Senator Cory Booker is holding the floor of the Senate and says he “will speak for as long as I’m physically able to lift the voices of Americans who are being harmed and not being heard in this moment of crisis”.
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Entries for March 2025
The United States Disappeared Tracker is “tracking persons politically arrested, detained, or disappeared by the Trump regime since March 9, 2025”.
The view from Europe, courtesy of Zeit Online: Thanks America, That’ll Be All. “Now that lunacy has installed itself in Washington for the next four years, the time has finally come for Europe to once again try its hand at hosting the spirit of the age.”
What Will America Look Like in 10 Years?
With the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and, especially, again in 2024, the adjacent possible of American society has shifted dramatically. For the Washington Post, Philip Bump asked a number of people who study systems of government and the erosion of democracy the following question: “Given the country’s trajectory and what’s unfolded in other countries, what can we expect the United States to look like in five or 10 years’ time?”
Steven Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die (Bookshop) and Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point (Bookshop):
I think the most likely scenario is a kind of careening between pretty dysfunctional democracy and an unconsolidated authoritarianism. A kind of back and forth in which the relative good guys win once in a while, they don’t perform well, they don’t last long and the bad guys win power occasionally and also don’t perform well and don’t last long.
But also (emphasis mine):
I think it’s possible the flurry of abuses and attacks, first of all, and secondly, the incredibly weak response by civil society, suggests that the Trump administration can get away with much more than I think almost any of us anticipated. I would have thought it highly unlikely that the Trump administration could really seriously tilt the playing field in terms of media access and resource access, given the wealth and the diversity of the private sector in this country. A Hungary-like tilting of the playing field seemed really unlikely. Now, I think it’s possible.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present (Bookshop):
Domestically, you don’t need to abolish opposition parties today. You just engineer the electoral system to keep Democrats out of power.
Thomas Zimmer, author of Democracy Americana:
A little over two months after Trump returned to power, it seems undeniable that even critical observers underestimated the speed and scope of the Trumpist assault and overestimated democratic resilience in both the political system as well as civil society. In mere weeks, Trumpists have managed to push America into that space somewhere between (no longer) democracy and full-scale autocracy. That means we must recalibrate our expectations. “They are not going to go *that* far” has been proved wrong over and over again. The idea that “they won’t be able to do this” seems similarly unfounded. Let’s finally discard whatever notion of “it cannot happen here” that is still floating around.
God, the “it cannot happen here” argument was so stupid even back in 2016 when people were debating whether Trump was a fascist. If nothing else, it was clarifying to be able to stick anyone who was chastising others for worrying too much into the “I’m highly skeptical of anything you write now” box.
Anyway, the whole piece is worth a read.
White House Correspondents’ Dinner Scraps Host In Favor Of Terrified Silence. “While we respect the legacy of a presidential roast, if you so much as cough, you will be forcibly removed.” Please enjoy each autocratic shift equally.
A thread from Berkeley political science professor Omar Wasow about how protests are effective actually. Cites research about the Women’s March, BLM protests, the Muslim ban protests, etc.
The End of College Life?
I have one kid entering college this fall and one a few years away, so I’ve been thinking (with fury and sadness) about the effect that Trump’s authoritarian regime is having on American colleges and universities. They’re pulling funding from schools; schools are cancelling programs, freezing hiring, and cutting back on admissions; and NIH and NSF funding is being curtailed and withdrawn. College students are being snatched off the streets by ICE & DHS and schools either can’t or won’t do anything to stop it. If these actions persist, US colleges & universities could look quite different in a year or two.
In a piece called The End of College Life, Ian Bogost calls the potential effect of these changes a “calamity” and says “the damage to our educational system could be worse than the public comprehends”.
Any one of the Trump administration’s attacks on research universities, let alone all of them together, could upend the college experience for millions of Americans. What’s at stake is far from trivial: Forget the frisbees on the quad; think of what it means to go to college in this country. Think of the middle-class ideal that has persisted for most of a century: earning a degree and starting a career, yes, but also moving away from home, testing limits, joining new communities, becoming an adult.
This might all be changing for fancy private schools and giant public universities alike. If you, or your son, or your daughter, are in college now, or are planning to enroll in the years ahead, you should be worried.
I am curious to hear from parents of high school and college students, from college faculty & administrators, and from students themselves: how have the actions of the Trump regime changed your thinking about college? What plans are you making or changing? Let me know in the comments. (If you don’t have a membership but would like to leave a comment, just email me your thoughts and I’ll post it for you.)
DOGE Plans to Rebuild SSA Code Base in Months, Risking Benefits and System Collapse. This will not work — ok, actually it will totally work to achieve the long-time conservative goal of gutting the US social safety net.
Roxane Gay and Debbie Millman are buying The Rumpus. “They are committed to staying true to the magazine’s core mission of publishing both emerging and established risk-taking writers and artists…” Gay was a founding editor of the magazine.
“The federal government isn’t just pressuring universities over speech — it’s literally disappearing students for their political expression. If you support actual free speech, now is the time to speak up.”
From the Center for Third World Organizing, an Organizing 101 bootcamp, “a multi-day day intro to organizing training designed for organizers, activists and community leaders”.
Multi-Player plays a grid of multiple copies of a single YouTube video, each with a slight additional delay. The site requires a bunch of bandwidth, but the effect is trippy when it works.
Conan O’Brien’s Mark Twain Prize Acceptance Speech
This excerpt from Conan O’Brien’s acceptance speech for the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor is quite good.
Twain was suspicious of populism, jingoism, imperialism, the money-obsessed mania of the Gilded Age, and any expression of mindless American might or self-importance. Above all, Twain was a patriot in the best sense of the word. He loved America but knew it was deeply flawed. Twain wrote, “Patriotism is supporting your country all of the time and your government when it deserves it.”
(thx, andy)
Rembrandt to Picasso: Five Ways to Spot a Fake Masterpiece. I’ve always loved this sort of thing, even before I owned a probably-fake Basquiat.
Steve Coogan Plays Four Roles in Dr. Strangelove Stage Adaptation
In a stage production that premiered last year in London, Steve Coogan played four roles (Dr. Strangelove, Captain Mandrake, President Muffley, and Major TJ Kong) in an adaptation of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. The play was adapted for the stage by Armando Iannucci and Sean Foley. A filmed version of the play is currently playing in theaters…here are some trailers and clips from that:
The play’s run has ended and I don’t know if it will be restaged elsewhere, but like I said above, a filmed version is showing in theaters and you can look for tickets near you.
P.S. In the original version, Peter Sellers was supposed to play the same four characters as Coogan does in the play but was reluctant to play Major Kong. In the end, Sellers sprained his ankle and couldn’t play Kong in the cramped airplane set, but he still played Mandrake, Muffley, and Strangelove. (via @fritinancy.bsky.social)
March 2025 Anti-Trans National Risk Assessment Map. “The risk level for transgender youth and adults has significantly deteriorated in the latest update. Most notably, the United States has now been designated “Do Not Travel” for foreign citizens.”
Apple has added the Lumon Terminal Pro computer to their devices lineup, right alongside the iMac and Macbook Air.
The Design of the New Swiss Passport
There are so many reasons these days to covet a Swiss passport but let me give you one more: the design kicks ass. First issued in 2022, the document was designed by creative agency RETINAA.
Drawing on cartographic tradition yet modern in its use of 3D modeled landscapes, the design depicts an imaginary journey along watercourses, from the Alpine peaks down to the valleys, through the 26 cantons and to the world beyond. This journey starts on the first page of the document, which features the Pizzo Rotondo, a summit in the Saint-Gotthard Massif at the crossroads of linguistic regions. Under ultraviolet light, contour lines reveal the landscapes’ topography, enhanced with architectural landmarks that showcase the country’s rich cultural heritage and history.
There are all kinds of beautiful security features that show up only under UV light:
What I love most about the Swiss passport is the idea that things can be official & beautiful, secure & beautiful, utilitarian & beautiful, meaningful & beautiful. From an interview with one of the designers:
With the design, we wanted to redefine what a Swiss document looks like in the 21st century. The design of passports often looks outdated, even though the technologies used to produce these documents are extremely innovative.
Instead, we wanted to create a contemporary design around a visual narrative. It allowed us to incorporate security features that are not only difficult to counterfeit, but also play a role in the narrative. Ultimately, the passport should be a document that holders can trust, identify with and be proud of over the next 15 years!
Finally got around to reading Craig Mod’s “rules” for running his membership program. Two that particularly resonated: “The program exists for the goals, not the members” and “Fundamentally, you are building a community”.
The Atlantic handled ‘Signalgate’ with good judgment. “The journalists’ actions ‘could be a college journalism class in careful, ethical handling of sensitive information’, said David Boardman, dean of Temple University’s media school.”
Scaling Laws and the Speed of Animals
A recent paper found that the time it takes for an animal to move the length of its own body is largely independent of mass. This appears to hold from tiny bacteria on up to whales — that’s more than 20 orders of magnitude of mass. The paper’s argument as to why this happens relies on scaling laws. Alex Klotz explains.
A well-known example is the Square-Cube Law, dating back to Galileo and described quite well in the Haldane essay, On Being the Right Size. The Square-Cube Law essentially states that if something, be it a chair or a person or whatever, were made twice as tall, twice as wide, and twice as deep, its volume and mass would increase by a factor of eight, but its ability to support that mass, its cross sectional area, would only increase by a factor of four. This means as things get bigger, their own weight becomes more significant compared to their strength (ants can carry 50 times their own weight, squirrels can run up trees, and humans can do pullups).
Another example is terminal velocity: the drag force depends on the cross-sectional area, which (assuming a spherical cow) goes as the square of radius (or the two-thirds power of mass), while the weight depends on the volume, proportional to the cube of radius or the first power of mass. As Haldane graphically puts it
“You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes.”
Scaling laws also come into play in determining the limits of the size of animals: The Biology of B-Movie Monsters.
When the Incredible Shrinking Man stops shrinking, he is about an inch tall, down by a factor of about 70 in linear dimensions. Thus, the surface area of his body, through which he loses heat, has decreased by a factor of 70 x 70 or about 5,000 times, but the mass of his body, which generates the heat, has decreased by 70 x 70 x 70 or 350,000 times. He’s clearly going to have a hard time maintaining his body temperature (even though his clothes are now conveniently shrinking with him) unless his metabolic rate increases drastically.
Luckily, his lung area has only decreased by 5,000-fold, so he can get the relatively larger supply of oxygen he needs, but he’s going to have to supply his body with much more fuel; like a shrew, he’ll probably have to eat his own weight daily just to stay alive. He’ll also have to give up sleeping and eat 24 hours a day or risk starving before he wakes up in the morning (unless he can learn the trick used by hummingbirds of lowering their body temperatures while they sleep).
