Journalists live for details. Nailing that the FBI Director allegedly ties one on at a club called "The Poodle Room" is the stuff of dream reporting.

A Newly Discovered Recording Lets You Hear Delta Blues Legend Robert Johnson in Stunning Clarity www.openculture.com/2026/04/reco...

When I clicked on the "Bluesky Issues" trending link earlier today, every account in the first few scrolldowns was reposting the exact same text blaming the problem on AI. Each account was clearly inauthentic and was advertising video game material in its profile.

Pro-Trump media bias: frame world events as a reality show with Trump as protagonist. As @larryglickman.bsky.social explains, it’s absurd to cast the Pope saying war is bad as a “punch” Trump is responding to. But also, he didn’t take any action. He just said words nonsensically insulting the Pope.

Paging @markstout.bsky.social and other intel history folks: I'm seeking reading recs about intelligence and espionage in Britain and continental Europe during the between-the-wars period, say 1920-1938. Colonial area stuff outside Europe is OK if particularly good.

Finished the Iliad last week, for the first time since 1987. I liked it a lot more this time than when I was 18. I especially enjoyed Wilson’s occasionally dry endnotes, like “It is unlikely that horses would enjoy wine.”

What did he know

I knew it would be bad, but this is just ridiculous www.atomic.computer/blog/white-h...

if think tanks acknowledge what trumpism is (incoherent and vibes-based), they have to face their own crisis of relevance as institutions that pump out policy papers and provide advice to movers and shakers. pretending there's some policy process that makes sense is a way to avoid grappling w this

Indeed, the _only_ way to develop critical thinking is to engage with multiple domains of knowledge.

the blueprints were what got me. they had zoning.

I love Angleton as much as the next guy, but I think I need to get back into Linebargerposting

The whole episode reads to me like the SecDef was so traumatized by someone sending him their pronouns in an email signature that he decided to destroy capitalism.

My only real interests in the Winter Olympics are ice dancing and biathlon and I’m pretty stoked with the amount I can watch this year.

Reposting just because I want to see @kikta.net's head explode. In a good way, of course.

Finished H.D.'s dark novella about the extremely complicated Bauhaus bisexual polycule situation that she inhabited in Switzerland circa 1930. One of her more accessible works of fiction, it's a nice reminder that while the past may be a another country, it also had lots of interpersonal drama.

having written upwards of 90k, fiction & nonfiction, about-or-thinly-veiled-about my favorite Modernist antifascist wife-guy Bryher (pictured), there's now the possibility I might get to publish a bit of it in essay form this/next year. fingers crossed it happens, & grateful for the chance.

Join me in my new masculinity cult: quit your job, lift heavy, run far, eat whatever you want, read obscure mid-20th century LGBTQ literature.

The Colorado basin. #rayshader adventures, an #rstats tale

Something similar happened to me in 2000 when the "senior" admin at a rural ISP where I'd worked for 3 weeks rage quit and took all the router passwords with him. The only real consequences were that I quickly memorized the Cisco password override process & learned a lot of Colorado back roads.

Great read. An additional point though is how many colleges have long relied on underpaid adjuncts to teach these courses. Even at Stanford in 1987, 2 of 3 trimesters of my great books track were taught by an amazing career adjunct & the third was by an awful senior prof who was just mailing it in.

Tell me five classes you took in college Introduction to Chinese Philosophy Introduction to Jewish Mysticism Introduction to Buddhism Medieval Women Writers Visions and Transformations

when I was 8 or 9, I got really into the poetry of e. e. cummings, so I got a book of his work from the library and copied a bunch of the poems down. my mom found them and thought she had accidentally raised an avante-garde modernist fourth grader and freaked out

The Weminuche Wilderness in the San Juans would be a great place for wolverines. I vote for the area east of Vallecito Creek, especially. It's high, it's remote, there's lots of space near and above treeline.

If anyone was still pretending this isn’t just about excluding trans kids from public life, the Trump administration just opened a Title IX investigation into a Maine school district because a trans student is on a *co-ed* cheerleading squad.

A group of young kestrels is startled by the presence of a butterfly. 🤣🤣🤣

My NYT obit on Aldrich Ames, CIA turncoat for the Russians. I interviewed him in the county lockup after his arrest in 1994, then by telephone for eight hours. Deluded, deeply alcoholic, he thought he could lift up the hood of history and tinker with the engine. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/06/o...

JJA.

Thrilled to share my latest article: "Keeping Syria connected during civil war." A compelling, years-in-the-making story of "Mahmoud," a Syria Telecom network engineer who was on the front lines of the conflict—literally—to keep the country's internet running. syriauntold.com/2025/12/27/k...

Succinct and nuanced? Who do you think you are @joewilliams.bsky.social ?

who is that you hear screaming? it is me, I'm the one who is screaming. many thanks to ashley judd for sharing with me her memories of working on michael mann's HEAT; at @vulture.com: www.vulture.com/article/ashl...

TIL that Japan has a museum called the Chinsekikan, which translates to “Hall of Curious Rocks”, that displays hundreds of naturally formed stones resembling human faces. ⚒️ #Geology japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/features/jap...

Annual book recs thread. Favorite new fiction: Rose/House by @byzantienne.bsky.social. SFF/gothic haunted house/detective noir/mystery all rolled into a little over 100 pages of gorgeous writing. I read it 3 times!

It's controversial as to whether it was during one of the labors of Hercules or the wanderings of Odysseus that the monsters were slain before they could get trucks.

Just dude stuff.

🗃️ My History Department is hiring for a tenure track position in Native American history. See link for details! jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta...

This is an excellent book.

Trying to remember how/where I learned to read topographic maps. Almost sure my dad knew, but I don't remember learning from him. My Boy Scout troop was extremely deranged and borderline illiterate, but maybe? Or maybe I learned from @stressrelated.bsky.social?

I'm starting to think about my annual favorite books list and noticed that while I read a lot this year (45+ books), fully one-third are rereads and another 20% are niche literary stuff that will interest almost no one.

In the era after online maps but before smartphone GPS, I was driving with a passenger in his early 20s. We encountered major construction and I handed him a paper map and asked him to find a reroute. He had printed turn-by-turn directions and had no idea how to use a map. How fast skills devolve!

My favorite thing about the new one is that Felix from Langley is running an off-the-books deep NOC op.

It’s funny that outside academic philosophy, if someone says they’re into metaphysics, it means they probably believe they have supernatural powers, but inside it means they probably spend all their time trying to figure out what sort of thing a table is

ODYSSEUS: wife I am home after 20 years PENELOPE: oh shit I mean honey you are home how wonderful ODYSSEUS: who are all these strange men PENELOPE: well, I'll tell you what they're definitely not, which is a 300 person polycule ruling in your absence

Through Dec. 3, @uchicagopress.bsky.social has my CODE NAME PURITAN--a biography of the professor and spy Norman Holmes Pearson--at a 30% discount (enter HOLIDAY25 at checkout). Dapper WWII spies, Ivy League professors, wild bohemian poets: something for everyone! press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...