"When he experiences harmless lovemaking outside the bounds of the #expectations of the crowd in which he was raised, he learns that the #fears put into him by his culture were a way of #gatekeeping. They lied to him." open.substack.com/pub/thespark...

"When a man experiences a responsible, adult, free love community built around #consent and #truthfulness, which requires free women to even exist, he can learn things the status quo will never teach him..." open.substack.com/pub/thespark...

Harmonie Perrone health and life was devastated by a Catholic hospital in Illinois that refused to treat her for an ectopic pregnancy, resulting in infertility and a real risk of death. Illinois is a pro-choice state but Catholic facilities can enforce shadow bans.

Scott Pelley deserves this week’s Joseph Welch Award for truth-telling in the face of tyranny Watch this important speech he gave just a year ago.

Our job in 2026 is the same as it would have been in 1939—not to be "Good Germans" in the face of obvious fascism, racism, wicked cruelty.

"The authoritarian family is typically the site where sexual suppression is first installed, and where women in particular are reduced from human beings and sexual beings to simply child-bearers, a reduction that is not incidental to authoritarian politics but structurally necessary for it."

"... one can have #money, #property, and #prestige, surrounded by lies, and live in fear of the truth knocking over the house of cards." open.substack.com/pub/thespark...

A psychiatrist watched fascism rise in Germany and blamed sexual repression. He was mocked, jailed, his books burned. Today's incel forums read like a test of his theory. What does a discredited thinker still get right about frustration and rage? #philosophy #psychology #incel

We should be making new mistakes instead of the same ones our great-grandparents made. It just seems to me like the lesson "barbarism is bad" should have been integrated by now.

“What is missing in all this bloviating is not only the suffering #violence causes human beings, but the possibility of losing the battle. No one pumps themselves up with a #fantasy about #war, imagining themselves pissing their pants before being overrun.” open.substack.com/pub/thespark...

“Trial and error means stumbling into the unknown. It means working together, each seeing past the other’s blind spot, scrutinizing what neither can see alone.” #maturity #discovery #teachable open.substack.com/pub/thespark...

CBS instructed him to lie to the American people. He refused. That is all I need to know about CBS, and about who Scott is. We stand with Scott Pelley. Thank you for you years of service and your dedication to journalism with integrity. #SheShed

Every once in awhile I go over to Facebook and find a diamond in that trash heap. Enjoy! www.facebook.com/reel/2016093...

After Emily Waldorf was denied care for a life-threatening miscarriage, her mother and stepfather were outraged: “If I took my dog to a vet and it had this problem, that dog would get better treatment.”

Note to media: police arresting peaceful protesters singing “give peace a chance” is not protesters “clashing” with police. It’s the state violating the First Amendment rights of people upset that human beings who did nothing illegal are being held without due process and being fed maggots.

"Honesty is sincerity in stating what one believes. A person can be perfectly honest and entirely wrong. Two sincere believers from incompatible faiths are both honest; they cannot both be true." open.substack.com/pub/thespark...

“Justice is the treasure, worth more than the gold that funds their wrongdoing. The institutions built in its name mock the word itself.” #WritingCommunity #Prose #ProsePoetry #Justice

Germany, 1933 to 1938. Imagine the clever people whose work was to make the alarmed look ridiculous, to call the critic hysterical and the patriot who criticized his country a fouler of his own nest. Imagine what they said. If the lines come too easily, ask yourself why?

"... we distinguished truthfulness from #honesty, established that truthfulness carries a... quality that resists reduction to any symbol or measure, and examined the paradox at its center: the more #truthful someone is, the more they are suspected of concealment." open.substack.com/pub/thespark...

Here’s what you need to know about North Carolina's latest bill, with more coming in the newsletter today—subscribe here if you haven’t already: jessica.substack.com

I hope people make CBS pay for their insolence.

State Dept spox Tommy Pigott goes full cult of personality: "The United States has been consistent from the beginning. President Trump has been consistent. It is President Trump who has advanced the cause of peace with the Abraham Accords. It is President Trump who has strengthened our alliances."

Rep. @votegloriaj.bsky.social responds to Republican @RepChrisTodd’s latest whining about @TNDemocrats protesting his party’s racist redistricting…

“A #friend will make a demand on our attention by pointing out something we are missing. Such friends are rare and precious, and we do not always thank them for it.” #truth thesparkmag.substack.com/p/the-parado...

