Dan Robitzski

Photographed the Den Music Festival this weekend

Getting Sticky: How We’ve Fostered Creativity at Super Trashed LA by OJ Patterson

I co-host a monthly pub video game night in LA (tonight! 7 PM! Brews Brothers' Noho location! @supertrashed.bsky.social ) and a main reason our event has immaculate vibes is co-host OJ's doodling contest. Read all about it on his latest blog: supertrashed.substack.com/p/getting-st...

His Works Completed, Dick Cheney, Mass Murderer of Iraqis and American Democracy, Dies As much as the Trumpists claim to disavow the War on Terror, they walk a path paved by the most powerful vice president in U.S. history.

All day, many of you have been asking for a Cheney obituary from me. Get ready:

CBS News just gutted its climate team Paramount and Bari Weiss aren't off to a great start. Here's why David Ellison should change course.

NEWS: CBS News gutted its climate team as part of the big Paramount layoffs this week. These journalists had been doing incredible reporting on extreme heat, flooding, clean energy investments and more.

I've got details for Climate-Colored Goggles: www.climatecoloredgoggles.com/p/cbs-news-g...

conspiracy to make a cop go slow

Hurricane Melissa Has Meteorologists Terrified The storm, which is set to make landfall in Jamaica on Tuesday, has stunned meteorologists with its intensity and the speed at which it built.

Hurricane Melissa intensified so quickly and unusually that meteorologists are stunned, @mollytaft.com reports. Jamaica is going to need a lot of help once this storm is over. www.wired.com/story/hurric...

Okay I’m reading it now and, no surprise, it suuuucks in exactly the ways you would expect.

You can just close your eyes and imagine things instead of reanimating dead celebrities for lazy braindead slop!

CBS News: Some NYPD officers worry about Mandani becoming NYC mayor the Free Press reports.

Promoting the editor-in-chief's personal side project. Zero named sources in a story that promotes the editor-in-chief's personal political position. Misspelling the subject's name. It took one day for CBS News to become a conservative blog.

www.cbsnews.com/video/some-n...

Two epee fencers compete in a national tournament.

Two epee fencers compete in a national tournament.

Two epee fencers compete in a national tournament.

and more!

Two epee fencers compete at a national tournament.

Two epee fencers compete at a national tournament.

Two epee fencers compete at a national tournament.

Two epee fencers compete at a national tournament.

More from the NAC

I'm camera face!

Two epee fencers compete in a national tournament. Fencer on the left fleches at his opponent, who recoils like he's doing the iconic matrix dodge. It didn't work.

Two epee fencers compete in a national tournament, running and jumping at each other and barely avoiding a collision. Fencer on the Right's blade is bent to an impossible degree, stuck on Fencer on the Left's hand.

Two epee fencers compete in a national tournament. Fencer on the Left lunges at Fencer on the Right, sending him recoiling in defense.

Two epee fencers compete in a national tournament. Fencer on the left scores a headshot, and his blade arcs in a sine wave shape as it sticks on Fencer on the Right's mask.

Scenes from Division 1 Men's epee at last weekend's @usafencing.bsky.social North American Cup

The president of the United States has both direct coercive power of the state and, by and large, indirect power over communication institutions. He has shown how he will use that power. He will punish enemies, yes. And if you agree that teachers, librarians, professors, left-leaning journalists and anyone who isn’t white, conservative and Christian are enemies, you may enjoy this comeuppance. But he has also shown that he will punish people who agree with him — but not enough or not in the right way or just because it is a Tuesday. The merging of state power and economic power around one man who accepts that power as his due would not be possible without the algorithmic grift that has so all-consumingly captured our attention. The internet and the people who, for all intents and purposes, now own it have excelled at making Trump good at authoritarianism. They commodified information. They quelled regulation. They escaped blame for degrading collective action while raking in profits for spectacles of violence that degradation predictably produces. Now, via their president, they are using it to crush the First Amendment, to supercharge the Second Amendment, to stand up bot armies and real armed militias to defend their ownership of your civil liberties.

"Mourn, or else" by @tressiemcphd.bsky.social

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/o...

In today's episode of "You'll Miss It Once It's Gone," The Corporation for Public Broadcasting closes its doors today thanks to the Trump administration cutting funds for public media.