Two prominent American scholars on fascism & authoritarianism, Timothy Snyder & Jason Stanley, have recently moved from Yale to the University of Toronto. Stanley: “the primary reason was the deteriorating political situation in the United States”.
For his 8th book, What the Dead Can Say, Philip Graham limited it to a print run of 1000 and distribution was entirely through stashing them in Little Free Libraries around the entire country.
Want to build your own synthesizer? The DIY Synths Database is a “curated collection of 68 DIY-friendly hardware synthesizers and related standalone musical equipment”.
From 2017, Ron Rosenbaum on the newspaper that fought Hitler. “The paper went down fighting a lie, fighting Nazi murderers, refusing to normalize the Hitler regime.”
Wired surveyed 730 coders and developers about how they use AI chatbots & tools. “Freelance coders seem to like AI more than full-time coders.”
Tavares Strachan
I like these collage-like artworks by Tavares Strachan. One of the figures depicted above in the third piece, just above the queen, is polar explorer Matthew Henson, who was the first person (maybe?) to reach the geographic North Pole in 1909 as part of Robert Peary’s expedition.
Watch All of the Commercials That David Lynch Has Directed: A Big 30-Minute Compilation. “The New York Department of Sanitation engaged Lynch’s services to imbue their anti-littering campaign with his signature high-contrast ominousness…”
Jess Piper on speaking to people in conservative areas of America about Trumpism. “You are going to have to tell them the truth. You know the truth. We have to be in the streets.”
What Did Hubble See on Your Birthday?
The Hubble Space Telescope “has observed some fascinating cosmic wonder every day of the year, including on your birthday”. Just enter your month and day of birth to find out what it saw. My birthday image is of the Egg Nebula (shown above):
Where is the center of the Egg Nebula? Like a baby chick pecking its way out of an egg, the star in the center of the Egg Nebula is casting away shells of gas and dust as it slowly transforms itself into a white dwarf star.
The Egg Nebula is a rapidly evolving pre-planetary nebula spanning about one light year toward the constellation of Cygnus. Thick dust blocks the center star from view, while the dust shells further out reflect light from this star. Light vibrating in the plane defined by each dust grain, the central star and the observer is preferentially reflected, causing an effect known as polarization. Measuring the orientation of the polarized light for the Egg Nebula gives clues as to location of the hidden source. The above image taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the Hubble Space Telescope is false-color coded to highlight the orientation of polarization.
Cool! I like my birthday nebula. (via the morning news)
Waldo Jaquith on why he works in the open (blogging, open sourcing software, etc.): “I’ve long worked in the open, overwhelmingly for one reason: it increases enormously the surface area for success.”
The Haunting of Verdant Valley is a photo book about Silicon Valley. “Anonymous office parks, pristine corporate campuses, and fading remnants of past industries tell the story of a region built on extraction — of resources, labor, and attention.”
Russian hackers find ways to snoop on Ukrainian Signal accounts. (Hmm, 18 people in the Yemen bombing chat, some w/ ties to the Kremlin — what are the odds Russia has ongoing, realtime access to US national security comms via Signal linked devices?)
McSweeney’s is documenting the “cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes” of the 2nd Trump administration. This is a great resource.
World Athletics, the international governing body for athletics (track & field, etc.), is introducing “mandatory testing for anyone entering female competitions to verify their biological sex”.
The Harriet Tubman $20 Stamp
Frustrated that the US Treasury Department is walking back plans to replace Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill with Harriet Tubman, Dano Wall created a 3D-printed stamp that can be used to transform Jacksons into Tubmans on the twenties in your pocketbook.
Here’s a video of the stamp in action. Wall told The Awesome Foundation a little bit about the genesis of the project:
I was inspired by the news that Harriet Tubman would replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, and subsequently saddened by the news that the Trump administration was walking back that plan. So I created a stamp to convert Jacksons into Tubmans myself. I have been stamping $20 bills and entering them into circulation for the last year, and gifting stamps to friends to do the same.
If you have access to a 3D printer (perhaps at your local library or you can also use a online 3D printing service), you can download the print files at Thingiverse and make your own stamp for use at home.
Wall also posted a link to some neat prior art: suffragettes in Britain modifying coins with a “VOTES FOR WOMEN” slogan in the early 20th century.
Update: Several men on Twitter are helpfully pointing out that, in their inexpert legal opinion, defacing bills in this way is illegal. Here’s what the law says (emphasis mine):
Defacement of currency is a violation of Title 18, Section 333 of the United States Code. Under this provision, currency defacement is generally defined as follows: Whoever mutilates, cuts, disfigures, perforates, unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, Federal Reserve Bank, or Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.
The “with intent” bit is important, I think. The FAQ for a similar project has a good summary of the issues involved.
But we are putting political messages on the bills, not commercial advertisements. Because we all want these bills to stay in circulation and we’re stamping to send a message about an issue that’s important to us, it’s legal!
I’m not a lawyer, but as long as your intent isn’t to render these bills “unfit to be reissued”, you’re in the clear. Besides, if civil disobedience doesn’t stray into the gray areas of the law, is it really disobedience? (via @patrick_reames)
Update: Adafruit did an extensive investigation into the legality of this project. Their conclusion? “The production of the instructional video and the stamping of currency are both well within the law.”
A judge chastised vandals of a Paddington Bear statue: “His famous label attached to his duffle coat says ‘please look after this bear’. On the night of the 2nd of March 2025, your actions were the antithesis of everything Paddington stands for.”
Long waits, waves of calls, website crashes: Social Security is breaking down. A deep-dive into the Trump administration’s gutting of Social Security (a long-time conservative goal).
The Bully Lie
In this episode of This American Life from a few weeks ago, Masha Gessen read an excerpt from their book Surviving Autocracy about the particular kind of lie used by autocrats like Putin and Trump.
Lies can serve a number of functions. People lie to deflect, to avoid embarrassment or evade punishment by creating doubt, to escape confrontation or lighten the blow, to make themselves appear better, to get others to do or give something, and even to entertain.
However unskilled a person may be at lying, they usually hope that the lie will be convincing. Executives want shareholders to think that they have devised a foolproof path to profits. Defendants want juries to believe that there is a chance that someone else committed the crime.
People in relationships want their partners to think that they have never even considered cheating. Guests want the host to think that they like their fish overcooked. These lies can be annoying or amusing, but they are surmountable. They collapse in the face of facts.
The Trumpian lie is different. It is the power lie or the bully lie. It is the lie of the bigger kid who took your hat and is wearing it while denying that he took it. There is no defense against this lie because the point of the lie is to assert power, to show I can say what I want, when I want to.
The power lie conjures a different reality that demands that you choose between your experience and the bully’s demands. Are you going to insist that you’re wet from the rain or give in and say that the sun is shining?
I believe the bully lie fits into the same general category as fascists seeing hypocrisy as a virtue — it only really makes sense when you think about it in terms of domination or power. (thx, caroline)
What the Press Got Wrong About Hitler. This “comical figure” was regularly ridiculed in the German & international press right up until he became chancellor. It did very little to sway his supporters’ fervor.
Oscar-winning Palestinian director Hamdan Ballal (No Man’s Land) was attacked by a group of 15 armed Israeli settlers and then arrested by the Israeli army. “They let the settlers attack him and then the army abducted him.”
The expanding size of American cars over the past few decades is increasing congestion by reducing the vehicle capacity of roadways. SUVs are longer, require more braking distance, and drivers behind them need to leave more space to see around them.
A recent study found that Black Lives Matter protests had a “significant and decisive impact” on the 2020 election. “This represents one of the most consequential impacts of a social movement on electoral politics in recent history.”
Free Warner Bros Movies on YouTube
For some reason, Warner Bros. has uploaded 41 of its movies to YouTube that are free to watch. Among them, Waiting for Guffman, The Accidental Tourist, The Bonfire of the Vanities, Richard Linklater’s SubUrbia, The 11th Hour (Leonardo DiCaprio’s climate change movie), The Science of Sleep, The Avengers (the 1998 non-Marvel spy flick with Ralph Fiennes & Uma Thurman), and Mr. Nice Guy (w/ Jackie Chan — this has the highest number of views on the list by an order of magnitude).
(via tedium)
Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America by Elie Mystal “reimagines what our legal system, and society at large, could look like if we could move past legislation plagued by racism, misogyny, and corruption”.
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans. “I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans…”
Ikea Australia posted an ad referencing Severance — “for work that is mysterious and important” — which features an MDR cluster of four desks.
The View From the Indie Bookseller
I really liked this thread from independent bookseller Charlotte Moore-Lambert; it starts:
being an indie bookseller in the helltimes has felt both very stable and very stabilizing, and part of me wishes everyone could be on my side of the counter for a little while, because I think it would help some of you be a little less cynical and doomy right now.
One of her observations:
little old Southern ladies come in looking for books to help them better understand their kids or grandkids who are transitioning and/or gender nonconforming. people want to connect with their autistic kids, their chronically ill siblings, their immigrant neighbors. I see it every day. every day.
Here’s the whole thread on one page.
Archaeologists have found 1.5-million-year-old bone tools in Tanzania. “This finding has pushed back systematic bone tool production by more than a million years and challenges previous assumptions about the technological capability of early hominins.”
For Fascists, Hypocrisy Is a Virtue
It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.
It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.
It’s very important to understand, fascists don’t just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect.
It’s the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing you’re able to deny others, because you dominate, is the whole point.
For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue — the greatest.
Yeah, this is basically why I don’t waste time anymore railing against the many hypocrisies of conservatives — they’re not gotchas that you’re catching them in, they’re part of the domination.
Utrecht’s fish doorbell is up and running again to help spawning fish navigate the city’s canals. “If you see a fish, press the doorbell. This alerts the lock operator to open the lock.”
“A string of high-profile arrests and detentions of travellers is likely to cause a major downturn in tourism to the US, with latest figures already showing a serious drop-off.”
Senator Schumer Votes to Let the Big Wooden Horse into Troy. “Yes, there’s danger in opening our gates to this statue. But there’s also danger in keeping it out… the danger of eroding the sanctity of the gift-giving process.”
Severance Scenes in Underwater Paint Swirls
Using paint in water to simulate clouds or smoke, Rudy Willingham created these magical scenes of characters from Severance (Instagram).
Willingham also created this cool animated zoetrope record with dancing Severance characters.
An analysis of pop music’s greatest two-hit wonders. “Pop stars are remembered because they are very famous. One-hit wonders are remembered for the opposite. Two-hit wonders are stuck in the middle.”
