HELL of a day to try and fly SFO to BWI, guys

Who decided airplanes need to play music?? Airplanes SHOULD NOT PLAY MUSIC, it is 12:30 am my time, turn that tinny weirdly chosen shit off

La Retraite de Hugues de Payens, by Georges Mathieu, 1958 (rotated), 📸 by @tiltoncreative

Happy birthday to one of my favourite haters, Charles Darwin

Becca Rothfeld: “But even if no newspaper can succeed entirely in cultivating the public that it imagines, it can still succeed to a greater or lesser degree—and Book World did succeed.”

mods asleep post mr. nipples

I've been reading Marty since I moved to D.C. which represents ... an incredibly small fraction of his time at the Post www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/b...

The Washington Post has laid off hundreds of talented journalists, so many of whom I was lucky to work with over the years. The Post Guild launched this fund to support them:

REAL the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity hours.

It’s important to keep in mind the existence of a lot of antipathy toward D.C. specifically, and its limited capacity to protect itself because of its relationship to the federal government.

who is this diva

I wish I had written this! Really good overview of a cultural strain I've been bringing up in meetings for a long time defector.com/fanfictions-...

the 30th anni of Infinite Jest means 10 years of committed Jestheadism on my part: I picked it up as a depressed pothead; like Hermione Hoby writes, "I was unaware that I was committing a form of gender treason; I knew only that little or nothing I’d read had come close in terms of sheer pleasure."

"The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Sad Tiger was one of the best books I read last year

When the AI slop summer reading list dropped last year I knew I had to write about making book lists. Thanks to @thebaffler.com for letting me go long with bewildered nostalgia & regret on 20 years of Internet book culture & how we made the slop book list inevitable. thebaffler.com/after-the-fa...

wikipedia turns 25 today! the last unenshittified major website! backbone of online info! triumph of humanity! powered by urge of unpaid randos to correct each other! somehow mostly reliable! "good thing wikipedia works in practice, because it sure doesn't work in theory" - old wiki adage

“Because no one can read everything, specific and achievable objectives are crucial,” @emmasarappo.bsky.social writes. She shares a reading resolution you can actually keep in 2026:

Helen DeWitt and Ilya Gridneff’s novel, “Your Name Here,” is wry, convoluted, and not for everyone. Yet it offers a surprisingly moving argument for spiky, irregular, sometimes even incomplete literature, Robert Rubsam writes.

was just reminded that my best friend’s boyfriend (Mexican) (visited the US for the first time this year) is an ardent Buffalo Bills fan (??) (can’t account for this) (he is literally from Sonora). Tonight he gets this country’s greatest tradition: Watching December football in the suburbs

For @theatlantic.com I wrote about Joe Sacco's search for the essential truth, from Bosnia to Gaza to Uttar Pradesh: www.theatlantic.com/books/2025/1...

this is absolutely wrenching to read, i hate that they know the procedure. once in college i got an active shooter text and we barricaded a room in the student center—it ended up being a SWAT hoax but it has not left me years and years later. i can still remember that room. nymag.com/intelligence...

i find myself charmed by this ongoing series the FT is doing that can be summed up by the idea of "washington dc is a real place"

The Atlantic’s editors pick their favorite books of the year—10 titles that distinguish themselves as worth reading and remembering. See the full list: theatln.tc/gaJVrZ7O

This is my going-on-eight-year agenda: DC Is a Nice Place to Live

be the bitch doing something yourself that you want to see in the world

Beautiful story about the Nashville of my youth* *I didn’t ride this carousel (I just checked with my dad) because my parents didn’t want to pay to put me on it www.nytimes.com/2025/11/30/a...

@washingtonspirit.com I love you so much this was me waiting in line for a full capacity bar (I got in) (don’t let me down)

"If Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair and the other late 20th century fakers were looking for the prestige and power that came with journalism in that moment, then this generation’s internet scammers are scavenging in the wreckage of a degraded media environment."

This holiday season I think you should purchase binoculars for a friend or family member. Someone in my OWN family will be getting binoculars, though I will not reveal who. And I wrote about why in here: www.theatlantic.com/culture/2025...

I need "Stats are down but he played great" to make it into the lexicon.

Just joined my coworkers for a practice picket outside Washingtonian HQ. Four years without a contract. We’d love to be doing something else today!

my Kaufman field guide to birds of north america and my heavily annotated paperback of Infinite Jest—is this anything

This weekend the Washington Spirit play in the NWSL semi-finals, and I got a chance to chat with team captain and goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury about the pressure of penalty kicks, the rowdy Spirit fanbase, and her favorite baked goods in the D.C. region: 51st.news/aubrey-kings...

This is such a fascinating cultural overview of a disappearing part of American life. I feel this tension in DC's public pool locker rooms, for ex—no one really knows if we're getting naked in front of each other or not www.theatlantic.com/family/2025/...

Today on Reddit, @emmasarappo.bsky.social and @boriskachka.bsky.social are answering questions about how they helped select The Atlantic’s list of 65 essential children’s books. Ask them about their choices, trends across kids’ literature, and more at 2:30 p.m. ET: www.reddit.com/r/childrensb...

🚨🚨🚨 The jury has reached a verdict. Sean Dunn, aka the DC Sandwich Guy, has been found NOT GUILTY of assault.

This is the perfect article. Reporter's like "Why would Carlota, who never lived in San Luis Potosí, be there" and the governor is like "Maybe she felt like it that day..." meanwhile footage is just of a normal human woman walking around in a room

Really good hobby drama

What a glorious day for picture books! So thrilled to have this list out in the world for @theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com/books/2025/1...

Certified: I read the Cat Sebastian on this list and found it delightful www.theatlantic.com/books/2025/1...

“In a world where nothing felt safe, that room functioned as a sanctuary.” Zoé Gillette illustrates the experience of visiting their childhood bedroom.

Fervor over books such as Judy Blume's Forever might feel quaint to some. But book banning is, unfortunately, all the rage—fittingly, Banned Books Week starts on Monday.

Not that everything is about us but too few Americans recognize how absolutely stupid life can be in the District of Columbia when the feds can't get their act together. Example 4 billion: wamu.org/story/25/09/...

if you're in the D.C. area: @emmasarappo.bsky.social is talking to @tricialockwood.bsky.social about her new book tomorrow night at Politics and Prose! politics-prose.com/events?srslt...

Maybe interesting www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...

It’s not a chilling effect. It would only be chilling if you had something horrid to say, and you don’t, do you? Certainly nothing critical of the regime, and absolutely no paraphrasing, not of anyone, not at this time!