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Entries for April 2025
“This Is What a University Looks Like”
Students and faculty from Columbia University recently held a “25-hour speak-out” in support of academic freedom. Some of the remarks made during the speak-out are published at Rise Up, Columbia: part 1, part 2.
Turkuler Isiksel, political science professor:
Like other scholars in my discipline, political science, I think a lot about how in recent decades, elections have come to be used for authoritarian ends.
Many countries that hold regular elections, where leaders come to power through a competitive struggle for the people’s vote, are nevertheless authoritarian. But how can that be? Aren’t elections the same thing as democracy?
Well, elections in authoritarian regimes are a kind of window-dressing: authoritarian incumbents win elections because they ensure that they cannot lose: by restricting media freedom, manipulating information, intimidating civil society leaders, jailing dissidents, banning opposition parties, outlawing rallies and demonstrations. Once in power, they typically try to conquer 5 key social institutions:
- The press
- The bureaucracy
- The military
- The judiciary
- Universities
Why these institutions?
First, because they answer to a different authority than whoever happens to be in political power. Their activities are guided not by whoever happens to be in power, but by its own professional ethic.
- journalism is guided by a commitment to informing the public,
- the bureaucracy is guided by an ethic of professionalism and public service,
- the military is guided by respect for the chain of command and political neutrality,
- the judiciary is guided by the ethic of impartially applying the law, and
- universities like ours are guided by the search for truth.
In scholarly inquiry, disciplinary standards have priority over other metrics (profits, power, glory, public opinion). Political non-interference is a precondition for our scholarly and teaching mission.
In short, the third law of thermodynamics does not change because the commander-in-chief doesn’t like it. So these institutions present an obstacle to political and social control.
James Schamus, film & media studies professor:
I’ve been asked to speak briefly today as part of a specifically Jewish cohort of Columbia faculty. And the request as always surfaces in me two contradictory immediate reactions. The first reaction is simple: Who cares what Jews think? A genocide is a genocide is a genocide; ethno-state fascism is ethno-state fascism. The false and dangerous conflation of criticism of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism as a cover for Israel’s crimes and the fascist repression of our universities here in the states is obvious now to all: Jews have no privileged perspective from which to add to those obvious facts.
My second reaction is also simple: This genocide in Gaza is being enacted in my name, supposedly on my behalf; the destruction of American universities is being enacted in my name, supposedly on my behalf. So I am indeed called to speak out, to fight back, and to work to create alternative forms of community and identity to counter the false claim that Israel’s depredations and Trump’s destruction of my university are somehow in my interest.
(thx, joe)
From Kirkus, a list of the Best Books of the 21st Century (So Far). I’ve read some of these but want to add the rest to my pile.
Smallpox: Defeating a Virus That Killed Half a Billion People
This is a great data-driven short documentary by Neil Halloran about how smallpox was eradicated from the face of the Earth. And what it took was humanity, through the use of science & humanitarianism, answering its own plea for something to be done about it.
Some philosophers believe there was a secondary humanitarian revolution that followed the scientific revolution. And I note this because the eradication of smallpox also had these two phases. The scientific breakthroughs of inoculation and the vaccine allowed many countries to become virtually smallpox-free — but not all countries. In fact, those 300 to 500 million deaths in the 20th century? They came well after the vaccine had been discovered. So clearly, for much of the world, something more was needed than medical innovation. And fortunately there’s reason to think that these two types of progress might be connected.
Part of being a human is contemplating why some of us get so sick. It’s a practical question and it’s more than that. As we learned about disease, the theory goes that we began to think a little differently about those who fell ill — to see that their suffering truly wasn’t meant to be. We stepped away from thinking it was up to a higher power and into the belief that, well, it was up to us.
See also How smallpox claimed its final victim (I’d never heard this story before watching Halloran’s video), How Children Took the Smallpox Vaccine Around the World, and No One Knows What’s Inside the Smallpox Vaccine.
Our Freedom is Fragile: Lessons From the Jewish Children Who Fled Nazi Germany. “America is no longer a country of refuge but one that is preying upon its most vulnerable inhabitants, including children, who stand to suffer the most…”
How Photography From the Vietnam War Changed America. “The images changed how the world saw Vietnam, but especially how Americans saw their country, soldiers and the war itself, which ended 50 years ago this month.”
100 days in, the Trump regime is failing. “We should thank [our] lucky stars that Trump chose to do this in the most stupid way possible.”
They fucked up the kerning on Pope Francis’s tomb. FR A NCISC VS. “There is no historical or aesthetic reason why the kerning is so poor.”
Two weeks ago, ICE detained Mohsen Mahdawi when he showed up for his citizenship interview. Today, a judge ordered him freed. Mahdawi: “I am saying it clear and loud. To President Trump and his Cabinet: I am not afraid of you.”
The Tide Is Turning. “After 100 days of chaos, I think we can finally declare that America realizes what is happening — and cares enough to stop it.”
Trump is a hallucinating LLM. “He answers questions in a manner quite similar to early versions of ChatGPT. The facts don’t matter, the language choices are a mess, but they are all designed to present a plausible-sounding answer to the question…”
“Authoritarian followers share three tendencies: they obey authority figures from their in-group (called authoritarian submission); they punish rule breakers (authoritarian aggression); and they rigidly endorse long-held traditions (conventionalism).”
On working for Andy Warhol. “The year I worked at the Factory felt like the happiest & most exciting period of my life, a whirl of discos, parties, famous people. Yet afterwards, when I looked back, it seemed a dangerously empty, soul-destroying time…”
IL governor J.B. Pritzker urges resistance. “If it sounds like I’m becoming contemptuous of Donald Trump and the people that he has elevated, it’s because… I am. You should be too. They are an affront to every value this country was founded upon.”
Trump’s Already Lost. “You simply cannot impose an autocracy if a clear majority of the country opposes what you are trying to do at the outset, when you are trying to do it.” (Not sure I buy this? But I’d like to?)
The 35th Anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into space 35 years ago and in celebration of that milestone, Alan Taylor collected some recent images from the Hubble, whose mission is still ongoing.
This is fun: Jacob Collier Improvises the National Symphony Orchestra. “I was challenged to improvise a piece of music with an orchestra, with no plan, no sheet music, no rehearsal, and no prior discussion. Here’s what happened.”
One Hour of Mon Mothma Dancing
Ok it’s not one hour of Zemo dancing, but I’ll take it. And the YT comments are better:
“Many Bothans died to bring us this beat.”
“Sir, we have located the Rebel bass.”
This isn’t the first time this song has appeared on Andor — it’s an “intergalactic hit” called Niamos! written for the show by composer Nicholas Britell, who lives in this galaxy and was also responsible for the Succession theme song. (via @moleitau.bsky.social)
The federal minimum wage is officially a poverty wage in 2025. “The annual earnings of a single adult working full-time, year-round at $7.25 an hour now fall below the poverty threshold of $15,650.”
Vystery is a game where you click/tap to enhance sections of an abstract image and try to guess what it is in the fewest moves possible.
My friend Jodi wrote a pretty thorough crash course on how Canadian elections work (and how they compare to US elections). “In Canada, the election or campaign period must be at least 37 days and no more than 51 days.”
Hundreds of Free Images From Studio Ghibli Films
Well this is just wonderful: Studio Ghibli has uploaded hundreds of high-resolution still images from almost all of their films, including all of the major ones: Princess Mononoke, Sprited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, The Boy and the Heron, Howl’s Moving Castle, etc. etc. The images are labeled “solely for personal use by individual fans to further enjoy Studio Ghibli films” and people are urged to “please feel free to use the images within the bounds of common sense”.
Head to the list of Ghibli movies and click through to each film to find & download the stills. (via open culture)
I Just Got Into Harvard. My MAGA Grandparents’ 6-Word Reaction To My Acceptance Devastated Me. “We are not your culture war — we are your kids. We are the future.”
The Snowy Owls of Logan Airport
This is a lovely little short film about the many snowy owls that migrate down from the Arctic and settle at Boston’s Logan airport and the man who safely captures & relocates the owls away from the airport. I love this story about what a fierce hunter the snowy owl is:
A snowy owl, several years ago, took a peregrine falcon. This peregrine came in — it was a young bird — came in, harassed the snowy owl while the snowy owl was roosting and sleeping. Bopped him off the back of the head, woke the owl up. [The peregrine] proceeded to take off and flew into a flock of starlings. It grabbed one of the starlings, it took the starling to the ground. And little did it know but that the snowy owl was right onto its tail. That snowy owl came in and grabbed that peregrine falcon and had him for dinner.
