I used "smooth-brained" as a dig until a father of a boy with lissencephaly -- the medical term for the condition -- wrote me an incredibly patient note to explain what his son had to deal with.
This phrase is a gratuitous insult to parents and children who are already suffering. Don't use it.
Jawn (/jôn/)
A term used by New York transplants to pander to locals and/or cynically promote their recently opened boutique, restaurant, or bakery.
www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-g...
It’s ironic that they’re like “if we do ethnic cleansing we’ll have a high trust neighborly society” and then Minneapolis is literally doing high trust neighborly society and they’re like nooooo
Many Americans are terrible neighbors to each other, and that is why MN is striking everyone as extraordinary activism... when they are telling us that it is not. They're good neighbors!
It's no wonder that "being a shitty neighbor" is the hallmark of our domestic politics and our foreign policy.
More on why I left The Washington Post.
This is a preview from tomorrow's newsletter, in which I will also be disclosing all of our funding sources from 2025.
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Yes, this is my local Target yesterday. One reason they can stage there is their parking lots have been pretty empty since they cut DEI. My only consolation is the bathroom Bovino exits is likely the dirtiest one ever, as they’ve always been filthy and likely worse now
bsky.app/profile/matt...
From a good friend in Minneapolis: "Target is allowing ICE to stage in their parking lots, use their restrooms, and abduct people from inside their stores - so if you weren’t boycotting already, now is the time." They were staging in Chicago as well.
Such a wonderful act of generosity and understanding 💕
It’s the “season of love and giving”…but this year, doesn’t it seem more like a “season of fear and taking”? Like many of you, I’ve been saddened by the human impact of draconian government budget cuts and how angry many housed Americans are at unhoused Americans.
🧵 1 of 9
Go volunteer for a progressive launching a “hopeless” campaign against an extremely entrenched incumbent currently squatting in a safe Blue seat. The worst thing that happens, is that you drag the incumbent to the Left. Best case? Zohran Mamdani, who was polling at 6% in January.
I knew it would take less than a day for a tiktok dj to make something.
3 times in the past 2 weeks, a WashPost editorial "has taken on matters in which Bezos has a financial or corporate interest without noting his stake. In each case, the Post's editorial line landed in sync with its owner's interests"
Via @davidfolkenflik.bsky.social
www.npr.org/2025/10/28/n...
Three times in the past two weeks, editorials at the 'Washington Post' failed to disclose that they focused on matters in which owner Jeff Bezos had a material interest.
Three high schoolers founded a book club that reads some of the country's most frequently banned books after a state law removing books with sexual content was signed in 2023. Two years later, many of the books have been reshelved and parts of the law can't be enforced.
There’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for people to build on the rubble of what’s being destroyed before our eyes. Private corporations bending over to forcefeed everyone government-approved speech is evil and amoral, but more than anything this creates boring, inauthentic, unwatchable shit.
Becoming increasingly clear we’re gonna have to build a parallel infrastructure for all the media we really love. The reason all of this is happening under the color of law is hyperconsolidation, dissent being traded straight up for merger approval, or fear of harassment.
By the way, you can in fact run a media business where people give you money for goods and services. 56k+ people give The Onion ~$100 and we give them a year of newspapers. This business didn’t exist last year in this way. People will pay for good shit. Now’s the time to break glass and go for it.
The annoying spam texts destroying the Democratic brand:
$678M raised through those spam tactics
$282M to one consulting firm: Mothership Strategies.
$11M to actual campaigns (1.6%)
The party isn’t just treating donors like marks—it’s being fleeced itself yet continues to back Mothership.
The reason why fundraising text read like scams is because they are. The political fundraising system has imported the tactics of elder financial fraud. These tactics are designed to filter out skeptics and specifically target and exploit seniors.
95% of scam PAC donors are 65+, costing > $500m.
Re-upping this again, please spread far and wide:
Journalists everywhere need to stand in solidarity on this killing spree and resulting news blackout. See below in this thread for some actions and stay tuned here https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-hits-gaza-hospital-killing-least-20-people-including-five-journalists-2025-08-25/
If any of these are your reps, please take 5 min today and call. Scripts and numbers at 5calls.org. Kill this absolute travesty of a bill.
If you just look at social media instead of news sources, you might believe the “big beautiful bill” has passed already.
It hasn’t. It still needs to go through the House, where it has a strong chance of failing — so yes, feel as sad and angry and scared as you need, but PLEASE CALL YOUR REPS.
It has a very real chance of failing—and *even if it passes with changes* it still has to go BACK to the Senate to get voted on AGAIN. And it barely made it through the first time
This thing is way more killable than you’d think and the longer we can drag out the process the more killable it gets
I work as an elder and hospice caregiver, which I am oddly passionate about. I can love on them shamelessly and no one complains about my codependence. It's a win-win situation. Many of my caregiving colleagues complain about the repetitive questions and, sometimes reactions, of the elderly, especially when those patients happen to read the newspaper, especially with the current downward spiral of our country — as if these people haven't lived through enough horror... I love my dementia peeps, but sometimes wonder if there's a Guinness Book World Record for how many times an hour a dementia patient can repeat the same question — it's got to be in the hundreds. At least with small children, they ask different questions. Dementia patients will get stuck on one short question and ask it until you can interrupt their train(carousel) of thought and successfully redirect their attention. That carousel is pretty manic sometimes. A couple days ago, I picked up my mail from the post office and drove over to the nursing home to take (let's call her "Miss Daisy") Miss Daisy out for a drive. Before we took off on our road trip, to the end of The Road and back, in our landlocked little town (Juneau, Alaska), I set my copy of The Onion down in front of her. Over our two-hour excursion, tiny Miss Daisy read that front page at least a dozen times and each time she would snicker, giggle, and guffaw, then put it down on the dash board and, a minute later, discover it anew. I think it was the best afternoon of my life. We don't often hear them laugh and when they do, it's the sweetest thing you've ever heard. ... Thank you, thank you, thank you, for the really important work all of you do. You make the world a better place.
I got permission to share this, and I'm extremely grateful for that.
The Onion got this letter from one of our subscribers in Alaska. She works with dementia patients and decided to leave a copy in the car for each one.
This email made my year. Read it and you'll see what I mean. People are good.
Text: ICE spotted 7th & Snyder. 6/10/25 9am: ICE has been spotted on 7th & Snyder Avenue, waiting in three unmarked vehicles wearing tan vests. Show up and alert your neighbors! We keep us safe!
🚨 SOUTH PHILLY: ICE was spotted on 7th & Snyder at 9am this morning; their two unmarked Dodge SUVs (one gray, one black) are heading South on Broad as of 10am. Community members have eyes on them—alert your neighbors!
KKF 7661 gray Dodge SUV
LTM 932 black Dodge SUV
VESLA HOME Kitchen Faucet, KZH Bathroom Faucet and CEINOL Bathroom Faucet
#WARNING: CPSC is warning consumers to immediately stop using VESLA HOME kitchen faucets, KZH bathroom faucets & CEINOL bathroom faucets, all sold on Amazon.com. The faucets were tested and found to contain lead that can leach into water at levels that can be particularly harmful to young children.
