incredible

I rarely do this, but here goes.

Dems should have VERY clear messaging on supplemental tied to the ouster of Whiskey Pete, Jared, and Witkoff. They've all ABSOLUTELY bolloxed the situation and if Trump wants $$, he needs to get rid of all of them.

i love Heaney

from Punishment

[
I who have stood dumb
when your betraying sisters,
cauled in tar,
wept by the railings,

who would connive
in civilized outrage
yet understand the exact
and tribal, intimate revenge.
]

“Girls Just Want to Have Fun” peaks at #2 today in ‘84

“We got every racial group of girl—mixed, Spanish, white, black, Asian,” said Lauper, “so that every little girl who looked at that video would .. understand that every young woman, older woman, every person is entitled to a joyful experience.”

think you might be remembering his advocacy on healthcare

he did confront some medical students over the war too but it was less punchy and his own position was a lot more tortured so there's not any good anecdotes

View from Citadel of Namur

And fine views of the River Meuse.

“Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding.”

-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, writing about the unfortunate director of the local paper factory

mannerofspeaking.org/2010/05/12/s...

i am simply amazed by the supple mastery of language flowing through the formal constraints. making it look easy.

Trump's illegal Iran War is destined to end in failure. Already, hardline leadership is emerging that will be more hostile to America than the leaders we killed. And there is no way to eliminate their nuclear program with a bombing campaign. This whole war is pointless.

I think David’s exchange with Senator Kennedy may even beat mine!

A group of us in the Senate are demanding public hearings on Trump's disastrous war with Iran with Secretary Hegseth and Rubio. And we've introduced a half dozen war powers resolutions to force the Senate to vote every day on the war if the hearings don't happen.

Alone, aloud in the raptured ear of men
We pour our dark nocturnal secret; and then,
As night is withdrawn
From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May,
Dream, while the innumerable choir of day
Welcome the dawn.
]

Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams:
Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams,
A throe of the heart,
Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound,
No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound,
For all our art.

poetry!

Nightingales
Robert Bridges, 1893

[
Beautiful must be the mountains whence ye come,
And bright in the fruitful valleys the streams wherefrom
Ye learn your song:
Where are those starry woods? O might I wander there,
Among the flowers, which in that heavenly air
Bloom the year long!

KENNEDY: You said, 'Republicans think can troll their way to ethnic cleansing.' Did I read that correctly?

BIER: DHS tweeted for 100m deportations. That would be ethnic cleansing!

K: You don't think it's hyperbolic?

B: I think advocating 100m deportations is ethnic cleansing. Yes. Your time is up

If we're going to do "when has automation ever made people's lives easier" discourse, I encourage everyone to read book 1 of Caro's LBJ series, and in particular the part about what happened once the Texas Hill Country got electricity and people could suddenly put their clothes in washing machines.

To reduce the number of incarcerated Black and Brown people, including youth, we must reform the criminal legal system so that it prioritizes rehabilitation and operates fairly and equitably. #EndingUnjustImprisonment

"And that's why I, Rand Paul, will be caucusing with the Democrats until further notice, at such time as all the lawless authoritarianism & unconstitutional bypassing of Congress stops"

🤔

Global Governance Under Fire: How International Organizations Resist the Populist Wave by Allison Carnegie and Richard Clark

In Global Governance Under Fire, Allison Carnegie and Richard Clark argue that international organizations are, in fact, strategic agents with the tools to resist populist pressures.

Now available!

Read a free preview of this timely and compelling book: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

Gullible, Cynical America The trouble with believing anything and nothing at the same time

nice piece from Serwer. nice Arendt ref!

in my standard Schutzian style, i'd stress dynamics in the post-broadcast structure of social authority.

but, Serwer is great on the presence of profitable exploitation *and* its aggravating fx.

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

i mean, i hate the anthropomorphizing & fear the consequences of this tech on balance. but i see it taking hold in a huge range of technical/formal composition.

where it gets valuable is as an aid to composition of any kind of technical or formal writing where originality is not even wanted. code dev is the pure case, but many kinds of docs are close enough. you cannot rely on it for research. but you can be much faster than traditional search-copy-paste.

ha! lovely. (my effortless genres are police procedurals & westerns.)

Oh is this happening?

The administration gutted state capacity to disrupt it, and smeared the very ethical researchers quoted, who have for years done nonpartisan work to address this problem. The deranged ketamine addict running X fell for Shellenbullshit about “censorship”. And here they are.

Mircea Eliade. Bollingen Recollections. Religion, Mythology, and Symbolism

Shamanism; Yoga; The Myth of the Eternal Return

The Mircea Eliade Collection, highlighting works by the renowned scholar of religion, is now available!

Find it here: press.princeton.edu/collections/...

#Bollingen #ReadUP #Eliade #MirceaEliade

The so-called secretary of war was not on a call between Trump and Putin in which they discussed war?

My wife vexed at a fray with my Lady Batten about my boy’s going thither to turn the watercock with their maydes’ leave, but my Lady was mighty high upon it and she would teach his mistress better manners, which my wife answered aloud, that she could learn little manners of her.

i guess i'm going to break down soon and look up what all this "TACO" talk is about.

"modernity" (in one of its many modes) rolls on

Senate Dems have offered legislation to fund TSA, FEMA, and cyber defense agencies, but Republicans have blocked our efforts. If they truly cared about Americans' safety and convenience, they'd stop playing politics with security services, fund most DHS components, and work with us on ICE reforms.