saturation with Tolkien spinoffs has somehow not prepared our culture for the arrival of dark lords bearing a gift that everyone becomes convinced they can wield to accomplish great things but just makes them dependent and start whispering about preciouses if you suggest just throwing it away

Seeing Lander lose the primary and just keep going hard for New Yorkers is such a powerful example of someone standing for something rather than trying to cruise to power. I’m not a New York voter, I just write there, but even from across the country it feels so nourishing to see.

I spoke with the Boston Globe about the Summers situation TLDR: other professors like myself can no longer trust Summers to perform a key duty of a university professor, which is to advise & mentor students www.bostonglobe.com/2025/11/18/m...

When my kid became captain of varsity lacrosse and soccer in high school, there was a huge box in her car of Advil, snacks, extra layers, spare socks…

RIP Sister JoAnn Persch, immigrant advocate who, alongside Sister Pat Murphy, prayed the Rosary in English & Spanish every Friday outside Broadview ICE, no matter what **since 2007** She was still attempting to minister to people inside Broadview Nov. 1. Legend 💚 blockclubchicago.org/2025/11/18/s...

Everything is very bad, but I love us. We take care of each other.

Per CNN, Elizabeth Warren is calling on Harvard to cut ties with Larry Summers after Jeffrey Epstein's emails released last week by House Dems featured Summers making sexist comments + asking for Epstein’s romantic advice.

It’s being reported that Greg Bovino and 250 of his goons will be leaving Chicago. But it’s also being reported that he’ll be back, in larger numbers. But Chicago is a boxer, tired but unbowed. I wrote about how we’ll be ready. dansinker.com/posts/202…

"The cyclists arrive at sunrise, rolling through Chicago’s Latino neighborhoods and stopping at tamale carts, elote stands & candy stalls. They buy out every last item — every tamale, every corn cob, every bundle of sweets. Then they load up the food and deliver it to shelters and families in need."

Oh this is SO GOOD!!!

Today I was in a very grouchy mood at the grocery store but THEN the woman in front of me was $6 short and I put it on my credit card and we were ALL much happier! Honestly, what a lift for the price of a small movie theater popcorn.

In grad school I got specific advice about how to minimize the awkwardness(!!!) of this potential interaction. A chunk of it was “how to avoid being the person sitting on the bed”

When I talk to my students about writing policy proposals, I always show them a graph of marginal tax rates (to explain why we COULD have good things). Sometimes a student says, “What HAPPENED there?” And the answer is Reagan. Later they were frustrated at insufficient regulation. Oh hey.

Obviously, you can think whatever you want about any book, but to me, Nabokov's two masterworks (Lolita, Pale Fire) are about horrible people possessed of deep delusions of grandeur who aim to get the reader on their side by appearing to be smart. And a lot of people fall for it!

No one leaving New York City because of Mamdani, say two top real estate CEOs

You know what’s good? Dogs.

Nice work Seattle?!?!?!?!?!!!?!?!

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG

Dinner with friends and neighbors ❤️

these people shouldn’t be able to go anywhere

Taking a little break from grading, to tell my senator that Chuck Schumer needs to get the fuck out of here if he can't deliver for the American people.

Wow UNEXPECTED not-bad news!

Wow congrats to Senate Democrats for making me wish for this future

My sister and nephews are coming for Thanksgiving for the first time in YEARS, I will be SO MAD if those men fuck this up

Last night, the Trump Administration sent a letter suggesting Wisconsin should return our FoodShare payments. My response ⬇️

This is an all hands on deck moment to save health care. If you got a notice this month that your health insurance premium is going up by $500 or maybe even $1,000, send me your story: www.warren.senate.gov/health-care-...

always important to consider the signaling effect of elections. one likely outcome of tuesday is to encourage the strongest candidates to throw their hats in the ring.

THANK YOU Lindsey Boylan!!!!!

I do think yesterday’s results reinforced the dynamic that while much of the American leadership class is chickenshit, most of the electorate is not

HOLD THE FUCK UP

Mamdani has now gotten more votes than 1/4 of the members of the United States Senate did when they got elected. The political power being channeled here is immense.

Watching Zohran’s speech and tracking his many quotations and references. When I saw that “you campaign in poetry but you govern in prose” is attributed to MARIO CUOMO, friends, I gasped so loud my dog woke up.

“Jews for Racial & Economic Justice organizer Lexi Sasanow …described what people should do today: Find a political home, be it a nonprofit, mutual aid group, or a community garden, so you “have a network of people you want to be with as things get harder.””

For the past two+ years I’ve heard so much hand wringing about the demise of Judaism and Jewish institutions in the midst of a collapsing consensus on Israel and it is so odd to me because the lefty Jewish flank that grew up in — my main touch point for Judaism — is thriving in this moment.

I knew it would take less than a day for a tiktok dj to make something.

FUCK YEAH

THE NAME IS MAMDANI M-A-M-D-A-N-I, YOU SHOULD LEARN HOW TO SAY IT

whatever you think of Spanberger, the fact that her opponent ran a campaign based almost entirely on transphobia and is on track to eat shit in the biggest blowout the state has seen since 2009 is unambiguously a huge win

I asked my engineering undergrads in Boston-ish, and they had heard freeze the rent, fast and free buses, childcare, grocery stores. The messaging is beyond spectacular. It’s incredible.

Please please please New York please do this

“I have a deep belief in the way we gather,” one host told me. “If we gather well, we can change the world.”

In the immortal words of Oingo Boingo: "Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye Goodbye goodbye, goodbye goodbye Goodbye goodbye, goodbye goodbye Goodbye goodbye, goodbye goodbye"

billionaires buy twitter or WaPo as a little treat, but yes tell me about Gen Z's apocalyptic pastry habit

Eminently reasonable proposed principles for professors’ use of AI, from a student refusinggenai.wordpress.com/2025/08/29/a...

New York 😍 😍 😍

My last Halloween as a Controller. Time for a (Nintendo) Switch.

I gotta be real, I did not suspect we would reach "roving mobs of white folks chanting "shame" at ICE" within 9 months, and it really feels like a sign of how much more horrifying it must be on the ground than those of us not there can even imagine.

From what I understand, even if the government obeys there is likely to be a delay before money hits the cards, so keep donating and keep checking in with people. And if they disobey this order, I swear to God...