(via, sorta, kottke.org)
A new game from the creator of One Million Checkboxes: One Million Chessboards. “Moving a piece moves it for everyone, instantly. There are no turns. You can move between boards.”
“There are other meat-eating caterpillars that ‘do lots of crazy things, but this takes the cake,’ said study author Dan Rubinoff with the University of Hawaii at Manoa.” I, for one, think it’s cool when bugs wear other bugs.
Silenced Science Stories
Silenced Science Stories is a collaboration between scientists and artists to tell the stories of scientific experts who have been affected by the Trump regime’s purge of their ranks.
We are organizing an illustrated series of portraits and stories of scientific experts whose work is being affected by federal budget cuts and mass firings.
We have over 30 science artists who are volunteering to create these features to communicate the careers and the important scientific research of federally employed and funded scientists.
If you’d like to get involved, they are looking for both artists and scientists with stories to tell. You can read more about the project in Physics Today. (via jonathan hoefler)
Scientists have invented (or discovered?) a new color called “olo”. “Verifying that [the] participants had indeed seen a novel color was tricky. Only one person witnesses the experience of color: the person who sees it.”
Website For MAGA-Friendly Businesses Backfires As People Use It For Boycotts. “Social media posts about PublicSquare have gone viral as Trump critics use it to find companies not to support.”
A year of hate: what I learned when I went undercover with the far right. “Leaders in the far right conceal their true nature to present a more acceptable version to potential voters, donors and sometimes their own members.”
This Five-Hundred-Word Bumper Sticker on My Tesla Explains Why I’m Not a Bad Person. “Trust me, I feel the sting of every single disapproving glare like a thousand needles. My soul trembles and withers. It is an unbearable burden.”
The Courage to Be Decent. “What matters is that acts we once took for granted as virtuous, routine, and safe — telling the truth, representing those oppressed by the state, … basic journalism — now carry some risk. They now require some courage.”
The $20,000 American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, and no touchscreen. “It’s a machine designed to be extremely basic, extremely customizable, and extremely affordable.” It’s also designed to patina (i.e. age gracefully).
“If the Trump administration can get away with violating the Constitution because it knows the courts will be too slow to prevent it, then those constitutional rights simply no longer exist.”
Rediscovering the Place That Made You Give a Damn
For his most recent video, Beau Miles (who you might remember from his “Mile an Hour” Marathon or Four-Day Commute to Work Via Kayak) returned to a pair of places (both outdoor camps) where his life took a significant turn.
I think we all suspect that world view comes from every day of your life in combination and all those experiences. But where are the moments where you thought, “Oh, here’s a big bloody fork in the road. There’s a powerful day of inspiration or a day of tragedy or something that is going to change your course”?
I’ve talked before about one of the big inflection points in my life:
When I tell people about the first time I saw the Web, I sheepishly describe it as love at first sight. Logging on that first time, using an early version of NCSA Mosaic with a network login borrowed from my physics advisor, was the only time in my life I have ever seen something so clearly, been sure of anything so completely. It was a like a thunderclap — “the amazing possibility to be able to go anywhere within something that is magnificent and never-ending” — and I just knew this was for me and that it was going to be huge and important. I know how ridiculous this sounds, but the Web is the true love of my life and ever since I’ve been trying to live inside the feeling I had when I first saw it.
I’d have to think hard about whether that was the moment or if it actually happened earlier, like going off to college (which was revelatory to me and opened me up to so many possibilities I didn’t even know existed) or deciding on physics as a major or even, much later, moving to NYC and finally feeling at home somewhere. (via sean breslin)
“In the 1980s and 1990s, PC Connection built its brand on a campaign starring folksy small-town critters. They’ll still charm your socks off.”
The Trailer for Pee-wee as Himself, an HBO Documentary Series About Pee-wee Herman
A few months ago, I wrote about Pee-wee as Himself, a two-part HBO documentary about the life and career of Pee-wee Herman (Paul Reubens) that had then just premiered at Sundance. Now we’ve got a trailer and a premiere date: May 23.
It’s weird to be in this situation, having a documentary made, because I’m used to having control of my alter ego.
The Process for Getting a Ph.D. in the US Has Changed
Randall Munroe notes that the typical path to getting a Ph.D. at an American college or university has changed somewhat in the past few months. In the alt-text for the image, he notes: “Rümeysa Öztürk was grabbed off the street in my town one month ago.”
Öztürk is still being held without evidence and a federal judge recently ruled that she must be returned to Vermont while her detainment is being challenged.
As part of their Smithsonian purge, the Trump regime is dismantling and removing the Woolworth’s lunch counter (a key artifact of the Civil Rights Movement) from the NMAAHC and returning other artifacts to their owners.
Twins Speaking Twins Speaking in Unison in Unison
Earlier this week, Aaron found this clip featuring a set of twins who were eyewitnesses to an accident and who also speak mostly in unison.
This short clip reveals more about the Powers sisters’ unusual way of communicating (“we don’t know why, but we have tried to talk separately, but it’s not ourselves, it’s not us”):
This synchronicity between twins is uncommon but not unique. In fact, Werner Herzog is filming a movie called Bucking Fastard right now that stars Rooney and Kate Mara as a pair of inseparable twin sisters based on the true story of Freda and Greta Chaplin.
Here’s how Herzog describes the Chaplin twins:
In 1981 they had a short run in the British ‘red tops,’ or tabloid newspapers, and were famous for a few weeks for being the ‘sex-crazed twins’ who were so infatuated with their neighbor, a lorry driver, that he took them to court and had a restraining order taken out against them. Their story is unique. They are the only identical twins we know of who speak synchronously.
We know that twins sometimes develop their own secret language when they are all alone by which they can exclude the rest of the world, but Freda and Greta spoke the same words at the same time. I have had the experience where they open the door, greet me, and ask me inside, all completely synchronous in word and gesture. I suppose this type of a conversation could be a ritual developed by practice. But later on, they answered questions they can’t have been expecting absolutely in unison. Sometimes they spoke separately, then Freda, for the sake of argument, would speak the first half of a sentence, at which point Greta would chime in with a word or two in unison, and then bring the sentence to a conclusion herself. Or the other way around. They wore exactly the same clothes, hairstyles, shoes. Their handbags and umbrellas were identical; they were as coordinated as a Rorschach test ready to be folded in two at any moment. When they walked, they didn’t walk in step like soldiers, left-right, left-right, but they had their inside feet together and kept time with their outside feet. It was the same with their handbags, which they didn’t both carry in their left hands; they carried them in their outer hands and their umbrellas with their inside hands. You could have folded a picture of them, and the two halves would have matched. Their gestures were synchronized, their physical awareness of each other continuous. Who was left and who was right in sitting or walking was for me the only way of telling which one was Greta and which was Freda at our early meetings.
You can see them speaking & interacting in this 1987 short documentary about the twins, A Pair of One.
I had no idea Logan was lousy with snowy owls. “Known as the ‘owl man of Logan airport’, the raptor researcher has caught and released into the wild more than 900 snowy owls that decided Boston Logan was their Boca Raton.”
Hmmm! Ken Burns & Lynn Novick are doing a 6-hour series on LBJ & the Great Society (to air in 2028). LBJ “voted against every civil rights bill during his tenure as congressman, then spearheaded the greatest civil rights measures since Reconstruction”.
Baby Steps is a forthcoming walking simulator game from the makers of QWOP (a ridiculously hard sprinting game) in which you walk around an open world.
The Testaments, Margaret Atwood’s 2019 sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, is getting a Hulu TV series of its own.
Whose Streets? Our Streets! Photos of NYC Protests, 1980-2000.
Whose Streets? Our Streets! is an exhibition of photos of protests in NYC taken from 1980 to 2000 by dozens of photographers.
New York’s streets were turbulent in the 1980s and 1990s, as residents marched, demonstrated, and rioted in response to social changes in their city as well as national and international developments. The profoundly unequal economic recovery of the 1980s, dependent upon investment banking and high-end real estate development, led to heated contests over space and city services, as housing activists opposed gentrification and called attention to the plight of thousands of homeless New Yorkers. Immigration made New York City much more diverse, but a significant proportion of white New Yorkers opposed civil rights and acted to maintain racial segregation.
Attempts to combat the high crime rates of the 1970s and early 1980s exacerbated concerns about police brutality, as innocent black and Latino New Yorkers died at the hands of the police. The culture wars wracking the nation had particular resonance in New York, a center of avant-garde art as well as of gay and lesbian and feminist activism, on the one hand, and home of the Vatican’s spokesman in the U.S., Cardinal John O’Connor, and a significant culturally conservative Roman Catholic population on the other.