What the hell? Saturn now has a total of 274 moons. That’s so many that they may have to relax the naming conventions because there aren’t enough Norse deities to cover them all.
Everyday Icons: Amy Sherald
A great behind-the-scenes look at the work and process of artist Amy Sherald in these two videos from Art21.
In her studio in New Jersey, artist Amy Sherald paints portraits that tell a story about American lives. Her face just inches away from a canvas, the artist carefully applies stroke after stroke, building her narrative through paint. “I really have this belief that images can change the world,” says Sherald, a belief she acts upon in her compelling paintings, which depict everyday people with dignity and humanity. Following the tradition of American realists like Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper, the artist uses her paintings to tell stories about America. Searching for models, settings, and scenarios that would convey the kinds of stories she wanted to tell, Sherald began to populate the world of her paintings with everyday people in everyday situations.
Sherald’s exhibition at The Whitney opens next month. (via the morning news)
In seeking information on how 21st century humans lived, future archaeologists will rely on fossils of soda cans, chicken bones, clothes, and concrete. Oh and, “wherever those future civilisations dig, they are going to find plastic”.
Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits
The MFA in Boston is putting on an exhibition this spring and summer called Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits.
Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) once wrote, “What I’m most passionate about…is the portrait, the modern portrait.” This passion flourished between 1888 and ‘89 when, during his stay in Arles, in the South of France, the artist created a number of portraits of a neighboring family—the postman Joseph Roulin; his wife, Augustine; and their three children: Armand, Camille, and Marcelle. Van Gogh’s tender relationship with the postman and his family, and his groundbreaking portrayals of them, are at the heart of this exhibition, which is the first dedicated to the Roulin portraits and the deep bonds of friendship between the artist and this family.
The BBC has more on the show and the artist’s relationship with the Roulin family.
“So much of what I was hoping for with this exhibition is a human story,” co-curator Katie Hanson (MFA Boston) tells the BBC. “The exhibition really highlights that Roulin isn’t just a model for him — this was someone with whom he developed a very deep bond of friendship.” Van Gogh’s tumultuous relationship with Gauguin, and the fallout between them that most likely precipitated the ear incident, has tended to overshadow his narrative, but Roulin offered something more constant and uncomplicated. We see this in the portraits — the open honesty with which he returns Van Gogh’s stare, and the mutual respect and affection that radiate from the canvas.
The exhibition will run at the MFA from March 30 to September 7, 2025 and then move on to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam from October 3 to January 11, 2026.
Am I excited to see this exhibition? Yes. Is this post an excuse to post 1889’s Portrait of Joseph Roulin, one of my favorite van Gogh’s? Also yes. Win win.
From Teen Vogue, a profile of Vivian Jenna Wilson. “She barely thinks about her father [Elon Musk]. ‘I’m not giving anyone that space in my mind. The only thing that gets to live free in my mind is drag queens.’”
It Is Now or It Is Never
There’s a letter at the end of this post that’s very much worth the read, but I have to explain some context first because otherwise it won’t make any sense. So:
The Trump regime has been targeting law firms “whose lawyers have provided legal work that Trump disagrees with” with executive orders that take away their security clearances and terminate their federal contracts. Yesterday, Trump rescinded his order against the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in exchange for a bribe in the form of the firm providing “$40m in free legal services to support his administration’s goals”. The settlement also includes an apparent agreement by Paul Weiss “to disavow the use of diversity, equity and inclusion considerations in its hiring and promotion decisions”.
Another of the law firms targeted by Trump is Perkins Coie, which has filed a lawsuit to fight the EO:
On March 11, 2025, we filed a legal action in response to a recent Executive Order that unlawfully targets Perkins Coie. The order violates core constitutional rights, including the rights to free speech and due process. At the heart of the order is an unlawful attack on the freedom of all Americans to select counsel of their choice without fear of retribution or punishment from the government. We were compelled to take this action to protect our firm and our clients.
In response to the Paul Weiss settlement news, Rachel Cohen, an associate at another law firm, Skadden Arps, sent a company-wide email to her colleagues last night with her “conditional” resignation notice, outlining her frustration with her firm’s unwillingness to support Perkins Coie’s lawsuit and related matters. She posted the letter to LinkedIn in image form — here’s the whole thing as text (boldface mine):
With gratitude and urgency.
Jeremy and colleagues,
Many deals I work on have concepts of conditional notice. This is mine.
Please consider this email my two week notice, revocable if the firm comes up with a satisfactory response to the current moment, which should include at minimum i) signing on to the firm amicus brief in support of Perkins Coie in its litigation fighting the Trump administration’s executive order against it, ii) committing to broad future representation, regardless of whether powerful people view it as adverse to them, iii) refusal to cooperate with the EEOC’s request for personal information of our colleagues clearly targeted at intimidating non-white employees, (iv) public refusal to fire or otherwise force out employees at the Trump administration’s directive or implied directive and (v) public commitment to maintenance of affinity groups and related initiatives.
This is not what I saw for my career or for my evening, but Paul Weiss’ decision to cave to the Trump administration on DEl, representation and staffing has forced my hand. We do not have time. It is now or it is never, and if it is never, I will not continue to work here.
When I went to law school and to Skadden, I did so in pursuit of agency. I was driven by a desire to be in rooms where decision-makers were, to get to play a role in things that mattered, because things felt so needlessly terrible. It never occurred to me that the people in those rooms might feel that they were powerless. I am forced to hope that our lack of response to the Trump administration’s attacks on our peers, both those at other large firms and the many people in this country with far fewer resources, is rooted in feelings of fear and powerlessness, as opposed to tacit agreement or desire to maximize profit. I still hope that is true. But it has not yet been borne out.
It feels mortifying to say “I suspect you know who I am,” but I suspect you know who I am. Over the last few weeks, I have devoted an inordinate amount of time trying to leverage various relationships and privileges to get our firm and broader industry to admit that we are in the throes of early-stage authoritarianism and that we are uniquely positioned to halt it. There is an open letter (now signed by over 600 other AmLaw 200 associates, many of them at this firm), mainstream media coverage and an oped explaining why I feel this way.
To anyone who feels sympathetic to the views I’ve espoused but wonders why I have taken the path I have: on Thursday, March 6, after the issuance of the Perkins Executive Order, I sent emails to multiple trusted partners in management asking to help with whatever response we coordinated.
One of them replied offering to talk and then failed to reply to my email asking for a time until a week later, significantly after I had begun speaking publicly. Know that I attended internal meetings about this topic, sent emails to decision makers, avoided commenting on the EEOC investigation publicly or airing any internal firm discourse publicly.
I did all of these things out of hope that we would do the right thing if given time and opportunity.
The firm has been given time and opportunity to do the right thing. Thus far, we have not. This is a moment that demands urgency. Whether we are failing to meet it because we are unprepared or because we don’t wish to is irrelevant to me — and to the world — where the outcome is the same. If we were going to resist, we would have done so already. If we were not going to respond to the EEOC (a refusal that would be fully legal), the firm would have already told us.
This is the first firmwide email that has been sent on this topic. What. Are. We. Doing.
Colleagues, if you question if it is as bad as you think it is, it is ten times worse. Whether what we measure is the cowardice in face of lost profits, or the proximity to authoritarianism, or the trauma inflicted on our colleagues who are nonwhite, or the disappointment that I feel in this moment, take what you suspect and multiply it by a factor of ten. Act accordingly.
I recognize not everyone is positioned as I am, and cannot act the same way. But do not recruit for this firm if they cannot protect their employees. Do not pretend that what is happening is normal or excusable. It isn’t.
To the many superiors, support staff and friends that I know I disappoint by making this announcement firmwide instead of talking to you first, I sincerely apologize. There are so many thank yous that I have for so many people at this firm. Please know that if you suspect that you have helped me or taught me or cared for me, that I agree and am eternally grateful. In the coming days, I will make every effort to reach out to you separately, but there is urgency here that makes it impossible to go to each of you first. I will do everything in my power to mitigate difficulties caused by my unexpected departure.
Like any self-important adolescent, I spent most of my high school history classes wondering what I would do in the moments before true horror or chaos or where my values were tested and demanded great sacrifice. I do not wonder anymore. I know who I am. I thought I knew who we all were.
Thank you for the opportunity. My personal email is cc’d. I wish each of you the best, and that you use the privileges you hold to work for the best for others.
Rachel
Cohen offered an update shortly after publishing her letter:
As an update, I no longer have access to my firm email, so I guess it’s just notice.
They owe me a payout for 24 accrued vacation days. Thank you and good night.
(via @annabower.bsky.social)
Severance has been renewed for a third season. “Stiller said ‘the plan is not’ to have fans wait three years for the next season’s release.”
More online showings of Eno coming up (March 27-30). “You must be watching on the date and time specified for each livestream. There is no delayed viewing. These versions of the film will never be shown again.”
The editor in chief at Science: I Was Diagnosed With Autism at 53. I Know Why Rates Are Rising. “The rise in diagnoses is the result of greater awareness, better identification (especially among women and girls) and a broader definition…”
What is the opposite of fascism? Living freely, colorfully, openly. Humanizing. Connecting with others. Gathering. Hoping. Following your dreams. Communing. Nurturing. Refusing despair. Laughing loudly.
Coco 2? Pixar will produce a sequel to Coco, set to come out in 2029. It joins Incredibles 3 and Toy Story 5 in development at the studio.
New issue of The HTML Review, “an annual journal of literature made to exist on the web”. Love the TOC interface — the web can still be fun!
Sally Rooney on Snooker and the Mystery of Athletic Genius
Writing for the New York Review (archive), Sally Rooney profiles “genius” snooker player Ronnie O’Sullivan. But much of the piece is spent on the mystery of how O’Sullivan and other athletes are able to do what they do without thinking.
Take the last frame of the 2014 Welsh Open final. The footage is available online, courtesy of Eurosport Snooker: if you like, you can watch O’Sullivan, then in his late thirties, circling the table, chalking his cue without taking his eyes from the baize. He’s leading his opponent, Ding Junhui — then at number three in the world snooker rankings — by eight frames to three, needing only one more to win the match and take home the title. He pots a red, then the black, then another red, and everything lands precisely the way he wants it: immaculate, mesmerizing, miraculously controlled.
