It’s on tonight, ya’ll

Why write a book if you are not going to write the book? Truly what is the point? Everything is stupid, the end. Thank you.

Incredible. Author of book on truth in the age of AI uses AI for book, which generates fake quotes from sources including my wife. Actual Kara Swisher quote, which somehow she got the NYT to print: “I also sound like I have a stick up my butt, according to ChatGPT" www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/b...

The rising toll of ignorance: Newborns are bleeding to death - as ill-informed parents reject a common, life-saving vitamin shot. www.propublica.org/article/more...

The triumph of kleptocracy - writ large.

Thomas Jefferson envisioned America as a lily white republic that rigorously excluded Black people. Join us next week - online or in person - for a frank discussion of race and racism at the founding of The United States. events.leapevents.com/tickets/anne...

Trump has purged federal agencies of black workers, the military of high-ranking black officers, supports GOP efforts to purge Southern states of black representation and wants elite universities to discriminate against black applicants, lest they admit too many (who obviously don’t deserve it.)

The Trump administration will not rest until every elite institution has purged itself of black people. ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...

“Instead of student loan forgiveness we’re doing a coup forgiveness program”

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

Continuing the long tradition of very disappointing, grifting sons

just open contempt for the united states as a pluralist and secular democracy. and a reminder that the function of the fiction that the united states was founded as a fundamentalist christian nation is to establish a hierarchy of human worth with white christians at the top

noted profile in cowardice wants his old colleagues to stand up to the guy he kowtowed to back when his choices actually mattered www.nytimes.com/2026/05/17/u...

I’ve been saying this.

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...

Another terrain for growing, community-based AI activism

"“It’s possible that we’re starting to see the consequences of severe and sudden cuts to global health programs that have eroded surveillance and allowed deadly viruses to spread undetected...” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/w...

I've been doing everything I can to push back on the MAGA menace for ten years and as a result I've been sued, I've had people try to get me fired, I've been physically threatened and more. You can pry my gallows humor from my cold, dead hands.

“It’s just frustrating to see them come into our community and run all over us like the citizens don’t matter, and then they’re above the law when they do break it,” resident, James Clifton said. www.politico.com/news/2026/05...

A wartime price surge is slamming consumers while boosting investors. on.wsj.com/49DLlnL

Gardenia - Brooklyn Backyard #5

Brooklyn Backyard #4

the way to think of this is that it is the judicial version of “you’re the real racist for noticing my racism or even thinking about race”

The Callais decision exemplifies how democracy is being crushed by an imperial Supreme Court that strives to make us its subjects. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/16/o...

Brooklyn backyard #3

“Take a load off, Fanny”: a global performance of “The Weight” www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph1G...

Brooklyn Backyard #2

Brooklyn Backyard #1: cucumber blossoms!

Trump pillages US treasury to pay his private militia dog soldiers

3:27 PM

Last week, in a Lancashire town that has elected Labour Members of Parliament since 1918, 25 local councillors were up for reëlection. 22 were from the Labour Party. Every single one lost. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/3tSqmc

In the immortal words of the theoretical physicist @chanda.blacksky.app: "Put down AI and read a fucking book." www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/s...

I grew up with 'Roots' as a point of pride for Tennesseans because author Alex Haley was Tennessean. They're now banning it in Tennessee libraries thanks to a law passed by Republicans in the legislature in 2022. www.wate.com/news/educati...

Preach, John Archibald: White Alabamians should get themselves to Selma - and other protest sites where Black Americans bled and died for voting rights. www.al.com/news/2026/05...

With some very important exceptions, when someone says "why isn't the media covering this??" what they really mean is "I haven't bothered to check if the media is covering this"

If people were as enthusiastic about political violence as they pretend to be online there would be more of it. There used to be much more of it. What some people want is to fantasize about violence publicly and feel like that in itself does something, but also never have that fantasy questioned.

interesting the way the VRA is presented as some kind of imposition from above, and not the product of one of the greatest social movements this country has ever seen

gestured towards this in my column today but republicans seem to have adopted this idea that the partisan lean of a state represents some mystical General Will such that the south isn't just a place with republican voters It Is Republican and no democrat has a right to serve within its borders

The Pentagon cost estimates are bullshit. The Trump folly in Iran will actually cost us hundreds of billions - or perhaps even trillions, writes the economist Justin Wolfers. ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYZSLOj2Sfs

Students in the U.S. are performing worse than their peers were 10 years ago, according to new, district-level test score data released Wednesday. nyti.ms/4nqZtGP

In a historic moment, I was interviewed by fellow Black woman particle physicist Dr. Katrina Miller. Few people can understand my journey the way she does. We talked about my new book, why poetry matters, and yes, how the *fact* of non-trinary neutrinos challenges anti-trans rhetoric. #GiftLink

Shades of things to come: A.I.’s voracious appetite for power leads a utility to pull the plug on a community of 50,000. fortune.com/2026/05/12/l...

Happy Birthday, Mr. Wonder

A remarkable piece from 93-year-old Fran Moreland Johns on what life was like before the measles vaccine. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

Consistent theme in the Trump era that his supporters see invoking his name as a form of racial antagonism

Another lie, exposed. www.nytimes.com?action=Click...

Timonthy Snyder on the coming collapse of the American republic. snyder.substack.com/p/on-superpo...

america's reactionaries would love nothing more to nullify the reconstruction amendments and render them a dead letter of the constitution. this was as true in 1873 as it is today.

Thomas Jefferson argued tirelessly that Black people should be exiled from The United States while also fathering four children with his enslaved concubine Sally Hemings. Join us for a frank discussion of how race and racism shaped the founding of America. events.leapevents.com/tickets/anne...

two things. 1. when the trump administration says that something is “illegal DEI” they are saying “you don’t deserve this” 2. the practical effect of destroying the VRA is to make it nearly futile for these americans to get relief from congress