John forgot the part where the frog watched the scorpion sting and drown a ton of frogs for ten years. And the part where the frog helped the scorpion sting other disloyal frogs.

Viennese cafes: a story in pastries.

“I’d argue that the most common feeling about AI is somatic: a low-grade hum of difficult-to-place anxiety that’s the result of loud people constantly suggesting that the near future will look very little like the present & that nothing—your job or the social contract—might survive the transition.”

A powerful memorial at the train station in Würzburg, Germany, where thousands of Franconian Jews were transported to concentration camps.

This is why Kalshi is dumb.

“As for the objection that students won’t or can’t read even single books, let alone a dozen courses-worth or more of weighty tomes, I call bullshit. If we can demand that students study chemistry and physics, French or Spanish … before they even get to college, we can insist that they read.”

I really wonder what the fallout is going to be because the sanitized version of history they’ve sold for a long time is “Jim Crow was a shameful moment in history but we defeated it and came out the other side a better country” and now it’s just… back it’s the end of a myth in the starkest terms

“There are so many countries with very legitimate claims for refugees—the doors are being slammed in all of their faces. The reason for the sympathy from this administration is because it sends a very clear message: ‘We will not tolerate white ethnic people being treated as if they are not special.’

SCOOP: The F.D.A. blocked the release of studies finding that Covid and shingles vaccines were safe. In the case of Covid, FDA staff had to withdraw studies heading toward publication: www.nytimes.com/2026/05/05/u...

“It may seem hard to believe, but it is nevertheless true that in [America’s post-war era] … working people were often regarded with the same kind of reference that we now extend to whoever just succeeded in rolling up small-town retailers or independent pharmacies.” —Thomas Frank, Harper’s

so far, much of the analysis of Callais out there is focused on what the Court's rulings did to the Voting Rights Act, which is reasonable but now I want to talk about what the Court did to the Constitution bc the threat of Callais goes far beyond the VRA alone ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/alito...

“There are a lot of [Trump’s critics] here in Washington who don’t believe their own rhetoric, who are not willing to act according to what they’re telling the American people the nature of the threat is.” —Susan Glasser @sbg1.bsky.social

Irony is dead.

“We [must] remember that there were eight Black members who served in Congress during Reconstruction. By 1900, due to unrestrained voter suppression, an indifferent & even hostile Supreme Court, violence, and a somnabulent Congress, there were none. The number eight was not reached again until 1969.

“Diminishing the power of minority voters may also allow the Republican Party to continue on its path from reactionary color-blindness to more overt racism, safe in the assumption that it will not have to answer to constituents who oppose such racism because they are its targets.” (!!!)

The Voting Rights Act is essentially dead and it’s quite possible that we will, like when a similar SCOTUS gutted civil rights at the fall of Reconstruction, see a disappearance of much of the Black congressional representation, especially in the most heavily Black states, which are in the South.

In light of today’s news: “As Johnson sat silently listening, most of these advisers were warning that he must not emphasize the subject because it would antagonize the southerners who controlled Congress, and whose support he would need for the rest of his presidency, (1/3)

“Although the court kept Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act intact, Wednesday's decision all but guts the landmark law that came out of the Civil Rights Movement and protected the collective voting power of racial minorities when political maps are redrawn.” Unbelievable.

Some very damning quotes in here. For example: “‘It’d be wrong to steal the non-profit from him [Musk]. to convert to a b-corp without him. that’d be pretty morally bankrupt,’ [OpenAI’s Greg] Brockman worried, while simultaneously conceding that ‘it would be nice to be making the billions.’”

“Every year, the [U.S.] Mint sells more than $1 billion of investment-grade gold coins. Each is stamped … signifying the government’s guarantee, required by law, that the gold is 100% American. But a @nytimes.com investigation has found that the government’s program of gold sales is based on a lie.”

“I am not going to give a sermon against political violence in this moment, all things considered. The all-things-considered includes the specific way the demand to condemn has been functioning in our discourse, the specific architecture of the trap it represents…”

“In pursuing Israel’s interests at the expense of American Jews, Netanyahu has put the largest Diaspora Jewish community in the world in a terrible bind,” Michael A. Cohen argues:

He’s talking about his BALLROOM!.

