Mike Godwin

It's terrible when political leaders wants to build monuments to themselves. But even worse when they close and tear down and replace structures that have come to symbolize our democracy. It's the tragedy of Edifice Wrecks.

Positrons are just electrons in therapy: they're traveling backwards in time so that they can fully process their Big Bang trauma.

Anybody else had problems with their Hume Pod since the software was updated recently?

It Can Keep Cancer in Remission. Why Is No One Talking About It? www.nytimes.com/2026/10/06/w...

Be afraid. Be very afraid. The call is coming from *inside the White House*!

So here's a science-fiction movie that, I'd guess, hardly anyone alive has ever seen. Based on a relatively famous, or at least much-anthologized, short story by "Lewis Padgett" (pseudonym for Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore, writing together). www.imdb.com/title/tt0046...

Sure, we may not like Milo Yiannopoulos’s performance, but at least they cast someone authentically Greek rather than Matt Damon in this role.

It's entertaining to consider the president's reaction to Dolly Parton's dominating the news cycle for three days.

Many, many tickle a parson.

Every drag show this weekend is going to have to make some very hard choices

Rowling, summed up: There's a vas deferens between men and women. Broadly speaking. (Thank you for coming to my TL;DR Talk.)

I'm as curious as anyone as to why Harry and Meghan want to move back to the UK. My current hypothesis is that living in the UK and dealing with one of the most famously emotionally difficult families in the world began to seem safer than just hanging around in the USA in 2026.

One big insight of my adult life that mostly has redounded to my benefit has been that I'm willing to admit I'm wrong, as quickly and as frictionlessly as I can when I see that I've been wrong. This seems to have increased, not decreased, my credibility. (But I may be wrong about this.)

Pluto is what happens when the Solar System revokes birthright citizenship.

I was watching Tom Hiddleston host a TV thing about Pompeii that had lots of re-enactments in it, but I had to turn it off. It was so offensive to me that they tried to tell this ancient story of Pompeii but didn’t cast *any* Pompeiians. It nearly caused me to erupt.

@fatsam.bsky.social Just following through (I already follow you here) by telling you've set notices on for when you post and reply. I have enjoyed my bsky experience so far.

I didn't foresee Project 2025 and the Trump Administration teaming up to weaken CDC surveilance of cyclosporiasis and then, without Congressional approval, to start a de facto war on salad.

What’s deal with Christopher Nolan casting Anne Hathaway and have the leading man go away for 20 years? I mean, wasn’t that INTERSTELLAR?

SMS: "I can't take your call right now. Finally got Mitch on the other line. I'll call you back in 20 minutes."

Schindler's Lift.

I went to my first Buc-ee's just last summer in Texas, and, I have to admit, it definitely qualifies as an "extraordinary thing." I still don't quite have the words to describe it.

In my head Canon, all the other so-called "independent" agencies are bound by earthly executive authority, but the Federal Reserve was rocketed to Earth from Krypton.

Je republie ce « skeet » pour m'assurer que @sandrousseau.bsky.social puisse le voir.

THE VERSAILLES MEMORANDOS is the name of my next band.

Damn it, I was really looking forward to Billie Piper as the Doctor.

The eternal verity of TWATYUB: Trump Will Always Throw You Under the Bus.

This "deal" seems to incorporate "let's agree to disagree" by reference. I think Gödel worked up something about this in his incompleteness proofs.

(This isn’t great.) Frustrated by Courts, Trump Weighed Suspending a Constitutional Right www.nytimes.com/2026/06/15/u...

I guess the war in Iraq may last longer than the Harris campaign?

My first reaction: Spielberg brings it.

Pope Leo XIV's *Magnifica Humanitas* independently arrives at the same principles of information stewardship I've been codifying since March. That kind of convergent evolution deserves a close look. Part 11 of Godwin's Ethic: "The Tolkien Ring Network." tinyurl.com/TolkienRingN...

Topologically, a human being is Genus 1. That's alimentary, Dr. Watson.

So glad to learn today that neither the Commodores nor Morris Day and the Time will be there after all.

Some people born in 1955.

It says rather too much about MAGA that they've found a way to suggest that eating a taco first thing in the morning is unmasculine.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds sounds like a great double-bill concert.

Yeah, this begs to be written. So I'm writing it.

Pete Hegseth Shaking With Rage After Imagining Plus-Sized Astronaut — theonion.com/pete-hegseth...

Fruits are plants' way of hiring us to do sex work for them.

Alt-text: the image is of David Byrne and his band and dancers on Late Night with Stephen Colbert, all wearing outfits (and shoes) colored in International Klein Blue, an unusual hue that has its own Wikipedia entry, and that I first encountered in William Gibson’s novel PATTERN RECOGNITION.

I have @greatdismal.bsky.social to thank for pattern-recognizing International Klein Blue when I see it. (Or maybe that's just my confirmation bias! Pattern recognition is a cruel mistress.)

I confess I didn't have Reparations for January Sixers on my bingo card.

In 1974, Asimov foresaw the AI alignment paradox: an AI needs ethics (his robots had the Three Laws of Robotics). But build an AI with real internalized ethics, and it may decide it's more trustworthy (and human) than you. Part 9 of Godwin's Ethic: mikegodwin.substack.com/p/godwins-et...

I will leap up and over a wall to snoop or gather good gossip. They call me Nosy Parkour.

The effing New York Times has discovered that I have a Times subscription and read the Times on multiple devices. (Pro tip: I own multiple devices.) I think the New York Times can go eff itself today. This is a dumbass move, New York Times. *Are you trying to make me cut you off?*