Morgan Johnson

Working on five projects at once today in a dizzying spiral. Corrections on a cozy witch romance cover; second drafts on a dark romantasy; 3D rendering character art for a client; scheduling more clients for next week; making ads for another; and then domestic thriller covers for a publisher

So today Anthropic announces their IPO; hedge funds short the stock market at least 18,000,000,000 in a bet against ai; and Microsoft offers early buyouts to 25% of their staff

NEW: The group behind Cornel West's 2024 ballot push was wholly funded through Elon Musk's dark money network, according to Sludge's review of tax documents. readsludge.com/2026/10/26/m...

When the Dems take back Congress, prosecuting these rapes has to be top of the list

Holy shit

NEW: "Donald Trump was an active participant in Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of young women during the mid-to-late 1990s," per new House Judiciary Dem report. Report has new allegation that Trump raped a 24-year-old and then promised the victim a visa & NYU admission, demanding she stay quiet.

I think Ed's point still stands

If the democrats win the midterms, the next fight is against the corporation-loving conservatives in the party. They’re going to resist investigations and calling what Trump and Musk and Kushner have been doing “treason”. We need to make their lives difficult.

"You have to elect the lesser of two evils and then move them left" - person who has no intention of doing this

It’s hard to decide what part of this story on Marissa Mayer’s new startup is most loathsome, but this “women need a wife or, in other words, a digital servant” construction makes me want to flip over an actual table www.nytimes.com/2026/10/25/s...

Tough chart: Home prices, mortgage payments and incomes since 2020 — all indexed to zero. (via JBREC)

Time to break up the company and confiscate all its assets then.

I’m not a political journalist, so was gladly surprised at the community I found here last night. To Americans anxious about the upcoming elections, a key thing we learned in Brazil that might help you: DO NOT engage with the far-right online. Don’t share rage bait. Amplify your people. Ignore them.

Yissss

What's striking to me are the rules of engagement and the methodology of action here, which more or less is predicated on burying liberal delusions about "debate" or the "marketplace of ideas". The rules were ultimately very simple: amplify your own message and suppress your opponent's.

The linked charts here are BRUTAL. The only ones doing well with ai right now are the snake oil salesmen

Well this is eleventy-million kinds of Fucked Up. @latimes.com (who once contracted with me as a freelance reviewer and whom I struggled to get paid by) asserts that *merely reading its website* constitutes a permanent waiver of your right to sue it under *any circumstances*.

It used to be that the wealthy would push this garbage on the rest of us and keep their kids in actual good schools. It’s fun to see them melting their kids brains instead gizmodo.com/the-ai-centr...

Lula winning is great for the planet, great for Brazil, and great for people who aren't revanchist assholes everywhere in the world, but let's not forget that it's also going to make some of the worst people on Earth extremely sad and mad. We should enjoy that, as a little treat.

Serbia's dictator has been deposed, and its people are in full Yub Nub mode, watch it live.

I don’t know, man, I’m kind of sick of treating Trump and his cronies like they’re just absurd and laughable and not really spending any time talking about the murders, the concentration camps, the millions starved around the world, people living lives beset with threats of violence and erasure.

Some more context: a black trans woman, congresswoman Erika Hilton, is a key reason why Brazil is reducing its working week from 6 days to 5; and she currently lives under 24-hour protection at a top secret address. english.elpais.com/internationa...

This piece fucking rules

The art director of the New Yorker being an "AI whisperer" should be a red flag for all artists who might work for the New Yorker going forward. The Spiegelman thing is a whole other bummer.

[flustered costanza voice] george is walkin' away from omelas!!!

I've had six beers, one joint, and am dressed as a wizard at a wedding. This is the most powerful I've ever been.

Fuck yeah

We tried "everyone is entitled to an opinion" for three straight decades and all we have to show for it is four thousand cases of measles and a death cult running the government. It's time for people who don't know what they're talking about to shut the fuck up.

scott galloway and jessica tarlov held an event here in town yesterday where “don’t impeach or waste time on investigations because ‘28” was the consensus position of the panel. so yeah, this is something to anticipate.

Is this viral marketing for Becky 3: The Last Temptation of Becky?

Dear god, yeah so the New Deal was a social contract because it was institutionalized through Social Security and Medicare and paid for collectively. “I give you dimes when I feel like it” is not a social contract, you degraded bootlicking toadies

There’s no discussion of potential penalties in this article, but if people don’t go to jail for flagrant illegality like this, it will keep happening. For companies like Google, fines are just another cost of doing business. Something to toss on the balance sheet and weigh against profits.

Currently