The last remaining red ball is stranded up by the cushion on the right-hand side, and the cue ball rolls to a halt just left of the middle right-hand pocket. The angle is tight, awkward, both white and red lined up inches away from the cushion. O’Sullivan surveys the position, nonchalantly switches hands, and pots the red ball left-handed. The cue ball hits the top cushion, rolls back down over the table, and comes to a stop, as if on command, to line up the next shot on the black. O’Sullivan could scarcely have chosen a better spot if he had picked the cue ball up in his hand and put it there. The crowd erupts: elation mingled with disbelief. At the end of the frame, when only the black remains on the table, he switches hands again, seemingly just for fun, and makes the final shot with his left. The black drops down into the pocket, completing what is known in snooker as a maximum break: the feat of potting every ball on the table in perfect order to attain the highest possible total of 147 points.
Watch a little of this sort of thing and it’s hugely entertaining. Watch a lot and you might start to ask yourself strange questions. For instance: In that particular frame, after potting that last red, how did O’Sullivan know that the cue ball would come back down the table that way and land precisely where he wanted it? Of course it was only obeying the laws of physics. But if you wanted to calculate the trajectory of a cue ball coming off an object ball and then a cushion using Newtonian physics, you’d need an accurate measurement of every variable, some pretty complex differential equations, and a lot of calculating time. O’Sullivan lines up that shot and plays it in the space of about six seconds. A lucky guess? It would be lucky to make a guess like that once in a lifetime. He’s been doing this sort of thing for thirty years.
What then? If he’s not calculating, and he’s not guessing, what is Ronnie O’Sullivan doing? Why does the question seem so strange? And why doesn’t anybody know the answer?
You can watch that final frame on YouTube:
There’s also a short interview with Rooney about the piece and other things.
I also mention that frames of snooker are expected to continue even after competitive play has concluded. Players don’t just get to a certain number of points and then stop because they’ve won the frame; they continue until the break imposes its own conclusion. There’s something so strange and excessive about that—it seems to belong to the realm of aesthetics rather than sport.
I used to write a lot about what Rooney examines in her essay — the effortless brilliance of top performers — under the subject of relaxed concentration. Still as fascinating as ever.
Shopping for Superman
Here’s the trailer for Shopping for Superman, a crowdfunded documentary on the 50-year history of local comic book stores — as well as their shaky future.
Shopping for Superman, guides viewers through a 50-year journey revealing the origin story of their friendly neighborhood comic shops and the people fighting to keep their doors open.
Since it began, the retail comics industry has contracted by over 75% with more shops closing every month.
After five years of diminished sales, a global pandemic, and the digitization of retail shopping dominating most markets, Shopping for Superman asks the question, “Can our local comic shops be saved?”
Shopping for Superman, does more than explain the history of retail comic book shops. Its underlying narrative reveals how shops directly influenced comic book publishing to cultivate some of the most daring and controversial materials ever committed to print.
Through the evolution of comics, bolstered by shop owners, local communities gained access to safe spaces for individuals having a crisis of identity, a place that promoted literacy and critical thinking in areas where those things are scarce.
Audiences will see, first-hand, just how necessary their support will be in keeping these shops open and available for future generations.
Ha, Improved Relative Time lets you ditch BC and AD for designations like ABW (After Barbed Wire), BHCS (Before High Carbon Steel), AIP (After iPhone), and ASCR (After Supersonic Combusting Ramjet). No ATSDB (After Trial-Size Dove Bar) tho…
Beautiful Public Data posts about the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII using historical documents from the Library of Congress & National Archives, including photos by Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange.
What does Maga-land look like? Let me show you America’s unbeautiful suburban sprawl. “Somewhere along the line, the American Dream became to live alone, surrounded by all of this, rather than living in connection with other people.”
A History Professor Answers Questions About Dictators
In this video for Wired, historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who studies fascism & authoritarianism, answers questions from the internet about dictators.
Why do people support dictators? How do dictators come to power? What’s the difference between a dictatorship, an autocracy, and authoritarianism? What are the most common personality traits found in tyrants and dictators? Is Xi Jinping a dictator? How do dictators amass wealth?
The Sticker Box and the Woodstock Message Tree. “What makes this sticker-covered electrical box even more interesting is its location. It sits right across the road from the former site of the Woodstock Message Tree.”
“Thirty lonely but beautiful actions you can take right now which probably won’t magically catalyze a mass movement against Trump but that are still wildly important.”
On Edward Gorey’s Great Simple Theory About Art “Anything that is art…is presumably about some certain thing, but is really always about something else, and it’s no good having one without the other…”
A UN World Meteorological Organization report “lists 151 unprecedented extreme weather events in 2024, meaning they were worse than any ever recorded in the region.” Heat, floods, storms — all made worse by global warming.
Trump Has Gone From Unconstitutional to Anti-Constitutional. “[Anti-Constitutionalism] rejects the premise that sovereignty lies with the people, that ours is a government of limited and enumerated powers and that the officers of that government are bound by law.”
Editorial from Nature magazine: Vaccines save lives. Leaders must champion them. “We urge policymakers to help boost people’s confidence in vaccines, and not to undermine scientific and medical institutions or the process of research.”
Don’t Be a Sucker!
In 1945, the US Department of War (the precursor to the Dept of Defense) produced this educational film on the “destructive effects of racial and religious prejudice” and the use of such prejudice to gain power.
Reel 1 shows a fake wrestling match and “crooked” gambling games. An agitator addresses a street crowd; he almost convinces one man in the audience until the man begins to talk to a Hungarian refugee from Germany. A Nazi speaker harangues a crowd in Germany denouncing Jews, Catholics, and Freemasons. Reel 2, a German unemployed worker joins Hitler’s Storm Troops. SS men attack Jewish and Catholic headquarters in Germany, and beat up a Jewish storekeeper. A German teacher explains Nazi racial theories; the teacher is dragged away by German soldiers.
It’s a good watch, but perhaps keep in mind this was produced at a time when American citizens were imprisoned for being of Japanese descent (among other things…Jim Crow, sexism, discrimination of LGBTQ+ people, etc.)
What Are the Physical Limits of Humanity?
A new video from Kurzgesagt explores the limits of human exploration in the Universe. How far can we venture? Are there limits? Turns out the answer is very much “yes”…with the important caveat “using our current understanding of physics”, which may someday provide a loophole (or wormhole, if you will). Chances are, humans will only be able to explore 0.00000000001% of the observable Universe.
This video is particularly interesting and packed with information, even by Kurzgesagt’s standards. The explanation of the Big Bang, inflation, dark matter, and expansion is concise and informative…the idea that the Universe is slowly erasing its own memory is fascinating.
A 6‑Hour Time-Stretched Version of Brian Eno’s Music For Airports. “The tonal field is the same, but now the notes are no attack, all decay.”
UbuWeb, a pirate library of avant-garde artifacts, closed in 2024. But last month, they started the site back up again. “Archiving reemerges as a strong form of resistance, a way of preserving crucial, subversive, and marginalized forms of expression.”
Bad at Goodbyes is a podcast highlighting a different critically endangered plant or animal on each episode. Recently featured: Vancouver Island Marmot, Dama Gazelle, Koyama’s Spruce, Cuban Crocodile, and Pariette Cactus.
Fooling a Self-Driving Tesla Is Dangerously Easy
In his latest video, Mark Rober shows how easy it is to fool Tesla’s self-driving capability (they use cheaper video cameras) when compared with other self-driving cars (which use lidar). Big Wile E. Coyote energy from the Tesla here.
Oh and he also uses lidar to map out the interior at Disneyland’s Space Mountain ride, which is entirely in the dark.
From The Climate Mental Health Network, a downloadable free zine for youth that “offers a collection of perspectives and tools to support other climate-concerned youth around the emotional impacts of the climate crisis and healthy ways to respond”.
The Women Who Wanted to Leave Their Husbands Over Politics. “This fall, I followed three women who had been thinking about divorce. What happened when Donald Trump won again?” Really interesting and depressing.
Freedom of the Press Foundation: “[Wired] is going to stop paywalling articles that are primarily based on public records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.”
You may have already seen it, but I finally got around to reading this piece: One Word Describes Trump. “Patrimonialism is distinguished by running the state as if it were the leader’s personal property or family business.”
Song Exploder talks to Theodore Shapiro about how he created the main title theme music for Severance.
From One Million Experiments, a printable zine meant to be “used as a template for those seeking to make an activism or organizing plan” with knowledge distilled from seasoned activists.
The Curious 100 from The Eames Institute is, “a celebration of one hundred courageous leaders and creative minds across the United States who are harnessing the transformative power of curiosity to solve today’s most pressing problems”.
Indie game Blobun has a joke setting that eliminates its lesbian content. But the main character is gay “so flipping the so-called ‘lesbian toggle’ in the options menu removes her from the game and renders it totally unplayable”.
If you’re mad as hell, one thing you can do is run for elected office. Run For Something recruits & supports “young, diverse progressives to run for down-ballot races in order to build sustainable power for Democrats in all 50 states”.
A really important point from Masha Gessen about the Trumpist attacks on (and “denationalization” of) trans people: “The reason you should care about this is not that it could happen to you but that it is already happening to others.” 🎯🎯🎯
A good, long piece from Thomas Zimmer about how we “underestimated the Trumpist threat and overestimated how resilient both the political system as well as American civil society would be…that is something we all need to grapple with in earnest.”
Timothy Snyder on the terrifying deportations being undertaken by the Trump regime. This is a prelude to any American being stripped of citizenship and expelled from the country for any reason (protesting, faving the wrong photo, using pronouns).
The World’s Deadliest Infectious Disease Is About to Get Worse. John Green, author of Everything Is Tuberculosis, warns that the Trump regime’s gutting of international aid and scientific funding will result in more death & suffering from tuberculosis.
Canada is so furious at the US right now. “Everything Trump has said and done has led to a level of rage and defiance that I think very few Americans fully appreciate.” And rightly so!
Beginning April 20, Pride & Prejudice (w/ Keira Knightley & Matthew Macfadyen) is heading back to US theaters to mark the 20th anniversary of its release.
Something new from Radiohead on the horizon? Radiohead Members Form New LLP, Historically a Telltale Sign of New Activity. New album? Reissue? Tour?
Ross Andersen writes thoughtfully about LeBron James’ protectiveness of his son Bronny James and accusations of nepotism. “The emotions of parenthood are gigantic. They can knock anyone off their game, even the great LeBron James.”
A bunch of people who have never heard of Radiohead listen to Creep for the first time. Some of them were in tears. It *is* a pretty great song.
The Pudding: How do animals sound across languages? “How can cultures hear the same physical sounds yet translate them into language so differently?”
This One Goes to 27
On this day 27 years ago, on March 14, 1998, I started this here website. I’m not sure what there is to say about the ridiculous length of time that I’ve spent doing this “moderately anachronistic thing” that I haven’t already said before:
A little context for just how long that is: kottke.org is older than Google. 25 years is more than half of my life, spanning four decades (the 90s, 00s, 10s, and 20s) and around 40,000 posts — almost cartoonishly long for a medium optimized for impermanence.
