Are they putting gollum front and center because of the new & ill conceived gollum movie?
Personal account.
1,639 followers 2,515 following 1,698 posts
view profile on Bluesky
Are they putting gollum front and center because of the new & ill conceived gollum movie?
This presidency is one never-ending insult to our collective intelligence
incidence of actual crime has gone down but people hearing about or seeing crime has only gone up, first with television and then with social media, amplified in recent years as the algorithms have been taken over by reactionary oligarchs
"Benny Johnson is one of the web’s deeply original writers, as is clear from his body of work." —Ben Smith www.politico.com/blogs/media/...
Congestion pricing is actually the perfect example here. Trump declared that “congestion pricing is dead” (and that he is the king) Hochul and the MTA told him to fuck off, and now, more than 6 months later, congestion pricing is still alive and working exactly as planned
a pretty good summary of the 21st century is that the humiliation of america's defeats in the middle east post-9/11 curdled into a reactionary politics that seeks affirmation in the humiliation of anyone who is an other: liberals, minorities, the global south, china, europe, whoever.
Unfortunately for the nation and the human race, Spencer Ackerman is a prophet (@attackerman.bsky.social)
Cereal is murder!!
Anecdotal but I do all of the shopping for our family of four and our average weekly grocery bill is already up by 30-40% over the spring. Everything that used to be $2.99 is now $3.99 or more.
Probably Alexander Hamilton’s fault in the end
Accelerating Republican gerrymandering and lack of a Dem appetite for response in kind (outside of California, where it might lose) seems to prove your point and augur poorly
Contiguous states with shared interests and a basis of mutual trust! What an interesting development.
Ah yes the Balkans, famously a great part of the world to start a new country
I see and I hear and I speak no evil; I carry no malice within my breast; yet quite without wishing a man to the Devil one may be permitted to hope for the best. -“An Ethical Grook” by Piet Hein
Frankly this gives us a chance to prepare ourselves for a deeply embarrassing obituary by the NYT (“transformative”?) and a wryly funny one from the Economist
Most famous graduate of Khan Academy
Hot Stove Winter
Or the day Hades 2 is released
"Her patient had signs of what could be a cancer or could be an unusual infection — diagnoses that would require completely different treatment. Ordinarily, she would confirm an infection after sending a sample to the CDC for testing ...the CDC no longer has the capacity to do that"
Lot of hobbies, personal trade networks, and small economies getting killed by tariffs.
These are literally the “death panels” Sarah Palin lied about the ACA creating, born instead of the unholy alliance between her party and Big Techl
Friendly reminder that things don’t go back to normal if he kicks the bucket. They could even get worse! And even when they lose an election there’s years, decades, generations of repair and remaking to be done.
This reminds me of a Martin Luther King quote I came across earlier this year that resonated with me given...everything about both me and the world lol "The American people are infected with racism--that is the peril. Paradoxically, they are also infected with democratic ideals--that is the hope."
MAYOR OF ATLANTIC CITY: Hey did you finish the World War I memorial we talked about SCULPTOR: Sure did boss, real sexy and disturbing just like you asked MAYOR: what
This too-perfect Krispy Kreme stakeout is also in one of the safest neighborhoods of DC. Our “warfighters” are really putting it all on the line out there.
Feels like things are speeding up, as if they need to consolidate gains and lock down opposition before some looming deadline.
We are in very dark times. It’ll take an entire political/social movement, an overwhelming rebuke at the polls, and a new vision of governance to unstick this country from whatever this collapse is.
The CDC is one of Atlanta’s crown jewels. Dedicated public servants who are tireless advocates for public health. They deserve better than this administration’s disregard for science. We deserve much more from our government than conspiracy theories and indifference towards individuals’ well-being.
Oh I’m sure you’re right. Every assault rifle is like $3k plus I think????
To Derek’s point, each of these scenes contains at least $10,000 in guns.
An epitaph for our era
Happy to clear this up. So, when you commit a crime using a spreadsheet, that’s actually just good business practices. This man was a job creator. Next question.
This gets a cautious "we need more data" from me. I also note that this still an order of magnitude more dangerous than the bus or the subway.
Genuinely don’t think the center-left coalition has fear or heart enough for the type of fight required to avert disaster
I think that’s probably true. Increasingly I’m convinced it’s a productivity booster for subject matter pros who are also trained on how to use it. Like Westlaw for lawyers; but that’s useless for non-lawyers whereas AI can be affirmatively misleading.
Historically speaking, political game-playing with the national guard is when things start to go bad. This is literally the origin story of national guards.
