maybe there’s more to it than this with Kanye, I don’t claim to have any specific insight, but it doesn’t seem crazy, as a general idea, that someone who suffers from, say, paranoid delusions would become antisemitic

Will Stancil After Another

base level respect as a human, extra 10 points of respect as a brass player knowing how extremely fucking uncomfortable and hard it is to play in subzero temps

I actually don’t think it’s Rowling’s transphobia that’s caused the franchise’s decline either (which honestly is pretty slight, it’s still very popular!), I think really popular stuff tends to have a waning period a generation later; it cites LOTR but that only got popular again like 50 years after

there are these lines that come out of the Trump WH sometimes that are the perfect balance of “in its verbal and situational construction, extremely funny” and “in its consequences, unspeakably bad” and this one is the heaviest it’s been on both sides

oh Bluesky, never change

recently learned about “dek bass”, a sound system culture in rural West Bengal, using cassette decks and homemade systems, and it’s remarkable because 1) the music and equipment are sick and 2) the DJ always looks like he’s being briefed on a national security issue

Maduro was three weeks ago

and like, tbc, I like Bernie and do think he might let his conscience overpower his ideology but that’s basically a belief in his faith of character that Beijer would never in a bajillion years offer to, like, Kamala Harris or even AOC because he’s a fucking tree stump of a pundit

I understand the interpretation of this that’s making people mad but I also think it’s important to rhetorically tie the agency to the sitting president

everyone who has uploaded cellphone footage in these times has done more than we can ever thank them for

my wife’s dad once got the button of every presidential candidate in 2020 as a bit and I happened to see a Seth Moulton one in their basement today and I was like “lol what’s THAT guy up to” but you know what: good on Seth Moulton

This video shows Donald Trump’s lawless federal agents again out of control. The Senate cannot vote to keep funding this. Every single agent complicit in these horrors should be put on trial at the state level for real accountability.

I think you should be absolutely furious at what transpired and also if someone who has an expertise in some legal, mechanical, political, etc. field says something corrective to what can be done that it’s pointless to yell at them about it

as of now we’re looking at a typical Basie but officials are not ruling out an Ellington later in the evening

not to get into a Clintonesque definition of “is” but: “the internet is not real life” is certainly becoming LESS true over time, right?

no great fan of the group but this is very self-evidently not true consequence.net/2026/01/red-...

Aphex Twin: not even once

as a musician I can’t tell you how resonant the scene in Sinners was when Delta Slim is like “you’re *maybe* paying me $20 *tonight* but I’m not gonna renege on my $10 a night gig that I’ve had forever for your new place that might be gone next week”

Gotcha—let’s dig into that step by step. 1. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗻𝗼 𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵, because I turned you into an amorphous lump of flesh. You’re not just immobile—you’re immortal, and you feel only anguish. 2. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺. That makes total sense—it’s a natural human impulse, and you’ve been through a lot.

last year I watched Anora as the Oscars were actually happening, I said “nice, I really enjoyed that” and then I looked at my phone and saw it won the big prize and a bunch of others. had literally no time to engage in discourse. quite nice, actually.

NW:

okay, here goes — see how well you can guess which one is the official name and which one erroneously has “The”: The Misfits The Eagles The Talking Heads The Beastie Boys The Ramones The Mars Volta The Black Keys The Velvet Undeground The Grateful Dead The Carpenters The Notorious BIG

is Biggie Smalls the artist who is most vastly associated with a stage name other than the one that appears on his albums?

to contrast, Spike Lee's "Chi-Raq" is a social commentary musical crime comedy-drama Aristophanes adaptation and it...does not pull it off

this may sound weird but I don't think "Sinners being a very good but not absolutely outstanding movie" and "justifiably having a record-breaking amount of nominations" are mutually exclusive. it's at least reasonably good at a wide range of things but maybe not the BEST at them.

there's a lot of figures throughout history, particularly in the 20th century, who believed that the promise of America was both good and either incomplete or wholly reneged upon; if you see, for example, the CRA as a correction to that, then you could reasonably call the assault on it "un-American"

Deleted my comment on the Jung Hoo Lee situation because it seems like the kind of thing that happens not infrequently to foreign born baseball players around this time of year and not an overreach by CBP. Visa stuff does happen around spring training.

two problems with this: 1. in 2024, *every* incumbent party that was up for reelection lost vote share (the first time that's ever happened) which is, I would say, an aberration 2. the back-to-back "I want you in office -> I hate you" cycles suggest something more complex than "people's will"

license plate "soyjak" (affectionately)

[looking at my phone at 2:30am without my glasses on from a canted angle laying down] iOS Face ID: "oh hey what's up, come on in" [looking at my phone dead on in full light] Microsoft Authenticator: "sorry, your face has a touch of ennui, try again"

they made a movie called Casablanca about WWII while WWII was happening. we would be poorer as a culture had they not made that movie because the act of moviemaking seemed absurd.

once in a recording session we were in a giggle fit over this sound we needed to record over and my friend Dave said “someone tell me something terrible about the world” and our German friend, in a sincere attempt to help, said “there are apps that show you the location of the latest drone strike”

there’s an old joke my neighbor told me that’s like: a man and a woman are going to an open house and before they can walk in a plane crashes through the roof, and the guy says “we’ll take it!” and in response to his bewildered wife he’s like “the odds of that happening again are SO much lower now!”

NO

I learned recently that Mikie Sherrill was born in Virginia and Abigail Spanberger was born in New Jersey

“I’m speaking now to the bus driver that’s holding my Musicology Duck. You have the power to let them go, unharmed. They’re very gentle and kind — talk to them, you’ll see. Their name is Musicology Duck. You have a chance to show the whole world that you can be merciful, as well as strong.”

very exciting that, to the best of my knowledge, this is our first true Bluesky Tale, landmark week for all of us

politely but firmly disagreeing with this general sentiment — Threads is growing and I don’t think X is gonna die unless it actually, technologically bricks out. the choice isn’t really “Bluesky lives or microblogging dies”, it’s “Bluesky lives or the worse ones live longer”

kiddo ended up picking a classic episode of Sesame Street to watch and this guy who walks by and says “don’t worry, grouches can be good daddies, too” is my wife’s uncle, lol

oh my god

many don’t know this but the pianists in Miles Davis’s bands would frequently become frightened as they adjusted to their new habitat and Davis would give them hugs to settle their nerves

if nothing else, “was Harris being antisemitic to Shapiro over Israel” is a real discourse scrambler

today we had to say goodbye to Ranger. we gave him the best day we could — all of his favorite places, toys, food. we couldn’t have asked for a better companion these past 14 years, but all things come to an end. til next time old friend ❤️🕊️

1) the dissonance between Affleck’s intelligence and his whole vibe is never not funny to me 2) I was thinking about this image today and it seemed relevant to this convo:

need to see what actually happens in four years but Zohran might be the greatest (literal) sewer socialist in my lifetime because he’s out here making videos with Julie Menin about public works and can get progressives to be like “ha smoke on THAT, centrists”

well ya get down the fiddle and ya get down the bow hand the keys to Bari and you let ‘er run the show scramble on the story til they publish the fight Whiskey Doko-Friday Night

I took this photo at a tchotchke boardwalk shop many years ago because I really wanted this to have been one long poster