lawless

I finagled enough back pain to prevent me from getting dressed right away (because I needed to iron a top) into 40 minutes of procrastinating.

“Every unhappy nation is unique. But the mood overlap between countries such as Hungary and Serbia, both of which have recently thrown out rightwing populists in corruption-dominated elections, and today’s America is striking.” My column as.ft.com/r/c8ced69e-f...

the thing is, they literally do. The claim is that the Arab world *once did* great things and *no longer does,* and that second part is not true. Conveniently, they keep records of who gets those prizes, so you can see that it is not true.

Pretty wild: Even some MAGA figures are now panicking about the early vote. And for good reason: The electorate is 11 points more Dem than at this point in 2024, and Latino vote is surging. On the pod @simonwdc.bsky.social is very illuminating on what the data shows: newrepublic.com/article/2171...

Feeding the herd. Bernard (he is a dog as far as I know) eats his supper while Larry (he is a cat as far as I know) has a beverage #DogsOfBluesky #CatsOfBluesky

There's no pretense left. J. K. Rowling made her hate for trans women clear in a slur-filled screed slurring them a dozen times and describing them as deceitful and dangerous. So writes @evanurquhart.bsky.social this morning on Assigned Media. *WARNING: Article quotes Rowling's hateful language.*

In 2005, Canada’s leaders agreed to a $5.1-billion plan to close the gap for Indigenous people. Three days later, the government fell, and the deal died with it. buff.ly/QP9iGvD

I didn't initially realise this was meant to be a negative thing, but when you read the piece it obviously was. Their attempt at a political hit job is quite literally to tell you that Mamdani is baller, and to connect him in your minds with Knicks' victory. Astonishing stuff, let's see how it goes.

In fact I will say the Earnest and Pious Charismatic Ethnic Minority political figure (AOC, Mamdani, El-Sayed) has been a pretty good bet for the American left so far, whereas the Disaffected Gruff White Guy Showcasing True Masculinity (Fetterman, Platner) has been a worse bet. Just an observation.

"When she calls trans women men, over and over and over again, she’s not describing what she understands to be reality or defending women or making a point about the definitions of words, she’s seeking to create a picture of a monstrous person who should be feared and shunned."

It's important to recognize this - and I think it's important for me, as a trans man, to clearly say I recognize this: Rowling's primary motivating factor is an intense irrational hatred of trans women. There's nothing else but that in the entire 2200 word essay.

In Rowling's telling, the movement for trans equality isn't about trans people wanting to live comfortably and authentically post-transition, whether that means using men's spaces, gender-neutral spaces, or women's spaces. Instead it's about interlopers seeking to penetrate women's spaces only.

Six years later, that pose of concern is gone, as is any acknowledgement that slightly more than half of all trans people were assigned female at birth. Rowling today speaks only about transgender women, and only in the most odious terms imaginable.

This is a very different beast from her 2020 essay, which plausibly read as reasonable concerns to the uninitiated. And one of the most interesting differences is that the 2020 essay spent a third of its wordcount on transgender men, who Rowling portrayed as girls misled into transitioning.

I felt I really needed to write about Rowling's essay, not because it's new, but because it's so poisonous and ugly that it felt like sanitizing her not to acknowledge it on my trans news site.

My most joyless leftwing opinion is that any homework that is, explicitly and obviously, homework for parents is bad pedagogy, unfair on parents, particularly on mothers, bad use of the teacher's time and bad for social mobility.

What’s that you say? Liz has a new book out which even the Telegraph is saying is even more unhinged than the last one? Wonderful, I’ll post this then.

perfect, no notes

Look Furfriends I bees having new stuff. I have mine own steps to get on bed when ever I want. No more bap bap bap at staff in long dark. I getting on and off when I choosing . - Morgan #Hedgewatch #CatsOfBlueSky #SuperSeniorCatsClub

I am old enough to remember when social psychologists were telling us overt racism had disappeared and we needed magical tools to measure our unconscious racism. How quaint

#til A Chinese nickname for Trump: "'Chuan Jianguo,' which roughly means 'Trump, the (Chinese) nation builder.'"

At least 18 early voting centers in rural Alaska have not opened as of Friday, state Sen. Bill Wielechowski says. The commonality? All the affected areas have at least a 60% Alaska Native population — with nearly a dozen having Alaska Native populations upwards of 90%: https://demdock.com/4yTW5Ze

thought about this interaction and am very pleased to find it has been preserved

Michael Atiyah 🇪🇬: Fields Medal 1966 (also Abel Prize 2004), for K-theory. Ahmed Zewail 🇪🇬: Nobel for Chemistry 1999, for his work on femtochemistry. Omar M. Yaghi 🇯🇴: Wolf Prize 2018, Nobel for Chemistry 2025, for his work on reticular chemistry Naguib Mahfouz 🇪🇬: Nobel for literature 1988

CBS deleted this post and reposted it admitting that their original one was misleading. And the misleading post from CBS was intentionally misleading, not an innocent mistake. CBS continues to lose credibility.

Major press failure: treating Jared Kushner taking foreign bribes and shaping US foreign policy as less relevant than Hunter Biden not taking bribes nor influencing policy. Covering Kushner accurately was considered partisan, biased. Lies about Hunter or his minor actions treated as more important.

tOday seems like a lot. sKip it?

Republicans, they're not like us.

"Is it real?" is the most pressing question in music in 2026, and it's one that feels impossible to adequately answer, in almost any context. n.pr/47Nr7Xt

Good morning. "If you don't make it in time, I make the effort to protect you from stepping on it." Jinx🤭

Oh, man, he's so close to getting it.

The caucus also accused the Trump administration of a broad cover-up, designed to shield the president from blowback as it tried to roll out the release of the Epstein files to the general public.

The report alleges Donald Trump was an “active participant” in Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse. trib.al/r158uvt

Hard to believe how far we've backslid on "is it a scandal to be overtly racist"

Elon Musk has spent more money on American elections in the last two years than George Soros has in his entire life.

Interesting that the NYTimes specifically points out the close proximity to the election, huh?

And yet they carried Comey's "Hillary's Emails" lies shortly before the 2016 election. And the Alaska Supreme Court already ruled that Dan "Not that Dan, the other Dan" Sullivan can run.

Infuriating catch-22. They treat the report as if it ONLY matters as a part of the electoral horse-race, not as evidence of a crime in its own right, while also seeming to imply that the timing of its release during that horse-race is suspicious. Couldn’t make it clearer the victim doesn’t matter.

“Democrats are trying to do a late oppo dump. Democrats have said they will try to get Trump.” Sounds like Trump didn’t do anything wrong and you wouldn’t even know what they’re looking into by reading this… total abdication of duty

sulzberger has systematically downplayed everything epsetein at every possible juncture for the obvious reasons, namely that his family is front and center of the epstein scandal. no accident that it was brown at miami herald that made the story happen