The photos are grouped by subject: race relations, police brutality, war & environment, AIDS, queer activism, abortion rights, housing, education & labor, and culture wars. (via the morning news)
Boston’s MFA had been working on transferring their Benin Bronzes back to their land of origin. But instead, the wealthy donor of the bronzes is taking them back and the gallery will close.
NYC People-Watching at 780 Frames Per Second
Filmed at 780 fps with a Phantom Flex from the back of a moving SUV, James Nares’ Street depicts people walking New York streets in super slow motion.
The film runs 60 minutes (depicting about three minutes of real time footage), Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore did the soundtrack, and it’s on display at The Met until the end of May.
Update: Here’s another short clip of the full film from the National Gallery of Art.
Trump Wants You to Think Resistance Is Futile. It Is Not. “There was no deal you could cut to save your Cloud City. You could either submit or resist. It is in the last two months that we have finally begun to see resistance.”
“Monarch Waystations are places that provide resources necessary for [monarch butterflies] to produce successive generations and sustain their migration.” Over 50,000 waystations (w/ milkweed & flowers) have been built by volunteers since 2004.
Timothy Ryback on Hitler’s Terrible Tariffs. “By seeking to ‘liberate’ Germans from a globalized world order, the Nazi government sent the national economy careening backwards.” Hmm, sounds familiar…
Trump ‘Alarmists’ Were Right. We Should Say So. “Put simply: It is that bad. Liberal democracy is in danger. Fascism is a reasonable term for what we’re fighting.”
Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves From the Tyranny of the Automobile. “From the hosts of The War on Cars podcast, a searing indictment of how cars ruin everything, and what we can do to fight back.”
How I’d Fix Atlanta. “In each of these essays, a citizen of Georgia’s capital argues for one way we could make our city better.”
4x3 is a Connections-like game invented by Hank Green where you sort 9 words into 4 categories. Crucially, “one special word belongs to all 4 categories”.
Ryan Coogler’s next project is an X-Files reboot. “We’re going to try to make something really great, bro, and make something for the real ‘X-Files’ fans and maybe find some new ones.”
Oscilloscope Music — What You See Is What You Hear!
This is a visualization created on the screen of an oscilloscope by a musical piece:
Primer is an introduction to oscilloscope music, a genre and art form where vector visuals are formed by the music itself. The image is produced by using the left audio channel to control the beam on the X axis, and the right audio channel to control the beam on the Y axis.
Once I wrapped my brain around what was happening here, I found this to be quite an impressive achievement: creating beautiful & coherent visuals from non-discordant music. (via waxy)
Tool libraries offer community members access to “power washers, hammers, drills, cameras, lawn mowers, pet carriers, grills” and such to help with project. “There are no tariffs on sharing. The more we share, the more we have.”
Say the Words: American Concentration Camp. “What is happening now is not a deviation. It is an expansion. The tools were always there. The tools were always sharpened on Black bodies. They are merely being used more broadly now, and with less pretense.”
Out today from chef, humanitarian, and activist José Andrés: Change the Recipe: Because You Can’t Build a Better World Without Breaking Some Eggs.
Columbia Canceled My Course on Race and Media. I’m Going to Teach It Anyway. “This is not a time for media literacy or historical knowledge to be held hostage by institutions bending the knee to authoritarianism and fear.”
On Misdiagnosing Trump
Sherrilyn Ifill on those who got it wrong about Trump and the Republicans:
If you have a public platform & spent years calming everyone down, telling us Trump was not a danger, was not racist, & arguing that the best way to deal w/Trump was to laugh at him, berated ppl who used the word fascist, insisted that the two parties are the same, admit YOU WERE WRONG.
We need to fight the [threat] arm-in-arm. But we need leadership w/discernment. If you misdiagnosed this threat, you should not take a front seat in analyzing the current moment or providing the strategy for how we confront what we are facing w/o admitting how badly you misjudged the threat. And LISTEN.
100%. I’m glad more and more people are waking up to the reality of Trump, but if the danger wasn’t plain to you until now, you should definitely let others lead the way from here — listen more, talk less. And for the rest of us, we should be more choosy in deciding who to listen to. For me, the “ope, maybe this is fascism after all” latecomers, particularly the “rational” “centrists” insistent on both-sidesing this whole situation since 2016, are not getting a lot of my attention these days.
Trump Pretends He’s a Dictator — and the Credulous Media Too Often Nods Along. “It’s the media’s responsibility not to leave the public with a false impression.”
Clint Smith visits the National Museum of African American History and Culture after Trump’s EO concerning “improper ideology” at the Smithsonian museums. “The real story of America includes the story of slavery.”
“Chrysalis is a literary magazine by trans youth, for trans youth (created with a little help from trans adults).”
Your Mum Does the Washing
The world’s political and economic systems can all unite over one central tenet: your mum does the washing.
Libertarianism:
Your mum does the washing.
You believe you did the washing.
Egalitarianism:
That one time you did the washing
is proof it’s all equal and
no one needs feminism any more.
Americanism:
Your mum does the washing.
It’s in the Constitution.
END OF DISCUSSION.
(thx, chris)
“This debate is entirely obsolete. To what extent is the constitutional order still in effect? If we must ask, we are fully in a crisis situation; once we don’t have to ask anymore, the constitutional order will have already been overthrown.”
“None of Us Knows What the Future Will Deliver”
On Friday, Heather Cox Richardson spoke at an event marking the 250th anniversary of the lighting of the lanterns at Boston’s Old North Church. The lantern lighting — “one if by land, two if by seas” — was part of years-long effort by some American colonists to resist what they thought of as unjust behavior by a tyrant king, and led to the start of the Revolutionary War. Richardson’s speech is well worth reading.
It was hard for people to fathom that the country had come to such division. Only a dozen years before, at the end of the French and Indian War, Bostonians looked forward to a happy future in the British empire. British authorities had spent time and money protecting the colonies, and colonists saw themselves as valued members of the empire. They expected to prosper as they moved to the rich lands on the other side of the Appalachian Mountains and their ships plied the oceans to expand the colonies’ trade with other countries.
That euphoria faded fast.
Almost as soon as the French and Indian War was over, to prevent colonists from stirring up another expensive struggle with Indigenous Americans, King George III prohibited the colonists from crossing the Appalachian Mountains. Then, to pay for the war just past, the king’s ministers pushed through Parliament a number of revenue laws.
In 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, requiring the payment of a tax on all printed material—from newspapers and legal documents to playing cards. It would hit virtually everyone in the North American colonies. Knowing that local juries would acquit their fellow colonists who violated the revenue acts, Parliament took away the right to civil trials and declared that suspects would be tried before admiralty courts overseen by British military officers. Then Parliament required colonials to pay the expenses for the room and board of British troops who would be stationed in the colonies, a law known as the Quartering Act.
But what Parliament saw as a way to raise money to pay for an expensive war—one that had benefited the colonists, after all—colonial leaders saw as an abuse of power. The British government had regulated trade in the empire for more than a century. But now, for the first time, the British government had placed a direct tax on the colonists without their consent. Then it had taken away the right to a trial by jury, and now it was forcing colonists to pay for a military to police them.
You can also watch Richardson give her speech at the Old North Church (she begins at the ~1:18:30 mark):
You can also listen to her read it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. (thx, meg)
Larry David: My Dinner With Adolf. “We need to talk to the other side — even if it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity.”
Anxiety by Doechii (Official Video)
After an old, unreleased song (and accompanying video) called Anxiety went viral on TikTok a couple of months back, Doechii released it as a single last month. And now it’s got a shiny new music video.
While I prefer the charming homemade quality of the original that she made in her small NYC apartment at age 21, this version is pretty great too. It’s going to be super interesting to see what Doechii does next — looking forward to it!
A collection of movie mistakes, including a recently solved one from Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. “Movies are handmade, and just like any other art form, sometimes the seams that hold movies together become visible to the audience.”
A depth comparison of shipwrecks around the world, from the Mary Rose (~40 feet deep) to the WWII warship USS Johnston (~21,200 feet) and everything in-between (Andrea Doria, German u-boats, Lusitania, Titanic (12.5K ft)).
Johnny Cash Covers Personal Jesus
While not nearly as popular as his amazing rendition of NIN’s Hurt, Johnny Cash’s stripped-down cover of Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus is fantastic. Both songs are from Cash’s sixty-seventh studio album, American IV: The Man Comes Around (Spotify, Apple Music), which was the last one to be released before his death.
In case you want to listen to Johnny Cash all morning, here’s that version of Hurt and Bridge over Troubled Water (with Fiona Apple):
Oh, and his cover of The Beatles’ In My Life:
In the wake of Alex Ovechkin surpassing Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goals record, here are a selection of other seemingly unbreakable sports records, from LeBron’s career points to Flo-Jo’s 100 meters mark.
