independent media.

Weiss will inevitably be a glass ceiling casualty of the new rape-bro 80s ski-villain movie brunchlord culture at paramount, who will probably replace her with some MMA chode in order to "sex up" the ratings for culture war agitprop

In Georgia, the state has made "catastrophic" cuts at DHS, citing an $85 million deficit. A provider described one result: a mom who relapsed last week. "Visits with her child were keeping her sober, but transportation services had been cut." Georgia is sitting on a $14.6 *billion* budget surplus.

Congrats again to everyone for pretending the far right authoritarian party’s assault on higher education was really about fighting antisemitism

Oops.

This is part of what I mean by “slow civil war.” It’s not coming, it’s here, and there are mounting casualties.

That we need the files of a dead man to corroborate the reported trauma of over a thousand women - and that even those files need to be cartoonishly redacted - pretty much says everything about whose experience is considered real.

Just because everyone assumed this is what Bondi would do with the Epstein files isn’t a reason to not raise holy hell about it.

Shocked, shocked.

We need Democratically controlled states to rename their state's largest correctional facility as "The Donald J. Trump prison." Plus install a plaque that explains Trump was convicted of 34 felonies, charged with 31 counts of violating the Espionage Act and 4 felonies for his coup attempt.

Boo-hoo, poor, suffering GOP. Once again the NYTimes frames abusers as protagonists.

Politics. Brought to you by banks.

Cartoon by @deadder.bsky.social.

"Cassandras" were dismissed not just by the media, but by colleagues and friends. It reminds me of how people who saw what was coming in Europe mid-20th century were later sarcastically referred to as "premature anti-fascists."

The DOD is escalating its attack on Mark Kelly. In the latest Pentagon post: "Retired Captain Kelly is currently under investigation for serious allegations of misconduct. Further official comments will be limited to preserve the integrity of the proceedings." To preserve the what now?

No matter how much Speaker Johnson holds down the felon's fort and carries his water, you just know he will ultimately get thrown under the bus. Is he the only person in the world who doesn't know this?

USA:

I would say House GOP members are the worst people in the world but the White House staff probably beating them out by a nose