Andy Lewis/The Optionist

This is the woman of the week. Virginia Dillard, age 105, got herself all pretty to go vote in Texas. 💙

These pardons are presumptively invalid. Constitution is silent on what is a legit pardon. Luckily, the Founders talked a lot about this. Pardons as quid pro quo for crime were not legit. Originalist position(& plain meaning) is these not valid.

Iirc, @zeteo.com broke news of the Hegseth / Eisenhower’s globe saga / hilarious visual metaphor in this Oct 15 profile of Trump’s “war secretary” zeteo.com/p/secretary-... I want to be clear: WaPo has pics and it’s a good story. I’m not bitching about credit I’m just pointing out that people…

SCOOP: 'Tommy' from the now-viral exchange with Abdul El-Sayed is Thomas Teepell, a former staffer for Republican Senator Josh Hawley with close ties to Christian Nationalist Sean Feucht. He's the son of a former Bobby Jindal staffer whose consultant work was instrumental in getting Hawley elected.

Here's the thing I know a lot of people like Maron—my brother, who worked with him!—but I once watched him bully a young Hollywood Reporter writer on social media over an inadvertent mistake in a casting/guest appearance type story and he's been ruined for me ever since.

Could "Execution Dads" Decide the Midterm Elections? They're one issue voters, and that one issue is being able to watch executions on YouTube.

When Trump says something has nothing to do with me is usually the thing we find out later that he was most involved in pushing for.

This is like saying I read Der Sturmer just for the recipes and from that I conclude it a nice family paper.

The really galling part of this era, which will be largely ignored, is that Congress could have stepped in and stopped all of it at any point and chose not to

An amazingly stark example of how the US economy has broken: Zaslav clears nearly a *billion* dollars amid a CEO tenure where he made basically anything he touched worse, harmed multiple prestigious brands, led huge layoffs—but delivered a corrupt merger for shareholders. variety.com/2026/tv/news...

‘Roll the Calls’ hit No. 2 on the paper’s list. But ‘Publishers Weekly’ excluded it after BookScan flagged excessive bulk sales

Burger King Halloween Whopper (2015-2015): A classic Whopper burger, with cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, mayo, and A1 Thick n Hearty sauce, served on a "spooky" dyed-black bun-with more A1 sauce baked into it. It became infamous for complaints of the dye turning stool green.

Jeez, this was a lot better than my plan: Go nearly broke getting a Phd, enter a terrible job market ....

I think about this more often than I'd like to.

Community Notes for the win here, Megyn Kelly. 👌

Oh look, it's Reed, Johnny, Ben and Sue.

This is the kind research RFK, Jr. is hostile to. This is the cancer that killed his beloved uncle Ted Kennedy. The death cult doesn't care who it kills.

The first color TV hit stores #OTD in 1951. “Color TV will sweep the country!" said the head of CBS, whose proprietary technology was deemed superior by the FCC—even though it was incompatible w/ black & white TVs. Only 100 sets were sold—and CBS killed its color broadcasts 3 weeks later. #TVSky

Nobody should take this article srsly. It's as much kicks for clicks as the original Globe story. The "story" is 95W% baseless speculation. There's a huge gap b/t a fun to read story & something adaptable for the screen, even as a doc. The lesbian bar story sits on the wrong side of that equation.

An acute reminder that we don’t live in a free country as long as American tech oligarchs continue to maintain their power.

Quite a thread

This aired just the once in 1998 on the live SNL show for which McKay wrote it. It was effectively banned as it never aired again. I wonder why. MEDIA-OPOLY

Oh, this is better. When I first saw it trending I read it as "Meryl Streep cast as ASIAN" and I thought, 'oh boy'

NDSU’s punter might hold the record for kinds of cultural experience in a six year span

This is an A+ event with lots of talent on stage. Harper's latest A Violent Masterpiece is a gem.

I'm a Sebastian Stan stan. He's carved out a great career, sought out challenging roles & really grown as an actor and in the couple times I've talked to him at parties low-key, interesting and unfailingly nice. I'll watch a movie b/c he's in it. www.vulture.com/article/seba...

I hope biographer Walter "Musk is the Great Man of our time" Isaacson and NYT"s Jeremy "what [Musk] stands for remains largely unclear" Peters are both forced to watch this documentary, then beg for our forgiveness.

Remember which company bent the knee to Trump (Google) and which company didn't (👇)

your denials-of-care at work

If fat bear week isn't enough for you. (Look out Shark Week ....) www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/c...

The email pitch for this asked "What if Bari's version of 60 minutes is better?" Sure, and pigs wil fly. There's basically zero chance it will be better. How do I know? Because we have *evidence* based on what's she's done so far. (Also I'm sick of journalists being contrarian for clicks)

In Trump's world the NIH wouldn't fund this basic research, ICE would deport some of the researchers, and the FDA wouldn't approve the vaccine.

All this because these guys can't take it that these "feminist pagan women" have been saying no to them for years

Man, I can't believe Bari Weiss hasn't hired him yet to join 60 Minutes as a correspondent.

The problem w/this (& by extension larger attacks on hiring) is that it imagines some fantasy ranking of absolute quality-1 pt for this, 1/2 pt for that etc-not lots of factors (area of expertise, potential courses, next project) alongside race/gender (does dept not have many/any women or POC?)

This is the "baby shoes, never worn" of TV criticism. Everything about this episode and what's wrong with it in fewer words than I'm using to describe it.

Yet another story framed around Trump’s supposed anger rather than his incompetence. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/u...

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"1982: Steven Spielberg & Jack Kirby Talk Comic Book Evolution" via Today. www.today.com/popculture/m...

I really wish reviewers would do their homework before writing stupid things like this. Forgotten by whom? Distorted by whom? There's a lot of scholarly work, work I'm guessing this book drew on, about this. Academic scholarship is the foundation for pop history. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/15/b...

The point is that "Chinese interference" is a theater whose audience is purely domestic. It's purpose is to enable more federal control of elections to ensure that the ruling regime stays in power.