First time through #babylon5 and still in S1. It’s coming together after the pretty great 2-parter. “Voice in the Wilderness.” It’s wild how much it knows about the road to fascism that kind of got swamped by the War on Terror. Like it understands authoritarian creep.

Well I think they are. For the money power.

living in a world where the only two jobs are “gambling” and “murder” isn’t nearly as cool as Cowboy Bebop made it out to be

This is us now.

Relevant to this: the man who can’t admit he lost an Emmy and lies about everything can’t find a way to lie about whether he thinks he’s going to heaven. That’s how bad.

This is, no joke, his leadership style and reflects something he believes to be true about the universe: that he can’t embarrass himself.

Money Pit! the Broadway Musical Found money.

I both love Winnipeg and also understand why so much art about Winnipeg is about hating it.

Hard to prove you don’t belong to a group that doesn’t exist.

“For the large majority [of the Harper’s Letter signatories,] Trump’s reign of terror has apparently been less objectionable than the irritating undergraduate and entry-level scolds of the 2010s.”

The algo videos that play endlessly on our private screens are doing Italian Fururism’s work of making thinking hurt, making violence omnipresent, destroying history, and praising speed and brevity above all else. Futurism was the house style of the fascist party and had a manifesto and everything.

A thing Dem leadership should understand is that their stance on the culture war (that it’s a distraction) means they miss a LOT of political violence directed at the most vulnerable parts of the coalition that elects them when they win.

@gregpak.net is one of the bright spots of this whole Bleak Era. Unrelentingly awesome.

With the added benefit of constantly testing the appetite for light genocide. Always money in the dehumanization banana stand.

This app is getting as unusable as any other. Oh my god we’re doing the devils’ work for them. We just can’t stop getting worse.

Man if Milwaukee isn’t in the top 10, y’all crazy.

Fuck yeah we beat San Bernadino www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/w...

Heard a stranger refer to Covid money as a Trump check. He won because a lot of people think he did a thing he hated. I can’t stand the fact that his political instincts are viable. Put yer name on it. Gadzooks.

I WONDER WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER #MildHorror

And terrible people haven’t even started getting rich from all the ICE money yet.

We are seven months in, and the speed with which vital civic institutions are capitulating to authoritarian demands we once would have regarded as inconceivable in an established liberal democracy is jawdropping. I hadn't thought I was polyannaish about America, but it's really stunning.

The president: and also they don’t have Apu on the Simpsons anymore Aide: ok sir but the electrical grid has just- The President: and Cleveland on Family Guy used to be voiced by a white man, thank you for your attention to this Aide: yes sir but The President: BET? Why can rappers say that word

Democratic Leaders Stand Real Still In Hopes No One Notices Them theonion.com/democra...

Phone banking! Want to join me for this event? mobilize.us/s/i8JOfI. @jfrejnyc.bsky.social has some too!

Monotheism when your neighbor has a different god is just supremacy. And we went and decided it was the hallmark of an evolved culture.

This is the language war. With all the other chaos, there isn’t time to fight the linguistic rot that is a man who swore to uphold the constitution saying I don’t know if I actually have to. Obviously the power is the problem. But part of the way that power works is to break language.

What happened to all those constitutional conservatives? www.nbcnews.com/politics/tru...

@xplainthexmen.bsky.social I’ve been thinking a lot about things you’ve said about the mutant metaphor. In this moment of escalating eugenics-friendly rhetoric, how does the metaphor hold up in this context? Are there explicitly anti-eugenics arcs that come to mind? Is Omega-level a complication?

This. The patrician class (in its many many forms) doesn’t need a czar (in its many many forms) but when they have one, his job is to use the powers plebes (in our many many forms) give a good story to create immortality to the best of his ability for the patricians.

I get why not everyone wants to study Shakespeare, but when I’m bored in a crowd and can start casting strangers in ways that amuse me — Canada stocking cap, you’re Horatio — what does one do instead?

Had a joke about Hamlet but it was printed three times and no one really knows the relationship between any one of those versions and what anyone actually heard and saw at the time I made it.

Not for nothing, but you could run a game of D&D via filibuster. "Will the Senator yield for a question?" "I yield for a question without yielding the floor." "Can I shove the gargoyle?" "Roll for strength." "9". *17 minute description of the gargoyle not moving after being shoved*

I wish everyone watched The Expanse because the difference between Belter as a political identity and Beltalowda (we in the belt) as one of shared material reality is so useful right now. There is a huge distinction between how the enemies of freedom use “American” and “we in American.”

Stormtroopers believe they’re enforcing the law, same as Good Cops. Stormtroopers also know that the law doesn’t protect you if they don’t say it does. A force that is both — public service for “Americans” and stormtroopers for people in the US not understood as “us” — has ALWAYS been the point.

Jessica: When I hear Republicans out there talking about their plan for education in America, I don't hear them talking about making sure disabled kids have access to a public education. Greg: Because we're against it.

We all know Moulder is and that the Lone Gunmen were all kinds of terrible off camera, but I think we have to admit there’s at least a sixty percent chance they got Skully too.

An underrated thing about social media is that if you keep posting with a small following it’s likely because you think you’re right which means that when the follower count stays flat or bots, it’s easy to take as evidence of conspiracy or Cassandra stuff and not as just not being special like that

If you wanted to time travel to kill Baby Hitler but you can’t be bothered to do the reading when someone says they’re back, I think perhaps it was a victim that wouldn’t fight back that attracted you to time travel and infanticide.

Outside of power, evil takes the form of wedge issues, pitting a group against its own weaknesses. But in power, evil is nothing but cracks because 2+2 doesn’t equal 5 and throwing Geoff into the volcano didn’t solve our problems. Bad economy pits rich v wealthy. Hit it with a book like John Wick.

The Tower Of Babel is at the heart of all of our problems I think. Somehow powerful folks convinced us that God is a union buster who hates translators and multi-culturalism when clearly it’s a story about lying priests. No god is afraid of a tower. But the people who own castles and stuff are.

It’s also no crime to acknowledge that you are no war-time consigliere and step aside so we can find one. It’s Warren or Bernie which is always where we fuck up the package: bad faith voices join the debate. He just needs to give one of them the reigns so we have an opposition party.

🚨 We need you to call your Democratic senator ASAP if their name is on this list. Tell your senator you will have their back if they do the right thing and vote NO on the extreme MAGA spending bill that would give Trump more power to dismantle the federal government: indivisible.org/resource/cal...

Elizabeth Warren says “I don’t see how anyone could vote for” the CR

Speech acts aren’t just speech acts. Saying “51st State” is a threat but it’s also, in and of itself, a display of dominance akin to renaming people: it intentionally destroys Canadas way of understanding itself as Provinces and implies a country famously proud of its diversity is actually not.

Here's to Richard Ransom, Denver native and veteran Memphis newsman, who is leaving our sister station there. Local TV newsers, note his quote: "it’s not a responsible or accurate reflection of life in Memphis to go racing around town chasing crime scenes." www.localmemphis.com/article/abou...

Man the first truly smart thing I’ve said here was too smart and made the thread I was riding through a flurry of likes get deleted a minute later. There’s a thing as being incompatibly correct for the internet.

Tesla lost enough value today that it could have fully funded USAID for a year.

Because normies don’t like post-modernism, we voted for guys whose whole thing is being The Empire but calling themselves Star Fleet.

listen to this. Elon can barely form a sentence right now.