I was assigned, at some point, a piece about a spree of killings and land thefts carried out with impunity in the West Bank since October 7th. The piece mostly focused on a single settlement where a man who had gone to pick olives on his land one Saturday was shot by an off-duty Israeli soldier. His execution had been captured on video. The story included a cast of settlers, anti-occupation rabbis, and West-Bank Palestinians who had spent their lives fearing that their homes would be stolen, and that if they were killed or dispossessed, there would be no recourse for them. I ran into the story editor in the hallway, who said he was having trouble balancing the narrative because all the Israeli characters seemed evil, while all the Palestinians were angels. A long section that documented, without any editorializing, that Palestinian dispossession was an ongoing process that had begun long before October 7th was whittled down to a single paragraph after a series of fights between the editor-in-chief and the story editor on one side, and myself and the freelance writer on the other. Though the man’s killing had been filmed, a fact checker is obliged to seek comment from any party alleged to have committed a crime. I called the soldier’s lawyer. He picked up from a café, where I could hear trance music blasting in the background. The lawyer told me that while, yes, his client did shoot the man picking olives, and yes, the man did die, the Israeli military court found his client not guilty of murder because the man picking olives was a terrorist who was throwing stones. Even though the video did not show the Palestinian man throwing stones, the court said that he was, so he was. QED, his client did not murder anyone, and it would be slanderous for us to say so.

Stunning piece. A horror movie of sorts. Will be familiar to anyone on the left trying to navigate the centrist American legacy media, albeit made all the more difficult when your bosses and colleagues all assume your people are by default murderous barbarians. bidoun.org/articles/hou...

It’s official: the United Nations Commission of Inquiry concludes Israel is committing genocide.

The UN body calls on nations to stop sending weapons to Israel, ensure people within their jurisdiction aren’t aiding or inciting the genocide, and hold those who are accountable.

BREAKING: Justice Gregory Carro has dismissed the first degree murder charge against Luigi Mangione in his state case, finding the DA put legally insufficient evidence before the grand jury. More TK.

Every centrist hagiographer: he said some very important stuff

Everyone: oh, like what?

Every centrist hagiographer: very important things

Everyone: Can you repeat some of those things he said?

Every centrist hagiographer, looking at their legal department frantically shaking their heads: no

US tech companies enabled the surveillance and detention of hundreds of thousands in China U.S. technology firms such as IBM, Dell and Cisco largely designed and built China’s surveillance state, an AP investigation finds. The tech companies deny wrongdoing.

A blockbuster AP investigation from @dakekang.bsky.social and @yaelwrites.com finds that US tech companies designed and built China’s repressive surveillance state trapping tens of thousands of ordinary Chinese citizens in a digital cage. apnews.com/article/chin...

Your Tax Dollars Are Funding AI Founding Fathers Who Quote Ben Shapiro PragerU teamed up with the White House. Oof!

Your tax dollars at work www.readtpa.com/p/your-tax-d...

"... meaning is a power in how we read, deeply influenced by the experience we are having when words come to our attention. That is Human Literacy: to know why the things that have meaning to you have meaning at all."

Here are some of the things @prismreports.org does to verify whether a pitch or piece is AI-generated (I hope this is helpful for others):

1. AI pieces and pitches all kind of look the same, and they're structured the same:
- intro
- Subhead and body of text repeated 4 or 5 times

Twitter Is Frying Your Brain Splinter is your home for news and opinions that challenge power in our political and economic system that's becoming more unhinged each and every day.

Wrote something you can send to your friends still addicted to Twitter to help convince them to leave before they become a 'you gotta hand it to JD Vance' guy. www.splinter.com/twitter-is-f...

My dumb mug taking a selfie at a fencing tournament, where the two fencers pause to give a thumbs up during a break in the bout.

Two of my students had to face each other at a tournament last weekend, so here's my top-tier, conflict-of-interest-free coaching

White House moves to eliminate NASA labor unions The White House has moved to eliminate employee unions at NASA, among other agencies, on national security grounds.

Yes, I'm sure the White House's issue with unions was "national security."
spacenews.com/white-house-...

pro CDC signs

It is not just that these employees are risking being put on leave or even fired for standing up for science (see EPA/FEMA officials), they are standing in front of a workplace that was the subject of a terrorist attack a couple of weeks ago, by a man who believes what their boss believes.