The market for sweetened certainty is and always will be larger than the market for unsweetened inquiry.

Quick read, and worthwhile. This is flagrant prosecutorial misconduct. If this patently illegal, "judicial weaponization slush fund" or whatever the 🍊💩 is calling it, where ever to exist, these 6 should be first in line for reparation. www.documentcloud.org/documents/28...

Russia was four-fifths Orthodox. Germany was overwhelmingly Catholic and Protestant. In both, #totalitarianism took hold. How short, then, is the passage from inherited #faith to mass murder? open.substack.com/pub/thespark...

Wow, absolute chaos just broke out in the House as Republicans refused to bring another war Powers resolution up for a vote. Mike Johnson has adjourned everyone and sent them home for the holidays. This is wild. Republicans are imploding. Nice work pissing them off Rep. McGovern!

The US feels a little smaller. Most of the talk on social media is Trump-related: him, what he does, the consequences, his allies, his enemies, and so on. It's important, no doubt. But what about our intrinsic sensibilities, our #Affections, #Beauty, the joy of #Discovery for its own sake?

In this political climate, the oblique angle is available to writers. Tolkien created the orc and we knew exactly what he meant. It was the small, unlikely Hobbit who saved Middle Earth. open.substack.com/pub/thespark... #WritingCommunity #AmWriting #WriteSky

The skepticism hid, not between the lines but in the writing. "When the Brothers Grimm published their first edition in 1812, an atheist could not testify in a court of law in England, not even in his own defense." #WritingCommunity #AmWriting #WriteSky open.substack.com/pub/thespark...

These men were too #vain to seek #understanding, so instead they listened to other men and misunderstood. Lack of understanding needs nothing to grow. Misunderstanding needs to be stopped before anything else can happen.

“I titled my report from Ukraine last year “America Rattles Denmark.” A year later Denmark is through being rattled. The shock of a belligerent Washington, or a transformed Washington, has worn off. A new day is upon us, whether we like it or not.” www.thenextmove.org/p/the-free-w...

Continuing its crusade against trans youth, the Justice Department demands seven years of all data relating to gender affirming care from NYU Langone. @alyssaur.bsky.social brings you their latest story in this week's TWIBS.

BREAKING (again, sorry) the order is in: The Fifth Circuit's ruling is again blocked. Mifepristone remains available via telehealth. Alito and Thomas dissent. Thomas' dissent mentions the Comstock Act, the 1873 anti vice law conservatives want to use to ban mailing abortion pills.

“The one who will not risk the unknown likely won’t discover anything, including that their own #beliefs are #false. In that case, only life imposing itself through circumstances can shatter a belief that might otherwise stand unchallenged.”

A person can be perfectly honest and entirely wrong. Two sincere #believers from incompatible faiths are both honest; they cannot both be true. #Honesty is a necessary but insufficient condition for #truthfulness. open.substack.com/pub/thespark...

“ #Art can be a doorway, not into another world, but out of your world of habits. You’re still in this world, but the same world is seen differently. Things that our #habits hide from us can be seen, like a chameleon hiding among ordinary things.” open.substack.com/pub/thespark...

“Maybe we know too much to be happy with the #lies that we have inherited from the past.” (The Paradox of Self-Realization) There’s nothing in school for this feeling, but it’s in the air we breathe.

“We can’t #pretend to be who we are, we can only pretend to be who we are not.” (The Paradox of Self-Realization) This puts the #lie under the floor.

How did #moral #relativism catch us unaware? We began to treat events as if they were merely topics. The topic of pizza has no calories.

"Honor has this great disadvantage, that to pursue it, we must direct our lives according to other men's power of understanding." ~ Baruch de Spinoza

“#Sexuality conducted with integrity and truthfulness… is one thing. Deception, #lying, #cheating, which robs others of the reality they need to make their own choices, is… another. These are not adjacent points on a spectrum. One is an expression of #freedom. The other is a violation of it…”

“Either we can start voting as we have not been doing before, or we are going to live the same existence in this country as Black people that our grandparents and parents lived. (cont.) www.notus.org/2026-electio...

#belief #opinion #pleasure open.substack.com/pub/thespark...

“The void where #judgment should be does not stay empty. It fills with #opinion, which feels enough like thinking that the substitution goes unnoticed. But opinion answers to nothing.” thesparkmag.substack.com/p/dont-surre...