Every time Rowling's originality is brought up, I think about this quote from Ursula Le Guin

When I was on tour back in 2018, someone stopping by the venue in Rochester referred us to an Ethiopian-owned health food store called "Natural Oasis" with amazing $5 small plates of the some of the best food I've ever had (and it was vegan). (not my photo, their website doesn't have much on it)

I didn't make it to as many LFC games in Lakewood this year but I am going to miss this guy.

I came down with some nasty respiratory virus (tested negative for Covid) and I've been sleeping for most of the past two days. A good thing though is that I'm enjoying this great Andrea Warner bio of Buffy Sainte-Marie that I picked up at the thrift store last week.

chortling execs and "I get paid for doing nothing all day lmao" guys on sky-high salaries cannot understand that openly saying you want to destroy all entry level jobs that young people could feasibly hope to get and setting fire to the ladder as you pull it up is not a good look

I had a very long conversation last night with a Ukrainian historian friend about how we're not talking enough about how these dynamics are really similar but in the U.S., a lot of our cold war binaries keep many of our peers from seeing it that way.

I've had some very long-standing friendships with men, some of which go back 15-20+ years, and this seems about right (my significant other also has some really healthy friendships with guy friends that go back just as long if not longer). Both of us grew up in working-class families.

my "this makes my cool friends mad" hill I'll die on is that John Frusciante's got some beautiful solo albums & great side projects and Flea's bass playing has influenced me so much, & he's really made up for who he was when he was much younger and wrote one of the best memoirs I've ever read.

As Jesus said, what is hidden will be made known. This moment feels like that kind of revelation. It is an invitation to tell the truth, and to resist the temptation to protect legacies at the expense of people.

The US government collected over $1 billion in immigration fees then refused to process the applications. No denials. No refunds. Just silence. This is the largest fee fraud in the history of the American immigration system. Here's what's happening. 🧵

“I am political,” Ms. Rachel told me of her new effort to free kids from ICE detention. “It’s political to believe that children are worthy of love … and that our care shouldn’t stop at what we look like, our family, at our religion, at a border. Mr. Rogers was very political.”

Thread. I'm begging people to realize how much we've already given in just the past 25 years. I'm old enough to remember when surveillance wasn't ubiquitous and before ICE or the TSA existed. There was even a time when the average cop wasn't kitted out for full on urban warfare.

Dems in 2020: No more kids in cages! Searchlight's idea for Dems in 2028: No! More kids in cages! bsky.app/profile/dana...

watching the Cato libertarians have a consistently smarter and more empathetic take on this than the donor class think tank Democrats has been something to watch in these 2020s.

Greatest informational kiosk in recorded history, especially love the person made out of U-A-W in this display for the @uaw.org Education Department. 1955. From the UAW's archives at the @reutherlibrary.bsky.social.

It's weird to have lived through the Bush and Obama years and suddenly hear people talk about how great and professional TSA is.

Because goodness knows we don't need experts in Russia or the Mideast right now.

Honestly one of the best nights out I've had in awhile and a big part of it was getting to hang out that night with Annie & our mutual friends.

how can you be a food writer in this town for decades and be shocked yet again that the best ethnic food in any given city is in a strip mall in a suburb that people hate driving to.

oh fun there's another Courtesy Bug appearance from 3 years later asking if you've caught it yet.

This is just "Pokémon Go to the polls" for socialists

My only real Chuck Norris memory as a kid whose parents only watched the McLaughlin Group, period dramas & Big Chuck & Little John, is that in the mid-2000s, one of my college friends took all those Chuck Norris jokes that were all over the internet and substituted Neil Young's name instead.

sorting through a pile of old CTS newsletters and very enamored by 'The Courtesy Bug' marketing campaign about being nice to people on the bus.

new Dead Can Dance is very good. deadcandance.bandcamp.com/album/our-da...

I've been pointing out that the term Zios is a David Duke creates term for years to the people who have casually used it and not one person has said "Oh shit? Really? My bad." They all just ignore what i said or double down on why the use is ok.

The ones making the bad decisions never actually bear the consequences of those decisions, it’s always regular people who just want to live their lives in peace.

she's big among evangelicals who think they're too smart for Fox News but will fall for anything that the WSJ prints in the opinion page and whatever neocon nonsense is on a Commentary podcast because those folks love a "liberal" who agrees with them about "the Radical Left."

uh siri what is this

tangentially seasonal morning jams. (I have no idea where my CD copy I bought in 2002 disappeared to but I'm hoping it turns up even though I'm sure it's in terrible shape because I wore this out in college). ritesofspring.bandcamp.com/album/end-on...

Some nice times news: Clevelanders find reduced-price produce, community meals at Archwood Foods signalcleveland.org/archwood-foo...

seeing the Cleveland t-shirt industry going straight for AI designs was I guess going to be the logical conclusion wasn't it?

inevitably, when the mayor posts something that's pretty dumb (in this case about "listening" to the complaints about the new parking laws), , the responses are inevitably even dumber and I don't even always know how that's possible.

It's absolutely wild how entities will just send you emails asking for financial support or saying "tell your story about your great experiences" when there were things they did that were categorically Not Great.

The only integrity framework possible is not partnering with Polymarket

Always evergreen, always relevant

I still really miss the internationalness of Twitter. I was following accounts from Somaliland and other faraway parts of the world that never migrated over here.

I'm around a lot of working-class state school Gen-Z kids who are navigating a whole different world than any of us, and they are FUNNY and I love nothing more than hearing their stories and takes on the world. There's such comedy & human interest gold there if anyone tried to care.

a friend of mine who taught Soviet history in Manitoba was talking the other night about Russian-funded separatist groups and I was having a lot of ding-ding-ding moments going off in my brain in regards to how my country's bankrolling this in Canada.

Gen A.I. barons want us talkinge alone on our phones to a demon thei created, and not goinge places and being wyth each othir yn art and joy and communitye. Thei want cinemas to shut downe and broadwaye to go darke. Thei want wryteres to stop writinge. Thei want to build hell and have us pay for it.

This whole arc is incredible.

I have never seen a cross-examination go so badly

If you haven't stumbled into it, I think the Plurals' take on "Green Eyes" is lovely. theplurals.bandcamp.com/album/rip-gr...

It's Grant Hart's birthday today so thread incoming. www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnnP...

Everything old is new again: Ben Sakoguchi, "World War III Brand," from the Orange Crate series, 1974-81. Sakoguchi, now 87 years old, is a Japanese American artist who was interned with his family in Arizona during WWII. Based in Southern California, he has been steadily making work since the 1960s

I wanna point out that white American dudes will often try to bully Latin American players and other foreigners for not ‘playing the game the right way ‘

Academia has always been patriarchal. Now that two generations of women have made some progress in changing that, the guys doubled down, enabled a rich rapist.

Fantastically well done. "You can’t hero-worship an ICBM, and there’s nothing real in pretending to wear fatigues. For all the goodwill this tournament brought the game of baseball, Team USA sure got none of it on ’em."

So into this if it's starring Sonya Madan.

Harry Clarke stained glass appreciation post for both his birthday and the holiday.