when Michael Phelps was dominating US swimming there was endless coverage of all his genetic advantages. His wingspan, the way his body processed lactic acid, on and on and on. Nobody, not one person, floated the idea of kicking him out of the sport for genetic advantages

The British government is considering a ban on cryptocurrency donations to political parties — in a move that could set off alarm bells in Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

A modern Christmas Carol remake where Scrooge doesn’t change his ways but instead makes his whole personality about how the woke Christmas ghosts are trying to cancel him

Love this site so much

Die Hard is a Metroidvania with rougelike elements.

Great culture can save lives. Literally. Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

love this feature of the human brain that sometimes, for no obvious reason, makes you wake up and feel about as calm as a warren-less rabbit on an open field with eagles flying overhead

Remember, these regime-changers *do not* care about democracy. This is pure PR narrative. The US gladly coups democratically elected leaders (Mosaddegh, Lumumba, Allende, etc), and gladly props up actual autocracies (Saudi, Jordan, Egypt, etc) if it serves their interests.

Argentina's behavior toward the indigenous inhabitants of the Falklands is totally consistent with its general behavior toward indigenous populations within territory it claims.

trying to learn literally anything about French kings and every fucking person is named Louis and I feel like I’m being pranked

Just imagining how much better it would be if ALL news stories about vaccine-preventable illnesses were illustrated with pictures of people with the disease, not pictures of needle injections. If you must show something that people will find scary & unpleasant, make it the disease, not the cure.

Using the *possible* fishing done by indigenous people (the Fuegians) who were genocided by the Argentine state to support your claims to the Falklands is fucking perverse.

People called it ‘awful’, but I would say it just looks ‘British’ www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

When I think of “consumerist slop”, I think “Winter Wonderland”, whose lyrics presumably go “buy lots of shit/and invest in crypto/and take advantage of Black Friday deals on consumer electronics/walking in a Winter Wonderland/to Boots”.

maybe this will heal me

james cameron every couple of years for some reason:

I know that Anti-Life make you nervous But I tell you I can't live in service Of Darkseid; I who was traded for a purpose Scotty can't Free

Please forgive me...I'd already started on this:

HEY KIDS! DON’T WATCH THAT! WATCH THIS!

FOURTH WORLD SKA [Metron starts skanking]

ancient Egyptians had their *own* archaeologists who studied even-ancienter Egypt

Yeah if there had been some sort of sensible industrial transition strategy it'd be a fair shout, but what we actually got was a campaign of social terrorism which those regions still haven't recovered from.

I never understand how people can simultaneously do the "NATO is even more vital" take and the "the EU needs to get its act together and become a proper defensive alliance" take, as if these were completely unrelated issues.

There will be movies that try to capture the Trump regime, and they will have their work cut out for them trying to measure up to the fascists in One Battle After Another—which wasn’t even trying to depict this particular administration at all. There’s more than one lesson in there.

Nicholas knows ball here.

I like how every six months or so we get a big "This Obscure Fasicst Thinker Is Key To Understanding The Modern Right" and without fail every one of those is the biggest loser you've ever heard of writing the stupidest articles you've ever read for Racism Monthly

Schmidt did not invent Nazism, the Nazism did not implement an existing Schmidtian playbook. but by pretending that they did the Nazis could pretend to be intellectuals and Schmidt could pretend to be important

Seems like as time goes on more people will adopt this already emerging consensus view of the Biden admin in MENA, but it's one thing to say it and another to hold the architects of this program to account: why does no one ask why CAP hired Blinken, why CNN hired McGurk, Sullivan at Harvard?

The guy's literally got one leg, but that's apparently one too many for the DWP to consider him disabled www.mirror.co.uk/money/dwp-fi...

I think we're gonna learn how badly we fucked up regulating this stuff when the next 10 years turn into streamers and smart tv manufacturers both trying to extort each other for bridge tolls, a version of cable carriage fees on steroids

Today is World AIDS Day. Don’t forget those who died.

One of my fave discoveries when co-curating that exhibit at the Billy Ireland were some truly unhinged early Fletcher Hanks drawings that turned out to be his homework from the W.L. Evans School of Cartooning and Caricature correspondence course.

"the president had a preventative mri and everything looks fine" feels like the sort of information you only announce if you're pretty sure shit is about to get visibly weird. that's what you put out if his head is going to fall off and start walking away like the guy from the thing next week

it must be so fucking annoying to take a college class and realize one of your fellow students is trying to do some right wing attack bull shit. like who cares bro

the use of "color revolution" here is like the spoor of the authoritarian internationale--the way that russian propaganda has slithered its way in to the american right

I called my fists Your and Party as they are poorly coordinated

uhh fuck this to put it mildly "A live map that tracks frontlines of the war in Ukraine was edited to show a fake Russian advance on the city of Myrnohrad on November 15. The edit coincided with the resolution of a bet on Polymarket..."

fuck it, for the people in the back: the jeff bezos owned washington post is the outlet responsible for making sure the primary complaint about AI was water. this may have been in part because jeff knew it was bullshit, so when amzn gets blowback they can easily prove their water footprint is small

I also want to say: Frank Quitely’s design for Offspring is PERFECT. It captures the essence of what makes Plastic Man’s costume unique while not just duplicating it. You can recognize it no matter the form it takes through shaping, segmenting, and coloring, while still looking like a cool costume!

it's ironic, because artists seem absolutely enraged and terrified that AI is helping coders replace them, but from what I see, the more apparent and profitable applications have actually involved non-technical folks having the ability to take engineers' work away from them

one problem this poses for the admin is that hegseth is maybe the single least likely member of the cabinet to be willing to fall on his sword and go quietly, but this is why you don’t hire tv guys for important jobs

i unironically believe we should pay government people extremely well and that it's not necessarily bad if they're wealthy but "simply ignoring conflicts of interest" is just pure grifter shit. you are going to take a white house job and then give yourself money. you think i am too dumb to see that.

There is an actual interesting little deceit in the budget, namely ther have the OBR still forecasting based on increasing net immigration back to 300-350k whilst the Home Secretary is promising to bring it down from 200k, which does dissolve about half the headroom, but somehow we're doing vibes.

the problem is that the TA appears to have been the target of a deliberate campaign to silence trans people and force them out of public life. so, it seems like that should be a factor when discussing the first amendment? 1

Kind of worrying that there's this nascent ecosystem of commentators and online posters who openly think that people not born in the UK, shouldn't be allowed to be MPs

2025: A WordPress plug-in accidentally pushes something to live - the chair of a national institution resigns OpenAI intentionally release products to a mass market that includes errors, manipulations and stolen material - cool, cool Is this how it works? www.theguardian.com/business/202...

i’m genuinely so convinced all of this has been a planned operation by the student and her mother (who is commenting on this publicly, and associated closely with the republican party), and big far right propaganda account going all in on it. this is designed to oust trans people from public life

yeah

It’s quite impressive that the US has as at last constructed ancien regime France when its founding texts are the classic “don’t build ancien regime France”