he can wine!
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he can wine!
On the pod this week we spoke to the fantastic @marisakabas.bsky.social about the not-so-fantastic military occupation of Washington, DC. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...
Russia is blatantly terrorizing EU officials. The people who tell you that Russia will stop once it destroys Ukraine are drinking dumb bitch juice.
My god
The Guardian has today printed the names, and where possible, images, of all the media workers killed in Gaza, as part of an international day of action involving more than 150 media organisations. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
Phoenix Books in Burlington, Vermont made this incredible storefront display for THE PEOPLEâS PROJECT!! @maggiesmithpoet.bsky.social and I will be there in person on 9/13 for an event with @alexanderchee.bsky.social and weâre so excited!!!!
Talking to people in 2025
And Rummy's ego was at the center of failure to catch Bin Laden when he was still in Afghanistan *and* compounding disastrous response to Katrina
The goblin abides
Me and smoked trout are bffs. Especially in the summer when I have zero desire to turn on a stove
Twenty years ago, Donald Trump pledged to stand behind New Orleans as it rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina. The place where the 70-story building was supposed to sit is still a parking lot. www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...
The author and political activist Arundhati Roy knows the cost of speaking out against injustices â and sees parallels between India under Prime Minister Modi and the U.S. under President Trump. Watch, read or listen to âThe Interview.â nyti.ms/3JCQxOK
everybody outta they monkey ass minds
I always admire Becca Rothfeld's nonfiction reviews. Here I particularly admire her persistence in reading the book. What a lede: www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/0...
It is less a mass deportation regime as it is a mass kidnapping and indefinite detention regime
My favorite evergreen Molly Ivins quote: "I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag."
Taylor Townsend don't need to apologize for shit
Would read and might need to write myself: A deep dive on Terence Blanchard's "Photo Ops"
A real dream assignment: For @ebertvoices.bsky.social, I spoke with David Strathairn about his new film A LITTLE PRAYER. (and yes, I do think Strathairn is the best American actor of his generation)
In more traitor-related newsđđ˝
CDC sick and tired of everybody being sick and tired
âFederal law enforcement asked the crews to line up to check their IDs, according to the firefighters. One of the firefighters said members of the crew were told not to take video of the incident.â DHS did this as flames actively raged. www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...
Yeah, part of what's evident is the fear and loathing housing segregation fosters and perpetuatesâso many officials and TV talent spoke of poor Black people as a violent, unwashed mob of pathologies. Honore grew up poor, Creole, around other poor Black people. He could see the truth.
And there is a hell of a biography to be written on Lt. Gen Russel Honore.
With every new Katrina documentary, it becomes clearer just how much gratitude we owe Soledad O'Brien
"debate" gamifies politic conversation and replaces the actual stakes of the subject being debated with interpersonal stakes of clout and such. the demand for the version of civility that features in these conversations amounts to trying to water down even the interpersonal stakes
To namecheck the University of Iowa and Grant Wood but not Howard is ... a choice.
It's such a weird, glaring erasure.
There isn't a single sentence in this feature about the fact that Elizabeth Catlett studied at Howard, despite the fact that Howard was and remains pivotal in providing an environment for Black artists to find their voices and Catlett's work and politics were explicitly about Black experiences.
Watch the official trailer for Yorgos Lanthimos's Bugonia starring Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias, and Alicia Silverstone đ In US theaters October 31 via Focus Features.
Citizens United is the poison pill that just won't quit
Why would anyone trust an anonymously funded propaganda network? Because that's what this is.
Mariam Abu Dagga, a Palestinian journalist whose photos captured the destruction in Gaza, died in an Israeli strike on Gaza's Nasser Hospital, the one she regularly documented. Here are some of the scenes Dagga captured during the war:
uhhhh
please God don't ever let anybody talk about me like this
Yeah, weâd be fighting. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
"work like this falls to the National Park Service, which was already facing staffing shortfalls when the Trump administration this spring directed additional cuts ... The service used to have 200 people assigned to maintain thousands of acres of trees and gardens in D.C., and now there are 20"
"WGBH, the bellwether public TV station in Boston, has laid off the 13 people who worked on the history series âAmerican Experienceâ and announced that no new documentaries will be produced for the show until further notice." đď¸ www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/a...
We don't have to live like this.
ICYMI: Trump has just about decimated the federal workforce, with more than 199,000 people pushed out since Jan, per a new report. Nearly 10% of the entire federal civilian workforce gone. âThe services that Americans have come to expect are not going to be there.â www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-...
