”…[T]hey’ve been wronged not just by people or institutions but also by broader forces. They are ancillary characters inflating themselves into victims, heroes, even symbols. It is the inevitable memoir style for a moment when everyone feels resentful, oppressed…” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/o...

a little-known fact about blue-state roads is that red-state cars frequently drive on them

Four Years 2021: "Let us all honor the Essential Workers." 2025: "Let us kidnap, torment & imprison Essential Workers."

When the president says “national security” he gets additional powers And when the president says “emergency” he gets additional powers And when the president says “terrorists” he gets additional powers Requires presidents who do so rarely, in good faith, only when circumstances make it necessary

Goes against the narrative, in an inspiring way

Bari Weiss is going to utterly destroy CBS News’ credibility—and ratings—which i guess is the point www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/b...

Apropos many different things: hang in there, everyone, please. We need you.

What are they gonna do? Replace us?

“This suggested that anyone with some storytelling skills could feed a plot into a fine-tuned chatbot, slap their name on the resulting manuscript, and try to publish it.“

In light of the grotesque attempted renaming of the Kennedy Center. www.thebulwark.com/p/donald-tru...

These are your words of the week Hanukkah inconceivable disarm bellicose junco gool www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/the...

Leavitt appears to believe President Kennedy is still alive.

Not to mention that she thought Kennedy would be part of a "truly great team". We are in the stupidest of times.

I have a great sense of humor, but having heard from Maria Shriver and JFK’s grandson Jack, I stand with them in disgust. Not seeing the humor as Trump, who destroys everything he touches is slapping his name on everything as if he owns it. It only exacerbates his thin skinned fragile ego more.

Francis Bacon - A Jet of Water - 1979

Donald Trump and the Justice Department had 30 days to release the Epstein files. The law is clear. Now he's breaking the law to continue the cover up. Survivors deserve justice. The American people deserve transparency.

Romney is dead right that the “step-up” that wipes out capital gains taxation at death is an outrageous accelerant of gross inequality & deprives the state of desperately needed revenue. His proposal of capping it at $100 million is too generous to plutocrats. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/o...

Hello, at the University of Minnesota, we're hiring a visiting creative nonfiction writer for the next 2-3 years to teach a 1-1 (one grad class, one undergrad class) and potentially sit on some MFA thesis committees. This job will give you time to write you next book: hr.myu.umn.edu/jobs/ext/371...

All this defiling of America, these symbolic shifts from "We the People" to a personalist regime, must be removed entirely as soon as the American people regain their democracy. The gross bribe-funded ballroom, the illegal "Department of War," the illegal renaming of the Kennedy Center, all of it.

He whiffed on Doctor Dolittle, as which of us doesn't? Anyway, you can all have your annual sulk about how he doesn't do those lists himself. (He does those lists himself.)

I met Barack Obama in 2007 at a small event when his run for president was just starting. He asked me what I was working on. I said, a book about the 5 1967 Best Picture nominees. He said, quickly, "So...Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, In the Heat of the Night..." >

a cornfield maze where to get out, you have to finish writing your novel instead of just posting about it

Hard no to this: French publisher Harlequin has told translators that their work will now be done by AI. They can ‘revise’ AI translations at much lower rate. It’s a subsidiary of Harper Collins so treat this as a test for rollout elsewhere

if anybody needs me I'll just be over here writing the books "men would read" in quiet obscurity

Poetry News → www.sevendaysvt.com/arts-culture... #PoetryNews #PoetrySky

haven't read the article yet, but sounds like a dramatic exit interview from Susie Wiles

good morning holy shit www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/u...

Wynn Bullock

You are neither here nor there, A hurry through which known and strange things pass As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways And catch the heart off guard and blow it open. ~ Seamus Heaney from Postscript Wynn Bullock | Point Lobos, Wave, 1958

Up there among the best (and maybe THE best) 7 movie runs of all time. RIP Rob Reiner.

"Alex Kleytman, an 87-year-old Ukrainian Holocaust survivor, was celebrating Hanukkah with his wife of 57 years, Larisa Kleytman, also a Holocaust survivor, when the attack began. He was killed while shielding Larisa from the bullets with his own body." www.timesofisrael.com/chabad-rabbi...

Taking a break from the sickening tragedy to focus on the beauty for a moment. Rob Reiner achieved something so rare and coveted that artists and entertainers dream of and rarely achieve: cultural permanence. How many times have you made a reference to something going to 11? Shouted "Inconceivable"?

Brooklyn Brueghel, 2025

bloodsuckers suck blood www.nytimes.com/2025/12/14/u...

Tonight, someone passing outside in the dark sang wonderfully, a song we couldn't quite catch... and it was lovely on a chilly night, w decorations and twinkling lights thru the windows. Reminded me how soft bells and distant voices soothe in the snow and how the lights seem far away yet comforting.

Started handing out my "Find Your Organizing Home in NYC" zine this weekend! It includes shoutouts to @bkindivisible.bsky.social @nywfp.bsky.social @socialists.nyc @jfrejnyc.bsky.social @handsoffnyc.bsky.social and SO MANY OTHER GREAT GROUPS! Download it digitally at zinefun.fyi !

I hate posting to the daily fail , but. She's not the only one. There was that shooting in california awhile back where some of the people were survivors of the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay/Festival shooting. People are experiencing more than one mass shooting.

today's random theater photo: the Provincetown Players production of Eugene O'Neill's The Long Voyage Home (1917)

Release the boat videos. Release the Epstein files. Release the ICE and Border Patrol body-cam footage. Justice Brandeis: "Sunlight is the best disinfectant." And there's so much the Trump administration's doing that needs disinfecting.

Happy 100th birthday Dick Van Dyke!

David Lynch, who died in January, showed us what our world was becoming, and how we should respond. www.newyorker.com/culture/2025...

This drove me crazy about my kids’ MS & HS education — & it was a trend that seemed v clearly driven by the standardized testing emphasis on learning to “solve” fictional passages like puzzles, instead of immersing yourself in whole works of literature

If I were a Member of Congress, I would not have voted with Republicans to censure Rashida Tlaib (like 22 House Dems did). But I sure would have already introduced a resolution to censure this bigot:

It's fitting that the cover on AI mindlessly apes an earlier creation and also displaces workers while elevating Silicon Valley plutocrats.

Although conservative in scope, the two laws represent a milestone in state governments trying to put their foot down on AI. www.avclub.com/new-york-pas...

“R U ok with having to see a primary care doc before you can see a specialist ?” Damn that would be wild. Wow.