Real missed opportunity for some judicious camera panning here.

I credit my having left Twitter for not having to think about Ori Feibush much this last year, and it’s slightly hilarious to be reminded out of the blue of what a toxic influence he can be in the city. www.inquirer.com/real-estate/...

Higher education is fighting for its life against a hostile takeover by an authoritarian regime, but for Bryan Parkurst the real sign of the times in academia is that somebody disagreed with him.

How funny is it that the Reichstag building, like, the one with the fire and the Nazis and all that, was modeled after Philly’s Please Touch museum. 😂

If my students only learn that album titles go in italics and song titles go in quotes, it all will have been worth it.

Few things drive me more insane than my firstborn son (age 12) who likes to cook (yay!) but refuses to use written recipes and instead only uses YouTube videos and so has to rewind and fast forward with his sticky fingers constantly to catch what the recipe guy is saying. (😱😱😱😱😱😱😱)

Looking for a new novel to read? Please choose between Dark Books and Colorful Books.

Music plug: we hosted the pre-teen punk band Owl Talons at the west philly porchfest last summer, and their first album is out: Ruined Future. 14 tracks in 28 minutes, nobody over 12 years old. open.spotify.com/album/1CPS9C...

Ten years ago 🥹

I am really enjoying this translation of Anna Karenina, but I could, umm, do without the cover design.

Extremely weird that Councilmember Young, who represents the 5th district, seems to be using his office to coordinate opposition to the new safer street layout in…West Philly.

The only argument against gender confirming surgery I am willing to entertain is Pete Hegseth’s face.

I will not have a martini before leading this two-hour review session on Zoom. I can have a martini _after_ leading this two-hour review session. I will not have a martini before leading this two-hour review session on Zoom. I can have a martini _after_ leading this two-hour review session.

Was reading reviews of the Rittenhouse Equinox and somebody not from Philly thought, I think seriously, that it was named after Kyle Rittenhouse. 😱

Words I really don't enjoy spontaneously spelling out on a chalkboard: double consciousness.

I’m sure Mayor Parker will successfully revitalize East Market like she promised any day now, right after she uses those Harrisburg connections to fund SEPTA, any day now, how dare you question the secret work that is absolutely happening.

It’s something we all have to keep reminding ourselves: you literally cannot believe anything Kash Patel’s FBI says.

Having spent a lot of time around old money types, it’s always been notable to me that the extent of their “social liberalism” is rooted in the fact that their children could always potentially be gay, but would never be black.

I haven’t seen any reporting on guitarist Yazmin Williams’s recent performance at the Kennedy Center. According to her social media, Kennedy Center president Rick Grennell helped the Log Cabin Republicans disrupt the show.

Here's a thing I would like to read an article about: the centennial concert at Independence Hall on July 4, 1876 that featured Patrick Gilmore playing a Bristow overture and was potentially the same event that suffragists famously disrupted to distribute their Declaration of the Rights of Women?

9yo extremely annoyed that Into The Woods Junior stops after the first act, so we got the full vocal score and she’s spending the school holiday trying to figure out out to condense Act 2 into one concluding number.

When I think about people I wish were still alive to help me make sense of this fucked up world, it would definitely be my father and Stephen Sondheim.

Donald Trump 🤝 Society Hill Civic Association

I like that almost half of the list consists of greens.

I’m just gonna say it, there are too many fig trees in West Philly, specifically Cedar Park.

So, I’m at this fancy black tie event at the Union League (long story) and guys, I ordered a martini and they…shook it. 😵

I arrived at the afterschool program to pick up my daughter to find that she had gathered all the children and was explaining the opening scene of Scream (1996) to them.

New porch friend just dropped.

I hate the social media posturing of “stupid liberals care more about Kimmel/Colbert than Mahmoud Khalil,” which accomplishes nothing more than sanctimony, but I do hope that their cancellations open more people’s eyes to the who and why and how of power being wielded.

Okay, this is the #localangle I am here for: Robert Redford starred in a Broadway play as the music critic for the Inquirer, who fell in love with a rival music critic. www.inquirer.com/arts/robert-...

Another one for the “should have taken some humanities classes” file. wjla.com/news/local/w...

(does it remind anybody else of the Barnes collection?)

Maybe I’m grumpy because of the typos and “half assed” analysis of these posters in my neighborhood, but “progress kills” is a slogan that owes more to Make America Great Again than anything else.

Your regular reminder that if BalletX is coming on tour to your city, you are required to go see them. NYC, next week this means you! The Noelle Kayser piece is to die for. www.balletx.org/seasons/ball...

Would love nothing more than to administer a drop-the-needle test on the western classical music canon to these dweebs.

Well, I guess it is good to know that Ezra Klein’s bizarre hagiography of Charlie Kirk was inspired by feeling personally unsafe in his position as a white male influencer, which allowed him to look past all of the violence Kirk fomented against other people over the years.

My in-laws are all longtime (e.g. 6th generation!) residents of Washington, DC, and it just sucks so much that the basic infrastructure of urban life in a midsized city—a performing arts center, a daily newspaper—are the targets of control for fascist oligarchs.

It is so embarrassing for the NY Times that it took it took three days and an opinion column to publish some basic, verifiable and objective facts about who Charlie Kirk was.

smdh, can’t believe they sang this in church today, what disrespect to the legacy of Charlie Kirk.

Timeline cleanse to wish my niece a happy fifth birthday.

If the FBI catches the shooter and it turns out to be right-on-right violence, or a jilted lover, or Russian spies, or whatever else, does anyone think Kash Patel would actually tell the public that?

This is the most offensive reaction to the death of Charlie Kirk I have seen.

No elected official Democratic party will be as cruel about Kirk's death as Mike Lee was about the death of Melissa Hortman. wisconsinexaminer.com/2025/06/17/s...

I've never figured what lesson to draw from this, but if you consider how the mission of fighting domestic Communists consumed an enormous proportion of US resources for almost two decades, it's an interesting fact that actual membership in the CPUSA peaked at about 75k in 1947.

Texas A&M has 79,000 students across all its programs, as a matter of interest. That’s more than every Ivy League undergrad college combined.

I know it’s easy to say from afar, but truly, faculty at Texas A&M need to exercise their collective power and go on strike in response to this.

By no means the worst thing about this horrible situation, but just imagining the sort of person who is the president of a major university but insists on being referred to as “General.”

9yo and her friends, totally of their own accord, have been working on putting on an amateur production of Into the Woods, and they’ve arrived at, um, That Scene. 😬

New low at the local CVS, the… popsicles, are now locked up. 😐