As always, thank you so much for reading and for the membership support. 💞
Wired has a big story (150+ sources) that takes a look Inside Elon Musk’s ‘Digital Coup’. “The next step: Unleash the AI.” 😱
Sarah Wynn-Williams’s memoir about working at Facebook, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism (Bookshop), is on the bestseller charts after Meta tried to get the book pulled from sale. The Streisand effect strikes again.
Ted Lasso is returning for a fourth season. Not every actor is on board (yet)…it’ll be interesting to see where this goes.
Trailer for season two of Poker Face. If you haven’t seen it, it’s directed by Rian Johnson (Knives Out/Glass Onion) and Natasha Lyonne plays an itinerant Benoit Blanc sort of character. Very good.
Harvey Silikovitz tried 10 times to get on Jeopardy! over 24 years and finally made it. (And won!) “He’s pretty sure he has made history as the first Jeopardy! contestant to play with Parkinson’s.”
Mahmoud Khalil’s Detention Is a Trial Run. “You may believe that Khalil does not deserve free speech or due process. But if he does not have them, then neither do you. Neither do I.”
404 Media has obtained a list of 200+ sites monitored by a contractor for ICE (Amazon, Apple Music, BabyCenter, Bluesky, Facebook, Github, GoFundMe, etc.). They can “pull a target individual’s publicly available data” from these sites “all at once”.
US added to international watchlist for rapid decline in civic freedoms. The Us joins a list of countries with “deteriorating civic space conditions, in relation to freedoms of peaceful assembly, association and expression”.
Things have been a little weird lately so I missed this when it came out but lolol: mustaaaaaaaaaard!
It’s Infrastructure Week!
Following on from my post this morning, I think this is a good time to step back from the site for a bit and focus on some long-neglected backend things that just don’t get the attention they deserve when I’m busy with the day-to-day posting. There are a couple of projects in particular that I’ve been noodling with that need some focus, so I’m gonna do that for the rest of the week. I’ll probably pop in with a few links here and there, but for the most part, I will see you back here on Monday. Until then, be excellent to each other and party on dudes!
The creator of Poetry Is Not a Luxury Instagram account is coming out with a poetry anthology in May: Poetry Is Not a Luxury: Poems for All Seasons.
How Much Do I Really Need to Know?
On Inauguration Day in January, Eliza McLamb wrote about her abstention from social media for a month and the challenge of keeping up with current events “without either turning towards ignorance or overwhelming myself with information”:
I’ve been thinking deeply about this idea recently — how much do I really need to know? I by no means think that I (or anyone) should be exempt from keeping up with the political and social going-ons of the world. Certainly, it’s invaluable to remember that one’s personal life is not reflective of the lives of everyone else. But I have recognized an impulse in myself to keep intaking information, as though it were a moral imperative to know every meticulous detail of all Earthly horrors. And, as much as I would like to think that it does, I don’t think that this impulse comes from duty. I think it comes from guilt. If I couldn’t directly help, the least I could do was witness. The least I could do was watch, feeling increasingly helpless, feeling increasingly numb.
Ultimately, I realized that this impulse actually resulted in me feeling less about the things I purported to care about. All the information swelled to a terrifying, dizzying checked-out-ed-ness, where I would make my way through a timeline that showed me children missing limbs in Palestine to an influencer’s makeup tutorial to details about Trump’s incoming cabinet to a house tour in the Hamptons. The bizarre, violent juxtaposition of it all started to turn my brain off. It was simply too much information.
I read this essay a few days after it was published and have been thinking about it (and related articles) more or less constantly ever since, not only in terms of what media & information I am consuming, but also in terms of what I’m sharing here.
Every damn day over the past month an a half, the Trump administration has dropped some new horror in their attempt to speed-run the fascist takeover of American democracy.1 All of it is relevant and all of it matters. Just two days ago, Palestinian student Mahmoud Khalil, who is legally residing in the United States with a green card, was detained and imprisoned by DHS agents on some Trumped up nonsense about “[leading] activities aligned to Hamas” (he was one of the leaders of Columbia University’s Gaza solidarity encampment). This is right out of the fascist playbook; Adam Serwer:
The way it works is that you strip fundamental rights from targets with less political support that people will turn their consciences off to justify persecuting and then eventually the state can do it to anyone, that’s always been the plan. Immigrants, trans people, palestinian rights activists, eventually it’s going to be your turn when the regime decides you are an enemy.
Here’s Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as reported by the New Republic:
You are shredding the Constitution of the United States to go after political enemies. Seizing a person without reason or warrant and denying them access to their lawyer is un-American and tyrannical,” she continued. “Anyone celebrating this should be ashamed.”
“If the federal government can disappear a legal US permanent resident without reason or warrant, then they can disappear US citizens too,” she wrote in a separate post. “Anyone - left, right, or center - who has highlighted the importance of constitutional rights + free speech should be sounding the alarm now.
Trump said he was going to deport his enemies (i.e. people who oppose him) and you’ve read the fucking poem, so I hope that somehow this can be stopped long before it reaches 50-something, white, male bloggers who live in rural Vermont, not at all for my personal sake but for every preceding person they try this shit on, up to and including Mahmoud Khalil.
And but so anyway, the point is that there’s so much important stuff going on! Fundamental human rights are under fresh attack daily! This is not a drill! But at the same time, the fundamental situation has not materially changed in a few weeks. There was a coup. It was successful. It is ongoing and escalating. Elon Musk retains more or less total control over a huge amount of the federal government’s apparatus and its spending. Protests are building. Congress largely hasn’t reacted. The Democratic Party shows few signs of behaving like an opposition party. Some of the purges are being walked back, piecemeal. The judiciary is weighing in, slowly. There’s talk of cracks in the conservative coalition. We’re in a weird sort of stasis where each day’s events are both extremely significant and also just more of the same.
So, the question I’ve constantly been asking myself is: How should I be covering all this? What is the best use of your attention and my time, platform, and abilities? For the first couple of weeks, getting good information and analysis out about what was going on seemed most important, along with expert contextualization of events, providing actionable information, focusing on the stakes not the odds, and emphasizing the human stories and costs of the coup.
I believe all those things are still important to highlight. And writing about this still feels like something I have to do. However it feels increasingly unproductive for me to keep up with the “day to day” (even when that means something as consequential as the disappearing of legal residents for political reasons) on KDO. Other people and outlets are better equipped to keep you informed about such events. I do not want to contribute to folks feeling helpless or numb from information overwhelm — that won’t do any of us, or our future prospects for democracy, any good.
So yeah, that’s where I am right now — between the opposite poles of too much and not enough — if that makes any sense at all. I don’t know what the answer is just yet, if there even is one, but I suppose I will figure it out.
(I’m gonna open comments on this because I want to hear what you have to say about How Much You Need to Know or What You Want to Hear From Me, but I’m gonna strongly suggest that your personal opinion on our current political situation is better addressed elsewhere. Thanks.)
- Which was well underway before Trump even came along. We’re in the “suddenly” part of our “gradually, then suddenly” political bankruptcy.↩
The First Three Episodes of Andor Available Online for Free
Disney has uploaded the first three episodes of season one of Andor to YouTube:
No idea how long they will be up or if they’re visible outside of the US. I started an Andor rewatch last week and I am finding it more enjoyable and interesting than I did the first time around. The writers obviously did their research on how fascism, dictatorships, and rebellions work — in almost every scene, you observe characters reacting and interacting with the constraints of bureaucratic totalitarianism. Very interesting to watch in this political moment. (via @rebeccablood.bsky.social)
Eyes on the Street
I ran across this story from Vanessa Guerrero on Instagram recently. She originally posted it to Twitter a few years ago; here’s the full text:
Living in LA, I’ve lived in many a neighborhood in which police helicopters circle all day and they don’t do anything except be loud an annoying. You know what improved the morale and safety of my neighborhood in less than two weeks?
A new taco stand. I’m 1000% serious.
In general street food vendors on a block means more pedestrian foot traffic round the clock, if they’re open late, that’s more eyes in a neighborhood. Additionally in an area with many dark empty storefronts, literally adds light and vitality to the area.
More of the neighborhood is meeting each other waiting in line for nearby tacos. I met people three houses down I didn’t know. It feels like we’re all only now getting to know each other, over a torta and some soda.
They also posted up at a bus stop and out open until 2am. Meaning people waiting for a bus stop are not longer waiting alone in the dark. There’s a noticiable air of camaraderie, safety and enthusiasm.
Street vendors did more for our neighborhood than the city ever did.
City planners had left the area in disrepair. The vendors literally CLEANED THE BLOCK. THEY PICKED UP TRASH THE CITY NEGLECTS.
I’m serious when I say in the area they posted up, it’s markedly cleaner. This is not the work of the local waste removal services. This is taqueros.
I love this. In her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs wrote about the importance of “having eyes on the street” and foot traffic to building successful neighborhoods:
A city street equipped to handle strangers, and to make a safety asset, in itself, out of the presence of strangers, as the streets of successful city neighborhoods always do, must have three main qualities:
First, there must be a clear demarcation between what is public space and what is private space. Public and private spaces cannot ooze into each other as they do typically in suburban settings or in projects.
Second, there must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street. The buildings on a street equipped to handle strangers and to insure the safety of both residents and strangers, must be oriented to the street. They cannot turn their backs or blank sides on it and leave it blind.
And third, the sidewalk must have users on it fairly continuously, both to add to the number of effective eyes on the street and to induce the people in buildings along the street to watch the sidewalks in sufficient numbers. Nobody enjoys sitting on a stoop or looking out a window at an empty street. Almost nobody does such a thing. Large numbers of people entertain themselves, off and on, by watching street activity.
GOLIKEHELLMACHINE is interviewing (current & former) federal workers for a series that “aims to capture both the personal significance of [their] work and its broader impact on the American public”. 8 stories so far — these are great.
“Covid was a privatized pandemic. It is this technocratic, privatized model that is its lasting legacy and that will define our approach to the next pandemic,” says Siddhartha Mukherjee. “There are some public goods that should never be privatized.”
I Am Trapped in the Criterion Closet. “How long have I been in this place? I cannot say. In the darkness, time has lost meaning. The only days I remember are Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978), the only nights, Nights of Cabiria (Fellini, 1957).”
When This [Medical School] Professor Got Cancer, He Didn’t Quit. He Taught a Class About It. “He wanted his students to understand the humanity at the core of medicine.”
The latest edition of Jodi Ettenberg’s link-drenched Curious About Everything newsletter just dropped. I was going to steal about a dozens links from this, but you should just go read and subscribe to the source.