"The Republican apologist class will go on producing the long, articulate, disqualifying-in-what-sense replies that history will read with the same grim clarity it reads the German conservative intellectuals of 1933" this is very good:

I’m not a fan of these fake surveys, which pretend to be from the government but are actually a fundraising mechanism for nonprofits. At a time when response rates are so low, it’s not great that we’re teaching people to throw away the surveys they receive in the mail…

To be clear: These people want us dead. Erasing us from history makes erasing us from the present easier, because if we don't have a past or a heritage, how real can we possibly be?

The funny (or depressing) thing is that both parts of the math are wrong here. Raising the price from $100 to $600 would be a 500% increase, not 600%. Dropping the price from $600 to $100 would be an 83% decrease.

On April 15, APS urged Congress to act immediately to preserve Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) at the #NSF. ACT NOW! Tell your federal lawmakers that these cuts harm their constituents and the country! www.psychologicalscience.org/news/2026-ap...

This op-ed is very, very good

“The Democratic brand is not predominantly woke, but weak. Respondents to our survey associated the Democrats with traits like honesty and caring about the working class, but they are seen as weak and not particularly effective. The Republican brand, by contrast, is a strong brand [but] extreme.”

My take on this weekend’s big DC schmooze fest where Trump will hang out with what he calls the fake news, and which he constantly attacks https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/23/white-house-correspondents-dinner-trump?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Now listening: Lauryn Hill’s cover of the Nina Simone classic “Wild Is the Wind”

This is a war based on lies

Breaking: HHS’s ban on gender-affirming care is struck down. Rarely have I read a ruling this sharply worded. “This case is one of a long list of examples of how a leader’s wanton disregard for the rule of law causes very real harm to very real people.” www.advocate.com/politics/nat...

“But one reason it was so gratifying to watch Lafarge be convicted and its executives, in their stiff-collared shirts and well-cut suits, be placed under arrest is that these men had surely never imagined that they could be punished for what they did.”

51 percent of Americans think stabbing yourself with a paring knife is a bad idea

I'm gonna get this out of my system so I don't go insane: What Trump said about the pope is easily the most genuinely anti-Catholic thing any American politician has ever said in my entire lifetime, and if Obama or Biden had said it, there would literally be calls to disband the Democratic Party.

In light of Orban’s loss, and thinking about democracy here in the US, a few things I’d love to see from a presidential candidate in 2028: • Major structural changes to strengthen democracy against corporate & authoritarian power • Complete restoration of all programs attacked by DOGE

From new Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar's acceptance speech tonight. This is the absolute BARE MINIMUM platform for any Democrat running for President in 2028.

“By converting moneymaking into a scientific enterprise worthy only of the highest priests of macroeconomic theory, the public is procedurally and practically cut out of one of the most important decisions affecting their lives.” —The Quiet Coup by @mehrsab.bsky.social

In all seriousness, it is terrifying that Orban (ORBAN!!) is more committed to the democratic process than Donald Trump.

So if I’m reading this right, anyone can look up my name, address, political party, voting precinct, and which elections I’ve voted in. How is this constitutional??

Aren’t you glad we put an anti-vaccine activist at the helm of Health and Human Services?

"The historian in me says 75 or 100 years from now... we’re not going to talk about politics at all. What we’re going to talk about is the fact that we were living through a technological revolution that was creating economic and cultural upheaval [and leading to] institutional collapse." —Ben Sasse

Every single journalist should be asking these questions. (Listen to the full question, but ignore the inane response from Leavitt.)

You can still be shocked can't you, even after years of this shit. That sentence chilled me to my bones. To see an American president say that. To see him boast about it.

That Trump post is a clear expression of genocidal intent. Clear cut case with zero caveats.

This should be THE headline everywhere right now! No sugarcoating, no paraphrasing. Just quote him!

Trump is promising to wipe out “a whole civilization.” This sounds like a nuclear holocaust. How is this not the top story across all major news outlets? And when will the Republican Party intervene to stop this madness? This is a five-alarm fire and we cannot keep normalizing this language.