Wonderful photos of Broadway legends reprising their most memorable roles, including Idina Menzel (Rent), Matthew Broderick (Brighton Beach Memoirs), Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl), and Dick Van Dyke (Bye Bye Birdie).
The Goalkeeper Who Got Lost in the Fog
This is a fun story about Sam Bartram, a goalkeeper who was accidentally left on the field when a 1937 game was called off during the second half due to heavy fog.
On Christmas Day 1937, Bartram was in the papers once more after a bizarre incident in a match against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. With the score at 1-1, the game had to be called off on 61 minutes due to thick fog. Unfortunately for Bartram, he was the last to be made aware. “Soon after the kick-off, [fog] began to thicken rapidly at the far end, travelling past Vic Woodley in the Chelsea goal and rolling steadily towards me,” he wrote in his autobiography. “The referee stopped the game, and then, as visibility became clearer, restarted it. We were on top at this time, and I saw fewer and fewer figures as we attacked steadily.
“I paced up and down my goal-line, happy in the knowledge that Chelsea were being pinned in their own half. ‘The boys must be giving the Pensioners the hammer,’ I thought smugly, as I stamped my feet for warmth. Quite obviously, however, we were not getting the ball into the net. For no players were coming back to line up, as they would have done following a goal. Time passed, and I made several advances towards the edge of the penalty area, peering through the murk, which was getting thicker every minute. Still I could see nothing. The Chelsea defence was clearly being run off its feet.
“After a long time a figure loomed out of the curtain of fog in front of me. It was a policeman, and he gaped at me incredulously. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ he gasped. ‘The game was stopped a quarter of an hour ago. The field’s completely empty’. And when I groped my way to the dressing-room, the rest of the Charlton team, already out of the bath and in their civvies, were convulsed with laughter.”
London fog is no joke.
P.S. BTW, the photo that frequently accompanies other online accounts of this story is not of Bartram. kottke.org: carefully fact-checking internet fun facts since 1998. 🤷♂️
Stephen King used to “grant permission to students and aspiring filmmakers to adapt one of his short stories for $1”. He called them his Dollar Babies. Frank Darabont made one of these $1 films and later directed The Shawshank Redemption.
Don’t Let the Days Go By…
This is a lovely cover of Bush’s Glycerine by Allison Lorenzen and Midwife, set to a poignant series of very short videos of everyday life. Give this 20 seconds of your complete attention and you’ll watch the whole thing, I promise. (via @mariabustillos.com)
300 people in a small Michigan town formed a book brigade to move books to a local bookstore’s new location from its old one. The move took ~2 hours and “the brigade even put the books back on the shelves in alphabetical order.”
‘An Overwhelmingly Negative And Demoralizing Force’: What It’s Like Working For A Company That’s Forcing AI On Its Developers. “I have had some truly wild conversations about AI in a professional context that make me want to walk into the sea”.
Contemporary Oil Paintings by Sebas Velasco
Spanish artist Sebas Velasco does these cool oil paintings that seem more like snapshots than conventional portraiture, still life, or landscape. They’re captured from the height & distance of a camera, they have photographic depth-of-field, etc. I like them a lot. (via colossal)
Good god, the official US government website for Covid (covid[dot]gov) now redirects to a page on the White House site called “Lab Leak, The True Origins of Covid-19”. Our country is being run by conspiracy theory.
Yesterday’s Manchester United vs Lyon Europa League quarterfinal match was absolutely and completely bonkers. Check out the highlights.
The next Star Wars film will be called Star Wars: Starfighter, stars Ryan Gosling, will be out in mid-2027, and “will not be a prequel or a sequel, but a new standalone adventure with new characters set several years after ‘Episode Nine’”.
The Supreme Court Knows Trump Isn’t Listening Anymore. “If the justices wanted the president to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia, they know what words to use. They didn’t use them.”
Timeless Tips for “Simple Sabotage” From the CIA
In 1944, the OSS (the precursor to the CIA) produced a document called the Simple Sabotage Field Manual (PDF). It was designed to be used by agents in the field to hinder our WWII adversaries. The CIA recently highlighted five tips from the manual as timelessly relevant:
1. Managers and Supervisors: To lower morale and production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work.
2. Employees: Work slowly. Think of ways to increase the number of movements needed to do your job: use a light hammer instead of a heavy one; try to make a small wrench do instead of a big one.
3. Organizations and Conferences: When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committees as large and bureaucratic as possible. Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.
4. Telephone: At office, hotel and local telephone switchboards, delay putting calls through, give out wrong numbers, cut people off “accidentally,” or forget to disconnect them so that the line cannot be used again.
5. Transportation: Make train travel as inconvenient as possible for enemy personnel. Issue two tickets for the same seat on a train in order to set up an “interesting” argument.
Ha, some of these things are practically best practices in American business, not against enemies but against their employees, customers, and themselves. You can also find the manual in book or ebook format. (via @craigmod)
I love this interactive visualization by The Pudding of the shared DNA of music (i.e. how “borrowed beats, loaned lyrics, and multipurpose melodies” are passed down through generations of music, from Edvard Grieg (1876) to Tupac).
Olympic Gold Medalist Dominates the 100m at Her Kid’s Sports Day Event
If you’re one of those people who watches the Olympics and wishes they’d put a normal person in the competition so we can see how fast the athletes really are, this one’s for you.
Eight-time Olympic gold medalist and a 10-time world champion sprinter Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce recently announced her comeback and for her first 100m race, she competed against the other parents at her son’s sports day event. And completely demolished them.
I love how she goes flat-out…no Usain Bolt showboating or looking around near the finish line. All business. (via @rebeccablood.bsky.social)
Update: She did it back in 2023 too.
The Rise of the Infinite Fringe. “It used to be easy to kill a conspiracy theory. But the internet has made them immortal — and politically powerful.”
Matt Webb’s interesting observations on running his first marathon. “There are new experiences to be found, when you go past your limits, which aren’t like the old ones scaled up. They’re something distinct. Unanticipated and unanticipatable.”
So You Want to Be a Dissident? For many, the US has “crossed into a new & unfamiliar realm — one in which the consequences of challenging the state seem to increasingly carry real danger”. Here’s “a practical guide to courage in Trump’s age of fear”.
Historians: Quibbling Over Exact Definition Of Concentration Camp Sign Of Healthy Society. “The more pedantic one’s reasoning for a facility not fully satisfying the criteria for a true concentration camp, the better that bodes for a country’s future.”
“Toddlers (which includes defensive bureaucrats, bullies, flat earthers, […] and radio talk show hosts) may indicate that they’d like to have an argument, but they’re actually engaging in connection, noise, play acting or a chance to earn status.”
Harry Potter and the Problematic Author, a fanzine “on loving flawed media and feeling betrayed by a childhood hero”. “I was 11 years old when Harry Potter finally broke through my dyslexia and turned me into a reader.”
The American Revolution by Ken Burns
Filmmakers Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt have made a 12-hour documentary series on the Revolutionary War that will debut on PBS in November 2025. Here’s a preview (YouTube, Bluesky):
From the press release:
An expansive look at the virtues and contradictions of the war and the birth of the United States of America, the film follows dozens of figures from a wide variety of backgrounds. Viewers will experience the war through the memories of the men and women who experienced it: the rank-and-file Continental soldiers and American militiamen (some of them teenagers), Patriot political and military leaders, British Army officers, American Loyalists, Native soldiers and civilians, enslaved and free African Americans, German soldiers in the British service, French and Spanish allies, and various civilians living in North America, Loyalist as well as Patriot, including many made refugees by the war. The American Revolution was a war for independence, a civil war, and a world war. It impacted millions – from Canada to the Caribbean and beyond. Few escaped its violence. At one time or another, the British Army occupied all the major population centers in the United States – including New York City for more than seven years.
An interesting thing about this series that sets it apart from some of his others is the star-studded cast: “Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Morgan Freeman, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton, Paul Giamatti, Jeff Daniels, Mandy Patinkin, Claire Danes, Ethan Hawk, Josh Brolin…” These aren’t narrators; they’re playing actual characters in the series (Giamatti reprises his role as John Adams and Claire Danes plays Abigail):
Our cast list has never been surpassed by Hollywood or any streaming service. [No one could afford to] film all the people who have read for us, but they’ve all generously done SAG minimum: Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Liev Schreiber, Laura Linney, Sir Kenneth Branagh, Damian Lewis, Matthew Rhys — and that’s [just] a third.