Purged gov’t employees, while scrambling to find work & health insurance, face MAGA relatives who are cheering their firing. “Some members of her mostly conservative family have unfriended her on social media. Others are giving her the silent treatment.”
I woke up Saturday wondering how observers of Ramadan time their fasting in polar regions, where sunrise & sunset don’t exist for months on end. “Muslims in the Arctic are generally advised by religious authorities to adopt one of three solutions…”
A forthcoming novel from Patricia Lockwood: Will There Ever Be Another You. Really looking forward to this one — her No One Is Talking About This is a favorite of mine from the past few years.
A game called “It is as if you were on your phone” is designed to make you look like you’re on your phone. “You’re just pretending to be on your phone! On your phone!”
A collection of movie clips containing inaccurate binocular shots, “(i.e., two overlapping circles instead of one, as you would see in real life)” — including Rushmore, Das Boot, Ronin, Chinatown, and Superman.
From Ben Fry, a visualization of the 5,000+ covers of the New Yorker from the past 100 years. “The horizontal line/artifact comes from the way that they re-run their first cover (and more recently, a variant of it) each year on their anniversary.”
Star Trek: TNG Opening Credits, But the Theme Music Is Coming From the Enterprise
This is the dumbest thing but it had me rolling in the aisles this morning: Star Trek TNG Theme but the theme music is coming from the Enterprise-D. It takes a bit to get going, but I laughed so hard when the ship whooshed by for the first time.
The same creator has made a number of videos in this vein, including The Imperial March but it’s coming from Vader’s chest control panel and Star Trek DS9 Theme but the theme is coming from DS9 Ops.
This is fantastic and very much worth your time: Marcin Wichary’s deep dive into a staunchly utilitarian font called Gorton, which you see almost everywhere in American cities, especially NYC. “Gorton is everywhere in Manhattan.”
I Took My Work Outside Every Day for a Month This Winter. (“My work” = typing on a laptop.) “Even though I’m not perfectly warm, it lifts my mood to be outside. I can hear the community of songbirds holding their morning conferences, a barking dog…”
The 100 Greatest TV Performances of the 21st Century (one per show & actor). Ian McShane (Deadwood), Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men), Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag), Anna Sawai (Shōgun), Maggie Smith (Downton Abbey), Peter Dinklage (GoT). Who’s your #1?
Watch Eagle Chicks Hatching on the Eagle Cam
High up in a pine tree in California’s Big Bear Valley, a pair of eagles guard their nest…and we can watch them live on YouTube.
The nest is located in Big Bear Valley in the San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California. It is about 145 feet up in a Jeffrey Pine tree. It is the current home for Jackie & Shadow, a local bald eagle pair.
The female eagle Jackie laid three eggs in January and two of them have hatched in recent days and the third egg is hatching as I write this at Friday around noon. You can scrub back through the video to see the chicks and some feedings. Or take a look at some of the clips of important moments in this YouTube playlist; here’s one from yesterday:
A full log of the important events is available on the Friends of Big Bear Valley website and you can see tons of photos & videos on their Facebook page. (thx, rion)
Some graphs showing how people’s Letterboxd ratings of the Star Wars films have changed over the past few years. The prequels’ rankings have increased while the Rey/Ren movies have fallen.
Watch Blue Ghost Land On The Moon in HD
A few days ago, on March 2, the first lunar lander operated by a private company landed successfully on the Moon. The video of the landing is really something — I wonder if I will ever get accustomed to or tired of watching footage of spacecraft landing on other bodies in our solar system? The answer is a resounding NO so far…this is cool as hell.
You can read more about Firefly’s Blue Ghost on Wikipedia. The mission delivered 10 science and technology investigations to the surface of the Moon for NASA. (via phil plait)
Dolly Parton has released a new song called If You Hadn’t Been There as a tribute to her late husband, Carl Dean. “If you hadn’t been there / Well, who would I be?”
After 54 years, the organizers of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (which celebrates bad opening lines to novels) have brought an end to the contest. So bummed…a friend and I had a pretty good entry we’ve been workshopping!
The Museum of All Things. “Every exhibit in the museum corresponds to a Wikipedia article. The walls of the exhibit are covered in images and text from the article, and hallways lead out to other exhibits based on the article’s links.”
How Are You?
Hey folks. I’m gonna take a break from KDO for the rest the day today (unless we invade Canada this afternoon or something) — I worked for much of last weekend and need a breather.
But I wanted to open up the comments here and ask: How are you doing? What’s your attention on these days? How are you coping with all of this uncertainty? What’s the view from your community? If you’d like to share, the comments are open.
I’ll see you tomorrow, hopefully with some Friday Foolishness.
Report: You Live In An Embarrassing Country. “According to a new report published Wednesday by the Pew Research Center, you live in a deeply embarrassing and barely functional country.” Evergreen piece from The Onion.
Yesterday’s letter from Heather Cox Richardson is a good one, drawing a line from the Cold War to Putin’s rise in Russia (through “virtual politics”) to Russian interference in the 2016 election to the ongoing coup.
Glass Onion
I recently rewatched Glass Onion and had a couple thoughts about it.
1. Before settling in to watch, I’d remembered that Edward Norton’s mega-billionaire character Miles Bron bore some resemblance to Elon Musk, but I’d forgotten that the whole plot of the movie revolves around what a blustering dope, what a dumb charlatan, what a dim-witted con man Bron/Musk is. As we endure this political moment dominated by halfwit flimflammers, witnessing Bron’s downfall orchestrated by a gay detective and a Black woman was surprisingly cathartic.
2. I love films like this! Like Knives Out, Glass Onion is stacked with acting talent, helmed by a great writer/director, funny & dramatic, and, crucially, doesn’t take itself too seriously. There’s a sense that everyone is having a good time, with a wink at the audience. And they’re just flat-out fun to watch. Is there a name for movies like this? A micro-genre? The type of movie you could imagine Muppets being a part of without too many changes?
I’d include movies like the Ocean’s series, Lucky Logan, some of Wes Anderson’s films, perhaps Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot trilogy, and maybe even Mike White’s The White Lotus series. Like, what do we call these winking prestige ensemble dramedy thrillers? (Surely we can’t call them “winking prestige ensemble dramedy thrillers”.) And what other films would you include?
How Congress Can Delete DOGE. “DOGE’s parent agency, the US Digital Service (USDS), was never statutorily authorized. In the grand scheme of the appropriations process, DOGE’s budget can be deleted if Congress decides to act.”
Buttondown makes it super-easy to migrate your newsletter from Substack. Plus: “Need help migrating to Buttondown? Just contact our support team and we’ll take care of it for you!” No more excuses.
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
I love the international cover for Omar El Akkad’s new book, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (Bookshop, Amazon). It uses the original text of El Akkad’s tweet about the war in Gaza:
One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.
The US cover, like many American things, is somewhat less subtle & elegant.
Josh Marshall on corruption and legitimacy regarding the US govt’s judicial & executive branches. “We shouldn’t be thinking we’re going to wait on what any court decides. That’s only a half step from waiting to hear what Donald Trump decides.”
From poet Joseph Fasano: For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper. “I know your days are precious on this earth. But what are you trying to be free of? The living? The miraculous task of it?”
“Every time Social Security makes its way into the news is an opportunity to push for a better & more inclusive form of Social Security: one that rewards caregivers, expands benefits, and provides something like an American dream worthy of the name.”
Paris Marx writes that the US is “a rogue state that cannot be trusted” and that our former allies “must form new alliances and end their dependence on US tech in response to Trump’s trade war”.
Trump’s Tour of Revenge Against the American People
Building on his walk-and-talk video from a couple of days ago, Jamelle Bouie writes about two of the easiest things to understand about Donald Trump. 1. The way in which “his every executive function exists to satisfy his ego”:
One immediate response to all of this is to say that Trump is operating according to some higher-level political and ideological perspective. And there is a cottage industry of observers who have given themselves the unenviable task of transmuting the president’s tics and utterances into something like a calculated strategy — an intellectually defensible set of doctrines rather than the thoughtless patter of an outer-borough confidence man.
But this has always strained credulity. To ask anyone, for instance, to treat the president’s display of childish pique opposite Zelensky in the Oval Office as some return to Teddy Rooseveltian great-power realism — as opposed to the embarrassing tantrum of a grade-school bully — is to demand that readers administer a self-lobotomy.
2. His desire for revenge:
If this is his psychological state, then it stands to reason that Trump would want revenge against the public that denied him a second term as much as he wants revenge against the officials who have tried to make him answer for his illegal actions.
It is hard to describe Trump’s first month and a half in office as something other than a retribution campaign against the American people.
As I wrote a few days ago about Trump’s Oval Office ambush of Zelenskyy:
It occurs to me after reading about the meeting that Trump’s actions here are partially motivated by a desire for personal retribution against Zelenskyy for not helping him smear Biden in 2019. Zelenskyy told Trump no and Trump wants revenge — and he’s gonna turn his back on Ukraine and Europe to get it.
Doechii Officially Releases Anxiety (the Song, Lol)
A couple of weeks ago, I posted a YouTube video of Doechii singing and rapping about anxiety over Gotye’s Somebody That I Used To Know from 2019 that was going viral on Insta and TikTok. Well yesterday, Doechii officially released Anxiety as a single, so you can find it on YouTube (though I prefer the original video), Spotify, Apple Music, and anywhere else you stream or buy music.
P.S. Here’s Doechii doing a CATFISH / DENIAL IS A RIVER medley at the Grammys last month:
And of course, you can check out her Tiny Desk Concert too.
Remember Digg? It’s back, in Pog fo— er, AI form. “How can we remove the janitorial work of moderators and community managers, and convert what they do every day into more of a kind of ‘director of vibes, culture and community?’”
Blogging for Democracy
This is a great post from Mike Masnick about why Techdirt is writing more or less full-time about the Trump regime’s attack on democracy: Why Techdirt Is Now A Democracy Blog (Whether We Like It Or Not).
I agree with every word of it. One of the points he makes is that media outlets like Techdirt (and Wired and 404 Media, etc) and reporters like Masnick that cover tech and the law are uniquely positioned to understand what has been going on, particularly w/r/t to Musk’s seizure of the government’s computer systems:
This is the kind of thing tech and law reporters spot immediately, because we’ve seen this all play out before. When someone talks about “free speech” while actively working to control speech, that’s not a contradiction or a mistake — it’s the point. It’s about consolidating power while wrapping it in the language of freedom as a shield to fool the gullible and the lazy.
