Kevin J. Maroney, he/him

Top of an envelope from Columbia Gift Planning which I have copyedited to more accurately read “Grift Planning”

Why would I want to give money to Columbia when they just pass it on to the Trump administration? Would be happy to give back my degree, though.

A picture of a tshirt with a picture of a sad frog sitting on a chair. Sign above says: "It is what it is and it is not great"

Found a tshirt that perfectly describes state of the games industry (and a lot of other things) and I really fucking need it.

I'm not an economist but seems worrying that the whole US economy is seven companies in a trenchcoat, passing the same $20 up and down

Dad’s books are full of empathy, common sense, and a healthy suspicion of the powerful. But at its heart his work is also about how systems keep people poor while pretending it’s their own fault. So I hope Kemi’s taking notes as well as reading the jokes.

Quite simply a global crisis that every single person leading, or in line to lead, a conservative party around the world is a blinkered, vengeful moron

We have built a society in which people of different skin tones, religious backgrounds & cultures get along, share power, work alongside each other, procreate with each other, recognise the each other’s humanity and democratic rights. It is a STUNNING ACHIEVEMENT OF WORLD HISTORIC PROPORTIONS.

This is so dark

Arthur C Clarke explaining to his friend Lord Dunsany that when humans walked on the moon we'd be able to watch them live on television.

(Dunsany didn't actually live to see it.)

Some interesting background on Bari Weiss's time at the Times:

I feel very strongly that "printing pages from a copyrighted work that I have paid for access to, for purely educational reasons" should be acceptable use under principles similar to Sony v. Universal. But I don't know the actual state of case law.

Wordle 1,571 5/6*

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Bogie, lost to the 'bot by 1. Move #3 was a complete blunder but I was stumped--it turns out there were only 3 possible words left and I couldn't think of any of them, so I was thrashing about.

Connections
Puzzle #849
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Solve order yellow-blue-green-purple. Did actually solve purple, which made me happy.

SETTLERS OF THE STORM WORLDS, pages 22-24 | Carla Speed McNeil Get more from Carla Speed McNeil on Patreon

More pages of SETTLERS OF THE STORM WORLDS! Free to read on Patreon, though of course yo dollahs are always appreciated.

I'm deep into WITCH HAT ATELIER right now, it rocks the rock house, but as always the making of a book is so different from the reading of one.

www.patreon.com/posts/settle...

I realized yesterday that the degree of testosterone posturing necessary to push fascism is *incredibly* cringe, especially coming from broken action-figure wannabees like Miller and Hegseth.

I'm not saying this is unique. H8tl8r was pretty frickin' cringe, too. But it's a point of attack.

University leaders need to take a look at journalists.

Mainstream journalism has not covered itself in glory in the Trump era to put it mildly.

But the Pentagon's attempt to get them to sign an agreement never to say anything the Pentagon doesn't want said was a bridge too far.

NO ONE signed.

Political Violence From the Left Is Surging Left-wing narratives are inspiring decentralized acts of violence.

This Chris Rufo "the liberals are coming to kill us" essay is nuts, but nuts to a purpose: to justify repression of liberals and Trump's use of the Insurrection Act to head off midterms that promise disaster for the GOP. www.city-journal.org/article/left...

Wordle 1,570 4/6*

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Par, lost to the 'bot by 1.

Connections
Puzzle #848
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Solved as shown--trap, blue, yellow, purple, green. I had a staggering lack of subject knowledge about the green group.

Oh, dear. This is not good.

reposted with alt text

ICE impersonator incidents rise during Trump’s second term | CNN A CNN review has found two dozen incidents of people posing as ICE officers in 2025 – more incidents than during the prior four presidential terms combined.

Every network should be diving into this story: www.cnn.com/2025/10/02/u...

Mark Kelly: “lf you are undocumented in our country, you cannot get healthcare from the Affordable Care Act exchange. You are not eligible for Medicare. You are not eligible for Medicaid. They’re just making that up. They just like to blame brown people.”

We should be getting Trump riled up about his supposed flunkies stealing his spotlight and working to usurp him, and I wish the Democrats were better able to actually exploit this. They did a good job with the "co-president Musk" brand earlier this year, but Miller & RFKj are clear weak spots, too.

Wordle 1,569 6/6*

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Triple bogie, lost to the 'bot by 3.

Historically bad. Fell into a double consonant hole; the bot said every one of my choices was excellent but it just didn't connect.

Connections
Puzzle #847
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Solve order yellow-green-purple. Did not solve blue (utter lack of subject knowledge), and it really feels like green and yellow are reversed.

Dragonstairs Press is down to five copies of UNDER A HARVEST MOON. So it looks likely that it will sell out today.

"You can't defeat bad ideas by adopting them. You can't grow a coalition by selling out its members." Another useful piece from friend Moxon.

For a movie that’s 35 years old, Dick Tracy’s make up & prosthetic artists did a fantastic job on the outlandish Dick Tracy villains that still holds up.

Wordle 1,568 4/6*

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Par, lost to the 'bot by 1. Feels like I squandered a strong start, but the 'bot says my plays were solid.

Connections
Puzzle #846
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Solve order blue-green-yellow. Did not solve purple.