In this recent interview, a charmingly shoeless Burns shares his team’s philosophy when working on projects like The American Revolution:
Given his and his team’s past few projects, including The US and the Holocaust & The Vietnam War, it will be interesting to see how the Revolution is presented and how the film is received.
About those stories of the detection of a possible molecular signature of life on a distant planet: the molecule they are talking about can also arise without life. “That’s a rather huge caveat!” (It’s never aliens. (Until it is. (Someday.)))
“AI discovered wholly new proteins before it could count the ‘r’s in ‘strawberry’, which makes it neither vaporware nor a demigod but a secret third thing.”
Ben Werdmuller on how he would run Bluesky. “Anyone will be able to permissionlessly build on that platform, but Bluesky’s services will be there to provide the best-in-class experience and de facto defaults…”
Was The Great Gatsby’s titular character a Black man who passed for white? “To read the novel without presupposing any character’s whiteness is to discover which characters are identified as white and which are not.”
On the Real-Life Story of Deep-Cover Russian Spies Living As American Families. “People who crave external validation would never make the cut as illegals, she said. ‘A spy is an actor, but an actor that doesn’t need a public or a stage.’” Fascinating!
The Traditional Designs of Ukrainian Egg Decorating
From a 1968 book, a collection of illustrations of regional patterns & designs of the art of Ukrainian pysanky, or egg decorating. From the Center for Russian, East European, & Eurasian Studies at the University of Kansas:
Pysanky are raw eggs that are decorated using an ancient wax-resistance method. The word pysanky comes from the Ukrainian word pysaty (писати), “to write.” Pysanka is the singular and pysanky is the plural. The art of making pysanky is called pysankarstvo (писанкарство).
The designs are “written” in hot wax with a special tool called a kistka (кістка) which has a small funnel attached to hold a small amount of liquid wax. The wax protects the pores of the shell from the dye. The artist, known as a pysankarka (писанкарка) writes parts of the design, dyes the egg one color, and writes more until the end, when all the layers of wax are melted off to reveal the final design.
Pysanky are an ancient art, made in Ukraine and other Slavic countries for centuries. Though many people call them Easter eggs, pysanky were made long before Ukraine adopted Christianity. The ancient symbols were then reinterpreted through the lens of Christianity later on.
From more on the regional patterns of Ukrainian pysanky and some images of actual decorated eggs, check out this page. And for a look at how these intricate patterns are made, here’s a video:
(via present & correct)
Here’s the full trailer for season two of Poker Face (Natasha Lyonne, Rian Johnson). For this season, they have tripled down on special guest stars, incl. Cynthia Erivo, Giancarlo Esposito, Kumail Nanjiani, Justin Theroux, Awkwafina, and Carol Kane.
Timothy Snyder on “the beginning of an American policy of state terror” (re: disappearing people to foreign gulags). “Whatever the government does is good, because by definition the its victims are the ‘criminals’ and the ‘terrorists.’”
The First Sighting of the Colossal Squid
A cephalopod captured on video in March has been confirmed as a juvenile colossal squid, the first live colossal squid observed in its native habitat.
It’s been 100 years since the colossal squid was formally described in a scientific paper. In its adult form, the animal is larger than the giant squid, or any other invertebrate on Earth, and can grow to 6 or 7 meters long, or up to 23 feet.
Scientists’ first good look at the species in 1925 was incomplete — just arm fragments from two squid in the belly of a sperm whale. Adults are thought to spend most of their time in the deep ocean.
A full-grown colossal squid occasionally appears at the ocean’s surface, drawn up to a fishing boat while it’s “chewing on” a hooked fish, Dr. Bolstad said. Younger specimens have turned up in trawl nets.
Yet until now, humans had not witnessed a colossal squid at home, swimming in the deep Antarctic sea.
(via @davidgrann.bsky.social)
Here’s a gift link to the WSJ article about Elon Musk’s “legion” of children that he’s had with his “harem” of women. “To reach legion-level before the apocalypse, we will need to use surrogates.” It’s all just so weird, gross, & white supremacist.
How Well Is [NYC’s] Congestion Pricing Doing? Very. “The number of complaints about excessive car-honking in January and February was 70 percent lower than last January and February.”
Seth Rogen Speaks Truth to Billionaires, Gets Censored For It
For the past 11 years, the Breakthrough Prize awards have “celebrated outstanding scientific achievements, honoring scientists driving remarkable discoveries in gene editing, human diseases, the search for the fundamental laws of the Universe and pure mathematics”. At this year’s awards, Edward Norton & Seth Rogen presented a prize in fundamental physics and Rogen took the opportunity to remind the audience — including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman — that the Trump regime is actively destroying the ability for people to pursue science in America.
And it’s amazing that others [who have been] in this room underwrote electing a man who, in the last week, single-handedly destroyed all of American science. It’s amazing how much good science you can destroy with $320 million and RFK Jr, very fast.
Rogen’s remarks were heard during the live presentation but have been scrubbed from the video on YouTube. I haven’t seen the uncensored video anywhere…drop me a line if you run across it?
The Guggenheim Fellows for 2025 have been announced and they include Miranda July, Nicole Krauss, Sheila Heti, and Sloane Crosley. (I have once again been overlooked. Next year!)
Robin Sloan’s monthly newsletter is one of my favorites, chock full of thoughts, recommendations, and links. The April 2025 issue is typically great.
New cookbook from Samin Nosrat called Good Things that includes “the things she most loves to cook for herself and for friends”. Nosrat is the author of the nearly ubiquitous Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.
Swamped Skies
Photographer Joshua Rozells on his photo of our increasingly crowded night skies:
The light pollution caused by satellites is quickly becoming a growing problem for astronomers. In 2021, over 1700 spacecrafts and satellites were put into orbit. Light pollution caused by SpaceX’s Starlink satellites are the worst offenders because they are low Earth orbit satellites, and they travel in satellite trains. One can only assume the issue will exponentially increase in the next few years, with SpaceX alone intending to launch over 40,000 satellites in total. The space industry is almost entirely unregulated, with no limits on the amount of satellites that anyone is able to launch and there is currently no regulation in place to minimise the light pollution they cause.
David Graeber (co-author of The Dawn of Everything): Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You! “Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to.”
“Drew Struzan is a legendary movie poster illustrator, the man behind all the posters we grew up with. He started with legendary titles like Blade Runner, The Thing, and Back to the Future, and continued with Indiana Jones and Star Wars.”
“The Rise of End Times Fascism”
This is a really interesting essay from Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor about the rise of end times fascism and the far right’s bet against the future.
The governing ideology of the far right in our age of escalating disasters has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism.
It is terrifying in its wickedness, yes. But it also opens up powerful possibilities for resistance. To bet against the future on this scale – to bank on your bunker – is to betray, on the most basic level, our duties to one another, to the children we love, and to every other life form with whom we share a planetary home. This is a belief system that is genocidal at its core and treasonous to the wonder and beauty of this world. We are convinced that the more people understand the extent to which the right has succumbed to the Armageddon complex, the more they will be willing to fight back, realizing that absolutely everything is now on the line.
Our opponents know full well that we are entering an age of emergency, but have responded by embracing lethal yet self-serving delusions. Having bought into various apartheid fantasies of bunkered safety, they are choosing to let the Earth burn. Our task is to build a wide and deep movement, as spiritual as it is political, strong enough to stop these unhinged traitors. A movement rooted in a steadfast commitment to one another, across our many differences and divides, and to this miraculous, singular planet.
And (emphasis mine):
If policing the boundaries of the bunkered nation is end times fascism’s job one, equally important is job two: for the US government to lay claim to whatever resources its protected citizens might need to get through the tough times ahead. Maybe it’s Panama’s canal. Or Greenland’s fast-melting shipping routes. Or Ukraine’s critical minerals. Or Canada’s fresh water. We should think of this less as old-school imperialism than super-sized prepping, at the level of the national state. Gone are the old colonial fig leaves of spreading democracy or God’s word – when Trump covetously scans the globe, he is stockpiling for civilizational collapse.
But:
In this moment, when end times fascism is waging war on every front, new alliances are essential. But instead of asking: “Do we all share the same worldview?” Adrienne urges us to ask: “Is your heart beating and do you plan to live? Then come this way and we will figure out the rest on the other side.”
Do Not Comply: A Lesson from the Last Three Months of Anti-Trans Attacks. “The cruelty lies in the ambiguity. These orders don’t explicitly bar specific conduct but deputize decision-makers to interpret them in ways that inflict the greatest harm…”
I Didn’t Think Things Would Get This Chaotic When We Elected President Donkey Kong. “But for all the talk from pundits about how we’d see a new side of Donkey Kong once he took office, well, not so much. Turns out we got exactly what we voted for.”