This is why it’s been the tech and legal press that have been putting in the work, getting the scoops, and highlighting what’s actually going on, rather than just regurgitation of administration propaganda without context or analysis (which hasn’t stopped the administration from punishing them).
I’m not a legal expert or a reporter, but I have been covering & writing about technology for almost 30 years and when I saw what Musk was doing (in conjunction with Trump’s EOs and what Project 2025 promised), I recognized exactly what was going on and started to cover it almost exclusively:
I keep hearing people saying this is a five-alarm fire but I feel like it’s a 500-alarm fire…we need metaphorical fire trucks coming from thousands of miles away to fight this blaze.
Masnick’s other main point is even closer to my heart:
When the very institutions that made American innovation possible are being systematically dismantled, it’s not a “political” story anymore. It’s a story about whether the environment that enabled all the other stories we cover will continue to exist.
We’ve always covered the intersection of technology, innovation, and policy (27+ years and counting). Sometimes that meant writing about patents or copyright, sometimes about content moderation, sometimes about privacy. But what happens when the fundamental systems that make all of those conversations possible start breaking down? When the people dismantling those systems aren’t even pretending to replace them with something better?
This x 10000. Like Masnick, I’ve gotten lots of feedback about my pivot to covering the coup, the overwhelming majority of it supportive — even the people who have told me they need to tap out from reading (I totally get it!) are generally approving. But there have been a few disapprovals as well, in the vein of “shut up and dribble” or “keep politics out of it” — which I also understand. To an extent. They want the Other Stuff back, the art and beauty and laughter and distraction, and for me to cool it with the politics.
But echoing Masnick, I believe that covering the rapid disassembly of American democracy is not some separate thing from the Other Stuff and never has been. The reason I have been able to write freely about those things for the last 27 years is because the US has had a relatively stable democracy1 under which people feel free to innovate, create art, take risks, and be themselves. Those things become much more difficult under fascist and autocratic rule. In a recent piece, Masha Gessen describes how autocracy stifles creativity:
Life under autocracy can be terrifying, as it already is in the United States for immigrants and trans people. But those of us with experience can tell you that most of the time, for most people, it’s not frightening. It is stultifying. It’s boring. It feels like trying to see and breathe under water — because you are submerged in bad ideas, being discussed badly, being reflected in bad journalism and, eventually, in bad literature and bad movies.
I’m covering politics in this particular moment *because* the actions of the Trump administration are threatening all of that Other Stuff, because I want to be able to go back to covering design & photography & movies & science & food & travel & cities & all the cool things humans can do, and because I want my kids and everyone else’s kids to live in a stable, free society where they can make art, pursue scientific truth, be freely gay or trans, have health care, be able to have families, have a place to live, and, if they want to, write about frivolities on their websites. All of that becomes much more difficult if Trump/Musk get their way, and if I can help push back on their efforts in some small way with this platform that I have, I’m gonna do it. ✊✌️
- I realize the phrase “relatively stable democracy” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. American democracy has never been as inclusive as it could be and a lot of people have been (and are still being) left out of participating fully in our society.↩
“De-extinction startup Colossal Biosciences has gene-edited mice to have mammoth-like features, creating what the company calls the Colossal Woolly Mouse.” (They eventually want to do the same w/ Asian elephants.)
From Just Security: “A timeline of actions that highlight the alarming level of politicization and weaponization of the Department of Justice under the second Trump administration.”
Josh Marshall looks closely at Trump’s Feb 11th “workforce optimization” EO for its inevitable conclusion: “It will be like a permanent shutdown. That’s not hyperbole or a metaphor. It’s literally what they say in the executive order.”
Formerly anti-vax parents on how they changed their minds. A former anti-vax parent whose kids got sick: “It was awful, and it didn’t have to happen, because I could have had them vaccinated. I felt guilty. I felt really guilty.”
Bellingcat’s Eliot Higgins on disordered discourse (which is not mere misinformation). “When truth is no longer a shared foundation, power shifts to those who control the most compelling narrative — no matter how detached from reality it is.”
On Public Service
Lisa Re Dale recently retired after 20 years of federal service. She worked for the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Program (which she says returns 10x on its investment) and wrote about what she did at work and why it matters:
I am retiring today after 20 years of federal service working on health care fraud enforcement. I’ve personally worked on cases where patients were raped in nursing homes and others so neglected that maggots grew in their wounds. Pharmaceutical companies paying kickbacks to doctors to prescribe their drugs, fueling the opioid epidemic. Doctors falsely diagnosed patients with cancer or MS to bill for unnecessary treatment. Pediatric dentists doing medically unnecessary root canals on toddlers — without adequate anesthesia — for profit. These are 4 of the thousands of cases I’ve worked on.
And she talks more broadly about what our government does for us:
I’ve realized many Americans have no idea what the federal government does. It pays for the military to protect this nation. Keeps food and medicine safe. Ensures laws are followed and fairly prosecuted. Operates national parks. Cares for the veterans who gave everything for us. Insures the money in your bank. Keeps air travel safe. Rescues children from sex trafficking. People will realize what it does after it’s been burned to the ground.
(thx, jason)
“The ‘war on woke’ did not suddenly appear. It is an idea deeply rooted in a form of scientific racism that has been laundered into the mainstream over decades by the Pioneer Fund and right-wing activists connected with this group.”
He Never Made the Same Choice Twice: 10 of Our Favorite Gene Hackman Performances. “That ability to conjure suspense from popcorn material is what made Hackman at once the best character of his generation and a singular movie star.”
Criminal defense attorney Ken White: “What happens if federal, state, or local officials text, email, call, or show up at your door wanting to talk to you about what you said about the President?” A: “SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH”
Is GoFundMe the New Insurance? “As the internet says, ‘This is not a heartwarming story.’” (Dynamic I was unaware of but that makes sense: higher income GFM beneficiaries receive more donation money.)
Total Context Collapse: New Polls Show That 100% Of Americans Have Forgotten Why We Built A Society In The First Place And Why We Need To Keep Doing It. “Well damn. These poll results are far from encouraging!”
On Saturday, Steph Curry dunked in a regular-season NBA game for the first time in 6 years (he’s only done it 27 times in his entire career). “That will probably be my last dunk.”
A good, long profile of author Robert Caro, in which he reveals that he’s written 951 pages of the fifth (and final) installment of his series of books on LBJ — but also that he’s “not nearly done”.
Rick Steves announces that he is cancer-free. “PSA 55 to PSA 0.09 to PSA <0.03…Yes! If you know prostate cancer, you know the happy story of those numbers.”
“No constitutional text is well written enough to save the rule of law when the American people elect a president who doesn’t believe in the Constitution, especially when he is joined by a Congress that refuses to hold him accountable for violating it.”
Menswear writer Derek Guy on Zelenskyy’s lack of suit in the WH: “I dislike the idea of respectability in dress…because it conflates the *appearance* of virtue with *actual* virtue. Wearing a suit doesn’t make you respectful, intelligent, or capable.”
America Alone
From Angry Staffer on Bluesky on the Trump/Vance/Zelenskyy meeting:
The public nature of the meltdown amplifies the embarrassment. Unlike past Oval Office tensions — like Nixon’s private rants or Clinton’s discreet scandals — this clash unfolded live before cameras, capturing every raised voice and pointed finger.
The world watched as Trump interrupted Zelenskyy’s attempts to discuss Russia’s broken agreements, dismissing him with, “You’ve done a lot of talking,” and Vance chimed in with, “Have you said thank you once?”
The optics were disastrous: a U.S. administration humiliating an ally fighting for survival, all while the Ukrainian ambassador sat with her head in her hands.
This wasn’t a leaked transcript or a hushed rumor; it was a global spectacle, branding the U.S. as impulsive and unstatesmanlike.
Historically, Oval Office embarrassments — like Reagan’s “bombing Russia” quip or Bush’s awkward Merkel shoulder rub — pale in comparison. Those were gaffes, fleeting and unintentional. This was deliberate and sustained, a tag-team assault on a guest that undermined America’s moral authority.
Zelenskyy came seeking security guarantees and a minerals deal, not a lecture on gratitude. Instead, Trump and Vance turned what was supposed to be an olive branch into a cudgel, canceling a joint press conference and effectively kicking him out of the White House.
The message to our allies is chilling: U.S. support comes with a loyalty test, administered publicly and punitively.
America First inexorably drifts towards America Alone. We saw this last night, as world leaders rallied behind Zelenskyy, with figures like the U.K.s Ed Davey labeling it “thuggery.”
America Alone. That really sums up America’s current foreign policy. Trump is remolding the United States in his own image — bigoted, confrontational, erratic, reactionary, greedy, belligerent, vindictive, petty, friendless, authoritarian — and he won’t be content until the US is as lonely and isolated as he is.
Putin Is Ready to Carve Up the World. Trump Just Handed Him the Knife. “What happens if Russia unleashes its aggression against Europe, unchecked or even aided by the United States?”
Good grief, the last two paragraphs of Heather Cox Richardson’s piece on Trump’s not-so-new alliance w/ Russia. Kremlin spokesperson: “The new administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations. This largely aligns with our vision.” 😳
“The Conscience of the Nation Must be Roused”
In the NY Times crossword for Sunday, March 2, the clue for 47-down reads, “‘At a time like this, scorching ___, not convincing argument, is needed’: Frederick Douglass”. The answer can be found in Douglass’ July 5, 1852 speech, What, to the American Slave, Is Your 4th of July?
Near the beginning of the speech, Douglass refuses to continue to debate that slavery is wrong — “there is nothing to be argued” he says. From a transcript of the speech:
Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.
I am reminded, yet again, of Toni Morrison’s assertion about the function of racism:
It’s important, therefore, to know who the real enemy is, and to know the function, the very serious function of racism, which is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says that you have no art so you dredge that up. Somebody says that you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.
Back to Douglass — a few minutes later in the speech, he outlines what is needed instead (crossword spoilers):
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
I don’t know about you, but I feel like this is relevant to current events. Must we continue to argue the wrongfulness of racism and fascism and corruption and autocracy?
Russian activist Garry Kasparov on The Putinization of America. “Unleashing Elon Musk and his DOGE cadres on the federal government, menacing Canada and European allies, and embracing Vladimir Putin’s wish list for Ukraine and beyond are not unrelated.”
How the US press would cover the 2025 Coup if it were happening in a foreign country: “…and instead ever-more-firmly embraced an authoritarian government structure united primarily by transactional kleptocracy and white nationalism.”
Skilled technologists are being forced out of government; 18F and USDS are gutted by DOGE. “Musk is not just destroying core government functions, he is also destroying the actual tech capacity of government.”
