Rachel K Barry

Friends— here it is. Updated & expanded thanks to the space afforded to me in the @therumpus.net & the guidance of the brilliant @roxanegay.bsky.social’s edits. The win centers Muslims humanity — but what does that mean in a country that rejects that?

therumpus.net/2025/11/05/z...

Not honored enough to keep the politics staff employed?

No one is coming to save us but us.

If you have it please donate cash to the food banks. $10 in their hands will feed more people than the $10 worth of canned goods you can buy for retail prices. Also check on your elders. Many of them will not admit they rely on these programs so grocery gift cards or a surprise bag of staples

Tomorrow. D.C. The National Mall. Sunup to sundown.

Almost every major news story this week is about how the entire economy is now gambling, scams, bribes and theft.

The frog did it. Ribbit.

The only reason to get rid of interlibrary loan is that you prefer ignorance and illiteracy.

Please share this as widely as possible. ICE kidnapped a 7th grader in Everett, Massachusetts and sent him to Virginia. Help bring him home now!

If any other president in all of history said the military should use American cities as a training ground he would be removed from office that same day. The hardest thing to tolerate in all this is how relatively silent elected democrats are. It’s ridiculous.

in the last year this is the onion headline i most often think about

fair point

Re-upping this again, please spread far and wide:

screengrab of a portion of new yorker interview with former simpson's writer john swartzwelder: Mike Sacks: How much time and attention did you spend on these scripts? Another “Simpsons” writer once compared your scripts to finely tuned machines—if the wrong person mucked with them, the whole thing could blow up. Swartzwelder: All of my time and all of my attention. It’s the only way I know how to write, darn it. But I do have a trick that makes things easier for me. Since writing is very hard and rewriting is comparatively easy and rather fun, I always write my scripts all the way through as fast as I can, the first day, if possible, putting in crap jokes and pattern dialogue—“Homer, I don’t want you to do that.” “Then I won’t do it.” Then the next day, when I get up, the script’s been written. It’s lousy, but it’s a script. The hard part is done. It’s like a crappy little elf has snuck into my office and badly done all my work for me, and then left with a tip of his crappy hat. All I have to do from that point on is fix it. So I’ve taken a very hard job, writing, and turned it into an easy one, rewriting, overnight. I advise all writers to do their scripts and other writing this way. And be sure to send me a small royalty every time you do it.

hi this is my favorite writing advice, it's from former simpsons writer john swartzwelder (i think about the crappy little elf all the time) www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

I do not care that you are not “surprised.” Please. You have no idea how tiresome it is when you post that something horrible, fascist, authoritarian is “not surprising.” Nothing is “surprising” anymore. But a lot of it is horrible and frightening. Let’s deal with it together.

@surj.bsky.social is asking antiracist white people to host mass meetings in their communities and they are providing guidance for people who are interested in doing so.

Inside ‘Alligator Alcatraz,’ detainees report relentless mosquitoes, limited water Without permanent structures, electricity or running water, logistical headaches have emerged at “Alligator Alcatraz.”

Solzhenitsyn wrote repeatedly about the use of mosquito torture in early Soviet concentration camp detention on the Solovetsky Islands. If you use the same nasty ingredients, you're going to bake the same cake.

‘New York Times’ Announces New Columnist Will Contribute Nothing To Society 3 Times A Week

‘New York Times’ Announces New Columnist Will Contribute Nothing To Society 3 Times A Week

that's some vintage antisemitism holy shit

This is what’s on CNN right now, an hour after Republicans passed a bill stripping healthcare from 17 million Americans, gutting food assistance to the tune of $300 billion, and exploding the deficit by $4 trillion.

I am grieving the barbarism that is going to unfurl from all this. People are going to die. Livelihoods gone. All to feed a corrupt kleptocracy.

I see every day up close how different it is from the first time around. There are no guardrails. A disaster. I’m sorry we have to live through this.

BREAKING: Republicans just blocked my amendment to ensure Veterans, foster kids and the homeless aren’t denied SNAP benefits.

There is no one Republicans won’t betray to ram through tax cuts for their billionaire buddies.

Millions of people are going to be directly, irreparably harmed, but let’s burn public attention with whether the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York has done enough to become One of the Good Ones™️

ALL OUT FOR REP. MCIVER WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25TH @ 9:30AM 2 FEDERAL SQUARE, NEWARK, NJ

📢📢📢 All out for @replamonica.bsky.social

Join @njaij.bsky.social @maketheroadnj.bsky.social, First Friends NJ/NY, Peoples Organization for Progress and many others at the Federal Courthouse to demand justice and an end to Rep. McIver’s political persecution.

Wednesday, June 25 at 9:30AM

I seriously think the Social Internet is 21st century cigarettes. Complete with secondary smoke causing a lot of harm in nonusers.

An Onion front page with the headline: Congress, Now More Than Ever, Our Nation Needs Your Cowardice Who will stand up for our democracy? This question, fraught in even the most peaceful times, has only grown more pressing as our country approaches its 250th anniversary. Each passing day brings growing assaults on essential liberties like freedom of speech and due process. Meanwhile, our delicately assembled legal system faces a constant barrage of threats. Even as this issue reaches publication, the U.S. military has been deployed against peaceful protesters. We teeter on the brink of collapse into an authoritarian state. That is why, today, The Onion calls upon our lawmakers to sit back and do absolutely nothing. Members of Congress, now more than ever, our nation desperately needs your cowardice. Our republic is a birthright, an exceedingly rare treasure passed down from generation to generation of Americans. It was gained through hard years of bloody resistance and can too easily be lost. Our Founding Fathers, in their abundant wisdom, understood that all it would take was men and women of little courage sitting in the corridors of power and taking zero action as this precious inheritance was stripped away—and that is where we have finally arrived. Now is not the time for bravery or valor! This is the time for protecting your own hide and lining your pocket. Now is not the time for listening to your idiotic constituents drone on about what’s happening to their precious democracy. This is the time for getting down on all fours and grov- eling. Now is not the time to say, “Enough is enough,” and have the tough conversations about resisting the ongoing assaults on American liberty. This is the time to let the wave of apathy and indifference roll over you as you think about getting a really nice renovation to your house in Kalorama. But what can I, one coward, do alone? you might ask.

Donald Trump just unilaterally bombed Iran. A masked gang is terrorizing our streets. America has rapidly devolved into an authoritarian state.

That's why, today, The Onion has purchased a full page ad in today's New York Times with a simple plea to Congress:

Sit back and do absolutely nothing.

Only Congress has the power to declare war and our elected officials must take that power back. Urge your senators to use their constitutional authority with the war powers resolution: act.indivisible.org/sign/no-iran...

Then do the same with your representative: act.indivisible.org/sign/no-iran...

Lessons (and an apology) from the Sun-Times CEO on that AI-generated book list The summer section was intended to be a supplemental value to our subscribers alongside our own journalism. Instead, it detracted and distracted from our work.

Chicago Sun-Times / WBEZ is continuing to take the AI slop that ran in the paper seriously as an internal scandal.

Today, Chicago Public Media published an apology and timeline of events from their CEO, which I don't think is perfect but I think is heartfelt:

Let's use the words that fit.

This is evil.