Orson Welles as The Shadow

My local coffee shop gave me a somewhat involved handmade St. Valentine's Day card for "John the Pour-over Guy." My loved one was impressed by it, too... but did tease me for insisting on calling it Saint Valentine's Day and not just Valentine's Day.

This week we have Jens Oehlen from Stockholm University sharing his super interesting project on the impact of the Allied breaking of the Nazi Enigma, providing the first data-driven analysis of WWII intelligence #econhist #history

When I worked for Reason magazine during Trump's rise to power in 2016, I was explicitly forbidden by the editor in chief from writing about Trump's racism, or the violence and racism at his rallies. It was a "sideshow," I was told.

Statler and Waldorf have more of a comment than a question

Bovino is just the patsy - a noxious and odious fall guy. Stephen Miller is the architect and prime mover of the whole thing. Everything they do is at his direction - often after his threats. As long as he runs policy in the WH, nothing will change no matter how many Bovinos come and go.

It’s hard to overstate how freakish it is for law enforcement who just shot someone to be shuffled off to other assignments with no investigative period at all.

A video of Alex Pretti reading out the final salute of an unnamed veteran he cared for until the end of his life in the ICU, posted to Facebook by his son.

The study found that only about 4% of the tariff burden is shouldered by foreign firms, with a “near-complete” pass-through of 96% to US buyers.

i think it is simply true that for all intents and purposes stephen miller is the president of the united states

Ok I'm going to bed Bill Kristol is quoting Karl Marx

www.ncronline.org/opinion/ncr-... "As a Catholic [...] Vance knows that protesting, fleeing or even interfering in an ICE investigation (which there is no evidence that Good did) does not carry a death sentence. Vance knows that lying and killing are sins. He doesn't care."

A vital read.

I just flew Delta, apparently when I bought the tickets I neglected to check the box that I have legs.

Feels like we're at the stage where Nixon caved to the pressure and released transcripts of the Oval Office recordings, which turned out to have been heavily edited and misleading. We might be jumping ahead to the 18 1/2 minute erasure, though. But I'm not sure the 1-to-1 comparison really works?

Revolting.

Today is one of those days when I should have taken my own advice. Flooded with rage tweets on the other platform. Garbage way to communicate that only brings out the worst in people. All dunks, no conversation. Complete waste of time trying to engage there www.gelliottmorris.com/p/you-should...

#cleveland #ideastream #wcsb Took a couple weeks, but the shadiness of a publicly funded non-profit destroying a public university's volunteer station under cover of secrecy has regional attention www.cleveland.com/opinion/2025...

Impressed with my Halloween themed latte at #readysetcoffee in #cleveland this morning.

#wcsb #cleveland www.collegeradio.org/special-repo...

The more I dig into what is going on at #Ideastream, something appears clearly wrong. I've supported them since their inception, but their $500k/yr CEO destroyed thriving local media #WCSB and appears mostly to spend time in California, not northeast Ohio. thelandcle.org/stories/why-...

🔗: https://l.cleveland.com/i85gj9  Students and community members rallied outside the City Club today, calling CSU’s handoff of WCSB 89.3 to Ideastream an “authoritarian takeover.” Photo: John Kuntz, clevelanddotcom

As a supporter of #Ideastream since it's inception it pains me, but following the truly horrible thing they did to #WCSB and how they did it, the only action that will change their leadership is a boycott. www.cleveland.com/news/2025/10...

Our next rally will be not-so-silent outside of the Cleveland City Club on Euclid Avenue from 11:30 am-1 pm on Friday, October 17th. Some of our members will be inside but their wall of window will ensure everyone will be seen and heard while Ideastream talks about the future of public media.

Help us get WCSB 89.3 FM Cleveland college radio station back, we will be outside of “The Future of Public Media” talk at The City Club of Cleveland on Friday, Oct. 17th from 11:30am to 1pm Protesting. Bring signs, bring your voice, bring a friend! HELP GET OUT RADIO STATION BACK! @wcsb.bsky.social

If you want to read it politically, Leo quotes Pope Francis near the top of the document, and he does it before quoting Saint Francis. www.vatican.va/content/leo-...

"Several judges singled out the justices’ criticism of Judge Young, an 85-year-old appointee of President Ronald Reagan and an Army veteran who has sat for more than 40 years, as a particularly demoralizing breach of decorum." 🎁 www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/u...

Be There! 11:30am 10/7 CSU Support alternative radio in Cleveland! @wcsb.bsky.social

Let me try that again, mistyped. #Cleveland Councilperson Kris Harsh denouncing the local "public" radio conglomerate #Ideastream for destroying a 50 year old cultural treasure with no comment. #WCSB www.youtube.com/live/maHLrLH...

#Cleveland Councilperson Kris Harsh denouncing #Ideastream and it's destruction of cultural treasure of local media #WCPN. l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http...

www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-n... #Ideastream murdered college radio station #WCSB yesterday without public discussion, just press releases about "opportunities" and "not taking over" as police lead students out of the station. That's it for my future support.

Wild that Gary Oldman finally got his Oscar for like his 10th best role - parlayed that into a TV series where he plays Smiley turned inside out (he always wanted to play Smiley again) - into self-producing & directing himself in Beckett, apparently quite well - into finally getting his knighthood

Take the good news seriously too

But it doesn't turn into fascism magically at the end in the burial pits. It's fascism all along, even if it is COMPARATIVELY mild, even if it gsts stopped.

Meanwhile, in #Albania... someone got a little too carried away with #AI hype. youtu.be/wWhrs0gJsps...

my pet theory is that the cubs winning the 2016 world series has plunged the world into an alternate timeline of pure chaos and the only way to restore things is for the cleveland baseball team to win a world series as the Guardians

generally speaking, and with the glaring exception of november 2024, the more directly democratic an institution has been, the better it has checked Trump (eg grand and petit juries); the more elite and insular, the less effective (the Senate, the Supreme Court, big business)

also entirely possible that Vance demands a fast-tracked Charlie sainthood or else 300% tariffs on the Vatican

There is no world in which it is normal for the president to publicly call upon his attorney general to hurry up and prosecute his political foes. It’s like the Watergate tapes but posted on social media. Let’s get a grip on what’s happening here.

Sep. 19, 2025: Propaganda Minister Brendan Carr Seizes His Horst Wessel Moment

the more americans turn on each other, the greater the win for washington’s adversaries.

Ezra Klein went beyond opposing political violence to extol Charlie Kirk for doing politics "exactly the right way," making up a fictional version of Kirk to praise. That distortion, with its indulgence of bad faith, is a perfect illustration of the larger media failure that helps Trump. My latest

I've long said that Cavett is a nice, well-read, prepared guy, good broadcaster, but his brilliance is that he's such an unassuming Midwestern guy that in a sense his subjects forgot they were on TV. Nobody like that would get a show in a million years.

I dreamt last night that I had willful pet terrier named Judas Iscariot.

About 47,000 people are killed in the US by gunfire every year. Mostly due to policies and laws that barely exist to please the death cult worshipping at the altar of gun manufacturers. These are their sacrifices and it is shameful and deranged.

"Christoph von Dohnanyi, who died on Saturday, was a conductor of clarity and poise, as evidenced especially in his output with the Cleveland Orchestra." Via @nytimes.com. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/a...

Not surprising, but still very important to document.

It’s been a month since I wrote this and I want to reiterate that as bad as things look now, Americans don’t understand how bad things are going to get.