Harvard Tells Trump to Go Pound Sand
Harvard is refusing to comply with Trump’s demands related to his regime’s racist, xenophobic political agenda, including a threat to cut $9 billion in research funding. From the AP:
Harvard President Alan Garber, in a letter to the Harvard community Monday, said the demands violated the university’s First Amendment rights and “exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI,” which prohibits discrimination against students based on their race, color or national origin.
“No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Garber wrote, adding that the university had taken extensive reforms to address antisemitism.
“These ends will not be achieved by assertions of power, unmoored from the law, to control teaching and learning at Harvard and to dictate how we operate,” he wrote. “The work of addressing our shortcomings, fulfilling our commitments, and embodying our values is ours to define and undertake as a community.”
You can read Garber’s letter and the letter Harvard received from the Trump regime.
I recently attended a virtual talk and Q&A with Timothy Snyder and when he was asked about Columbia and other schools capitulating to Trump’s demands and what needs to happen in order to stop it, he replied something along the lines of: “Some big school is gonna have to stick their neck out and take the hit. Say ‘no’ unequivocally to Trump and get their funding pulled. Lead by example and others will follow. Solidarity is the only way out of this.” Good on Harvard1 for helping to lead the way on this…hopefully more schools will find their backbone after this.
- But bad on Harvard for the Claudine Gay fiasco. And they are hardly the only ones pushing back on Trump, but they are one of the 5 or 6 schools in the nation that people pay close attention to.↩
Ars Technica is doing a three-part series on the history of the internet; here’s part one, which covers ARPANET, IMPs, TCP/IP, RFCs, DNS, CompuServe, etc. “It was the first time that autocomplete had ruined someone’s day.”
In a meeting today, dictators Donald Trump & Nayib Bukele talked about building Salvadoran concentration camps for US citizens and defying a Supreme Court order to return Abrego Garcia from unlawful detention. “You gotta build about five more places.”
Palestinian Protester on His Way to Citizenship Test Arrested by ICE in VT
From Akela Lacy at The Intercept, Palestinian Student Leader Was Called In for Citizenship Interview — Then Arrested by ICE (archive):
Mohsen K. Mahdawi arrived at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Burlington, Vermont, on Monday. A Palestinian student at Columbia University, he hoped that, after 10 years in the U.S., he would pass the test to become a naturalized citizen.
Instead, agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested him and began the process to deport him to the occupied West Bank. Mahdawi, a leader of the campus protest movement against Israel’s war on Gaza, became yet another green card holder arrested and facing removal.
“Mohsen Mahdawi was unlawfully detained today for no reason other than his Palestinian identity,” Mahdawi’s attorney Luna Droubi said in a statement to The Intercept. “He came to this country hoping to be free to speak out about the atrocities he has witnessed, only to be punished for such speech.”
Windsor County state senator Rebecca White took a video of Mahdawi being escorted in handcuffs (also on Reddit & YouTube) from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in Colchester, VT by hooded and masked men to a group of unmarked vehicles.
(thx, caroline)
Director Ryan Coogler Breaks Down Film Aspect Ratios
Filmmaker Ryan Coogler (Black Panther, Creed) is a big ol’ movie dork, and it’s endearing to watch him break down all the different types of film, aspect ratios, and projection options as he explains how many ways you can watch his latest movie, Sinners, when it comes out this week. Super informative too if you’ve always wondered about the different IMAX formats and just what the heck it means when someone you love gets excited about 70mm.
Why do AI company logos look like buttholes? “The fluidity and warmth of human-centered thinking through the use of circles is perhaps the most elegant way anyone has ever described making a logo that resembles an anus.”
Are You Looking for Work? Are You Looking to Fill a Position?
Hey, it’s been awhile since we’ve done one of these. If you are out there looking for work, post a quick summary of what you do, what you’re looking for, and a link to your resume/portfolio/LinkedIn/contact info and maybe someone here will see it and want to hire you. Likewise, if you or your company/organization has job openings, post a brief description and a link to the opening(s). Full-time, freelance, remote-only, in-person, tech, non-tech, anything goes.
Since comments can only be left by members, if you’re not a member and are looking for work, send me your comment via email and I will post it for you. (If you are on the hiring side, you can afford to expense the membership fee to post a job posting. 😉 But if you’re a non-profit, email away!)
I don’t know what counts as spammy when I’m literally asking for ppl to post links, etc. but if it happens, I’ll delete spam listings.
Oh, and I’m happy to accept finders fees if your company hires someone from the comments here. Ok, let’s see what you’ve got.
M. Gessen: “This is my radical proposal for universities: Act like universities, not like businesses. Spend your endowments. Accept more, not fewer students. Open up your campuses and [bring] education to communities. Create a base. Become a movement.”
Unequal Rights
Heather Cox Richardson on where we are right now in terms of what type of government we currently have:
Here’s the thing: Once you give up the idea that we are all equal before the law and have the right to due process, you have given up the whole game. You have admitted the principle that some people have more rights than others. Once you have replaced the principle of equality before the law with the idea that some people have no rights, you have granted your approval to the idea of an authoritarian government. At that point, all you can do is to hope that the dictator and his henchmen overlook you.
They are 100% going to try to do this with citizens:
Make no mistake: as Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson recently warned, if the administration can take noncitizens off the streets, render them to prison in another country, and then claim it is helpless to correct the error either because the person is out of reach of U.S. jurisdiction, it could do the same thing to citizens.
Meanwhile, Trump’s approval rating is still well above 40% (and is even higher if you don’t factor in the economy/tariffs). 🤷♂️
Letter from a high-ranking FBI official who recently resigned. “I took an oath to defend the Constitution. The unqualified leaders Donald Trump chose to lead the bureau act like they took an oath to Trump personally.”
I was chuffed to see that KDO’s own Edith Zimmerman has a cartoon in the New Yorker today! Go Edith!
George Monbiot: Rightwing populists will keep winning until we grasp this truth about human nature. “Economic inequality breeds resentment and a desire to get even. That’s what fuels support for even incompetent regimes.”
I am catching up on what happened in season one of The Last of Us by watching and reading recaps. Season 2 starts tonight on HBO & Max at 9pm ET.
New Study Finds Average American Stands No Chance Against What’s Coming. “The typical American is toast.”
The Tariff Saga Is About One Thing. “Trump’s desire to dominate others is the driving psychological force of his administration.”
Busy Day at the Airport
Cy Kuckenbaker compressed five hours of landing planes into 30 seconds of video. I love this. A great example of time merge media. (via colossal, which has been killing it lately)
All the headlines are following Trump’s messaging of a “pause”, but the fact is that goods imported from practically every country in the world are taxed at 10% and Chinese goods at 125%. These damaging tariffs are all Trump’s doing. Nothing is “fixed”.
Clean energy powered 40% of global electricity in 2024, report finds. “The milestone was powered by a boom in solar power capacity, which has doubled in the last three years.”
What It Feels Like, Right Now. “It’s hard to focus. It’s hard to focus on the things in front of me, that I need to do. It’s hard to focus on the news, because it’s not just one thing, it’s a hundred things, news like fire ants…”
We Should All Be Very, Very Afraid. “The administration could create its own gulags with no more judicial review than existed when Stalin did the same thing in the Soviet Union.”
If You Heard What I Heard is a collection of Holocaust stories as told by survivors to their grandchildren. “Our generation is the last to ever hear our grandparents’ stories firsthand, in the same room, over the course of decades, directly from them.”
From the NYT’s Overlooked obituary series: Katharine McCormick, Force Behind the Birth Control Pill. In the 20s, she smuggled 1000 diaphragms into the US in her luggage and later funded the development of the birth control pill.
The List Keepers, on the informal efforts to keep track of the toll of AIDS in the theater industry. “Sometime around 1982, McAssey had opened a pocket-size spiral-bound diary and written LOST FRIENDS at the top of a page.”
Former Substack creators say they’re earning more on new platforms. “Paying someone $100,000 a year to host your blog. Come on buddy. I said I hate being a businessman, but even I know that’s fucking stupid.”
ICE director’s dream: “Squads of trucks rounding up immigrants for deportation the same way that Amazon trucks crisscross American cities delivering packages […] like (Amazon) Prime, but with human beings.” This is pure evil.
Speedrunning Economic Collapse for Funsies
Ryan Broderick on how, with the trade war that Trump’s tariffs has unleashed, we are speedrunning Brexit and other hyper-inflationary financial crises (thread) and Americans may soon find out what happens when US dollars don’t buy anything.
