This is one of the most beautiful things I have witnessed, the craft here is impeccable.

Covid? Bleach. Hernia? Bleach. Cancer? Bleach. Ron Johnson has a simple remedy that will cure all your ailments. It's bleach. www.techdirt.com/2025/12/29/s...

Happy dead Santa season! Good crop this year.

Politicians are terrified of an electorate they think is far more authoritarian and angry and right wing than it actually is, because they are out of touch because the literal media - the thing that mediates between public and polity - is corrupted

The last time I saw The Trial by Orson Welles it was on VHS; the teenage me probably taped a late-night TV broadcast of a cropped, substandard print. I saw it again last night. Wow. Every frame is a work of art, not least due to cinematographer Edmond Richard. Here's a short 🧵of frames. #cinema

I finding it hard to find words to describe it bsky.app/profile/numb...

Of all the dirty tricks: juking USPS rules so that the postmark of mail-in ballots won't reflect the date they were put in the hands of the Postal Service, creating a pretext to throw out the votes.

This one gets a pass

Sarah McBride put out a fundraising post on her Instagram specifically denouncing Republicans for trying to ban gender-affirming health care for trans people. It's probably one of the most forceful statements I've read from her.

A mistake in three acts

Tonight in the December Comfort Watches: Apollo 13, perhaps the best film ever for competent people doing competent things competently, both on screen and off of it: whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/29/t...

Watched “Citizen Kane” on the plane. Hadn’t seen it in maybe 20 years. Sound was terrible. Almost forgot the stunning use of chiaroscuro light technique used in nearly every scene. While not new to cinema, the use of it in CK (1941) probably helped pave the way for later Film Noir crime classics.

50 ICE agents swarming a public library to arrest one person. This isn’t policing — it’s authoritarian spectacle. Armed intimidation, fear as policy, and taxpayer money burned to terrorize communities. This is fascism in plain sight. #TrumpWatch #Resist

What I hear when I'm in the dentist's chair.

Full denial

White woman puts Mexican flag on her truck to waste ICE’s time.

Oh man, the Neo-Nazis are having their Night of the Short Sporks.

Ask this question and its follow-up. Like Begum before him, Alaa el-Fattah is being used as a crowbar to shift reasonable people - even some progressives - into a space of thinking that full citizenship, if granted recently or dual, is retroactively conditional or attracts a lower class of rights.

My wish for 2026 is that editors finally give up on using the hoodie/matrix text trope when illustrating articles about cyber.

Second anniversary of our Apple TV’s spectacular attempt to understand me asking for “Hercule Poirot’s Christmas”

I am trying, really trying, not to get angry but it is genuinely unbelievable how much of our current woes you can put down to "the Conservative party thinks only in a 2 day media cycle and acts accordingly." A party gleefully smashing up the hotel room then asking whose room it is.

A modern fairytale: Jack the cat went missing from his home in North Holland. He’d got on the last train of the night to Schiphol. Luckily conductor Marcel found him, took him in the cabin then took him home for the night. “I’m responsible for all passengers, including Jack” nos.nl/artikel/2596...

🙁

The circular economy

“You guys, Hitler wants to see Poland succeed”

Britain: oh crap are we really going to have to do a nuclear war plan against the Americans France: oh yay we get to dust off our nuclear war plans against the Americans

This book was my origin story.

South Park alumnus Toby Morton saw the rename on the cards months ago and bought the trumpkennedycenter domain (com and org). https://www.trumpkennedycenter.org

Good news for anyone wondering how Jake Paul could sound like more of a fucking loser.

NEW Jane Austen as a writer about law Some notes on Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, by me (And also why there is only one good adaptation of her works.) emptycity.substack.com/p/jane-auste...

Having a normal Christmas morning

I think people today don't understand just how dramatically the night sky has changed - it looked like it does in super remote areas *everywhere* before the invention of electric lighting, and light pollution that obscures the sky has gotten dramatically worse in the last 25 years.

Making it illegal to hold federal agents accountable does not mean people will stop holding them accountable. But I don't think the admin is considering what it looks like once normal people begin embracing illegal forms of holding these agents accountable.

Relatedly, we obtained an unpublished history of Stephen Miller's ancestors' immigration to the US, written by his grandmother. People like them were attacked in terms very similar to the ones Miller and MAGA use about today's immigrants: newrepublic.com/article/2041...

A manly tear…

The magic of Christmas

UPDATE: We may see the first time English is displaced as the most popular language among Bluesky posters as soon as Americans head to sleep tonight. Japanese users were close to achieving that feat at 7 am Eastern Time, and their activity is increasing at an exponential pace. This is remarkable.

He was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.

Bob Dylan attempts to explain Willie Nelson in The New Yorker's profile of Willie: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

"It is logically impossible to simultaneously be evil, corrupt, and incompetent" is an absolutely amazing take to have in the year of 2025

Here’s a GENERAL TIP for THINKING ABOUT POLITICS and also ALMOST EVERYTHING ELSE: Be very cautious about conflating “An explanation for why my preferred conclusion COULD BE POSSIBLE” with “An explanation of why a particular conclusion IS MOST LIKELY.” A common, fundamental, devastating error!

Nobody is getting presents this year, because I can't find the end of the sellotape

I’m skeptical about that letter Epstein supposedly attempted to send to Larry Nasser, and I’m worried that if it turns out to be fake, it’ll be used to discredit + undermine otherwise credible evidence. Can we all pump the brakes on it until it’s verified by a handwriting expert?

Among the newly-released Epstein files. This Justice Dept email from Jan 2020 'I wanted to let you know that the flight records we received yesterday reflect that Donald Trump traveled on Epstein's private jet many more times than previously has been reported"

The point I wish got emphasized more is that the big winners from congestion pricing are *people who urgently need to drive*. Because they are ones that travel times really matter for. I always thought that instead of congestion pricing it should be called "free streets" - free from other cars.

The only Trump renaming that makes sense.

great work, well done everyone for inspired band naming 👏👏👏. the last entry may be the best:

Some absolutely top notch orange cattery here

Being from the UK and a member of the late part of Generation X means having to live with the fact that every photo from your childhood resembles a still from a cultishly acclaimed but commercially disappointing folk horror film. ESPECIALLY IF THEY ACTUALLY ARE... www.tom-cox.com/some-photos-...

It's a whole genre it's beautiful