John Howl Boo

Charles III, painted by Anton Raphael Mengs.

Charles III. European monarch who looked most like Bugs Bunny was about to make a fool of him.

Bad art used to have weird charm because you could wonder about the person making it and now that person doesn’t exist at all.

Moral clarity brigading is always cancel culture. Moral clarity brigading against cancel culture is, at best, lack of moral clarity and most likely cynical 'joking/not-joking'.

"And uncouth pain fled bellowing. On each wing Uriel, and Raphael, his vaunting foe, Though huge, and in a rock of diamond armed, Vanquished Adramelech, and Asmadai, Two potent Thrones, that to be less than Gods Disdained, but meaner thoughts learned in their flight, Mangled with ghastly wounds through plate and mail. Nor stood unmindful Abdiel to annoy The atheist crew, but with redoubled blow Ariel, and Arioch, and the violence Of Ramiel scorched and blasted, overthrew. I might relate of thousands, and their names Eternize here on earth; but those elect Angels, contented with their fame in Heaven, Seek not the praise of men: The other sort, In might though wonderous and in acts of war, Nor of renown less eager, yet by doom Cancelled from Heaven and sacred memory, Nameless in dark oblivion let them dwell."

Saying you oppose cancel culture because you believe in good and evil? (Remember that time God cancelled Satan for being evil? Wasn't that cancel culture?) But seriously. When you see how unserious she is, what can you conclude other than that she is cynical about the whole anti-cancel racket.

People are pointing out - fair - she tries to play it off as a joke. Even so. She 1) denounces cancel culture as why the left is evil then 2) admits her allies also practice cancel culture but says they are 3) good because they - 4) see the other side as evil? This is good? bsky.app/profile/dand...

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS EASTERN DIVISION CHICAGO HEADLINE CLUB, BLOCK CLUB CHICAGO, CHICAGO NEWSPAPER GUILD LOCAL 34071, NABET-CWA LOCAL 54041, ILLINOIS PRESS ASSOCIATION, RAVEN GEARY, CHARLES THRUSH, STEPHEN HELD, DAVID BLACK, WILLIAM PAULSON, AUTUMN REIDY-HAMER, and LEIGH KUNKEL, on behalf of themselves and others similarly situated, Plaintiffs, V. KRISTI NOEM, Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS); TODD LYONS, Acting Director, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); MARCOS CHARLES, Acting Executive Associate Director, Enforcement and Removal Operations, ICE; RUSSELL HOTT, Chicago Field Office Director, ICE; RODNEY S. SCOTT, Commissioner, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP); GREGORY BOVINO, Chief Border Patrol Agent, CBP; DANIEL DRISCOLL, Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF); WILLIAM K. MARSHALL III, Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP); PAMELA BONDI, Attorney General of the United States; U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY; U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE; UNIDENTIFIED FEDERAL OFFICER DEFENDANTS; UNIDENTIFIED FEDERAL AGENCY DEFENDANTS; and DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States, No. 25-cv-12173 PLAINTIFFS' COMPLAINT FOR INJUCTIVE AND DECLARATORY RELIEF

NEW: I'm listening in on a second new lawsuit out of Illinois today, addressing First Amendment freedoms surrounding protests, including press and religious claims.

Judge Sara Ellis, an Obama appointee, is hearing the TRO motion and has found the plaintiffs, for TRO purposes, have standing.

This would single-handedly transform the lives of everyone I know in such profound ways it is difficult to fully articulate, but it would also let us actually make more and different and crazy things

Propaganda. In an authoritarian context, all journalism will tend toward propaganda unless it is explicitly formulated as anti-authoritarian.

Sorry, no time to type it all out. He makes the point that Weiss is obviously not being hired for quality. "She's a loss leader for the larger project of tech lord consolidation."

This is good.
www.thebulwark.com/p/the-washin...

"“Conservatives know two things above all else,” Ms. Weiss continued, after warning of similar rising extremism on the right. “That evil is real and that our precious civilization is human and therefore fragile.” She told The Free Press readers on Monday, in an announcement about the Paramount deal, that the publication’s values “now have the opportunity to go very, very big.”