So from my uniquely weird perspective after living in the UK through Brexit, being in India during Modi’s demonetization, and living in Brazil when the real tanked during the Bolsonaro administration, I can confidently say that Americans do not and can not understand how bad this is going to be.
To sort of broadly describe what is about to happen if the Trump admin doesn’t reverse course, we are quickly racing towards a world where not only does our money just not work correctly anymore day to day, but the background radiation of a crumbling economy will become impossible to ignore.
After the Brexit referendum, everything in London just got slightly worse. A year or two in, you could feel it. But that’s because it took five years for the country to actually leave the EU. We’re speedrunning that. In Brazil, prices would change overnight, stores just wouldn’t have stuff.
There’s more; read the whole thing. Broderick was reacting to this brief WSJ piece (archive):
The broad selloff in U.S. stocks and bonds, and the continuing decline in the dollar, represents a “simultaneous collapse in the price of all U.S. assets,” analysts at Deutsche Bank said Wednesday. They warned that “unchartered territory” lies ahead.
- Markets are dedollarizing, they said, citing the lack of evidence that investors are hoarding dollar liquidity— a dynamic that in previous market routs fueled Treasury and U.S. dollar rallies but this time is leading to declines in the prices of both.
- The administration is encouraging the Treasury selloff, they said, in a bid to bring down U.S. asset valuations—a decision they said now is exposing the fact that “reducing bilateral trade imbalances is functionally equivalent to lowering demand for U.S. assets as well.”
- A financial war with China could lie ahead, they conclude, contending that “there is little room now left for an escalation on the trade front” and that “there can be no winner to such a war.”
I’ve been saying since his election that Trump was going to drive the economy into the ditch. This is more like driving it off a cliff.
The Phoenician Scheme
Ok so I’ve watched the trailer for the new Wes Anderson movie, The Phoenician Scheme, a couple of times and I still don’t know what it’s actually about? But from the looks of things, it is more of the same for people who like that sort of thing, which is lucky for me.
Also, Michael Cera might be the most Wes Anderson-coded actor that’s never before been in a Wes Anderson movie.
Which types of people aren’t big fans of “impartial” news? People who don’t have power. “The poor, those with less education, young people, and women are less likely to prefer ‘impartial’ news sources over those that align with their own views.”
The Rules of Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote Cartoons
Speaking of the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, animator Chuck Jones and his team were said to follow these simple rules when creating the cartoons:
- The Road Runner cannot harm the Coyote except by going “meep, meep.”
- No outside force can harm the Coyote — only his own ineptitude or the failure of Acme products. Trains and trucks were the exception from time to time.
- The Coyote could stop anytime — if he were not a fanatic.
- No dialogue ever, except “meep, meep” and yowling in pain.
- The Road Runner must stay on the road — for no other reason than that he’s a roadrunner.
- All action must be confined to the natural environment of the two characters — the southwest American desert.
- All tools, weapons, or mechanical conveniences must be obtained from the Acme Corporation.
- Whenever possible, make gravity the Coyote’s greatest enemy.
- The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.
- The audience’s sympathy must remain with the Coyote.
- The Coyote is not allowed to catch or eat the Road Runner.
The rules are made only slightly less interesting by their fiction; according to Wikipedia, long-time Jones collaborator Michael Maltese said he’d never heard of the rules.
Can I Teach the First Amendment If I Only Have a Green Card? “[Trump’s chilling actions] also make it difficult to work out how to teach cases that boldly proclaim this country is committed to a vision of free speech that, right now, feels very far away.”
25 Films to Help Understand the US Today
For The Guardian, the film critic Guy Lodge has complied a list of 25 films that “shed light on the US under Trump”. From the introduction by filmmaker Alex Gibney:
This is a dire moment in the US. It’s a moment where there’s an opportunity for people with a lot of money to rip apart all of the guidelines enacted by the Roosevelt administration, way back in the day, to guard against the brutality of unfettered capitalism. Capitalists like to have all the power that they want, whenever they want it. They’re not much interested in democracy either, it turns out. Nor, apparently, the rule of law. The government is not the solution — it’s the problem. And now a vengeful president who just wanted a get-out-of-jail-free card is going to punish his enemies and show us all how to destroy the American administrative state by using the big stick of Elon Musk’s chequebook.
Here are a few of the films and their trailers — you can check out the article for the rest.
I Am Not Your Negro (Raoul Peck, 2016):
Election (Alexander Payne, 1999):
White Noise (Daniel Lombroso, 2020) {Note: this is not the DeLillo adaptation}:
American Factory (Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar, 2019):
I’m curious…what films would you add to the list?
Happy 10th birthday to Lit Hub, a site I’ve been reading and linking to more frequently over the past few months. “I believe deeply in making our small corner of the internet a better place, publishing work that elevates, interrogates, and inspires…”
DJ Bart Simpson & The Hood Internet
In a recent episode of The Simpsons, Bart becomes a DJ and KDO favorites The Hood Internet wrote the music and did all of Bart’s mixes. They also made a ending credits remix of some of the most memorable Simpsons songs, including See My Vest, Mr. Plow, Do the Bartman, We Do (the Stonecutters song), Dr. Zaius, and The Monorail Song:
How to Enter the US With Your Digital Privacy Intact. “Crossing into the United States has become increasingly dangerous for digital privacy. Here are a few steps you can take to minimize the risk of Customs and Border Protection accessing your data.”
On the Episode That Changed Ira Glass’s This American Life Forever. Or, On the Importance of Fact-Checking. “There was only one problem. In almost every salient detail, the story was a fabrication.”
Torpedo Bats and the Physics of the Sweet Spot. They invented a new legal-for-now baseball bat shaped like “an elongated bowling pin” and the Yankees are using it?
Thomas Zimmer: “If you are feeling overwhelmed by the stupidity, the chaos, the vile fanaticism, the immeasurable damage and suffering, the specter of global turmoil, just know that I am feeling that too. Because this is just an insane situation.”
America’s Future Is Hungary
Anne Applebaum writes about how Trump, Bannon and other MAGA conservatives love what Hungarian Prime minister Viktor Orbán is going to his country.
Once widely perceived to be the wealthiest country in Central Europe (“the happiest barrack in the socialist camp,” as it was known during the Cold War), and later the Central European country that foreign investors liked most, Hungary is now one of the poorest countries, and possibly the poorest, in the European Union. Industrial production is falling year-over-year. Productivity is close to the lowest in the region. Unemployment is creeping upward. Despite the ruling party’s loud talk about traditional values, the population is shrinking. Perhaps that’s because young people don’t want to have children in a place where two-thirds of the citizens describe the national education system as “bad,” and where hospital departments are closing because so many doctors have moved abroad. Maybe talented people don’t want to stay in a country perceived as the most corrupt in the EU for three years in a row. Even the Index of Economic Freedom — which is published by the Heritage Foundation, the MAGA-affiliated think tank that produced Project 2025 — puts Hungary at the bottom of the EU in its rankings of government integrity.
Oh, and the corruption:
The Hungarian businessman and a Hungarian economist I spoke with — both of whom insisted on anonymity, for fear of retaliation — had separately calculated that NERistan amounts to about 20 percent of the Hungarian economy. That means, as the economist explained to me, that 20 percent of Hungary’s companies operate “not on market principles, not on merit-based principles, but basically on loyalty.” These companies don’t have normal hiring practices or use real business models, because they are designed not for efficiency and profit but for kleptocracy—passing money from the state to their owners.
An organization called Direkt36 has made an hour-long documentary about the corruption enabled by Orbán…it’s free on YouTube:
Three key points on how economic crises can lead to the breakdown of authoritarian regimes. “1. Regimes break down when elites turn on each other about how to deal with an economic crisis.” It becomes a matter of “who needs to avoid bankruptcy”.
Rebecca Solnit on the importance of Preaching to The Choir in activism. “‘Have we thought critically about why we agree?’ It’s a call to go deeper, to question yourself.” It’s also good to hear “the great stories more than once”.
“If we want to bring the world back from the brink, we have to deal with him.” Quick quiz: is that a quote from the latest Mission Impossible movie trailer or about the current inhabitant of the White House? (Also, Mr. Milchick!)
Tesla’s Cybertruck Is The Auto Industry’s Biggest Flop In Decades
Move over Ford Edsel, Pontiac Aztek, and AMC Pacer, there’s a new automotive flop in town: the dumpster-forward Tesla Cybertruck.
