Bertolt Ottoman

Unserious click-bait journalism at its finest: "Six months into his term, the Trump administration is veering toward what some say could be a constitutional crisis."

“Maybe light is a / pre-existing condition for love, an auspice of longing” — Alina Stefanescu (@alinaetc.bsky.social‬) . . . This poem appeared in Couplet Poetry, 2021. Shared here with deep gratitude.

Truly wild, but I'm so old that John Entwhistle's body of work is now cooler than Daltrey and Townsend's combined. Weird.

Ok, it's true, this happened on my watch.

A Lotto Carpet (Turkey, c 1600). Carpets displaying this striking design of stylized vegetal arabesques in yellow on a red background are often called "Lottos," after a famous altarpiece by the Italian Renaissance painter Lorenzo Lotto that depicts a similar textile.

“Ingmar Bergman’s ‘Scenes from a Marriage,’ from 1973, is the greatest artistic exploration of the vicissitudes of marital loneliness,” Agnes Callard wrote, in 2021.

Is there more free speech at Bari Weiss' University of Austin? No, decidedly less. And quite an ideological litmus test. Plus: if you're critical of anything Benjamin Netanyahu is doing, they'll be all in favor of kidnapping you and stashing you in a concentration camp somewhere.

#FuckCrypto and the criminal oligarch nag it rode in on. It's a vehicle for crime and an egregious waste of electricity, consumption of which we must conserve, not massively increase for another fucking casino. Earth bats last. We don't have the luxury of such idiocies anymore. #MoneyAintBroke

Murphy: "There's no guarantee that we are gonna have a free and fair election in 2026. He's trying to rig our democracy, to destroy dissent, to cripple the opposition, so that even if his approval ratings are in the 30s next year, there isn't the ability for his opposition to muster a real campaign"

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” - Audre Lorde

When the Guggenheim introduced Hilma af Klint to New York in a blazing 2018-19 retrospective, it scooped sublime canvases out of obscurity and laid them out like freshly polished gems. They were big, abstract and geometrical, yet they also celebrated recognisable organic forms.

Francisco Collantes, Saint Onuphrius (Madrid, c 1645) The 5th cen St Onuphrius was a Persian who withdrew as a hermit to the desert of Thebes, where a raven miraculously brought his daily ration of food. At his feet, a crown and scepter allude to his royal origins as he was the son of a Persian king

Pulitzer Season has begun. This is great local journalism.

Ercelik v. Hyde

The Psychology of Blind Loyalty: How Psychology Explains the Unwavering Support for Donald Trump www.jackhopkinsnow.com

Brilliant. "I Never Thought the Leopards Would Eat My Face." Just everyone else's face. Oh dear.🐆 #USDemocracy #Voices4Victory

Yea, she seized on the anti-Establishment angle without seeing that The Dude's libertarian daimon was moderated by the Dude's non-violent nature as well as by his highly-developed bullshit detector. Obviously, Ashli Babbit was not an English major.

Ossoff better have pepper spray if he debates her in person.

You really want to scare those thugs? Re-open Shawshank.

LIST OF LAW FIRMS THAT BENT THE KNEE (or THE WILLINGLY EXTORTED): Kirkland & Ellis A&O Shearman Simpson,Thacher & Bartlett Latham & Watkins Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft Paul Weiss Milbank Wilkie, Farr & Gallager

Canada, we’re with you! TRUMPISM IS REPUDIATED IN AUSTRALIA! #auspol

And also if you call them weird.

I wrote about watching Werner Herzog as a child and as an adult. bitter-meteoroid-729.notion.site/Enthusiasms-...

🤣😂🤣

Ok, Not on my bingo card: Al Gore firing up the moral fight against American fascism by referencing Jurgen Habermas and Theodor Adorno. DAMN!

🧵 Don’t “Hegsmith” your group chat. If you are new to protesting, a dissident or active it’s important to check your digital hygiene/opsec regularly. Check out this thread of comprehensive tools. First up Signal settings.

Thinking about the destruction of the NEH: the right is happy for people to study texts and ideas as long as the outcomes of that study is predetermined. This is why the right-wing loves and funds civic leadership institutes on college campuses devoted to the study of 'fundamental' texts and ideas.

Ahem stancilculture.substack.com/p/crisis-is-...

In the Odyssey, Zeus proclaims “Ah how shameless—the way these mortals blame the gods. From us alone, they say, come all their miseries, yes, but they themselves, with their own reckless ways, compound their pain beyond their proper share.” This is where the Hubris Project begins. #indieauthor

"It's the Constitution, stupid."

Today:

What you're seeing are wet microbursts—intense downdrafts from thunderstorms that slam rain into the ground, creating those stunning lobes. Like a reverse explosion from the sky. Captured in Perth, #Australia

Trump's tariffs aren't just economics: they're a cultural purge designed to destroy white collar & knowledge work, deskill the country, force men into blue collar jobs & women to marry MAGA men, and render us all unable to resist fascism. My latest: washingtonmonthly.com/2025/04/08/t...

NEW: The Supreme Court took 6 months to decide immunity, but just 6 days to effectively strip the rest of us of due process. My latest: www.muellershewrote.com/p/the-corrup...

Crossing into the United States has become increasingly dangerous for digital privacy, not only for non-citizens but for Americans as well. Here are a few steps you can take to minimize the risk of Customs and Border Protection accessing your data:

Maddow tries to shake Jeffries into meeting the moment: "Policy doesn't feel like the main convo…we are in the middle of a Ketamine-fueled autocratic power grab rendering Congress irrelevant, making the rule of law an afterthought if not a joke”: Full: www.instagram.com/reel/DGe93bq...

Must-see thread👀 Where are the Democrats and what are they doing about the dismantling of the USAID? They are fighting back against the ultra rich taking over our institutions and country. Please repost so others can see their passion & fire! U.S. Senator @chrismurphy.bsky.social (D-CT) 👇🏻 1/3

A Spoon is Better Than a Fork This was sent to all EEOC employees. Hit “Reply All,” y’all‼️

Exciting that @criterion.bsky.social has a curated list of “Surveillance” related films! Their list, which includes THX1130, Citizen Four, The Conversation, The Anderson Tapes, & others inspired me to post a 🧵 with my own surveillance-related film picks www.criterionchannel.com/surveillance...

In honor of his birthday, the extraordinary last paragraph of Charles Portis's TRUE GRIT:

It's Almost Christmas

Induction song for Sisyphus gotta be Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone."

What the actual hell. Suddenly Republicans don't want the debt ceiling eliminated? MAGA is being played, duped, and disrespected. They are going to tax-cut the billionaires again, just like they did in 2017. Wake up people.