I'm gonna want to listen to this.

I have no idea how law students are supposed take seriously anything they learn in constitutional law when the Supreme Court's entire approach to precedent and stare decisis is just "does Mister Trump want us to overturn it right now" ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/trump...

If you, like me, are the parent of a neuro-atypical child dreading this autism press conference, please remember: These are the people hurting our kids. Not us. They are the ones stigmatizing and pathologizing them. They are the ones peddling untested science. And we should be very, very angry.

My mother used to say if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all. Now my government says it.

Time to tell stories of the good life we’re building for the real future. #zentao

open.substack.com/pub/houseofm... Wrote about the radical act of returning to one's body in a digital age designed to detach us from them.

When do we get these?

Bay Area peeps: did that wake up anyone else at 2:56 am?

So: Fascism is bad The First Amendment is good Genocide is an actual fucking crime And also: It's appalling to be in 2025 where each of these is not, in fact, taken as part of the baseline shared reality anymore

"Gender studies scholars and experts on domestic violence have long known that gender-based bigotry is a gateway to violent extremism. It’s time for national security officials to catch up, says @milleridriss.bsky.social" 19thnews.org/2025/09/how-...

Here is my fun new article about him suing the New York Times for a lot of money and the judge saying pls get the fuck outta my face with this shit and come back when you can act like you got some sense ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...

Last day of summer. Seasons have meaning despite the chaos out there. #zentao

Wow. This may be the only time in my life that I'm in the 1 percent. And I was just pleased I quickly ended up with way more followers than I ever had on Twitter.

I’m worried it can still get stupider

could everything stop being terrible for, like, a couple of days? maybe a week? just give us a moment to catch our breath.

"What's your favourite book?" If people have one, I'm happy for them, but I like and admire so many different books for so many reasons, the question is meaningless for me personally.

"Yudkowsky and Soares are earnest; unlike many of the loudest prognosticators around AI, they are not grifters. They are just wrong."

Another concrete example: We need pundits who think about how to defend democracy *in between elections.* We simply no longer have the luxury of only thinking about winning elections and implementing good policy. One of the reasons (not the only one) is, if we don't, then elections won't be free.

Just shared a gift link to this myself. Jamelle Bouie is why I still pay for the NY Times.

@jamellebouie.net gets the truth of what we're dealing with. "American politics is no longer a fight over policy; it is a fight over the character of the nation itself." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/o...

We have the knowledge. Bad systems and bad actors make it hard to act. #zentao

I strongly recommend this interview of Karen Attiah by Paul Krugman on what she built at the Washington Post and the way they fired her. You can listen or read the transcript. open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

Raven Nothing by Som Paris: www.aqueductpress.com/books/978-1-...

Despite all the conventional wisdom that says you can't lose weight by exercise alone, that's the only way I've ever lost any. A rant about figuring out your own body on the Treehouse Writers blog. treehousewriters.com/wp53/2025/09...

The Kimmel suspension is a much bigger deal than you know. It's really about a growing alliance between Trump and the companies that own America's local TV stations - like Nexstar - to turn local TV into Trump propaganda. 1/ Let me tell you the short story. It's chilling.

Why does “greatness” mean destroying things that work and hurting people? #zentao

When you meet someone who wants you to be institutionalized, prosecuted, or killed, you should be asking yourself: what do I have in common with this person? Tomorrow from Ezra Klein

As a regular reader, I highly recommend the Flytrap.

No. Just no.

When Ruthie Foster sings “If I Had a Hammer,” I find deeper hope. #zentao

This is precisely the kind of government coercion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent — and media companies need to start standing up rather than capitulating to it.

agree. the way to have good ideas is to have a lot of ideas. the way to write good sentences is to write a lot of sentences

I must remind myself that revision is when a writer builds brilliant writing from the compost of the ordinary. And honestly, "uninspired" writing is better than we think it is, and the more "uninspired" writing we do, the better we get

Not really an overstatement to say that the test of a free society is whether or not comedians can make fun of the country's leader on TV without repurcussions.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH

Who reads Tolkien and wants to be Saruman or even Sauron? #zentao

It's very hard for a journalist to cancel a subscription to a newspaper they once loved. Here, @willbunch.bsky.social explains why he's canceled the Washington Post. "I can’t spare one thin dime to the enablers of this American fascism that I’d hoped to never see in my lifetime."

Peter Thiel in a nutshell

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

So we have the radiologist’s update on Castiel, and… It could be a lot better. We’re looking at another night of hospitalization, and at least a month of medical recovery. So I have bowed to the inevitable, and set up a GoFundMe to cover the costs. 😔🙏🏼🐈‍⬛ www.gofundme.com/f/help-casti...

Nowhere did I say don't go to a protest. I just said don't sign up for one. And white men have lost their fucking minds in my mentions.

It’s pub day for the new editions of the first three Regency-noir Sarah Tolerance Mysteries: Point of Honour, Petty Treason, and The Sleeping Partner—available in print or ebook! And Coming in October, The Doxies Penalty! And yes, I’m delighted!

Why would you use one of these things when BART is right there?

We just filed a lawsuit on behalf of faculty, staff, students, and unions to protect free speech within the University of California system. The Trump-Vance admin's use of financial threats against academic institutions in an attempt to stifle views it opposes is both unconstitutional and illegal.

“'AI isn’t magic; it’s a pyramid scheme of human labor,' said Adio Dinika, a researcher at the Distributed AI Research Institute based in Bremen, Germany."

Here's a powerful poem in Strange Horizons on the way things are from @gwynnega.bsky.social strangehorizons.com/wordpress/po...

Today, JD Vance urged Republicans to put on the "full armor of god" to fight their opponents. Tonight, some of the most powerful people in tech will gather to hear Peter Thiel—who created Vance—give a secret lecture on the Antichrist. It's all the same talking point, folks: politics as holy war

Oakland peeps: Anyone know if any organizations are organizing to fight Waymo coming into the East Bay? Apparently they have to get permission from the Port, the DMV, and the PUC, but not the city council. @oaklandside.org reports: oaklandside.org/2025/09/15/i...

Pretty weird to find out about an earthquake that happened a couple of hours ago about 25 miles away by reading the NY Times. In my defense, it was only a 3.5. Anybody in the Bay Area feel it? (it was just north of Mt. Diablo, apparently.)