The most impressive thing about this campaign is how *creative* they are. They’re trying new stuff! Multiple times during the last few months I’ve thought “wow, I’ve never seen a campaign do that.” Much more of that needed everywhere.
Two things can be true: (1) AI is a powerful and transformative technology… (2) …that is being aggressively pushed on the average customer before it’s ready for prime time bsky.app/profile/carl...
The upvote/downvote system which Reddit copied from Slashdot probably also helped.
Why are NYT podcasts constantly running ads about how Uber should pay less for insurance?
On the one hand I’m sorry for my Gen Z and α brethren. On the other, it’s nice that we’ll be bound together by the shared experience of Republicans wrecking our early-career years.
Hbd
Fantastic chat between @mattsitman.bsky.social and @mikeduncan.bsky.social about the decline of Rome and the right's perverted efforts to map it on to today's big debates. Matt unearths some oldies but goodies. Highly illuminating all the way: know-your-enemy-1682b684.simplecast.com/episodes/how...
“Blue jurisdictions under legal and financial assault by the president and their sister states” is not a sustainable dynamic
6 months later, with armored humvees and (as of tomorrow) military personnel carrying weapons of war through the capitol, with a concentration camp built in the florida everglades, with SCOTUS and circuit courts enabling this every step of the way, i think this framing has been entirely vindicated
Nic Carter: I get my news from Twitter personalities with “investor” in the bio and made all of my friends at Curtis Yarvin lawn parties Marc Andreesen: Same and I will also believe anything that flatters rich weirdos
Wasn’t it Tom Cotton who said he’s a proud Christian Nationalist?
I’ve said multiple times that the thing that surprises me most about this era is just how many real neo-Nazis are coming out of the woodwork and inhabiting positions of power. From Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller down to ICE agents, these people are white Christian supremacists, and are proud of it
DHS posts wink-wink references to white supremacist tracts, the new BLS head is a J6er with a legendary Nazi battleship for his Zoom background, and a high administration official threw several literal Nazi salutes. At what point are we allowed to draw the obvious conclusion?
Social shaming is and was a valid cultural defense mechanism against frauds, charlatans, fascists, and racists. Allowing these people to convince the world that antisocial behavior was somehow entitled to an audience was a huge, self inflicted blow to liberal democracy.
I simply do not think these people should ever have been allowed to leave their basements and enter polite society. No sane culture tolerates a Curtis Yarvin.
Never really understood what it meant when history books said things like, “forces opposed to the regime were exhausted and internally divided.” On the plus side — now I do!
There's a new Harper's Letter coming any second now, right? Right? RIGHT?
Huge congratulations to everyone who spent the Trump interregnum insisting cancel culture was the free speech issue of our day apnews.com/article/smit...
(1) This has never worked. 1950s-era noblesse oblige was downstream of *political* incentives — strong New Deal coalitions, fear of Communist propaganda, etc. (2) Passing it would require an Obamacare-level investment of energy and political capital anyways… (3) …only for SCOTUS to surely kill it.
Find someone who loves you as much as Eric Adams loves weird crimes
Pretty bleak to have Tablet re-running the Ground Zero Mosque play
Especially hilarious given that the last two episodes of Douthat’s podcast were on aliens and Epstein.
Gaza is one of the richest archaeological landscapes on the planet, with thousands of years of continuous occupation and layer after layer of history going back to the Neolithic. The destruction of that is nothing next to the human cost, but it's still a cruel, thoughtless act of destruction.
Um, @theonion.com @bencollins.bsky.social did you see this?
Truly, it’s the racism.
Rooftop water heater logos are clutch
“Em dashes are an AI tell” is lawyer erasure. We 👏🏻 exist 👏🏻
Huge if true
Wait a sec. Last year NYC had 171 firearms deaths on a population of 8.3 million. Louisiana had 1,266 deaths on a pop of 4.6 million, which is on the order of 12 times as many. You are twelve times as likely to be killed by a bullet in Louisiana than in NYC.
We need to teach people the difference between being uncomfortable and being unsafe. Because the discomfort of the safest people is endangering the most vulnerable, all day every day.
Telling that game companies are using AI to replace their level design teams rather than — I don’t know — making better products. Creating a sufficiently challenging computer player in “Civilization” has beguiled developers using traditional methods but seems like a great use for AI. And yet!
