As is common when the NYT pulls this shit, comments in the article are turned off. If they allow comments at all, they also often block comments that call out the weasel tactics they employ.
Creator of words, music, and sound for theater. Also, as of the last few years, teacher of same. Listen at soundcloud.com/davidreiffel
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As is common when the NYT pulls this shit, comments in the article are turned off. If they allow comments at all, they also often block comments that call out the weasel tactics they employ.
Also, it was the word that got me to QB, and I spent a lot of time refusing to put it in and looking elsewhere before I muttered “David, just go ahead and try it” and voi-effing-là.
Heros? (Google AI says it’s an accepted more modern spelling but it’s giving me shpilkes.)
I have a BIG question for you once the spoiler embargo passes.
A sliver of the crowd today at Boston’s Labor Day Parade.
Also perhaps if set in Baltimore?
I'm attending AFL-CIO's event, “Boston’s First Labor Day Parade” - sign up now to join me! www.mobilize.us/mayday/event...
It’s really important to remember that Republicans are cruel and mean and ruthless as any bully, but also like any bully they are a bunch of piss-pants cowards who run crying to their favorite podcasts when they get mean looks in restaurants.
A lot of political influencers within the Atlantic/NYT orbit are very, very eager to sell us on the lie that we can get out of fascism by sacrificing trans people. They will beat that drum even louder as the right weaponizes this tragedy. They are liars now & they will be liars in the coming days.
You just sent me down a rabbit hole that well might inspire my next musical. I mean, he died at 31 from dieting, & his alleged boyfriend, David Bacon, who allegedly also dated Howard Hughes, was stabbed to death (& was found with a camera containing a single nude photo of Bacon). That’s a lot.
If pundits would like to talk about violence, a terrorist recently shot up the CDC and another assassinated Democratic officials in Minnesota but they sort of let both stories disappear Not as threatening as motorbikes in DC I know but maybe we could circle back?
I saw the movie in Paris once, and he was a much better actor when dubbed into French.
And now I’ve got Michel Legrand running through my head
Holy farking snit!! That’s amazing from first moment to last.
If you live in Washington DC or if you work for the DC police, National Guard, DHS, ATF, FBI, or any other relevant agencies and have any info or tips to share, please reach out via Signal premthakker.35 Your anonymity will be protected If this doesn't apply to you, please boost so others can see
These misleading heads/subheads have me teetering on canceling my subscription. I’ve also noticed that they do this often on those “updates”/“live” articles where there are no comments allowed, and when I *have* been able to comment (temperately!) on the practice, it’s not published.
I use page 57 when I’m buying books. I figure it’s past any opening fireworks by then and the writer has probably hit their stride.
Yes, and then can we launch a brigade of volunteer docents to verbally annotate whatever they put in the truth’s place? Uniformed friendly people leading impromptu tours: “Here’s the history that was recently removed by the present administration”
Just finished a run of “As You Like It” in the Boston Common, and I am more convinced than ever that “Sell when you can; you are not for all markets” is the funniest line Shakespeare wrote.
Because Gertrud.
And it took me a moment to realize that the little bit sticking out from his foot on the left was his other foot and not an opposable toe.
we can sneak around town / hunting working folks down / I hear they got a great benefit plan join ICE boy ain’t it nice / join ICE take my advice www.tiktok.com/@jessewelles...
I am *not* enjoying it.
The first time I saw it in a theater, also the first time in color, was at an unintentional college double bill with Psycho, playing in the theater next door (also for my first time on the big screen.) it was quite the evening.
Shameless. And Six Feet Under.
Final preview of As You Like It on the Boston Common, before tomorrow’s press opening. It’s free, most evenings at 8 pm through August 11.
"AI" is IT from A Wrinkle in Time. "Just give in," the AI pushers say. "We can all be together in this. You don't have to think." Time to hold onto your inner Meg, friends.
For me I started using it in scare quotes for pretend quaintness and then, as typically happens with me, it became part of my normal usage. I fully expect the shakshuka I just ate to repeat on me later this evening.
Truly there’s nothing that finishes off a loooong day of outdoor rehearsal better than a post-midnight bus ride home as boneshaking as the Coney Island Cyclone.
If these roles were reversed, the right would instantly memorize the names of everyone involved in this story. The perpetrators would be talked about for days on Fox News and podcasts. The victim would get invited to the White House.
personally I would nominate somebody who might get lots of people to vote for them instead of a soulless triangulating fucker running yet again into the arid desert of Good Republicans With a Conscience seeking to win 50% of the 10 available votes, but I am not a paid election strategist
I don't think I have *ever* seen an op-ed that told conservatives to climb down off their high horse, be the bigger person, and reach out to their left/liberal family members. It's just assumed that hard-right folks won't change, and nobody should ask them to.
