The Reddit community r/Democrats has a conspicuous absence of any news about Zohran Mamdani today. But that's by design. The moderators have rules that ban people from talking about democratic socialists. www.reddit.com/r/democrats/

Your face when I'm about to tell you something that would interest you

ICE enforcement may be a mass disabling event. Disease is rampant in the camps. Disabled people report having their medical needs ignored and their conditions drastically worsened. The indiscriminate use of chemical weapons and violence causes harm. Abolish ICE.

ICE deported him anyways. They literally put a man who was at death’s door on a plane to Costa Rica. Doctors there found he had encephalopathy, rhabdomyolysis and the inability to eat on his own. What happened to him in ICE custody to cause this? He died a few weeks after deportation:

More people have died in ICE custody in last 9 months than in the entire prior 4 years. We hear of a few, but most barely make the news. Cases like Randall Alberto Gamboa Esquivel. He was in perfect health when ICE detained him. He disappeared in June & by August was in a vegetative state.

It's an interesting argument because, otoh, yes, but this is also not exactly NEW; it takes a "uniquely great candidate" vs "the two worst candidates ever" (during Trump v2) situation to bring out how true this already was, because, usually, the powers that be are able to thwart this desire

I stayed on twitter longer than a lot of people, and thought the "nazi website" stuff was hyperbolic; there were a lot more international folks on there, and bluesky wasn't a replacement for that. And then at some point in the last year, it just stopped being hyperbolic. That site is vile.

What's notable about vile shit like this is that they never have the courage to stand up and actually defend the proposition they are oh-so-provocatively putting forward with the framework. They love to be "just asking questions" so they can *suggest* what they're too craven to actually argue.

What is a vibe report? www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/what-is-a-vi...

This month, we will be donating our profits from sales on Sundays to the Alameda County Community Food Bank. This nation’s present leadership, which we already knew to be venal, are committed to yet more vile acts against our most vulnerable neighbors.

Imagine having a kid in this daycare who watches as their teacher is bodily dragged away by masked goons.

a fun thing about being an insomniac is also getting woken up multiple times a night by your maddening children

This needs more attention: Zohran SPLIT the straights with Cuomo. ALL of his margin was from LGBTQ+ voters. Every Dem who ever said “we should abandon the transes” needs this shoved down their fucking throat with a ramrod.

A propos of nothing

headlines are gonna be like "Will Election Results Challenge Trump to Further Greatness?"

everybody gets twenty-four hours to lib out with impunity, tonight is the cringe purge

this genuinely feels like a moment history books will look back on where the Democratic Party was forced to either fix its hearts or die

A perfect video to post today

Onion onionously onioned onions and mustard, mustarded with just a quarter onion of mustard for onions and mustard, are the mustard onion mustard for mustardally any onions or mustard.

These generously onioned onions and mustard, mustarded with just a quarter onion of mustard for onions and mustard, are the perfect onion mustard for practically any onions or mustard.

These generously buttered onions and mustard, sprinkled with just a quarter onion of mustard for color and freshness, are the perfect blank canvas for practically any onions or mustard.

These generously buttered onions and mustard, sprinkled with just a quarter cup of parsley for color and freshness, are the perfect blank canvas for practically any onions or mustard.

These generously buttered onions and mustard, sprinkled with just a quarter cup of parsley for color and freshness, are the perfect blank canvas for practically any stew or braise.

does anyone worry that zohran's cheek smile-muscles are gonna snap like brittle rubber bands, our boy is working them too hard

The week in Oakland literary doings: do them. www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/calendar/

I love the smell of onions and mustard in the morning

My sources are actually telling me that Allah personally flagged his shahada and that it hasn't gone through

It is worth saying that putting “Africana studies” in scare quotes as if it’s a ridiculous concept is not a political argument. It’s just racism. “Africa is not worthy of a major” is the implication. Yeah dude you’re just racist. (From Gerard Baker at the WSJ today) www.wsj.com/opinion/mamd...

[Richard Beck's HOMELAND has entered the chat]

Dick Cheney won't see your mean jokes about his death, but Tony Blair will, hopefully.

The account named @ischeneydeadyet.bsky.social hasn't yet woken up to the news

<-- I want this man FIRED for this horrendous and tasteless attack on a beloved patriot and mass murderer

Perfect. 60 Minutes edited out an important part of its Trump interview in which he boasts about extracting millions from its parent company on an utterly meritless claim . . . that 60 Minutes selectively edited its Kamala Harris interview.

The Baileys aren't Chuck Schumer's excuse for inaction They're psychic entities in the astral plane, thoughtforms of pure malevolence that only Chuck can see. They have haunted him his entire life When he says "What am I supposed to tell the Baileys?," he is afraid. Their True Name is unutterable

Now THIS is how you respond to unhinged Islamophobia

I spend upwards of $4K on candles, where do you buy your candles, those sound like cheap candles

Just so we're clear: This administration's blatant, unapologetic choice to deny food to 42 million people—to have the money sitting there and say, "No, we'll let them go hungry"—is simply a more overt display of why homelessness and poverty keep worsening in this country. Because it's *decided.*

Well, an acquaintance who relies on the ACA marketplace for insurance just received a notice explaining that their fee for coverage will be rising. Right now they pay $180 a month. The new price? $2733.15 a month.

For my first feature in years, I wrote about Monster Jam as an echo of place and what that felt like in Oakland in 2025.

Every scene in All the President's Men: Woodward/Bernstein on a rotary phone: would you please tell me everything you know about the watergate conspiracy? Somebody: I don't really want to... Woodward/Bernstein: please, I'm from the Post Somebody: OK, well, it was Nixon who did it

It's worth taking a second to think about what happens when one person within the broad left calls another within the broad left "insane": this is a declaration that such "discourse" is not simply wrong or misguided, in sympathetic terms, but casting it out completely (along with its speaker).

Props to the Christian Century for publishing an amazing piece that wouldn’t be permitted in most Mainline pulpits. ⚓️

it's good that Cuomo is going to completely eat shit because the Democratic party is generally at a real inflection point over whether the response to Trump is going all-in on "fuck the left" and "actually bigotry is fine"

New incredible detail here: ICE says a match in its facial recognition app Mobile Fortify is a "definitive" determination of a person's status, and that this overrides birth certificates. This is an app ICE is using in the field to scan people www.404media.co/ice-and-cbp-...

This is just "non-white people should not and cannot live next to decent white families" with a couple fig leafs left on

Under Trump, the draconian future of homelessness policy is coming into focus: mass internment. Utah is building a 16-acre site to detain up to 1,300 homeless people inside locked "accountability centers." This is profoundly alarming. Vital reporting from @ellenbarry.bsky.social and Jason DeParle:

I think the thing about "kitchen table issues" as a centrist fetish object is that while it pretends to be about HARD REALITIES, it actually just serves for a soft-focus idealized nuclear family feeling you have, "If only dad had a single-breadwinner salary so that mom didn't work and kids obeyed"

The week in Oakland literary events (but all the world is a stage, etc, so in that sense, any event can be "literary" if you squint? Maybe?). Anyway, the ORB guide to the week to come: www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/calendar/ Come!

In Palestine, the polite way to address people older than you is to call them aunt or uncle. This is a big thing in so many other cultures too. Incidentally, this is also how you survive encounters with certain supernatural beings in our folklore.

Oakland Review of Books calendar of (not just) literary events, October 28 - November 2: www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/calendar/