☀️ The most important thing to understand about politics is that Head Monkey Good, Not Bad. Stop saying Head Monkey Bad. ☀️
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It's not great, what happened next was the century with the greatest mass slaughter in human history.
I feel like they're allowed to mention that, at long as its no more than 10% of the time
I wonder if WP reporters have formal instructions never to tell the paper's readers what actually happened in Gaza in 2006-7 (ie, Hamas won the election & then Bush tried to stage a coup reversing the election) washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
I did learn the rudiments of sewing from both my parents, and occasionally stabbed myself with needles, leading to even more colorful language
It's amazing how much continuity there is in American culture, it's like we're reliving the late 1800s. Tariffs, a gilded age, gutter racism, enthusiastic massacres of the natives. Even politicians with beards. It's all happening again.
If Trump dies, JD Vance will become the first president with facial hair since William Howard Taft in 1913
One way to measure the enormous increase in America's wealth over my lifetime is that both my parents knew how to darn socks, while I'm not sure exactly what that means
9 CDC Directors going back to 1977 speak out. What RFK Jr has done to our nation’s public health system "should alarm every American." It "is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...
The mental health benefits of not knowing any history right now must be massive. Moving through your day with total equanimity. What happens next? Who knows? Maybe something good
feel like slim and fat chance should be a different amount of chance
By me from 2023: Four Days a Week: This Labor Day, Let's Talk About Laboring Less theintercept.com/2023/09/03/f...
More evidence that nature is more peculiar than we could ever imagine. Everyone should get bitten by The Tick That Makes You Vegan www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/d...
I wrote about the humility of expertise and the arrogance of ignorance, the profound laziness that attends believing that you can find knowledge by ignoring the accumulation of inherited human knowledge, and the ways lazy arrogance fuels narratives of fascism. www.the-reframe.com/your-ignoran...
Rudy Giuliani happened to be in the middle of one of his favorite pastimes - RESPECTING WOMEN - when he suddenly broke every single bone in his body. Please do not call and ask any questions because his business partner is taking care of him ❤️
Among the benefits listed in the looney tunes plan for Gaza circulating at the White House is that it will "secure US-industry access to $1.3T of rare-earth minerals from the Gulf" washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
Border Patrol arrested firefighters during a wildfire. It can't help but make me think of how Germany was so fanatically devoted to the holocaust that they prioritized using railroads to send people to death camps over moving troops to the front. www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...
The results are in
New York City's mayoral election is November 4. When will the NY Times publish its first article about The Failed Mamdani Administration? I'm guessing November 5.
Not everyone acquires wisdom as they age. But I feel you can if you make an effort. The problem is that it takes a super-long time and when you finally have the wisdom you're old, no one listens to you, and then you die.
BREAKING: Social Security Administration chief data officer and whistle-blower Charles Borges has resigned after bombshell report that SSA put highly-sensitive data at risk. He sent out an email to colleagues moments ago. Here is the text of his email shared with me:
Why doesn't anyone want to secretly pay me to spread clumsy propaganda? It honestly hurts my feelings.
Yes, people will point out that there have been social panics like this over and over again in history, and they've always turned out to be wrong, but this time the old crone who lives at the edge of town really IS eating our children
It is not just that these employees are risking being put on leave or even fired for standing up for science (see EPA/FEMA officials), they are standing in front of a workplace that was the subject of a terrorist attack a couple of weeks ago, by a man who believes what their boss believes.
squeezing every last dime out of everything is our only remaining competency, we can't give that up
What's a good example of the sunk cost fallacy? Well, I can't leave Twitter after spending so much of my life blocking its advertisers.
I can't believe she thinks the alliance between The Left and Islamofascism is new! We formed that alliance long ago when our hatred of Western Civilization led us to oppose the invasion of Iraq.
In 2001 I lived a mile and a half north of the World Trade Center. In the weeks after 9/11 you could smell the bodies decomposing under the wreckage. I often think about how Gaza smells now.
