One of the great tragedies of the 21st century is that enjoyment is harder to quantify than engagement, so the data obsessed people who built social media defaulted to engagement and built services that make us mad instead of services that we like and enjoy.

it is in absolutely everybody’s best interests to develop some hobbies aside from Phone

another day, another story about the administration's war on knowledge itself, all in service of allow its corporate patrons free rein to rob us blind and poison our world www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/c...

The entire reason AI is being deployed in schools is to funnel money out of schools and into tech companies. Whatever reasons you've convinced yourself that AI edtech is necessary, regardless of how "useful" you think it is, it's sole purpose is to pad the pockets of the wealthy.

the “taco” thing is annoyingly twee and lib-coded but it’s undeniably true. the guy is chickenshit and will never, ever commit to a fight he fears he could lose. if he’d been prosecuted for jan 6 he would have folded like a deck chair

We should be two “D&D Honor Among Thieves” sequels deep.

this is the kind of headline you write if you spend way too much time online. this isn't an unpopular opinion except amongst certain online communities. you're fighting ghosts homie.

the stereotypical small town story is of the pitcher who gets away with sexual harassment because they can throw a fastball at 95 mph. the era we are in is ruled by the guy who never made the team but bets on the game, but still somehow loudly gets away with the open sexual harassment

A very Spielberg week.

oh wow it's that thing that was only happening in everybody's heads

Extremely unsurprised that the cowardly little right wing troll immediately hid behind mommy and daddy and Mommy and daddy's lawyers when he got caught. These shitheads aren't just naturally occurring, they're being cultivated.

It's that time of year again, where you have to curtail your water usage. Not because of a lack of water, but because our filthy agricultural sector pollutes it faster than it can be cleaned and refuses to change its ways.

I dunno man, but I continue to not be impressed by the machine super intelligence that can't count.

Republicans about to get even more anti Catholic.

you see this in almost every creative industry too lately, just an absolute refusal to respect the intelligence of the reader/viewer/whatever. and that lack of expectation just reinforces more lazy behavior from everyone on every side!

i just dont want to see democrats get roped into a “man off” in every competitive race, i want them to respond by pointing out you are insecure about your tiny dick if you tie your own masculinity to a political party

Just watched A.I. and as ever felt extremely frustrated that we spent the 90s and 00s creating so much thoughtful cautionary media about the concept of artificial intelligence only to have the least thoughtful people in history decide that the machine that replaces humans sounds like good business.

Mowed the lawn, hacked off some shrubs, and dug up a bunch of hasta. It's days like this I miss having a tub I could just collapse into and let myself soak for an hour and a half. Instead I'm trying to summon the energy to take a shower before I shut down for the day.

One of the most crucial insights you can have in life is "I'm just some guy"

(reminding myself not to post about bluesky on bluesky) does anyone th- (also don't post about bluesky users complaining about bluesky) is there a- (also don't complain about complaints about bluesky on bluesky) what's everyone's favorite toilet bowl cleaners

Had a succulent Chinese meal after not having eaten anything all day and am now coming down with a severe case of Need A Nap.

i just told a friend on my couch, "shots fired at the White House" and they responded, in a tired voice, "ok"

Mixed bag this week, but and high highs

Welp, I know what I'm doing for a few months after this comes out.

Reading about attitudes towards WWII in America and it's incredible how quickly and completely the country flipped from "this European nonsense is none of our business" to "every man must sacrifice himself for the noble cause of liberating the globe from fascism."

This is a cat checkpoint; relinquish the most recent cat pic on your phone.

Chinese Mandarin in the 19th century assuring the dowager empress that the reformers are wrong and the English have nothing to teach us.

Not a great day for my boss to joke that one of our new guidelines is "if you have to think hard about it, don't do it"

I see a lot of people saying that the fund is going to be used to, like, arm brown shirt terror cells that will be posted up at every polling place in a majority Dem district. But I dunno, it looks to me like just another vehicle for Trump and his cronies to stuff their pockets with taxpayer money.

Incredible

Woke up before dawn and couldn't get back to sleep, so I watched First Reformed and am now ready to have what I'm sure to be a Very Normal Day.

Weird, the Supreme Court just decided that a world whole ass law that Congress passed a lot more recently than that could just be ignored.

This is just being in your late teens and early twenties and having money for discretionary spending for the first time. You eat out a lot until you go "geez, I'm spending a fuck ton on this" and start going to the grocery store instead. Or you start coming up with elaborate justifications.

Ah, my cue to remind everyone that in Iowa more people work in finance or medicine or education than anything ag related.

When push comes to shove and the oligarchs actually try to use these things to oppress the proles, they are going to be extremely dismayed by how easily they are laid low by a metal baseball bat or length of pipe.

I think a lot of people who obsess over Disco Elysium should spend less time litigating its legacy and play another game, like Norco, which is a masterpiece that not enough people played.

Been thinking a lot about the recent episode of This Guy Sucked about the Yuppies as it really crystalized a lot of things for me about how we went from the social democracy of the 30s-60s throwing the doors of American prosperity open to an unprecedentedly wide swathe of the populace

So you CAN get reparations you just have to be a reactionary white person who tries to overthrow the government because black votes shouldn’t count

Saw the new Gundam movie and my hat is off to Bandai and Sunrise for having the guts to provide us with that Real Gundam Shit (hard sci-fi with adult themes where characters somberly invoke the wisdom of a guy named Quack Salver) in 2026.

Belligerent local gun nut with an arsenal of hundreds of high powered rifles certain that he is about to be attacked by neighbor who recently purchased a nail gun.

If you think CEOs are always smart or remotely connected to the actual work they do, I challenge you to listen to Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella or Mark Zuckerberg talk for 10 minutes. You probably haven’t listened very intently, and once you do so it’s impossible to take them seriously

this is such a great encapsulation of what the various factions of the reactionary right want. i might add that they envision themselves as slave masters and the rest of us, in one way or another, as their slaves. betterdonkey.substack.com/p/the-vra-wa...

This is kind of why I would prefer AOC remaining in Congress where we are badly in need of such leadership. Having a progressive presidency won't mean anything if the congressional caucus can't be effectively whipped in support of it.

Another entry in the genre of "Republicans think the crowds protesting them are paid for because they're paying for the crowds that support them"

I hope I live long enough to see this Jack Welch, layoffs to goose the numbers bullshit get rightfully repudiated and business majors taught that it was one of the greatest self inflicted wounds of 20th century capitalism.

this Elon Musk plot to steal your 401(k) money is really going underdiscussed

It's cool that a significant number of congressional and Senate seats now functionally exist solely to provide taxpayer funded concierge end of life care to a handful of people who used to be politicians.

still not quite over the fact that i watched 15 year olds get sued for millions of dollars for downloading twelve songs and now we all have to accept AI slop because every tech company in the known universe decided that IP laws don't exist now that they're inconvenient for them

This is rage bait but 1 of the most eye-opening things I’ve learned from leaping up a few tax brackets due to luck is HOW MUCH MONEY there is at the top. Straight up unfathomable. Way, way, WAY more than you think! California can afford ANYTHING. YOUR govt can afford ANYTHING. Demand it all!

Really good and really eclectic movie week. Last two are me prepping to see sequels in the theaters over the weekend.