Big congrats to the Nobel Committee for awarding the prize "for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy" just so she could immediately conspire with a foreign government to murder civilians on the high seas then invade and stage a coup.

Part of our spread for Moscow New Year. С Новым годом, ребята! 🎉

Here’s a thread of some work that I really loved this year from new-to-me artists. First is Belkis Ayón, a Cuban artist whose startling images grab you in whatever gallery you find them. These two are from the Tate Modern in London “La Cena” (1991), and “Sikán” (1991).

My formal choice as a guy of a certain age youtu.be/fl9KQ1Mub6Q

MTV is officially ending all of its music channels. In honor of that, what's your favorite music video?

We have just over 24 hours left in our year-end campaign, and we're still short of maxing out our matching grant. Stories like today's revelatory investigation are only possible with the support of our community, and we need all the help we can get. Learn more and donate at theshoestring.org/give

it took the Tories 15 years of fucking everything up to obliterate their party. Keir Starmer did it in 18 months

“The Adoration of the Shepherds,” Gaetano Gandolfi. 1798. At the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

IT’S CHRISTMAS EVE

For the holidays, Truthdig asked me to talk about the weird sensation of watching Hallmark gradually go woke(r) over the last five years just as one party is trying to turn the real world into it at gunpoint.

In 2021, Bari Weiss famously published a resignation letter by former Smith College librarian Jodi Shaw. Shortly after, I asked Smith if Weiss had reached out for comment first. “She did not,” spokesperson Stacey Schmeidel said via email. Weiss’ agents declined my requests for comment.

Intriguing time - just a few hours ago happened to see a random full MAGA troll on twitter float a "maybe it's time to move on to JD" post.

Around London today

This is even worse than I expected, and I was expecting the worst.

Today in Oxford

Stealworkers

"Strong floor, no ceiling" is very literally the basis of like every Gilded Age political cartoon

Our Spectrum Internet service has been blinking between 3 and 15 Mbps for hours. Their website has a speed test tool that claims we are getting 150 - and offers us to pay $10 for an upgrade to 'advanced' service. The crappy service is bad enough, but the gaslighting is really another level

Ah, that explains this curious email Monday

You think he’s hit bottom and bam, he always finds another level

Where "exile" is "chilling in a house in Malibu for a while, hiking & writing, until I'm ready to return as editor of Vanity Fair." God people are embarrassing themselves around this. It's so fucking gross.

The shameless lying makes it much worse

"A.I." is the tool of and the prevailing aesthetic of fascists leading to a world devoid of meaning or art.

A few pics from #NoKings in North Adams (courtesy of my wife!)

A perfect pick for 2025, to be honest

Everything he touches

Come on

the president of the united states wants to use the american military to kill american citizens on american soil. that's the whole story!

perhaps instead of cowering under a blanket labeled "health care," democrats should respond and advance on the issues that move people. this, of course, would require a foundation of conviction and principle, which may be asking too much of the party's leadership and strategists.

Bombing my big stand-up special in front of a totally silent room of generals. "What else, what else. Bagram Air Force Base, we're going to do that again, okay? And we're going to do it the right way: through specific types of tattoos, and haircuts."

And yet, these two still haven’t given up the effort to find Bipartisan Solutions for the Kitchen Table Problems facing American Working Families

Trump, pounding shoe: "We will bury ourselves!"

Surely some countries on earth have enough self-respect left to start talking about moving the UN from the US?

Repulsed to see @neal.house.gov voted for this crap. Unacceptable.

I'm old enough to remember when Russian t.v. shows could make fun of their leaders www.nytimes.com/2000/06/18/w...

This is it. Cancel culture, but for real. The Twitter Files, but for real. Actual, unadulterated collusion between the government and media-owning corporations to censor Americans. Shame on the MAGA libertarians and fake-heterodox civility cops who helped pave this road to authoritarianism.

Not really an overstatement to say that the test of a free society is whether or not comedians can make fun of the country's leader on TV without repurcussions.

Pretty much every mass shooting, particularly ones involving kids, people try to dig for some hidden motive, message, or ideology in a cesspool of edgelord internet shit. But the vast majority of the times, there just isn’t one.

Day three of the media pretending that Charlie Kirk believed in free speech and failing to note that his signature political project was the creation of McCarthyite watchlists of college professors to harass out of their jobs and out of society. bsky.app/profile/nyti...

If you hate political violence, you should hate Charlie Kirk. He was not “practicing politics the right way”—he was a very well paid henchman for the same guys who are trying to make it illegal to oppose them. He bussed people to J6. He encouraged political violence against his enemies.

No better evidence that "The Cathedral" is fake than allegedly liberal journalists tripping over their dicks to praise, as a champion of free discourse and expression, a guy who made one of his central accomplishments a blacklist of professors

This is an actual exchange from a VP who took an oath to defend the constitution and, as a citizen, is expected to abide by the law. May we one day have accountability for the grotesque lawlessness of this regime.

I keep typing words and then deleting them because none of them are sufficient to capture how utterly fucked up and unacceptable this is. And yet it won't move a single Republican to give a damn.

This tactic - pressuring corporations financially until they put a regime friendly voice in charge - is exactly how Orbán took over the free press in Hungary

A little on the nose for someone who was famously accused of plagiarism

Did Horst Wessel have a stupid-ass nickname?

When I worked at a Russian newspaper in 2008, there was a guy who had a desk with us editors. He was friendly, quiet, and most of the week just took naps. Except at close, when he was the only person on staff who could actually send the pages to the printer

I’m in Berlin, and every one of these stupid stories really hits

it’s even more demoralizing when the history you’re repeating is history you were around for the first time