Lauren O'Neal

"American innovation" now refers to making a kind of atrocity cronut by combining insider trading with war crimes.

It's gay to email.

We live in a world in which its entirely possible that Iran negotiations failed because people involved bet the under.

A picture of a stationary plane and some airport vans taken through an airport window.

Forgot to post the picture I took of Casablanca while on a layover. Unforgettable, "here's looking at you, kid."

They don't *need* AI to make these decisions. But they *want* AI to make these decisions. Because the tech gives them plausible deniability--something to blame (other than themselves) when things go wrong.

In fact, given American policies on vaccines, guns, education, school lunch, access to health care, and so on and so forth, it would be easy to argue people overseas love their kids more.

if you dont have nukes and give us everything we want in negotiation, we might still kill you as late night television entertainment for the demented emperor

Correct but doesn’t go far enough—they are devoted to mass death. They’re in love with it

Once again, in actual democracies, people do not need to engage in permanent litigation & political mobilization to retain the basic right to vote, because none of the major political parties make restricting suffrage the central pillar of their policy platform. We also don't have to live like this.

Which is 112 more votes than the Libertarian Party

the party that wants to require ID to vote abruptly invalidating a thousand people’s IDs overnight seems like a pretty giant flashing red light

So this is the kind of move that would normally qualify someone for asylum. This is overt persecution of a minority.

The level of rage I have towards the New York Times that enabled this while blaming us for it is indescribable.

So this didn't work

They found him. He died.

Another murder by our immigration goon squads

IIRC, Chicago Manual of Style did this too until the most recent edition! But in my experience as a copyeditor, house style guides would usually override it.

Super interesting piece. I was especially struck by this part, because Trump himself actually prefers flashy displays of might—it's our institutions (including elected Dems and "liberal" media) who have worked overtime to make him seem like just a normal politician and not a threat to democracy.

one of the basic problems of prediction markets that our brilliant economists clearly have not thought through is that the insider trading poisons basically everything in public life. everything is potentially untrustworthy, a set-up. the fix is always in.

Never seen Wonderwall hit harder than with this random crowd of Americans, Brits, and Spanish people in Madrid. Honestly almost made me cry.

Crushed "Bad Romance" at a karaoke bar full of Zoomers in Madrid. Had them voguing and calling me La Máquina.

An illuminated store sign that reads, "Alimentación Mr. Weed 9 Eleven Open"

Incredible things are happening in Madrid.

Hearing Spanish people speak English with a Spanish AND British accent is giving me some insight into how weird I must have sounded to people when I was in Portugal speaking Portuguese with an American AND Brazilian accent.

Confusing day of travel—train got canceled, reinstated, part of the route changed to a bus, etc. By the time someone told us our train was now "un Ave," I was too tired to parse that as a company name and was like, Ma'am, as whimsical as it would be, we cannot take a bird to Madrid!

City Council, we demand half a percent of the overall city budget for libraries! In response to the NYC FY2026 Budget, adopted this June, the Brooklyn Public Library, the New York Public Library, and the Queens Public Library released a joint statement thanking City Leaders for in...

Can we get to 4500 letters to NY City Council by tomorrow? It only takes 30 seconds: actionnetwork.org/letters/city... - Also if you've already signed, can you please get 4 others to do the same?

Knifing journalism in the back pays.

I am currently conducting what I call The Spanish Experiment, which is when you get 100% of your calories from wine and walk 15,000 steps every day.

Me posing next to a Barbary macaque sitting on a trash can on the Rock of Gibraltar

A Barbary macaque sitting on a railing

My husband and am Barbary macaque looking at each other

A Barbary macaque looking through the sunroof of a car

Saw the only monkeys in Europe today.

A picture of the rock of Gibraltar

A row of colorful houseboats

I'm now entering the Mad Libs portion of my vacation and am on a houseboat in Gibraltar.

Community meme: I CAN EXCUSE FASCISM. BUTI DRAW THE LINE AT MERCANTILISM.

The Supreme Court:

We passed the first hour of this bus ride from Málaga to Gibraltar in total silence, and then suddenly for no apparent reason the driver started blasting loud music and honking and yelling at every other driver on the road.