Autocrats and fascist movements attack journalists and news orgs for being truth-tellers and maintainers of reality. We stand fully in support of @adamzyglis.bsky.social for his body of work of powerful editorial cartoons including this one that has triggered the right wing outrage machine. 1/n
I wrote about being a person of privilege in a supremacist society while trying to oppose supremacy, and the some ideas on how best to avoid becoming an obstacle to that struggle. www.the-reframe.com/be-bolder-no...
And that he can say “a fraudster always makes the loudest noise” utterly without irony…
Can you hit repost? Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn't want you to know the name of her opponent but will try every desperate attempt to save her seat. My name is Shawn Harris. I am a Democrat, husband, father, Retired Brigadier General, farmer, and I'm running against MTG. Can you share and follow me?
WATERSHIP—naah, nevermind
Yesterday I hit 200 on my NYT crossword streak, after ditching my 1500+ streak during the NYT tech workers strike. A milestone is a milestone (even if it sometimes feels like a millstone).
This is what I was talking about in my previous post.
I appreciate the NYT compendium of judge quotes in today’s edition but it was a little rich for the EdBoard to write ”His actions deserve to be called out in plain language” when their headline/kicker writers so often obfuscate articles’ content in Drumpf’s favor.
This from the great Alan Alda. 🙌 The best advice an actor might EVER hear.
Notice how troops were sent to LA for political theater, but none were sent to Texas to help find the missing people who were swept away in the flood?
Not a movie, but GROKODILE ROCK (John, 1972). Or maybe Grokodile Grok.
PICNIC AT HANGING GROK (Weir, 1975)
Hey, is there a different president in office right now? Is he doing anything newsworthy or nah?
They are the thing I’m always disappointed to find when I see a sign offering gooseberries. (I mean, they’re fine but not what I want for my pie.)
“The problem with the technologies of 2025 — household, work or personal — is that we don’t have control over whether we use them, which perhaps is part of why we don’t see Americans gaining any more leisure time despite the wild advances of the past two decades.” www.nytimes.com/2025/07/05/o...
Point taken. But the last few months have shown us that M*sk has a deep bench of evil tech bro coders.
My sweet jesus there’s a programmer at T*sl* who came up with THIS as the solution to the problem…
My sweet jesus there’s a programmer at Tesla who came up with *that* as the solution to the problem…
I just wrote one. With a gong-roll crescendo for good measure.
As another Shakespeare quote has it: a great cause of night is the lack of the sun. Read; share.
The NYT has apparently forced @jamellebouie.net to delete two perfectly factual skeets. The paper obscured the fact that their source for the hacked info is a well-known eugenicist and racist, whose academic work is discredited. Bouie called it out and was slapped down. Please spread widely.
Here's something I haven't seen for a long while: a lovely old lady with a hyacinth blue rinse. Went perfectly with her slightly darker blue top. Made my day.
To quote Myfanwy Piper, "Don't smile like that. No-one should be smiled at like that."
If you have a Republican representative in Congress, here's a list and a script to get them to vote against the budget bill. Thanks @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social @schumer.senate.gov @schiff.senate.gov @padilla.senate.gov Maybe you could make some calls too... docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
Fuck Paramount. Fuck Penn. Your compliance will not save you from these monsters. Oh and also fuck any Dems working against the chosen candidate for NYC mayor. (This is all in top of any and all Republican enablers, which is all of them.) I don’t have enough middle fingers.
Really excited to see my and @ardenthistorian.bsky.social 's pieces on the nerdy fascism of Palantir up @religiondispatches.org -- give it a read, those people are weird and awful. religiondispatches.org/fool-of-a-to...
Happy Lottery Day to those who celebrate! (h/t to Benjamin Dreyer) images.freeimages.com/images/large...
Once I was poring through my mother’s highly annotated copy of Fannie Farmer and a scrap of paper fluttered out. On it was my great-great-aunt Rilla’s recipe for doltclous. It took some doing, and I could never quite get the aspic to set, but the results were, in a good way, memorable.
Every time a centrist politico whines that trans people “went too far,” remember that our crime was pushing back on this disgusting bullshit. This rampant, hideous sexualization of our lives was the norm until we started demanding to tell our own stories. THAT is what they mean by “too much.”