"Maybe these 'wheels' make sense in socialist hellholes like Germany or Japan. But Americans are different, we will never give up the freedom of our horse-drawn travois." bsky.app/profile/schw...
The most amazing thing about the catastrophic US healthcare system is that the solution was invented long ago in other countries. It's like we're refusing to use wheels.
Is there a podcast that's just about prostates? I feel like there should be.
I wrote about what it was like growing up up Dobson. nymag.com/intelligence...
When we're barricaded inside City Hall, you and I will pass the time making zines on the office copier
People say that but I think it turned out to be made up
This is an extremely tough one. There will be billionaires across the country pouring money into efforts to destroy Mamdani, including usual suspects like Murdoch. There will be the full force of the presidency under Trump.
I actually think some people do know this and the question is are we building a powerful base that can back him up. The question remains on the table.
There will be an all-out media & financial assault on Mamdani if he takes office. When Salvador Allende was president of Chile, Nixon said the US had to "make the economy scream." Something similar will happen to NY in a collaboration between Trump & Dems. bsky.app/profile/schw...
definitely
I'm not saying it couldn't happen, these young DOGErs are the worst people available. But there's no evidence that it happened, as far as I know.
I don't think people understand how ferocious the opposition to Mamdani will be if he's mayor. Republican & Democratic power brokers will unite to crush him & punish NYers for voting for him. They cannot allow someone with his positions to be a success & inspiration.
I believe that's made up, actually
Slideshow of today in Washington DC, and how it looks when a terrorizing government scares people away. By me, no paywall: fallows.substack.com/p/a-summer-a...
Some incredibly good news: One year ago this week, The Onion returned to print. In that one year, we’ve grown to the 13th largest print newspaper in the United States, just ahead of the Boston Globe, and growing fast. In short, it’s working. So… thank you. Thank you for helping save this thing.
History repeats itself, first with the Reichstag fire and then with a dork nicknamed Big Balls getting beaten up by two 15-year-olds
One reason the Trump administration so fervently supports the obliteration of Gaza is they would genuinely love to do the same to certain swaths of America, and they see Israel as showing the way
They are super horny to start killing us
Unfortunately they see their job as being in the way
And yes, the guy who did concentration camps is by far the most progressive and successful president in American history, which says a lot about America. The center of a huge empire like the U.S. will always have essentially reactionary politics.
That's a fair question, and the answer is that by historical standards there really is no left in America that could run a candidate. Left politics has always been based in unions, and unions are weaker in America than in any comparable country. We're more like Honduras than Canada.
Well, FDR did pretty well, leading to 80 years in which the Democrats made sure never to nominate someone like him again
Well, the Democrats are unquestionably old. In terms of their intelligence and competence, you might look to the fact that they've lost twice to **Donald Trump**.
Yes, that's exactly the problem
WE MADE IT. . . to the end of the #ZcavengerHunt but unfortunately because they ran out of cards, we won't be able to get to the last location (which I'm 99.9% it's a campaign rally). Congrats to everyone who organized this, congrats to the participants, and thanks to y'all who followed along!
Zohran Mamdani's campaign is making politics seem fun, worthwhile and inclusive. No wonder the Democratic Party is rejecting him like a foreign organism.
the relationship of the Republican Party to the United States can best be understood through @schwarz.bsky.social’s “iron law of institutions”. sure it weakens the country to destroy science, universities, cities. it also weakens their internal enemies. www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/...
he's just good folks
I still can't believe Republicans couldn't find a single Haitian to say they're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs. They would have immediately vaulted to right-wing superstardom.
Three forces of doom are converging on working class power. On the bright side, the one path out of this is clearly illuminated now. www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/three-cris...
John Bolton will be sad about his home being searched, but he will ultimately forgive Trump because Trump gave Bolton his heart's desire: Iran getting bombed
First they came for John Bolton, and I spoke out, gritting my teeth extremely hard
I think the Democratic donor class is largely fine with what Trump's doing.