Great Timothy Snyder analysis of the Trump/Vance/Zelenskyy meeting. “There was a logic to what happened…the logic of throwing away all reason, yielding to all impulse, betraying all decency…in order to bring out the worst in the world.”
Teens Seeking Abortions Face Huge Challenges. INeedAnA Is Here to Help. The website shows the closest clinics, info about parental consent laws, and abortion funds that can help pay for care.
An interesting summary of a call with Dem Reps Raskin & Stansbury: “all 215 Dems are communicating on a scale they never have before and the senators are doing the same” & “Republicans who publicly say positive things are not doing the same privately”.
Jamelle Bouie: Democrats should skip Trump’s State of the Union address and hold their own event to explain to the American people what’s going on. (On Bluesky, AOC asked what Dems should do. Lots of ideas in the replies.)
Hero Snow Reporter Who Took on Vance Still Employed
Good news: at least for now, Lucy Welch remains employed by Sugarbush. From the Boston Globe (archive):
In a statement to the Globe, Sugarbush spokesperson John Bleh said the resort respects “the voice and opinion” of its employees but “determined that the snow report was not the appropriate medium to share that information.”
He would not comment on whether Welch had faced disciplinary action but said she “remains a member of the snow reporting team.”
JD Vance visited Vermont this weekend and skied at Sugarbush; Welch wrote the widely shared snow report for the resort that, in direct and plain language, detailed her distaste for the administration that Vance represents. Bill McKibben called Welch “a hero for the moment” — here’s a portion of her missive:
I am really scared for our future. Acting like nothing is happening here feels way scarier than losing my job. I want to have kids one day, and I want to teach them to ski. The policies and ideals of the current Administration, however, are not conducive to either of these things, because, at least how things look now, I’d never be able to afford a good life for a child anyway, and snow will be a thing of Vermont history. So please, for the sake of our future shredders: Be Better Here. It has truly been a pleasure writing your morning snow reports — I hope this one sticks with you. With love, peace, and hope, Lucy Welch
Judging from the comments on Sugarbush’s most recent Instagram photo and other social media platforms, Welch has achieved the status of folk hero in the state. Well deserved, IMO. (thx, caroline)
JD Vance cut his Vermont vacation short, perhaps because of the cold or because he felt unwelcome. Protesters lined his route all the way back to the airport in Burlington (about a 50-minute drive). Reports are that he didn’t even say thank you.
I’ve been updating this post about JD Vance’s ski vacation to Vermont with new information in the comments, including a video of Vance skiing and being called “Putin’s puppet” as he skips the lift line. Best sign: VANCE SKIS IN JEANS.
Trump Betrays Ukraine in White House Ambush of Zelenskyy
Here’s a straightforward description of Trump’s “ambush” of Volodymyr Zelenskyy from Heather Cox Richardson:
Today, President Donald Trump ambushed Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky in an attack that seemed designed to give the White House an excuse for siding with Russia in its war on Ukraine. Vice President J.D. Vance joined Trump and Zelensky in the Oval Office — his attendance at such an event was unusual — in front of reporters. Those reporters included one from Russian state media, but no one from the Associated Press or Reuters, who were not granted access.
In front of the cameras, Trump and Vance engaged in what Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo called a “mob hit,” spouting Russian propaganda and trying to bully Zelensky into accepting a ceasefire and signing over rights to Ukrainian rare-earth minerals without guarantees of security. Vance, especially, seemed determined to provoke a fight in front of the cameras, accusing Zelensky, who has been lavish in his thanks to the U.S. and lawmakers including Trump, of being ungrateful. When that didn’t land, Vance said it was “disrespectful” of Zelensky to “try to litigate this in front of the American media,” when it was the White House that set up the event in front of reporters.
Unlike many media outlets reporting on this, Richardson ties this into a previous attempt by Trump to negotiate with Zelenskyy, which ended in Trump’s first impeachment:
Zelensky came across Trump’s radar screen when, in July 2019, Trump tried to force Zelensky to say he was opening an investigation into Hunter Biden in order to smear Biden’s father Joe Biden before the 2020 election. Only after such an announcement, Trump said, would he deliver to Ukraine the money Congress had appropriated to help Ukraine fight off Russia’s 2014 invasion.
Zelensky did not make the announcement. A whistleblower reported Trump’s phone call, leading to a congressional investigation that in turn led to Trump’s first impeachment. Schiff led the House’s impeachment team.
Talking Points Memo similarly did not mince words: Trump And Vance Ambush Zelensky In Prelude To Betrayal.
President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance moved to betray a key U.S. ally that has lost hundreds of thousands of people in fending off a Russian invasion on Friday, taunting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at an Oval Office meeting after spending weeks trying to undermine the bilateral relationship.
The Oval Office blowup, in which Trump and Vance berated Zelensky as ungrateful while dismissing the prospect that Russian President Vladimir Putin might renege on a potential ceasefire agreement, is a culmination in a weeks-long campaign to choreograph an end to U.S. support for Ukraine.
It occurs to me after reading about the meeting that Trump’s actions here are partially motivated by a desire for personal retribution against Zelenskyy for not helping him smear Biden in 2019. Zelenskyy told Trump no and Trump wants revenge — and he’s gonna turn his back on Ukraine and Europe to get it.
Good Trouble: JD Vance Chastised by Vermont Snow Reporter
JD Vance, fresh off of helping his boss ambush & insult a foreign leader in the White House yesterday afternoon, is on vacation in Vermont with his family this weekend and will be skiing at Sugarbush Resort in Warren, VT, a 15-minute drive from where I live.
This morning, Sugarbush snow reporter Lucy Welch took the opportunity to make some good trouble by sending out a message of resistance against Vance and the administration he represents. The message went out via email to all Sugarbush daily report subscribers and appeared on the website for a brief time before it was removed. Here is the text of her message:
Mar 1st, 2025, 6:49 AM: Today of all days, I would like to reflect on what Sugarbush means to me. This mountain has brought me endless days of joy, adventure, challenges, new experiences, beauty, community, and peace. I’ve found that nothing cures a racing mind quite like skiing through the trees and stopping to take a deep breath of that fresh forest air. The world around us might be a scary place, but these little moments of tranquility, moments I’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy as a direct result of my employment here, give me, and I’d guess you, too, a sense of strength and stability.
This fresh forest air, is, more specifically fresh National Forest air. Sugarbush operates on 1745 acres of the Green Mountain National Forest. Right now, National Forest lands and National Parks are under direct attack by the current Administration, who is swiftly terminating the positions of dedicated employees who devote their lives to protecting the land we love, and to protecting us while we are enjoying that land.
This Administration also neglects to address the danger, or even the existence of, climate change, the biggest threat to the future of our industry, and the skiing we all so much enjoy here. Burlington, VT is one of the fastest-warming cities in the country, and Vermont is the 9th fastest-warming state. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), a resource I use every day for snow reporting, is crucial in monitoring extreme weather events and informing public safety measures, and is also experiencing widespread layoffs and defunding at the hands of the Administration.
Sugarbush would not be Sugarbush without our wonderful community. Employees and patrons alike, we are made up of some of the most kind hearted, hardworking people I have ever met. Our community is rich with folks of all different orientations, ethnicities, and walks of life, who all contribute to make this place what it is. They all love Sugarbush because it is a place where they can come to move their bodies, to connect with the land, to challenge themselves, to build character, to nourish their souls with the gift of skiing.
Many of these people are part of the LGBTQI+ community. Many (well, that’s a stretch, we all know this is an incredibly white-washed industry) are people of color. Half are women. Many are veterans or adaptive skiers who, through Vermont Adaptive, are able to access snow sports in part thanks to federal grants through the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is also facing devastating cuts. Many of our beloved employees moved across the world through an exchange program on the J1 visa to help this resort run, and they are not US citizens. ALL of these groups are being targeted, undervalued, and disrespected by the current Administration.
The beauty of National Forest land, is that anyone and everyone is welcome to enjoy it. Anyone and everyone can buy a lift ticket. I also imagine it is incredibly difficult, and likely impossible, to say “No” to the Secret Service. I hope that, instead of faulting Sugarbush management or employees for “allowing this to happen”, you can direct your anger to the source — the Administration that, in my oh-so-humble opinion, is threatening our democracy, our livelihoods, our land.
I want to reiterate how much I admire and respect my fellow employees and managers — they work so hard to make this place operate, to keep you coming back and enjoying it and making lifelong memories. Many of them may feel the same way that I do, but their hands are tied, and for good reason. They have families to support, they have benefits and health insurance to receive, they face far greater and more binding pressure from Corporate. I am in a privileged position here, in that I work only seasonally, I do not rely on this job for health insurance or benefits, and hey, waking up at 4:30 AM isn’t exactly sustainable. Therefore, I am using my relative “platform” as snow reporter, to be disruptive — I don’t have a whole lot to lose. We are living in a really scary and really serious time. What we do or don’t do, matters. This whole shpiel probably won’t change a whole lot, and I can only assume that I will be fired, but at least this will do even just a smidge more than just shutting up and being a sheep.
I am really scared for our future. Acting like nothing is happening here feels way scarier than losing my job. I want to have kids one day, and I want to teach them to ski. The policies and ideals of the current Administration, however, are not conducive to either of these things, because, at least how things look now, I’d never be able to afford a good life for a child anyway, and snow will be a thing of Vermont history. So please, for the sake of our future shredders: Be Better Here. It has truly been a pleasure writing your morning snow reports — I hope this one sticks with you. With love, peace, and hope, Lucy Welch
But hey, while we’re here…1-3” of fresh snow to kick off this interesting weekend. Chance of scattered mixed precip showers today, with warmer temps reaching 36 at the base and 28 at the summit. Right now, the snowpack is a mix of machine groomed and frozen granular, with more winter-like conditions near the summits, but the new snow may help nudge conditions into the powder/packed powder category in certain aspects and elevations. Enjoy 60 groomers and 100% open terrain today! For Saturday, we’ll be rocking 111 trails, 484 skiable acres, and 60 groomed runs. Temps are expected to be in the mid-20s and mid-30s under cloudy skies with winds out of the WNW ranging from 15-40 MPH. With all the new snow we saw this month, it is more important than ever to be diligent when skiing and riding in the woods — tree wells pose a greater risk with all this fresh pow.
Thank you, Lucy — that was wonderful.
The rest of the towns around here and in the surrounding area have turned out for protests as well…some pics and video here, here, and here. There were some protesters spotted earlier on one of the Sugarbush webcams as well.
Update: There are a bunch of updates on the protests and links to photos and videos in the comments below. Two of the photos embedded above (HIT A TREE and the pride flag one) were taken at the protest yesterday by KDO field reporter Caroline. 🙏
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