Good plan, NY friends (except I’d rank Zohran #1). Don’t rank Cuomo the creep!
Putting this here for later.
I followed this back to a lengthy and fascinating thread focusing on just the kind of qualms ive been trying to express about AI: it’s changing us into creatures that corporate America can use more easily to its profit while giving us slop (however tasty) in return.
NYT has an awful take on yesterday’s SCOTUS decision. Victim blaming 101. Trans kids need our support, and it’s bigotry that gets in the way, not the righteous insistence on the (apparently radical) notion that trans rights are human rights for all, including young people.
🚨🚨The White House is pissed off about this ad so you know what to do, share it everywhere! ICE is disappearing people just because of the color of their skin! No Warrant! No Due Process! This is not who we are as Americans! #MAGAKidnappers want an all white America, fuck that‼️
Reposting so I can find it again. I have lots of friends in love with ChatGPT.
People reallye ynto Gen AI summaryes seeme to thynke of bookes as annoyinge litel labyrinths whose onlye benefit ys that thei leade to a tastye magical glowing orb called "informacioun" that when consumed doth turne you into a man wyth a bow tie and the righte to talke over everyone else.
A.R. Moxon’s superpower is in his focus on the frames we allow to limit our thinking. His essays always shift the way I’m analyzing this mess were in, and, more importantly, shift the actions I take. This answer to TERF cruelty is epic.
He has asked to remain anonymous for the moment.
*friend, not fiend. Fat thumbs.
Hey Julie—do you recognize our friend, who I think you know?
An impassioned thread. What is AI turning us into when we use it, or experience its product? To whose benefit?
BREAKING: Federal agents in plain clothes and unmarked cars tried to snatch 1st graders from LA elementary schools—told staff they had “parental consent.” They lied. When pressed, they HID THEIR IDS. DHS admits they sent them. This wasn’t a welfare check. It was a test run for a police state.
As usual, great analysis from @juliusgoat.bsky.social I was just a few days ago struggling to express what here is put clearly and uncompromisingly.
Prepare!
So did I, I expect with equal success.
Your periodic reminder that the Democratic Party assiduously avoided trans issues in 2024. I was there. There was not a two-sided conversation on trans issues. There was the GOP with their bullhorn versus Democrats largely pretending we don’t exist.
Two words: Donkey Skin.
Repost if YOU are going to a No Kings Day rally on Trump’s birthday, June 14th. This is a great summary of what the events are for and why it’s important to TURN OUT! Please watch and share.
This Substack post recounts a conversation with ChatGPT that seems amazing until it goes shockingly off the rails. I’m reposting mostly to have it for future reference. Read it.
So damn proud of these kids for their courage. 💥 Hundreds of Milford, MA high schoolers walked out in protest today after ICE detained their classmate Marcelo Gomes Da Silva. Detained on his way to volleyball practice. Illegally. These students aren’t backing down—they’re rising up. #OnYourSide
The end of a great thread (as usual) from @juliusgoat.bsky.social. “Show me.”
Thanks for amplifying this action Alex. Right now, we are slightly shy of 15K people sending a message to their senators. Every submission makes a difference! If you haven't sent a message, do it now. Let's protect trans healthcare and the healthcare of all Americans together!
(Click through and read the thread and blog posts.)
As usual, @juliusgoat.bsky.social dives deep and comes up with pearls. We make efficiency our god at our peril.
“The point of technofascist capture of the arts is to lower the expectations of audiences/consumers so they'll accept degraded, automated 'content'.”
“No matter what AI can hypothetically do, in practice it is a corner cutting technology used to save you time while wasting everyone else's time.”
Fascinating post. I have friends who I was gobsmacked to learn were all in for RFK Jr. Late in this (long) thread there’s some explanation that helps me understand (but not forgive) them.
I saw it first as a teenager—a production in the upstairs attic theater at the University of Chicago. Always been fond of it; possibly the early exposure, but also for a couple of wild moments (the slaps among them). And the last moment always moves me. I wish it were done more.
“I call this our slop era” #FuckAI
Makes me wonder how one might characterize his supporters if they were, for instance, put in a basket.
What, not even Robert Morse fresh out of the shower?
I do adore the pool, however, almost as much as Ludwig’s grotto at Linderhof. I’m a sucker for an over-the-top water feature.
I prefer to pronounce a certain soft drink kuh-KAH-kuh-luh.
Thank you for this idea, because “in place of the gin” is a phrase you’ll never hear me utter.
Kvelling.
I’d especially go if it included “Hosannah Rockefeller.”