This is one of my favorite stories we ran this year.

[doing backing vocals for Sam Cooke] Science Book

I would love some recommendations on good things to read about how countries that have done actual disarmament/truth-and-reconciliation stuff after deposing authoritarian regimes have made this sort of thing work, when and where it has worked.

I remember the phrase "they can't be allowed to melt back into society" re: the de-Baathification of Iraq after the war there. Like everything about that experience, the attempt was cynical, stupid, and botched. But there really should be a plan about what we do with guys like these in the future.

Good morning! For @defector.com, I wrote about what @rachelreidwrites.bsky.social's "Game Changers" books, and the resulting TV show, have meant to me as a lifelong hockey fan with an increasingly... complicated... relationship to the men's pro game.

the tv commercials telling you to join ice because of 9/11 and the tv commercials where lil dicky advertises buzzballs each offend me the exact same amount

DENNIS

Number one YouTube line I've heard playing from my father-in-law's phone today is a dude who sounds like Toby Keith saying "men over 50, I'm about to tell you about the viral tomato sauce trick." I assume it's something to do with either buying gold or prostate health, he skips away pretty fast.

I was kind of goofing around with this one last week in that classic Sunday Blog Chair way but it does seem like the Spurs actually have figured something out, here. Just have De'Aaron Fox play at godhead level all game, and also Wemby, and your team could do it too! defector.com/the-spurs-sh...

♫ Oh there’s no place like home for the holidays,

Merry Christmas. You will log.

In retrospect the Bush-era War On Christmas stuff seems more ominous than it did at the time. It was just cable news guys crying about dumb/fake shit, then and now; I mean the campaign to turn Christmas, which most everyone likes and feels warmly about, into just another thing to get mad about.

God bless us, every one

This is how I want people to be posting on Christmas. Do not try to convince Mark Cuban's goofy ass that universal healthcare is right. I want to see pleas for character actors to cleave them in twain with a broadsword. I want people volunteering to get kicked down the Exorcist steps by Alicia Witt.

Warmest holiday wishes to you and yours.

The federal government has replaced governance with the manufacture of sadistic content for a droopy boomer cable news addict and suburban dipshits who've been driven insane by their phones. Not what you want, but it is kind of funny that they're so bad at it. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/i...

I'm a part of this collective as well, so my biases are what they are, but the one bit I'd add is that at $36 a year it is one of the really good deals out there in Things To Read Online. You can check out some free ones and subscribe at flaminghydra.com

🚨JOB ALERT🚨 Enjoy writing clever headlines and assigning one-of-a-kind stories? Have an eye for detail and a knack for turning rough copy into sparkling prose? We're looking for another editor to join our small but elite team covering New York City news and culture.

To honor the Christmas season, we have finally answered a question of the ages: What if you made Coming to America, but it wasn't funny, and the ingenue's family was cast from the most enthusiastic Olive Garden staff in America? Apple: bit.ly/4aOeQoz Amazon: bit.ly/44HHKTr Spotify: bit.ly/45d4smo

$25,000 signing bonus $10,000 per college campus speech $50,000 for every 200 slurs logged $100,000 for making the TPUSA all-star roster she was set up to make over $2M a year but she was barely rosterable for most of the season, one of the more unfortunate prospect busts of late

ALSO TODAY: @davidjroth.bsky.social reveals his weird little secret. “This is my annual struggle: to avoid revealing myself as too much of A Hallmark Guy to someone I don’t really know like that” flaminghydra.com/have-yoursel...

People on here will post anything. “Scott Calvin got some fits off.”

We are quite literally Back.

At Flaming Hydra, a Christmas story about going blind, going broke, and wrestling with Tolstoy. All this and @davidjroth.bsky.social, too, for the low, low subscription price of $3. A perfect stocking-stuffer!

Whe @theonion.com nails it boy do they nail it

The latest Hallmark Podcast episode is about a movie that isn't very good, but which does offer some thrilling Canadio-Italian fusion flavors, in the service of a very goofy vision of Queens. (Also the last acting role for lead Megan Park, the writer/director of 2024's delightful My Old Ass.)

I wrote about my Hallmark habit, and trying to be normal at parties when you know more than is normal about Lacey Chabert's filmography. (The movie where Wallace Shawn plays an angel is called Christmas At Carwright's.) (A guy grandly says "Christmas Nog!" in it.) flaminghydra.com/issue-468/#h...

I'm not the only person to have written it, and Parker in particular also did it well, but this was a lazy work the whole time. You can make a whole rancid career in the conservative politics biz just by knowing who you can get away with trying to hurt and then doing it. defector.com/the-conserva...

I wrote about Eephus for this, but there was a lot of very compelling competition, much of which my coworkers covered. Pretty good year for watching stuff, all told! defector.com/the-best-thi...

Yes. Eric Adams had "an actual werewolf" do it when he was sworn in and no one was able to stop him, or even get him to explain why.

I know she's just kind of saying whatever, but it's on-brand for Bari Weiss to review a damning story about the US sending people to a concentration camp and respond "we can't air this, have you even asked Tom Homan if he feels bad about any of it yet?" Perfect readout of who she sees, and doesn't.

"I find that LLMs produce sentences that are smooth, glib, poreless, smiling, somewhat like a beluga whale. But every busted sentence written by a human is busted in its own way. Each of these sentences is unwittingly an act of resistance against the onrushing techno-homogenization of language."

Goodbye, Windex!

Given her background, I have no trouble at all believing that the issue is simply that she’s too green to understand how this sort of reporting actually works. “We must have comment” is actually the kind of kid playing dress up approach you’d expect from an amateur in this job.

"The project—[Bari Weiss's] and that of her backers—is to establish herself and her cohort not as new-right media, but as the new liberal media, staking out the leftmost acceptable position within the new right-wing paradigm." (This is a gift link, from October) defector.com/bari-weiss-s...

[goldfinger theme voice] bo dietl

who calls the shots where you get your news? defector.com/products

LOL "Bari killed this meticulous story because it was unfavorable to the Trump administration" is literally the story they're giving to their stenographer

Political scientists baffled by all these nasty people on the downside of their careers being so drawn to the Make And Keep It The Past movement.

Aaron @kleinman.bsky.social thinks he's better than me because he "reads books" and "knows how to read." He wrote about the 20 best he read this year (new and old) including @calfraser.bsky.social @chrislhayes.bsky.social + @bridgetgillard.bsky.social. www.welcometohellworld.com/20-books-you...

Commissioning a custom version of this card that's exactly the same except it says Alan Dershowitz on the knob of the bat instead of Fuck Face.

Excited to announce that I'll be appearing on Fox Business later tonight, in the 250am block of Last Call With Maria Bartiromo. The topic will be "Did Jeffrey Epstein 'Have That Shit On' In The Epstein Files." I'm apparently going to be debating Madison Bumgarner, who thinks he didn't.

Some of these redactions are almost like modern art

Excited for this to replace medical science in the next year

The Donald J. Trump and The Diet Mug Root Beer Dana Carvey Show

Obviously it's bad but it is very funny/on-brand for Trump to be going around grafting "The Donald J. Trump And" onto stuff that people actually respect in the hopes of getting rounded up into it. The Donald J. Trump And Orioles Park At Camden Yards ass. The Donald J. Trump And Chrysler Building.