With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.

One thing I’d say about ranked choice voting in NYC is that you don’t have to do complex calculations of viability. You should rank in order of *who you want to be mayor* and if you *don’t* want someone to be mayor, you shouldn’t rank them!

On the left, the guy who ordered his 15-man death squad to kill and dismember American journalist Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. On the right, the former leader of Al Qaeda with a $10m US bounty on his head. And in the middle, the most corrupt US President in history.

Holy shit, you guys. I just read Curtis Yarvin'a actual writing instead of a summary. The man is 51 years old, treated as an intellectual by the Sand Hill elite, and he writes like the most annoying freshman honors student who ever discovered Nietzsche from a comic book guide to philosophy.

once again I have to invoke the specter of Ronald Wilson Reagan, who is in Hell now. under Reagan, the term "government spending" was effectively demonized. fuck you, Reaganite ghouls! spending money, on its people and their needs, is the function of government! public works are good! say so!

I think this is true. Also, perhaps it was a bad idea for Dems to clear the field for the spouse of the man largely responsible for destroying thousands of manufacturing jobs in key swing states

RONALD REAGAN (1988): We should be aware of the demagogues who are ready to declare a trade war against our friends, weakening our economy, our national security, and the entire free world—all while cynically waving the American flag.

People have some good reasons for not trusting economists braveneweurope.com/dean-baker-i...

This is an amazing quote, from a Jan 6 prisoner who is refusing Trump’s pardon. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

In the words of @izzos.us: “There are two types of people in the world. People who think Elon Musk is a modern day Henry Ford.”

I think about this joke a lot these days.

Consumer safety regulations dictate the space between the console and the driver's seat must be larger than the width of a cell phone but smaller than the width of a human hand

I don't know why this is so fucking hard for people to get. Con artists always tap into people's real fears and concerns. Every get-rich-quick scheme, fake cancer cure, phony weight loss treatment. "He's tapping into real concerns" is not a defense. He is lying about the solutions.

LinkedIn is cool because I was always wondering what it would be like if people I sort of knew wrote mediocre press releases about themselves.

1/2 Incredible speech by an Israeli MK and rabbi calling out other leaders in the Knesset for their genocidal mindsets about Palestinians. Honestly have not seen anything even close to this strong from an Israeli leader on either side of the aisle in a while.

From time to time in Los Angeles I meet people who were involved in the Nakatomi business. They always find this time of year difficult.

I will bang this drum forever: in THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE FREE: THE GERMANS, 1933-45 Milton Mayer interviewed 10 ordinary Germans after WW2 to learn how fascism took hold. There was never a moment when everyone woke up:

I will post this forever...

so i, too, am mad at biden about his failures around clemency, but what angers me is that he has shown virtually no mercy, a stinginess that has morphed into cruelty. MORE clemency. more clemency all the time. more pardons. more commutations. more mercy. more mercy. more mercy.

A bit of commentary about the RFK Jr.nomination, but more about dealing with this kind of story in general. Because we’re going to get a lot of them.

@eschatonblog.com @katzonearth.bsky.social An erev yom kippur thread. Perhaps of use to some? Scholars of genocide (most of them Jewish, like me) who believe Israel is committing genocide, assertions presented chronologically. 1. Raz Segal, October 13, 2023 jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-c...

I think that Canticle for Leibovitz is one of the great speculative fiction novels of the 20th century, one of the great post apocalyptic novels of all time. It’s also become clear to me that a lot of people who are not as old haven’t read it. What more recent books would you compare it to?

This ad is *fantastic* www.evangelicalsforharris.com/ads

Happy Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov Saves The World Day! It's a great day to hug a non-radioactive family member! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanisl...

I'm convinced! Sparta was apparently worse than I thought, and I always figured it was pretty bad - what with all the helots and probably "300" was mostly BS. bsky.app/profile/bret...

Reading an interesting dissertation on the evolution of corporate personhood in US law. 'Corporations are people too.' We all have an intuitive sense that the legal fiction here can be problematic in its implications. knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/3479?...

Looking forward to the sequel, in which a constitutional scholar and a guy arrested at the Capitol riot debate democracy.

Janeway. I grew up on TNG, TOS,& VOY, but the strong women characters on Voyager changed my life as a kid. I don’t know if I’d be in Congress if that show wasn’t on TV. My dad was a huge Star Trek/Roddenberry fan & always talked about its social & political history. I could go on forever about ST 🪐

It credits a samosa hot-dish recipe! It has directions like "Throw in the jalapeño, ginger and garlic and fry for a minute or two until fragrant"! I'm hungry.

Putting on body armor, gas mask, and combat boots to arrest a creative writing professor whose diet is mostly hemp

People who skew center right on my FB feed are all clutching their pearls like it’s an Olympic sport over student protests, so I posted this.

you can take the red pill, which i believe tastes like strawberry. or the blue pill, which is, you guessed it, more of a blueberry flavor. i don't remember what they do

Remember, kids: all claims about the modern Electoral College that try to map it onto "founders' intent" are nonsense. This one is particularly easily demonstrable nonsense since winner-take-all didn't become the norm until the 1820s. www.nytimes.com/2024/04/03/u...

Okay Hi I wrote an essay about Flavius Josephus and the end of Zionism, but it ended up being too intense for the outlet I'd pitched it to So I decided to just publish it on my website Might send out on my newsletter, too, but I wanted y'all to have the first crack at it:

Lads ... I wrote about the "ancient literature says the clitoris doesn't exist" guy. I just think it's funny, ok? I just think it's super funny to be like "yeah the people who believed in humors didn't talk about it so it wasn't there." Also they sorta did? ANYWAY going-medieval.com/2024/03/05/o...

I did this 13 years ago, and it's still one of the things I'm happiest with online: 33moments.tumblr.com/page/7 Start from the bottom and work up. It's Lin Yutang's translation of Jin Shengtan's "33 Happy Moments," interspersed with mostly public-domain classical Chinese art.