ICE officers getting paid for standing around doing nothing while TSA employees work without pay is a pretty succinct summation of where we're at right now

I wrote about the poetry and prose of Antigone Kefala, one of the Great Australian Writers of all time >> sydneyreviewofbooks.com/essays/alien...

I think a key and under discussed reason for the relative ascendancy of conspiracism is the simple fact that neither the US nor Israel are actually acting all that rationally and a lot of people have internalized a framework of mind where a state acting against its own interests isn't possible.

There is a a strong case to be made that Israel is in many ways a secessionist power within the American regional framework that's largely designed around the maintenance of its own security— which is patently irrational. And absurdly the US doesn't seem to care, which is also irrational.

Strange situation where we await a statement from Iran to check whether there's any truth to what US president is saying.

It's wild that Trump is BARELY into year two of four.

They've got ICE agents milling around the airports, doing nothing to actually alleviate the lines. It won't be long before some angry traveler says something to one of these trigger-happy goons and all hell breaks out.

The entire market plan really does seem to be "what if Trump doesn't exist and has no input into the situation?"

the entire Trump plan really does seem to be "what if Iran doesn't exist and has no input into the situation?"

5 hour early arrivals means the amtrak crescent is now time competitive with any atlanta–northeast corridor flight as a bonus, you get to sleep those 5 extra hours away instead of standing in the tsa line

This, and also Cuba

Has anyone written anything good/interesting about how the NoKings protests have been / are organized? It feels like the story of Indivisible, from there to here, would be a really interesting story.

It is being reported on the ground in Cuba that everyone on a ventilator at this hospital died overnight. As a Cuban, I'm devastated.

Hey there

I’m currently working on the plan we’ll execute tomorrow to introduce our hastily hired and poorly trained fascist shock troops into a job they have no competency for, but don’t worry I found the time to do a couple hours of tv hits about it before I finished it.

"Total damages could reach up to $2.6 billion, attorneys for the plaintiffs said" but "the financial implications are minimal considering his net worth, which currently sits at about $650 billion, according to Bloomberg."

not on Bluesky to recreate the glory years of Twitter, I'm just here to make peace with my bitter admiration of my hated rival, the great Mozart

here's a really basic and easy hearty thing to cook: lentil veggie burgers. Just mash the hell out of some lentils, chop and fry and add an onion, with an egg and some tomato paste, and then make a patty and fry it in a pan. Throw some garlic salt in there at some point. That's it.

On this week's #LARBRadioHour, journalist and "Equator" co-founder Jonathan Shainin joins the podcast to talk about war in Iran, Lebanon, and how conflict is covered by the press. Listen now: https://lareviewofbooks.org/av/shainin-iran-war-podcast-media-interview-equator/

Mr. In Between is such a great show because the Australian version of The Sopranos is just like "what if Tony never went to therapy nor had the capacity for introspection?"

heads up: in a month or two, we're all gonna be talking about climate change a LOT

I've interviewed more than a dozen hydrologists and climatologists across the West the past 10 days. A sense of panic is starting to set in. Wildfires and water shortages will start mounting this summer. Adverse impacts are expected from not only this heat wave, but the historically warm winter.

Harris sent an email to Page Six afterward, clarifying his insult: “It was late, and I had a few too many martinis, so I misspoke when I said, Goebbels… I should’ve said, Friedrich Flick.”

I’m coming around to the view that the Warren endorsement of Platner is substantially about a Senate leadership challenge, and it coming after the Stratton win in IL is not coincidental, and I guess we’re going to find out if Warren et al are any good at counting votes

Feeling a lot of fury at what the US is doing to Cuba right now, as always

A propos of nothing, there's no scene in One Battle After Another that's as sticky as the opening gas station scene in The Secret Agent

No one who is afraid of "open borders" thinks other countries' borders should be closed to *them.*

If you want to talk about Austin, you have to talk to the non-YIMBYs too: "It is more accurate to see the falling rents in 2024-25 as a recalibration from a temporary bubble, rather than a sustainable trend towards greater affordability." harlo.substack.com/p/austin-and...

"In the end there is no response to the fact of inequality, because to a man of humanity that fact is—in the word we all most associate with Shawn—inconceivable."

If you've ever wondered how a Kentucky judge could threaten to bankrupt Oakland for the crime of bankrupting a coal company, have we got the long read for you: www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/unpaid-debts/

If you had $77bn you could squander without feeling any consequences whatsoever, what boondoggle would you throw it after?

Oakland police are the highest paid staff members for the whole city. So this residency imbalance also results in a huge siphoning of Oakland’s budget out to other wealthier jurisdictions through property taxes, sales taxes, etc.

we could do worse than a quick find-and-replace "Dolores Huerta" for "Cesar Chavez" on all those elementary schools and parks, I guess

Dolores Huerta's statement about Cesar Chávez's sexual abuse, no longer an open secret medium.com/@dolores_hue...

Here's the story: sheriff deputies broke into Afroman (the rapper)'s house on a bogus warrant, and his security cameras caught them fucking with his stuff and being wildly unprofessional. So he wrote a song (and music video, with his security camera footage) about them. Then the deputies sued. /1

Is there a non-antisemitic way to say "Trump is such a vicious dumbass that Netanyahu (and allies in the blob) were able to get exactly what they wanted out of him (a really dumb war with Iran) which is not in Trump or anyone's actual interest, that someone less stupid than he would have avoided"

No Gods, No Icons

Conversations about pay for writing usually blur the fact that people write for at least two different reasons; one is Selling The Word Commodity For Financial Gain, and the other is more like "I want to write a thing for people to read, the more the better." sometimes overlapping, sometimes not

I'm a little confused about the SAVE act; it doesn't seem obvious that it advantages Republicans? It's a travesty, obviously, but is disenfranchising old people the move for the GOP? Are "people with passports" the population they want voting?

This @the-independent.com story is such an obvious lift of mine that they didn’t even bother deleting my site’s referral URL. And no, they do not credit me for reporting it first or (intentionally) link to my story. In j-school, rewording someone else’s reporting was called plagiarism. 1/

after he got caught without a clear statement on a united ireland, dude hit the books

thanks google

don't want to startle you but it turns out marc andreeson's grasp on 17th century philosophy and thought is somewhat limited

More details and context about what being a woman math major in the early-2000s was like and why it was so damaging here: cooperativeoverlapping.substack.com/p/a-fuller-s...

If he's going to get a national profile on the strength of a younger woman's campaign, I'm going to come out and say it: during his short-lived tenure as a math professor, Biss had an inappropriate romantic relationship with one of his undergraduate students. I was that student.

Even better is biking around with a bunch of strangers and putting anti-Flock posters on intersections on a sunny day www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/flock-of-bic...

So what the Dutch are saying is, there's a CHANCE

Taking the vibes at Berkeley Copwatch's "Flock Bike Tour" yesterday: www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/flock-of-bic...

It's silly do demand that a movie have the same politics as you, but it's not unreasonable to point out that a movie has reactionary politics, or incoherent politics, particularly if we define "politics" broadly.