One of my college friends is a deeply religious small town Texan who organized her local No Kings rally and I think often about how she’s the type of person who actually pushes our lines forward
Preemptive strike is truly the only way to win the War on Christmas
Certain kinds of liberals & leftists are really going to need to get okay with having Christians who take their faith seriously in their coalition.
man lived to about 150, had an amazing life of comfort, and (even outside the context of everything else going on) I won’t pretend that this is a tragedy. His public life was all gift. And, still, I’m crying like a baby. RIP the best to ever do it. (Also the only one to ever do this particular it)
Obama felt powerfully the need to (for lack of a better term) “move on” — seen in the decision not to aggressively pursue the perpetrators of the 2008 financial crisis. Which was, incidentally, another huge mistake.
Would be a great time to get a 3D printer to make for yourself some of the little tchotchkes likely to jump in price — but you’ll never guess where most 3D printers and supplies are made
Everyone is celebrating him for his (obviously wonderful) songs but I am also celebrating him for releasing all his works into the public domain and insisting he retained no copyrights over any of it.
Tom Lehrer was a genuine inspiration to young nerds who, like me, needed to see in others the joy that we found in learning www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/a...
It’s a mark of how thoroughly World War I has faded from public consciousness that so many memes about the French center their early surrender in World War II rather than their near-suicidal bravery in 1914-18. Especially considering how the latter helps explain the former.
my favorite fact about tom lehrer is that he dropped out of public life because it was annoying. he wouldn't do interviews and would tell people who wanted to interview him that they could print anything about him and he wouldn't deny it. my favorite song is poisoning pigeons in the park.
Cotton Hill would know what to do with these people
The Democratic party "has clearly begun to string together a cohesive narrative that Trump is not a scourge of, but a protector of, the elites, and he has abandoned the working-class voters he promised to help." Better late than never. @lauren-egan.bsky.social: www.thebulwark.com/p/democrats-...
God these people are insufferable
TAPPER: 14 Republicans say you're risking undermining critical research by holding up NIH funding VOUGHT: If they were a company, their stock price would in shambles. They in some respects caused the pandemic. You have an entire institute that does nothing more than DEI research at the NIH.
Silicon Valley: AI will soon be so powerful that it will answer every scientific question ever and make all human activity obsolete Spotify algorithm on the account that I have shared with my wife for ten years: Hey have you noticed dating is hard
What perfect album came out when you were sixteen?
We need to make it illegal for AI models to offer advertising. And, we need to really examine referral fees as well. The last thing we need is to have algorithms designed to maximize revenue driving LLM output and interactions. We need to have learned our lessons from algos in social media
“No-Cuomo voters made up 70% of fully completed ballots.” ✊✊✊ gothamist.com/news/how-did...
Unsolved Physics Problems xkcd.com/3115/
![Comic. The Three Types of Unsolved Physics Problem (First panel) Vague. PERSON [next to curved diagram] What is the nature of time in quantum gravity? Is it a background parameter, a dynamic aspect of spacetime, or an emergent phenomenon? (Second panel) Precise. PERSON 2 with short hair [device with equation below: 71Ga + νe → 71Ge + e- .] Why does the *S.A.G.E.* Gallium Neutrino Capture Experiment produce only 75% as much germanium as predicted? (Third panel) Cursed. PERSON 3 with white hat [rectangular block with hairs growing out of it labeled Zinc Whiskers] Why does some metal randomly grow hairs? It keeps causing short circuits and we have no idea what’s going on. OFF-PANEL: Is this a joke? PERSON 3: No! Please help!](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/bafkreiguoi672ahbrlp4eewfdz6v2ynlajbtpmucqed6fl4npoeu3uypkm@jpeg "Click to view full size")
Something incredibly bleak about spending $1,550+ on delivery from Hooters.
So, let’s talk about the elephant in the room- the discussion that needs to be (further) had about compassion, and how South Park has contributed to a cultural mindset of, “Sincerity is for losers. Compassion is performance. People who care are probably grifters or idiots.” Deep breath. Let’s go
Zoomed in and noticed the image DHS is promoting as something to be proud of and to defend literally includes indigenous people being driven out and fleeing
also clock the way that "elite" is being used as a stand-in for a cultural position and not economic and political resources.
reihan salam — who once tried to write a case against birthright citizenship and who has given an institutional home to chris rufo — accusing anyone of having "zero-sum politics" is rich
sorry for being super woke but deposition video of the worlds most famous pedophile invoking the fifth when asked if he ever partied with you and underage girls should be career ending
When I gave my judge a draft opinion, I had to include a hard copy of every case I cited with highlights showing where the relevant info or quote came from. Before a final opinion was issued, I would read it to my co-clerk, who would simultaneously check every quote, citation, etc.
yeah i’d say the opposite is true. it’s in times of dour pessimism that we need media that is sunny and earnest and optimistic. when there’s a hitler in the world you want a comic with a guy wearing the american flag punching him in the face right there on the cover! why the new superman hits