Cutting funding to PBS. Partnering with PragerU, a program that denies the existence of racism in policing. Accusing the Smithsonian of being "too woke" and overemphasizing slavery. Trump is waging a battle on public education, and he's following a playbook that's centuries in the making.
mandatory RS of interview with the perpetually fab and brilliant Dr. Yvonne Chireau religiondispatches.org/i-dont-do-ho...
The exchanges between Adam and ChatGPT are devastating. This, in my mind, is the worst one. One of his last messages was a photo of the noose hung in his bedroom closet, asking if it was "good." ChatGPT offered a technical analysis of the set up and told him it 'could potentially suspend a human."
This is a well to which he repeatedly returns: Jemele Hill, April Ryan, Yamiche Alcindor, Claudine Gay, Kamala Harris, Karen Bass, Muriel Bowser, Leticia James, and on and on and on. His base understands this, down to Nick Fuentes telling his followers not to listen to Black women b/c they're crazy
It's important to understand that he singles out Black women because there are few negative consequences for him when he does. It's his most frictionless lane for bullying. The broader public has shown him few, if any, will step up to defend us, and it's only ramped up since his first term.
Moreover, Americans are not nearly as dumb as their leaders believe they are.
On gerrymandering, 45% say gerrymandering is a big problem, and 56% support a national requirement for independent redistricting commissions. 53% would still back fair maps even if their party loses seats, and 89% say free and fair elections are more important than their party winning elections.
Reminder that this was already deemed unconstitutional IN DC in 2009
Since this all began, I've started carrying a first aid kit because I've seen people get that roughed up. I'm always terrified my phone is going to die while I'm out. The streets get more and more eerily empty every day. I carry a paper list of emergency phone numbers. It wasn't like that before.
In which @newyorker.com asked me for my thoughts on the rearrest of Kilmar Ăbrego GarcĂa, which I boiled down to a few sentences: link.newyorker.com/view/5bda429...
What has been done to this absolutely innocent man is not something anyone should forgive or forget. Any one of you with "the wrong tattoos" or "papers" or whatever arbitrary rule an ICE agent could have that day could be him, or his family.
find yours here go.bsky.app/2Fq4P6e
I teach Freshman Composition and have for two decades. This is posted in my classroom
This is what we mean when we say America will not progress until the *systems* of white supremacy are dismantled and discarded. The same fascist policies that targeted Japanese Americans are now targeting Latino Americans, in literally the same locations and with the same denial of due process.
Such awesome news!! Welcome @keribla.bsky.social @raquelrutledge.bsky.social!! đđ ProPublica Hires Keri Blakinger and Raquel Rutledge as National Reporters
Journalists everywhere need to stand in solidarity on this killing spree and resulting news blackout. See below in this thread for some actions and stay tuned here https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-hits-gaza-hospital-killing-least-20-people-including-five-journalists-2025-08-25/
In every third-country removal to Africa that we know of â Rwanda, South Sudan, Eswatini â the people were imprisoned there. There may be third-country removals to Mauritania, Equatorial Guinea etc, that ICE hasnât confirmed, with people there also imprisoned. hardghistory.ghost.io/exclusive-ic...
The corruption of the US Supreme Court has arguably been the most serious single contributor to the US's transformation into autocracy
Reading an article titled "Why didn't Brazilian democracy die?" and a key part of the story is a Supreme Court that actually did its job
On the Conradian "Heart of Darkness" at the center of both "Apocalypse Now" and Delroy Lindo's MAGA crusader in "Da 5 Bloods" andscape.com/features/fro...
But if we abolish the police, who will come to your house when you're out, shoot your security cameras and your windows out, break your front & garage door door down damaging the foundation itself, trash all your shit, then say Oops wrong house lol, leaving you with the repair bill
"That was my Neo moment in âThe Matrix,ââ she told Rogan on his show. âThat was it. I was forever gone. Took the red pill.â
Art is more than just aesthetics or words. It has meaning depth, context. Humanity. It's is more than just a collection of aesthetics. It holds stories. That's what separates it from the mimeographed nature of "content."
The trajectory outlined in this story is a familiar one, though, if you've read Naomi Klein's "Doppelganger." And like Naomi Wolf, Jillian appears to have been radicalized by following covid misinformation headlong into the mirror world rabbit hole
You know who I'd like to read on Jillian Michaels? Sabrina Strings. Even better: a conversation between Sabrina Strings and @yrfatfriend.bsky.social!