What if the Democratic Party were capable of basic organization and actually wanted to protect the U.S. from Donald Trump? Obviously neither thing is true, but if they were, they could agree to say "America hates Donald Trump" over and over in every media appearance.
No president has ever been more unpopular at this point in their presidency than Donald Trump — even Trump himself in his first term. Yet all of America's institutions are eagerly surrendering to him.
Just think, if we privatized Social Security, the average retiree could pay over $100k to Wall Street over their lifetime cepr.net/publications... That's pretty damn MAGA!
My interview with Katie Wilson, likely Seattle's next mayor, on a plan for individual tax credits to support local journalism cepr.net/mostly-econo...
or so bill gates would have you believe
he would have been happiest at the 1980s New Republic
One thing power does is put you in a little mental bubble where you cannot comprehend the motivations of people with less power. This is turn leads you to make up weird stories about them.
I was once a professional parodist and this is honestly very good
Totally changed my view on Gaza when I learned that the starving kids were… also really sick
The last president before Donald Trump who didn't have a pet was Andrew Johnson, over 150 years ago. But this is probably a good thing, because we're at the point in America's decline where Trump would nominate his dog for Secretary of Defense and the Senate would confirm it.
I don't understand why Andrew Cuomo hasn't been nicknamed the Westchester Molester
Currently reading it and the NYT review’s concluding paragraphs (written 17 years ago) make me want to scream. Cc: @rickperlstein.bsky.social
Say what you will about Gavin Newsom, but he’s a fighter, whether that’s against Trump, trans children, or his own constituents with nowhere to live.
Not telling Heater about this but I think you need to look inside your heart
I have made the surgeons-washing-their-hands joke, which is probably next from RFK Jr
I think your mistake here is thinking in terms of "arguments"
Not buying what?
I'm always happy when we get to the part of the year when there are so many watermelons that stores will almost pay you to take them away
I never imagined human beings would forget why it's a good idea to pasteurize milk
I interpret it to mean that all of our wealth is now directly based on the slow accretion of knowledge about the physical world — which is the common inheritance of everyone. So billionaires are akin to someone who's carried to ten feet below the summit of Everest by society, then climbs to the top.
Recall that Israeli snipers printed up t-shirts with a picture of a pregnant Arab woman with a target on her belly, and the caption "1 Shot, 2 Kills"
When Karl Marx wrote, "The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production" it was both 1) boring writing & 2) an extraordinarily important, profound point. You can't understand the world without it.
immediate follow for "my poop is hurting my butt" www.instagram.com/p/DH-t5Dvx_V4/
I don't think there's any reason to think they fabricated anything
surely that's just a weird anomaly that says nothing we need to consider about our larger society
Chris Rufo always makes me think about what Victor Klemperer, a German literary scholar who narrowly survived Naziism, wrote in his diary about the country's "intellectuals."
he always makes me think about this passage from a book by the writer Victor Klemperer
I'm embarrassed to admit that I was once the kind of person who would have been up in arms about Doreen St. Felix's 10-year-old tweets. (You can look them up.) Then I grew up & learned about the last 500 years of human history.
Funny article from 1952: www.jta.org/archive/anti...
we can be both
are we the baddies
The official Israel twitter account, run by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has never deleted this fabricated atrocity propaganda from October 2023. If Palestinians did this, it would be seen as a damning symptom of the Disease of the Arab Mind. x.com/Israel/statu...
at least he didn't bring in the masons
You may not be surprised to learn that people who think McCarthyism Classic was a great idea are also fans of the current version bsky.app/profile/houf...
funny story, I signed up for personal training at a local gym and was assigned a former NFL linebacker as a trainer giant man, covered in tattoos, big muscles, loud voice I am someone who just… doesn’t have a particularly well-assembled body
i reject black friday (exploitative, capitalist, wasteful) in favour of black phillip (cool goat, definitely satan, lives deliciously)
Fortunately Steve's family and mine overcame our differences and found common ground, based on hating the dangerous families that subscribed to US News & World Report. bsky.app/profile/schw...
wolves in human form