After a little over a year on the market, sales of the 6,600-pound vehicle, priced from $82,000, are laughably below what Musk predicted. Its lousy reputation for quality — with eight recalls in the past 13 months, the latest for body panels that fall off — and polarizing look made it a punchline for comedians. Unlike past auto flops that just looked ridiculous or sold badly, Musk’s truck is also a focal point for global Tesla protests spurred by the billionaire’s job-slashing DOGE role and MAGA politics.
“It’s right up there with Edsel,” said Eric Noble, president of consultancy CARLAB and a professor at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California (Tesla design chief Franz von Holzhausen, who styled Cybertruck for Musk, is a graduate of its famed transportation design program). “It’s a huge swing and a huge miss.”
It’s impossible for me to drive past one of these things without laughing at and/or mocking it. I was out driving with my daughter last week and a Cybertruck came into view and before I could even say anything, she said, “it’s just so *bad*”. (via @mims.bsky.social)
An editorial in Nature: “A brain drain would impoverish the United States and diminish world science”.
America Is Watching the Rise of a Dual State. “For most people, the courts will continue to operate as usual — until they don’t.” Great piece on how autocrats both use and flout the law to suppress & control while keeping capitalism humming along.
Silence is Collaboration: Academics Must Speak Out Against Fascism. “We will call these arrests what they are: abductions by ICE cowards in plainclothes and facemasks.”
I’m a Free-Thinking Centrist with Only Right-Wing Ideas. “I voted for Trump, but I respect Democrats like John Fetterman who are willing to reach across the aisle to promote ethnic cleansing.”
Travel maven Rick Steves made a great hour-long documentary about the history of fascism in Europe. “We’ll see the horrific consequences: genocide and total war.”
This Is the Holocaust Story I Said I Wouldn’t Write by Taffy Brodesser-Akner defies easy explanation but is very much worth reading. “Does a life have to be meaningful? Can’t it just be a life?”
Photos of the Hands Off! Protests
On Saturday, millions of Americans flooded the streets of cities, small towns, and every other sized municipality in the nation to protest the illegal and damaging actions of the Trump regime. These photos published by a number of media outlets show the scale, enthusiasm, and creativity of these peaceful protests, in the US and around the world.
- Photos: Nationwide Protests Against Trump and Musk (The Atlantic).
- Anti-Trump protests hit cities worldwide — in pictures (The Guardian).
- Photos: See demonstrators around the country rally in ‘Hands Off!’ protests (NPR).
- Scenes and Signs From Saturday’s Mass Anti-Trump Protests (New York msagazine).
- In photos: “Hands Off!” protesters rally against Trump across the U.S. (Axios).
- PHOTO COLLECTION: Trump Hands Off Protests (AP).
- A pair of threads on Bluesky from @jbendery.bsky.social and @kremlplots.bsky.social.
- Anti-Trump protesters gather in Washington, other US cities (Reuters).
A rare interview with Tracy Chapman. “But I grew up across the street from a public library, and it was the only place my mom would let me go on my own. It was my second home, and I read everything that I could get.”
Season Three Trailer for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
I am still stinge watching my way through the second season of Strange New Worlds, but the third season of the show premieres sometime this summer, so I’d better finish it up before then. Anyway, I love this show and crew and the trailer looks appropriately kooky and wacky so let’s goooo!
They’re gonna do a season three of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. I enjoyed both seasons, but the second one was definitely better.
There’s a new Frank Lloyd Wright house that was just built in Ohio. The home was constructed according to plans completed by Wright just before his death.
The extended trailer for Mario Kart World, the new Kart title launching on Nintendo Switch 2 in a couple months. Love a new Kart.
50 Ways to Rest. “Wander slowly around the block. Look at the trees. Look at the clouds. Look at the moon. Stand barefoot on grass.”
NYC is getting a new subway map, based on the 1972 Unimark/Vignelli map. I know this puts me in the minority of design aficionados, but I have never cared for the Vignelli map — too much style over substance IMO.
The championship match of the 2025 Tournament of Books pits Percival Everett’s James against Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! What a matchup! I won’t spoil the result…you’ll have to click through.
It Is All Just So Very Very Stupid
Folks, I can’t even today. I gotta tap out. I hope to be back with you tomorrow.
M. Gessen: Unmarked Vans. Secret Lists. Public Denunciations. Our Police State Has Arrived. “The United States has become a secret-police state. Trust me, I’ve seen it before.”
Nature poll of 1600 US scientists: 75% are considering leaving the country, “many said they were looking for jobs in Europe and Canada” or “anywhere that supports science”.
Clickens! Judge paintings of chickens based on characteristics like persistence, altruism, petulance, clairvoyance, and friendliness.
Lots of great comments from students, parents, and faculty in “The End of College Life?” thread about how they’re thinking about the changes to higher education in the US under the Trump regime.
Timothy Snyder: “The American imperialism directed towards Denmark and Canada is not just morally wrong. It is strategically disastrous.”
An E-Bike Transformed My Family’s Life. “I felt connected to our neighborhood in a way I hadn’t ever experienced.”
Margaret Sullivan on “the need for straight talk right now. Enough with soft-pedaling from the media. Clarity! Courage! The truth!”
This ProPublica story about ICE deportation flights, with intel from flight attendants who work them, is horrific. “Don’t talk to the detainees. Don’t feed them. Don’t make eye contact.” The Trump admin is treating these people like animals.
Hands Off! A Day of Action and Protest on April 5.
On April 5th, a group of prominent national organizations (including 50501, Indivisible, Hands Off, MoveOn, and Women’s March) and many local organizations are all coming together for a day of nationwide action and protest.
This is a nationwide mobilization to stop the most brazen power grab in modern history. Trump, Musk, and their billionaire cronies are orchestrating an all-out assault on our government, our economy, and our basic rights — enabled by Congress every step of the way.
They want to strip America for parts — shuttering Social Security offices, firing essential workers, eliminating consumer protections, and gutting Medicaid — all to bankroll their billionaire tax scam. They’re handing over our tax dollars, our public services, and our democracy to the ultra-rich.
If we don’t fight now, there won’t be anything left to save.
This is gonna be huge. There are events all over the country on April 5, and if there isn’t one near you, you can plan your own. There are signs you can print out to bring (or design/bring your own).
For more information, you can check out the Hands Off! website, the See You In the Streets site, or this informative collection of info from several sites/orgs.
A two-part online training event on the Fundamentals of Organizing. It kicked off tonight at 5:30pm ET and part 2 is on April 8.
The record for the longest individual speech in the Senate belongs to segregationist Strom Thurmond. He spoke for 24 hours & 18 minutes in a racist and futile attempt to prevent the Civil Rights Act of 1957 from passing.
Mercator Extreme is a fun tool that you can use to choose any point on Earth as the pole and then view the resulting ultra-distorted Mercator map.
With a headline like this, how can you resist? On the Best (Worst) Best Man Speech Ever (at My Super Mario-Themed Wedding). “After he finished his speech, he received applause and cheers from one and a half tables and dead silence from the rest.”
“A fragile 13th century manuscript fragment, hidden in plain sight as the binding of a 16th-century archival register, has been discovered in Cambridge and revealed to contain rare medieval stories of Merlin and King Arthur.”
No One Is Safe From America’s Abusive Immigration Authorities Anymore. “Immigration agents are increasingly using the full statutory powers that they always had, choosing to detain, abuse, and deport these tourists & workers instead of working with them.”
Historian Heather Cox Richardson says that Facebook is removing her posts. Her two most recent posts, both critical of the Trump regime, are not on the platform anymore.
Here’s What Life Was Like Before the Affordable Care Act
From Aubrey Hirsch, It Could Be Much, Much Worse, an illustrated guide to what health care and insurance was like in the US before the ACA.
You can also find this guide on Instagram.
Of Course Trump Will Tank the Economy. It’s What Republicans Do. “They screw up the economy. Later down the line, Democrats get elected and have to fix everything.”
John Lithgow Reads 20 Lessons on Tyranny by Timothy Snyder
In this 10-minute video, John Lithgow reads each of the lessons from Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (Bookshop).
Number two: defend institutions. It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of our institutions unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about — a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union — and take its side.
Snyder himself made a series of 20 videos a few years ago in which he reads each lesson and then provides more context on what it means. Here’s the first episode on anticipatory obedience (he starts reading after a short intro, at about the 2:40 mark):
Lesson number one is: do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.
So, this is the first lesson because it’s about the basic choice we make when we confront difficulty. It’s about the choice of all choices: are we going to go with the new flow or are we going to stand — if only a little bit, only hesitantly — as long as we can against the current?
Again, the whole series of 20 videos can be accessed from this playlist.
Tressie McMillan Cottom: AI is mid tech for mid tasks. “The use cases for artificial intelligence across every domain of work and life have started to get silly really fast.”
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