I just woke up from a nap and somehow while I was asleep, everyone on the bus has figured out we are not going to the right place

In what is often described as the most significant assassination of the 20th century, the execution of Patrice Lumumba of Congo possibly occurred on 17 January 1961. I wrote about him and the global participation in his horrific execution folukeafrica.com/patrice-lumu...

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Surprise! www.ft.com/content/da74...

I just dropped my earphone into an enchilada.

Perennial reminder of this excellent paper about how secret police forces are swamped with underachievers “We don’t want clever people. We want mediocrities.” (Ungated summary here ajps.org/2019/10/08/w...)

This is almost 40% of all countries in the world

Good question This is what the brave new world of "institutional neutrality" looks like www.chronicle.com/article/wher...

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LETTERMAN: “.. CBS News is a wreck. It’s just gone. .. The integrity of CBS News .. has been trampled on, pissed on and eviscerated by these idiots that have taken it over.” @letterman.bsky.social $PSKY youtu.be/CHYksa07oQA?...

“He studied night and day as though he feared lest [when he was buried] the worms might find a few ideas missing in his head.” Saw this quote from Heinrich Heine again. He knows me and my friends so well.

Weird to be commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Am Rev while living under a government that has a) sent armed troops to occupy cities perceived to be too rebellious, b) rendered largely irrelevant the representative branch of government, and c) claimed imperial right to rule other countries.

🇮🇷 Protest in Tehran, Iran.

Atlanta botanical garden

A headline to sum up our times:

Bizarre discovery of the day: I was listening to Queen B-sides for motivation and discovered that they had a song called Khashoggi's ship about the billionaire Adnan Khashoggi, who was the uncle of Jamal Khashoggi.

After 5 years of data collection, our WARN-D machine learning competition to forecast depression onset is now LIVE! We hope many of you will participate—we have incredibly rich data. If you share a single thing of my lab this year, please make it this competition. eiko-fried.com/warn-d-machi...

How your email finds me.

My one real comment on the Jan 6 5 yr anniversary is that it was carried out by rich people. The poor hick stereotype is incorrect. It was rich people, suburban millionaires and their backers. We know this from who was arrested. It cost money to go to DC, stay at fancy hotels, fund this, etc.

The failure of our elites to hold Trump accountable for January 6th is as disgraceful as what happened on that awful day. Since 2010, 35 democratic leaders around the world have been criminally convicted. Only Trump went unpunished and unconstrained. Now he threatens democracy at home and abroad.

5 years ago today Donald Trump attempted a coup. He failed and the Biden administration declined to punish him in any way for it. That's probably the biggest factor in why we're now where we are.

WH sources say Venezuela's opposition leader committed the "ultimate sin": She accepted the Nobel Peace prize. “If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” one said. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Jurassic Park Was Right: Mosquitoes Really Can Carry Libraries of Animal DNA

A little farcical comedy here about the Falcons and Hawks

This song came to mind for reason youtu.be/xsZJ-utwKOA?...

I'm glad that Congress isn't alive to see this

Context you rarely hear: global stocks are up about 30% over the past year. U.S. stocks? Around 18%. That means American investors underperformed the world by about 12 percentage points, even while headlines called it a “fantastic year.”

DOGE was A LOT less likely to cancel contracts from companies that donated money to Republicans than companies that donated to Democrats.

The Lord is risen

Federalist No. 70 has/will come up a lot in the Roberts Court’s analysis of executive power. I dove into how SCOTUS has blithely misquoted and misread it along the way.

Of those, Jeffrey Tambor's Hank Kingsley is truly the most fantastically multidimensional character - this scene of Hank meeting the Wu Tang Clan is truly painful/hysterical...

Earthrise Apollo 8 December 24, 1968 63/n

Is Escape From New York a Christmas movie? Asking for a friend.

💰Trump’s wealth increased by about $2.5B since his reelection, to $6.9B 💰 Eric’s increased 10x, to $400M. 💰 Don Jr.’s 6x, to $300M. 💰 Barron, a college sophomore, is worth $150M.

BBC does a good job juxtaposing ineffective approach and effective approach

NEW: Humanitarian officials staged a last-minute plea to Trump officials at their fancy hotel to re-start food aid $ for a huge refugee camp in Kenya. The Trumpers blew it off and babies starved. @annamaria.bsky.social & Brett Murphy www.propublica.org/article/keny...

I just learned from a friend about this annual list and... well, if you're looking for something funny to distract yourself today, go read it!

I am trying ONCE AGAIN* to read Portrait of a Lady. I’ve read and loved other James novels but I have twice quit this one at the midpoint. * all caps indicates Al Pacino voice

I think it's kind of beautiful that this was Rob Reiner's final line on television

Over a span of 8 years Rob Reiner directed movies with Mandy Patinkin, Wallace Shawn, Peter Falk, Christopher Guest, Robin Wright, Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Carrie Fisher, James Caan, Kathy Bates, Lauren Bacall, Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, Demi Moore, Kevin Bacon, Kiefer Sutherland, and John Cusack.

Rob Reiner's first seven films: 1. Spinal Tap. 2. The Sure Thing. 3. Stand By Me. 4. THE PRINCESS BRIDE. 5. WHEN HARRY MET SALLY. 6. Misery 7. A Few Good Men. Good lord. Even Spielberg included 1941 in his first seven. And that was after playing Michael Stivic. I hope this news isn't true. But...

There was a time when I was excited about Best Books of the Year lists but somehow these keep getting duller. I remember North Woods as being one of the few exceptions.

OK, fine. Kareem's no longer the GOAT 😂

This. This was the formative event of my generation & our entire politics in 🇺🇸. The structural break after which we were no longer a full democracy, when 5 Wizards In Robes decided they were a super-legislature & counting all the actual votes didn’t matter. The rest has been 25 years of commentary.

BREAKING: Democrats have *flipped* a seat in Georgia's state House tonight. Democrat Eric Gisler has won the seat, which was previously held by a Republican who resigned this fall. This is a red territory: Trump won the district by 13% in 2024.

The harder it is for people with criminal records to get jobs, the easier it is to recruit them for jobs like this.