Ava Ayers

NYC-area officials raise Pride flag at Stonewall after Trump admin takes another down Local leaders hoisted a Pride flag at Stonewall National Monument on Thursday, defying a federal directive that led to its removal earlier this week.

gothamist.com/news/nyc-are...

100%. He's very clear that he plans to keep recommending students on the basis of their appearance and that he thinks it's appropriate to do so. Every student in his class is being judged on whether he thinks they're attractive. Out.

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again.
#Pinks #ProudBlue

Ancient 'Dial-a-Poem' Service Rises From the Grave, Lets You Use Your Phone as a Phone There's something rather poetic about a service designed to breathe life back into poetry getting resurrected after all these years.

55 years after the FBI shut Dial-A-Poem down, it's back: gizmodo.com/ancient-dial...

This is "the beatings will continue until morale improves," delivered with all the pomposity and gravitas of the neighborhood crime boss at the table in the back of the restaurant who doesn't realize the Penguin is about to betray him

Sign by Make it Weird and Resistance Ephemera installed near Philadelphia City Hall in October 2025: "Somewhere in America, a little girl is hiding in an attic, writing about ICE"

"Somewhere in America, a little girl is hiding in an attic, writing about ICE"
hyperallergic.com/artists-stre...

"He ran into a wall" is something mob bosses on TV say when they want everyone to know that they beat a guy up

When Not to Be a Steamroller Lessons from Eliot Spitzer’s failed push to get driver’s licenses for undocumented New Yorkers

Here's something I wrote: on how Spitzer tried to sell driver's licenses for undocumented people -- and the weird fact that the law never prohibited them to begin with. nycpolicyforum.substack.com/p/when-not-t...

Rudy Giuliani disbarred in D.C., months after disbarment in New York Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has been disbarred from practicing law in the nation's capital, a D.C. appeals court ruled.

Sometimes! www.cbsnews.com/news/rudy-gi...

Texas A&M Bans Plato - Daily Nous Drop the race and gender material from your course and the Plato readings, or teach a different course. You have a day to decide. That's a paraphrase of what Martin Peterson, professor of philosophy a...

Texas A&M actually tells a philosophy professor he may not teach Plato.

Fleabag was already mentioned, so I'll add Waller-Bridge's 2016 series "Crashing." Astonishingly good finale.

Oh yes, everyone remembers all those times the Evening News did in-depth segments about the social-science research on the topic they were covering.

Tress of the Emerald Sea: A Cosmere Novel A Cosmere Novel

And if you liked Carol's idea of boats that sail on colored sand (even though she made fun of it), there's bookshop.org/p/books/tres...

Airplane! arrived there.

The image that Tubi uses here is like the least striking frame of the whole movie, I promise.

Animalia (2023) In the final days of her pregnancy, Itto becomes separated from her husband and wealthy in-laws when a supernatural event thrusts Morocco into chaos.

The trailer for Steven Spielberg's new alien-arrival movie looks interesting, but also looks like it, ahem, shares a lot of themes with the beautiful Moroccan movie "Animalia," which I can't recommend highly enough. Every frame is stunning.
tubitv.com/movies/10003...

Working in law and government, but also just in day-to-day life, I've seen endless problems caused by people who can't spot ambiguities in the bad writing (and speech) they produce. There's no better training for ambiguity-spotting than the study of poetry.

Another great book: "Expelling the Poor" by Hidetaka Hirota. Extremely useful history of state and local exclusions and deportations in early America, and how they led to the federalization of exclusion and deportation in the late 19th century.

Reason-giving is a tax on fascism, because fascism 1) requires speed and 2) is an assault on reason

YouTube video by Dan Reeder - Topic bloo you believe in bloo blove

Bloo You Believe in Bloo Blove www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P_G...

I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor or degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes" When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy [sic].

Abraham Lincoln, 1855.
www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/spee...

How the FBI Became the Face of Deprofessionalization What research tells us about national security under authoritarianism

New from me:
Kash Patel is engaged in purges, removal of real accountability, and impunity for loyalists at the FBI.
Researchers told me that these are the exact patterns that create abusive national security organizations under authoritarianism. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/how-the-fb...

In a fair world, reporters would now ask everyone who voted for it to define socialism, and play their attempts at answers on air

State Challenges to Immigration Enforcement Practices Recent lawsuits in Wisconsin, New York, and California explore questions about the role of state law in federal immigration enforcement.

NEW: I wrote for @statecourtreport.org about the important role *state* law plays in immigration enforcement, and some ongoing litigation in WI, NY, and CA that will shape the relationship between ICE and the states and localities in which it operates. statecourtreport.org/our-work/ana...

On this Trans Day of Remembrance, we remember the bright and courageous trans people whose lives were stolen by hatred. Their absence is felt across our city.

We will honor them by building a New York where every trans person can live safely, fully and freely.

Appellate judges at oral argument:

Sincerity and Authenticity — Harvard University Press “A powerful diagram of the moral life from Shakespeare to the present...a book crowded with insights.”—Geoffrey Hartman, New York TimesOne of the twentieth century’s foremost literary critics traces t...

I think the punks picked up what the Romanticists laid down. I'd love to read a cultural history that started where Trilling left off and traced authenticity through to the punks: www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...

The latest from Torment Nexus 'R' Us!

Is it bad if a sitting federal judge was (allegedly) part of a conspiracy to commit murder? It seems bad ....

I'm with you Kate.