"“I know that there are some people in this room who don’t believe that my marriage should have been legal,” Ms. Weiss told the Federalist Society, an influential conservative legal group, in 2023. “And that’s OK. Because we’re all Americans who want lower taxes.”

This Bari Weiss article. Cancel culture is the root of all evil. Also, cancel culture is fine so long as makes money for me. Say what you will, it's an ethos. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/b...

Dreher: "So, Taylor Swift wrote a new song about Travis Kelce's primitive root wiener. Hey Cole Porter, Hoagy Carmichael, and Ira Gershwin, seems like someone is carrying y'all's torch into a new golden era of the Great American Songbook!"

Rod Dreher, man. When the whole world is just one never-ending Isaac Chotiner interview you can't stop giving. It's a mystery.

Space Pirates Of Xarpot

pulpcovers.com/space-pirate...

Covers, Amazing Adventures, Magazine, Sci-Fi, Whips

Murder Makes A Merry Widow / Blue Mask At Bay

pulpcovers.com/murder-makes...

Covers, Dead Body, Magazine, Mystery, Skull, Two Complete Detective Books

They literally just fought a Supreme Court case for the right to racially profile. It was in the news!

As Gov Pritzker describes it, the Trump secret police assault on a Lakeshore Drive apartment complex was a made-for-TV event designed not to serve any lawful mission, but instead to create video footage that would be suitably depraved to entertain the MAGA base. That's correct.

Back in the land of reality, here's what one of the Black people whose home was smashed into during the apartment raid last week said about his Venezuelan neighbors: "They were cool people."

Mr. Jones, a U.S. citizen, was dragged out in handcuffs and held outside for hours.

perhaps the biggest story TFPever ran was a catastrophically shoddy argument that George Floyd ackshully died of an overdose. When confronted with irrefutable evidence that the piece was simply wrong, Weiss didn’t take it down, she asked her critic, @radleybalko.bsky.social, to come on a podcast.

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann ...

if you ask the average American to describe what they think a tougher immigration system should look like, they will describe something a degree of magnitude softer and more generous than the current reality.

The lesson here is that people are both better and dumber than they appear.

Vladeck and Bernick have refused to give him what he wants and that has visibly annoyed him. How is a guy supposed to engage in epistemic arbitrage, selling stuff for more than it's worth, wrapped in 'even liberals treat claim x respectfully', if the libs won't play along, politely?

Conmen play on the impulse of normal people to be civil and friendly. Wurman is palpably always trying to play on polite instincts of liberal legal academics in the same way. He prods the Vladecks & Bernicks to be collegial to crazy claim x, obviously hoping to resell civility as plausibility of x.

Shelob E.

Elrond Costello

Arciryas Speedwagon.

A wooden sculpture of a man in religious attire clinging to and biting a pillar, part of the choir screen in St. Bavo Church, Haarlem.

The pillar-biter

(On the far right of the choir screen of the St. Bavo church in Haarlem, Netherlands)

This evening, President Trump is ordering 400 members of the Texas National Guard for deployments to Illinois, Oregon, and other locations within the United States. No officials from the federal government called me directly to discuss or coordinate. We must now start calling this what it is: Trump's Invasion. It started with federal agents, it will soon include deploying federalized members of the Illinois National Guard against our wishes, and it will now involve sending in another state's military troops. I call on Governor Abbott to immediately withdraw any support for this decision and refuse to coordinate. There is no reason a President should send military troops into a sovereign state without their knowledge, consent, or cooperation. The brave men and women who serve in our national guards must not be used as political props. This is a moment where every American must speak up and help stop this madness.

Statement from Illinois Governor JB Pritzker

HAPPENING NOW: Judge Karin Immergut hears emergency arguments as California and Oregon seek to block President Trump's deployment of federalized California National Guard troops to Portland. 🧵

What you fail to see, Mr. Rabbit …

Fire extinguisher next to a statue of Joan of Arc

Hell of a thing to put next to a statue of Joan of Arc. (h/t David Pilling)

'Democracy, whiskey, sexy' - but without the democracy. Just, like, maybe, Milwaukee. We have met the enemy and he is us. We'll be hailed as liberators.

it's one gust of wind. how much sand could it possibly blast into my eyes