You can pretend to have your shit together if you want. They don’t really check

Well, it’s Christmas for me, so have my favorite Christmas story. www.jowaltonbooks.com/short-storie...

“I am worn from warning. What is a warning, anyway, but a declaration of what you love and want to protect? It’s not that my heart’s not in it. It’s that my heart is in everything.” sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/the-miners

Merry Christmas! Here, have a vintage snow-covered Diplodocus skeleton

As a holiday tradition, we should seek vengeance on our enemies. 😇

just saying: it's possible that "I'm gonna dramatically constrict my state capacity while plotting dramatic imperial expansion, and expanding my set of internal enemies while alienating most of my foreign allies" is the beginning of a world-historical masterstroke. but also possible that it isn't

I am a video essayist now! My second video is out now, about that terrible OU gender studies essay and what it means when power stops bothering with an argument. youtu.be/GvCmeuJyT9g?...

Every day, I pray this will be the day of that one particular piece of good news. You know, THAT piece of good news, inspiring jubilant celebration. Every close-up of hand makeup heralds hope and possibility. May that joyous day come soon.

You probably had a better Saturday than Vice Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, but that’s because you didn’t order anyone to kill two helpless, unarmed people like Vice Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley did.

i think this video is pretty good and you should watch it

Several state and local elections broke campaign spending records, thanks mostly to big donors and super PACs. www.brennancenter.org/our-work/ana...

The skull beneath the skin

Last month's odd-year elections in the states broke spending records, a sign that we haven't yet seen the high-water mark of the big-money flood unleashed by the Supreme Court and other deregulatory actions. www.brennancenter.org/our-work/ana...

‘You boy! How do I unsubscribe from all these Black Friday emails?’

Does anyone want a survivorship bias shortbread

The old peasant had two skills: stone-working and knowing not to report to work when the monarch’s secretive projects were nearing their completion dates. #MicroStory

Ivan Marchuk (Ukrainian, b. 1936). Moon in the steppe.

"I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

This Thanksgiving, it's important to think about what kind of Thanksgiving column you want to wind up in—the hot cousin one, or the Marine Todd one. Then I explain how we can take direct action against your family.

You know what? I'm going to toot my own horn a little bit. Here are the first two pages from "Lost Worlds." If you've read "Sapiens," compare the depth of his understanding of the material he's citing with what I'm doing here.

Trump is the only president to fundraise for a super PAC while constitutionally prohibited from running again. (To be fair, only one other president, Obama, even had the chance.) www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/u...

evergreen

These idiots are lying about vaccines to pander to the politics of cruel stupidity, and they are going to kill children.

Coinbase CEO says the company gave to Trump's ballroom fund to "keep good relations with the White House." www.axios.com/2025/11/18/t...

If I move beyond simply cracking jokes about the alleged blowjob, my thoughts go in this direction: bsky.app/profile/riki...

the sense of incredulity and comic revulsion i get every time i see a cybertruck in the wild has not been reduced by even a single degree in all the time they’ve been on the street

Rich people are complaining about their taxes going up and like, can't you just make more money? I swear, rich people these days just don't want to work anymore. They're so lazy and entitled. Like pull yourself up by your gold plated bootstraps, rich people, don't you always say that's so easy?

Republicans yesterday 😂

I'm not old-fashioned about much but I do think it's a shame rock and roll is no longer blamed for all the ills of the world.

Nature abhors a vacuum, but it loves a dumpling

I don't think there's a single group of people anywhere on earth who has not, at one stage of their societal development, looked at a piece of food and thought "You know what this needs? An edible wrapper"

And the universality of the dumpling creates a realm where no one can say, here is the apotheosis of the dumpling. There are a hundred sublime versions.

*Doctor* Eric J. Harvey!

When Massachusetts passed a "millionaires tax" in 2023, conservatives claimed the rich would flee. But two years later, they haven't — and MA has collected $5.7B for infrastructure and public education. A reminder that positive change can still happen at the state level.

"In the two years since the state started charging a 4% surtax on incomes over $1 million, the effort has created a $5.7 billion windfall, with the surplus being used to fund bridge repairs, bolster literacy programs and address the transportation system’s budget deficit." Taxing the rich works!

In a major break from the past, the Supreme Court is frequently using its emergency docket to rule on challenges to government actions — almost always in favor of the Trump administration and without explanation. bit.ly/4nXIr2p

Do your parents walk too slowly through palaces, monuments, and other places frequented by tourists? Do they stop to read every plaque while you’re trying to hustle them into the next room so you can see some cool stuff? You may be entitled to compensation.

This week on the blog: Peasants! We are at last putting together and wrapping up our discussion of life for pre-industrial peasants - a category which includes a majority of all humans who have ever lived. How we can model how they lived, worked, loved and died. acoup.blog/2025/10/17/c...

My first day working at AWS is going great. For some reason they had a lot of computers plugged in that nobody was using, so I’ve started an initiative to lower our carbon footprint

[Exit King.]

Jeffrey Epstein was a hyper-parasite, a billionaire whose quarry was other billionaires.

I now cry every time I watch this or hear it. Also, remember, this is now under the Tom Holland rule and must be reposted every time you see it.

#Frog #Pratchett

I have seen Him in the refugees arriving on our shores And I’ve seen His Pontius Pilates on the House and Senate floors. Let us build Him up an altar before ICE’s prison doors.

the Brennan Center has a nice overview on the abuse that is NSPM-7 www.brennancenter.org/our-work/res...

New @brennancenter.org roundup of what we're following in money in politics, from AI super PACs to Web ad spend... the first major SCOTUS campaign finance case in a decade, the FEC down to 2/6 commissioners, pardons, corruption--and some good news, too. www.brennancenter.org/our-work/res...

Why most polls overstate support for political violence www.gelliottmorris.com/p/most-polls...

Stay weird, Portland. I love that about y'all. Show those mean ICE pricks how ridiculous they are.