I know some of the Chotiner interviews are slow burns, but this one went off the rails for me in the intro www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

Robby Starbuck is a far-right activist. Meta putting him in the position of being a "bias advisor" for its chat bot is insane.

There’s an entire parallel bizarro Bluesky made up entirely of 2017’s top resistance grifters that and possible to be entirely unaware of its existence.

I cannot think of something less interesting than cass sunstein writing a book about Star Wars. Unfortunately this means you need to read it for @ifbookspod.bsky.social

That Chotiner/Cass Sunstein interview is basically this Dril tweet:

Literally just "henry kissinger was superficially polite about something important to me, therefore it's okay to be friends with one of history's greatest monsters" unfortunately, I think a lot of people basically work this way.

chotiner’s real gift is very quickly revealing how many powerful and influential people are complete morons. Sunstein is asked about his friendship with Kissinger and it’s pretty clear that he’s never really thought about it.

"The monster was nice to me ... so why should I treat him like a monster" Is the greatest moral self-indictment possible.

Several months ago, I learned that a friend I had met because of similar academic interests was planning to co-write a book with an aggressive and vocal bigot on X. When I asked, “Why publish with someone who constantly demeans other people that way?” the response was “Well, he’s always nice to me.”

I'm sure if a Democratic elected official mandated that a left-wing organization had to be given access to all of a state's public schools, they would be completely fine with it and would never ever call it "grooming" or "indoctrination" or anything.

this is not giving your wallet to the wallet inspector when he asks this is seeking out the wallet inspector and insisting he take your wallet

Cass Sunstein: not the man for the moment

OMG. The “Kissinger was nice to me” and “maybe downplay my love of Kissinger” law prof was CASS SUNSTEIN?

Q: Do you support defund the police A: No Q: Do you support defunding the police A: Yes

Aaron you're getting far too popular to be taking risks like that, don't you want to live??

NEW — I wrote about my confirmed scoop from last night that Disney hastened Kimmel's return because of a planned Disney+ streaming price increase announcement coming on Tuesday:

Isaac Chotiner has invited me to sample some delicious Amontillado wine and I don’t know guys but I think I’m going to come out of this interview seeming like *quite* the wine expert

New Interview: www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

Obituary: Libertarianism, 13, Dies in Argentina Chainsaw Accident www.thenerdreich.com/libertariani...

cool, ed martin (whose path to be us atty for dc was blocked and who now ostensibly runs doj's "weaponization" probe) is hanging out with alex jones

If Isaac Chotiner asks you about your friendship with Henry Kissinger, you are already dead.

More than 1800 detainees are missing after the closure of Alligator Alcatraz. Their families and lawyers can’t find them and they’ve vanished from the ICE database. Feels like this should be a much bigger story www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

Explicitly unwilling to understand the difference between being a college student enrolled in a course where you study children's literature and being a child reading children's literature www.texastribune.org/2025/09/19/t...

Returning Jesus Christ Downed By U.S. Missile Defense 30,000 Feet Before Making Landfall

What an incredible metaphor. I think "Ken Doll journalism" is the sort of term that should enter the public lexicon.

The New York Times does a 24 paragraph story on Larry Ellison buying up new and old media properties and doesn't so much as HINT, anywhere, at the obvious goal of leveraging this properties to conduct right wing information warfare, or that this kind of consolidation is bad for the public

What if the rapture happened a long time ago but only Amelia Earhart made the cut?

How it started // How it’s going

a pretty underrated way in which the political press has cooperated with the Trump regime is frequently reporting things the Trump people wish were true as if they were true. "Eric Adams will drop off the ballot and endorse Cuomo" being a prototypical example.

Breaking character: Ken White has a fantastic post about how "free speech culture" undermines free speech. It's something I've thought about a lot before, but Ken knows way more about it than I do and explains it really well. www.popehat.com/p/how-free-s...

What are the names of the U.S. Navy officers carrying out these orders to serially bomb civilian boats that pose no threat to their own vessels, killing everyone aboard? Surely they’ll want to take personal credit for this honorable service and perhaps wear a little campaign medal on their chest.

DISNEY: "OK, we are putting Jimmy Kimmel back on the air. You can resubscribe now." ME: "I unsubscribed because you immorally bowed to fascism. I'm not going to resubscribe because you immorally bowed to finances."

I do think if we ever see a coalitional breakdown in the GOP we're going to get some truly insane sex scandals coming out all at once as everyone unloads the blackmail shotguns they have pointed at each other

An 11-year-old Michigan boy was expelled from school for a year after he took a gun away from a classmate, disarmed and disassembled it, according to his mother He’s now enrolled in a non-accredited online program as he tries to keep up

snicker

A LOT of these guys joined ICE, etc., specifically to beat the shit out of immigrants and protesters. And statistics tell us anyone willing to behave this way in front of witnesses and news cameras has probably beaten domestic partners too.

As People Mag Points out, a treatment for autism Dr. Oz just announced Trump’s FDA is approving is sold by a supplement company owned by… Dr. Oz. people.com/what-is-leuc...

Many Cascade PBS journalists I admire are losing their jobs. Seattle is also losing a valuable piece of its news ecosystem. I think of the many journalists scattered throughout local newsrooms who passed through Cascade PBS/Crosscut at some point, freelanced there, or got their start there.

Anyway, here are some more photos of him from today.

Too late, Batman. Once this Tylenol floods the city's water supply, my wiki won't run out of editors ever again

Trump: don’t take acepitoemponoene RFK Jr: *moth crawls out of mouth* A nude man is in the background, only referred to as “the colonel” Person watching on tv: well if they say so

Took a while to get to this level of plainspeak, but glad to see it more and more.

Kamala Harris on Mamdani: Look, as far as I'm concerned, he's the democratic nominee and he should be supported.

I was told on here she said the literal exact opposite and it‘s reached the point where if you all said Kamala thought water was wet, I’d double check the records.

What a fucking G.

NEW: SCOTUS majority says Trump can ignore precedent if the majority doesn't like it. A 90-year-old precedent meant nothing to the majority allowing Trump to fire an FTC commissioner during litigation. This is no way to run a court, let alone a country. Tonight, at Law Dork:

This ought to be engraved somewhere.

In December 2023, Special Counsel Jack Smith asked SCOTUS to grant cert before judgement to hear Trump’s immunity appeal. The court rejected that request and didn’t issue its immunity decision until July 2024. Trump’s federal cases never made it to trial before the November 2024 election.

SCOTUS enjoined several Biden immigration policies for a year or more before finally ruling for the administration on the merits, only to stop any and all injunctions against Trump policies. It’s incredibly obvious.