Stephen Michael Kellat

Watch Shiny Happy People: A Teenage Holy War | Prime Video Teen Mania captivated a generation of fervent evangelical Millennial kids with adrenaline-fueled, ecstatic religious experiences through “Acquire the Fire” rallies. But beneath the glittering surface lurked sadistic boot camps, staged martyrdom drills, and fascism disguised as faith - transforming innocent teens into fanatical soldiers, with devastating consequences still unfolding today.

Gutting colleges. 10 commandments in schools. Religious exemptions for everything. Dobbs. broken IVF promises. Tradwife content. Crosses round the necks of spackled women starving themselves for Jesus.

It’s enough to make me wonder if ICE will be repurposed into a US revolutionary guard.

Scoop: Brown interviewing campaign managers for Ohio Senate race Brown would be another key candidate recruit win for Senate Democratic leaders.

I feel like Sherrod Brown had to have seen some good data if he really is getting involved in that Senate race
www.axios.com/2025/08/04/sherrod-brown-ohio-senate-race-husted

***unless you were traveling on the tab of a large corporation, say in the fossil fuels industry…

This would more or less halt the ability of scientists and academics from visiting the US to give talks, attend meetings and workshops, collaborate with peers on research and I think that is the primary point. 🧪

Judges Openly Doubt Government as Justice Dept. Misleads and Dodges Orders

I'm glad that judges are recognizing that DOJ lawyers are lying as a matter of course. Now we need judges to recognize the same about ICE officers.

Axios’ Quiet Retreat Axios quietly winded down its premium policy subscription, Status has learned, marking a stumble in its quest to monetize insider information in Washington.

Axios is shuttering its $4,500+ a year “Pro” policy subscription, a setback in its bid to monetize Washington insider intel. The scoop in @status.news: www.status.news/p/axios-news...

Indiana Jones is an anthropologist he's posting about the ontological turn and indigenous anarchism

Sharing an article in Nature: “Sleeping’ cancer cells in the lungs can be roused by COVlD and flu — Inflammation from the respiratory infections seems to be the culprit, study in mice finds, by Max Kozlov”  Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02420-1   Visual: X-ray of lungs. The caption says: People infected with the virus that causes COVlD-19 (lungs of a person with the disease shown) have a nearly twofold increased risk of cancer-related death, data show. Credit: Rajaaisya/Science Photo Library   A quote from the article: James DeGregori, University of Colorado School of Medicine says that “Respiratory-virus infections didn’t just awaken the cells, they also caused them to proliferate, or multiply, to enormous numbers.”

Studies in mice showed that COVID or the flu can trigger both local & systemic inflammation, causing the awakening of dormant breast cancer cells in the lungs, leading to a significant expansion and the formation of metastatic lesions. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
#MaskTogetherAmerica

Perplexity is using stealth, undeclared crawlers to evade website no-crawl directives Perplexity is repeatedly modifying their user agent and changing IPs and ASNs to hide their crawling activity, in direct conflict with explicit no-crawl preferences expressed by websites.

If Cloudflare's analysis is correct -- and I've no reason to doubt it -- this is shameful behavior from Perplexity blog.cloudflare.com/perplexity-i...

How a Christian college ministry glorified a sex offender and enabled him to keep abusing students Daniel Savala urged generations of Chi Alpha members to get naked in his Houston sauna. Why did Assemblies of God pastors keep bringing teenagers to his home?

How a Christian college ministry glorified a sex offender and enabled him to keep abusing students www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

h/t @bornwithatail.bsky.social

Don’t Wait for Permission to Write for the Public You don’t need a public engagement grant or media team to begin. Here’s how—and why—to share your expertise now.

Advice for academics on finding their public voice: www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

6 successive rolls of 2d6: 2-5, 5-5, 1-3, 2-6, 2-4, 3-6

If you’re looking to start building a Traveller character, here’s some chargen rolls for you.

i think also, drawing on this post by @louisevans.bsky.social, we're very likely approaching a point where the courts have defacto spun apart into a bunch of competing fiefdoms

Harvard “is seriously considering resolving its dispute with the White House through the courts rather than a negotiated settlement.”

The university president said “the suggestion that Harvard was open to paying $500 million is ‘false’”

www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

Anna Belokur of the Kyiv Independent presenting the weekly news update

Sunday’s evening news

And has for several years through the Pay.gov interface. This is not new.

It would be hard to make this week's Midtown Manhattan shooting any more devastating. But Fortune found a way. Among the four murder victims in Monday's rampage was Wesley LePatner, a top real estate executive at Blackstone Inc. and a forty-three-year-old mother of two. On Tuesday, Fortune ran a bizarre, disrespectful, and mercifully short obituary about LePatner. Under the unfortunate subhead "FORTUNE INTELLIGENCE," the obituary: • misstated LePatner's age; • put the gunman's name into the lede; • included a graf about his football injury; • linked to a New York congressman's tweet, without offering evidence the two knew each other; • published this photo caption: "An image of Wesley LePatner"; • and added this line, which is reprinted here verbatim: He honored her sense of civics, as a ". The most informative part of the obit is the editor's note at the end: "For this story, Fortune used generative Al to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing."

When obituaries go awry.

Via this week’s Laurels & Darts/ @columjournreview.bsky.social

www.cjr.org/laurels-and-...

When public media disappears, so do the stories that bring us together.

With federal funding eliminated, millions may lose their last trusted source of news and connection.

If that matters to you, now’s the time to act. Donate: n.pr/458sOhq

John Brunner was actually the most prophetic science fiction writer, and it's pissing me off.

Fucker had personalized push ads in 1969.

I got back-to-back emails about "illegals" because I had the audacity to write about murdered NYC cop Didarul Islam and his Bangladeshi community

I wish all of these people would get arrested for driving 3 mph over the limit, handcuffed, and shackled on a flight to a Salvadoran concentration camp

Doctor Who legend 'becomes latest star to sign up for Strictly Come Dancing' Spoilers, sweetie....

Context. metro.co.uk/2025/08/03/d...

River Song, as illustrated by Sophie Cowdrey

FWIW, I know nothing. 🪩 But any excuse to plug the back catalogue. https://bgfn.sh/hush

🔊 What you need to know today:
- US migrants face third-country deportation threats - but some are then sent home
- EU brands dodge tariffs with ‘first sale’ customs clause
- AI sparks fears for Europe’s voice actors
Listen on Reuters World News podcast link.chtbl.com/rPv0V-H0?sid...

"...we'll pay extra too..."

Seriously, this is a hot table, y’all.

"Since the first messenger who told Tigranes that Lucullus was coming had his head cut off for his pains, no one else would tell him anything, and so he sat in ignorance while the fires of war were blazing around him, giving ear only to those who flattered him."

-- Plutarch, ≈ 100 A.D.

From a director at the … American Enterprise Institute