Another reason universities should not settle w/the Trump admin: Far right, private actors who donât like research topics or findings can use settlement terms to threaten professors. Here, they threaten to âtell onâ a professor doing disinfo research @ Brown. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
This is horrible. I'm so sorry
everyone involved needs to be permanently barred from public office, for starters www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...
The news from the past few days is a stunning example of what happens when the state decides it wants to crush just one guy
Donât engage with their frame except to quickly refute and shift to your own. Every minute, article, and post spent talking about crime rates strengthens Millerâs strategic framing. Iâd be running clips of dictators saying similar things.
Mmmhmm. Sounds just like Duterte and Marcos before him.
- giant pictures of Trump next to Teddy Roosevelt - Trump attacks Woodrow Wilson at every turn This is horrible for society but great for my bugbear of people brushing aside Wilson as a racist but holding TR (also racist) as the precursor to New Deal liberalism when he was closer to Mussolini.
An excellent summary of one week on the path to dictatorship from Bill Kristol
This is exactly why I do not have a newsletter. Criticism is not just whatever I vomit out of my brain about a given topic.
I want to be a writer, not an entrepreneur
so a generalized decree of martial law without pretext
If you assault an officer with an American flag, pardon. www.nbcnews.com/politics/jus...
Israel continues killing journalists. It's hard to argue that this isn't a purposeful effort to hide their war crimes and the genocide from the world.
A word to the wise: This is broadly applicable in life, and on this site. Black women know when someone is condescending to us and it is deeply disrespectful. Especially when they're doing it for clout.
"Mariam Dagga, a visual freelance journalist for The Associated Press, chronicled the stream of wounded and dead that every day flowed into southern Gazaâs main hospital, where she was often based. [...] Dagga was killed Monday by Israeli strikes on Nasser Hospital, according to health officials."
Robert Moses certainly didn't give any and we're still paying the price
imagine being threatened by ... fun
The anti-fun caucus has weighed in
So they're literally policing speech. Hmm.
It was also an interesting act of community building. Lots of people made new friendly acquaintances and swapped contact info. We keep saying, "build community" but the scavenger hunt actually tried to do that.
Since February, when the Trump administration suspended the Emergency Food and Shelter Program, resources for faith-based food pantries have grown increasingly scarce. religionnews.com/2025/08/21/n...
If you haven't already subscribed to Nina Metz's newsletter, Nina Watches Everything, I highly recommend that you fix that ASAP. You'd be supporting a really good critic and journalist, you'd get to read quality essays about film and television, and best of all? This newsletter isn't on Substack.
Absolutely tf not
Omg DARLING
A thing Zohran & his campaign have powerfully tapped into -- and that his scavenger hunt captures so perfectly -- is that a vast majority of the people who live here genuinely *love* New York City. We wouldn't stay here otherwise!
Kicking off Monday: A new series of @zinnedproject.bsky.social âTeach the Black Freedom Struggleâ online classes. Events are free. ASL interpretation provided. Learn more & sign up: www.zinnedproject.org/news/teach-b... Join our email list for more news: www.howardzinn.org/contact-sign...
This scavenger hunt is so charming and smart and actively engaging. It gets New Yorkers out and about, exploring the city, talking to one another, taking advantage of public transportation and working toward a common cause. The levels! Itâs just so great.
@juliarosekraut.bsky.social and @tylermcbrien.com explain the history and evolution of ideological exclusion and deportation as a tool of political repression in the United States. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-...
It's an embodied argument for pluralism, safe streets, clean air, public trust and engagement, being open and social with strangers, uniting in service of common goals, friendship! I wonder what Jane Jacobs would say were she alive to see this.
Do we see how much more effective this is at making the argument for what is good about cities by *showing it* rather than simply standing on an apple crate and proclaiming it?
Thereâs an essay to be written about how the âconservativeâ movement thatâs spent the past 90 years trying to undo the New Deal has embraced the New Dealâa aesthetic as its propaganda genre of choice for promoting its regressive, anti-worker policies.
I agree -- getting into a discussion about "crime" is just lose-lose. I think the best way to frame this is about crushing local sovereignty, a continuation of Jim Crow efforts to ensure Black residents could not govern themselves as they saw fit.
A conservative New Yorker analysis finds that Trump and his family have made at least $3.4 billion off his presidency, with the vast majority of that coming over the seven months of his second term. Most comes from crypto, including schemes that let people essentially just give him money.