yeah.

I cannot believe what we are subjected to, day after day.

It has been suggested that i pin this piece, but I never actually posted it myself. So 👇

Where Is the Line? On Ezra Klein, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and the struggle to define the boundaries of what is acceptable in America

Where Is the Line?

On Ezra Klein, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and the struggle to define the boundaries of what is acceptable in America. If we can’t even agree to hold the line against Trumpism, democracy must perish.

New piece:

steady.page/en/democracy...

I'm sure the Faculty Senate at the University of Texas would do this, too, if it still existed.

The Fall of the House of Etsy The beloved marketplace set out to disrupt the monotony of home goods gifting. Now its platform no longer feels differentiated. What happened?

This 2024 piece summarizes 5 key reasons Etsy got enshittified. To summarize the summary: the company prioritized growth and easy money over sustainability or actually functioning well as a platform for handmade crafty stuff. spy.com/articles/lif...

/2 The gulf is between people who think this is bad and think it is good. The gulf is between those of us who think the government shouldn’t treat people that way and people whop think we are stupid, un-American Marxists to think that.

You should be running planning seasons for multiple contingencies over the next 1.5 years. Not legislative. How to coordinate civil resistance. How to handle attacks by the security services. What to do if Trump declares martial law. Because this is all very fucking real.

Today marks the first day in the 55-year history of PBS and 54-year history of NPR that public media has broadcast to its audiences without federal funding. But even though lots of local outlets are at risk, PBS and NPR are still here, providing fair, accurate news coverage and will not be silenced.

I'm skimming, but this paragraph stood out:

Since the Ezra & Ta-Nehisi discussion is still happening: the main point I think most are missing is that Klein is saying the role of the journalist-intellectual is to do strategic politics, whereas Coates says the role of the journalist-intellectual is to tell the truth

I agree and why I think Coates is correct is because Klein and other pundits are terrible prognosticators and strategists. So writing your truth is the only responsible and accurate course.

a man and a woman standing next to each other with the words this is a real low point written below them ALT: a man and a woman standing next to each other with the words this is a real low point written below them

Eisner figured it out? That guy?!

New York and Other States Form Health Bloc as Answer to Trump’s Policies

Gov. Kathy Hochul is expected to announce New York’s involvement in the initiative on Thursday morning. The effort is similar to the West Coast Health Alliance — a bloc of four Democratic-controlled Western states, including California — that issued its own vaccine guidance this week.

Subscription renewed!

If liberals like Ezra are saying that someone who called for Gay people to be stoned, trans people to be lynched, Black people to accept police violence and women to obey did politics "the right way", that is in some respects more alarming that the bloviation of the far right. Bend that knee, Ezra.

Rising political violence is bad, even when it happens to someone I do not like, whose views I find reprehensible.

The road of endless escalation leads nowhere good for society.

There will be blood - Lawyers, Guns & Money Jamelle Bouie (gf) points out that the current political struggle is, at the most fundamental level, one between Abraham Lincoln’s America and Donald Trump’s: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers, brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” said […]

There will be blood

Succinctly put:
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/o...

How (Not) to Save the American University Why splitting the sciences and humanities—and appeasing Trump—won’t work.

So if you remember that frustrating article a couple of weeks ago at the Dispatch suggesting that we ought to save the sciences by shoving the humanities overboard, I wrote a response to the financial illiteracy and moral cowardice of that position: thedispatch.com/article/univ...

The Political Awakening of the Oyster Farmer Gunning for Susan Collins Graham Platner’s campaign launch has been a sudden sensation. But what he’s building now is rooted in the work of a lifetime.

This story has it all: aquaculture, Black Flag, Bernie Sanders, Star Trek as policy, John Hodgman, male tears, and a candidate citing Luthen’s monologue from Andor.

Meet Graham Platner, the Maine oysterman trying to crack the senate. @grahamformaine.bsky.social

newrepublic.com/article/1996...

YouTube video by Farm to Taber Chorus Saved My Channel. Here's My Story

The scary headlines about "Chorus, a sEcReT dArK mOnEy gRoUp" have been absolutely wild to watch.

Because I'm in Chorus, & it's been a godsend.

Without it, I wouldn't be able to cover the US's massive modern-day farm slavery problem- at all.

youtu.be/f5UwwtrGdak

The American Meteorological Society's formal response to "foundationally flawed" DOE mis/disinformation report on #ClimateChange is excellent & timely. Frankly, I have been more impressed w/@ametsoc.org's ability to effectively meet the moment this year than other scientific professional societies.

Selling Zohran | Defector On a cool Sunday in November, a few days after Donald Trump’s re-election, Zohran Mamdani stood on a street corner in Jamaica, Queens, holding up a hastily drawn cardboard sign that read “DID YOU VOTE...

“I had tried during the primary, unsuccessfully, to pitch journalists on it, but at some point it occurred to me, we could just tell the story ourselves.”

This is key to how Mamdani is dealing with an information ecosystem dominated by the oligarchy. Democrats take note.
defector.com/selling-zohran

💯. But it must be pushed hard. And it will come back, worse, if what comes after it is not transformational and retributive.

I mean by Hamilton's social mores Trump would have been killed in a duel decades ago soooo....

Sobering physics-of-democracy finding: attractors in social-media dynamics seem to be "networks of outrage."

The Mothership Vortex: An Investigation Into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine How a single consulting firm extracted $282 million from a network of spam PACs while delivering just $11 million to actual campaigns.

The annoying spam texts destroying the Democratic brand:

$678M raised through those spam tactics

$282M to one consulting firm: Mothership Strategies.

$11M to actual campaigns (1.6%)

The party isn’t just treating donors like marks—it’s being fleeced itself yet continues to back Mothership.

If you work in/adjacent to Democratic politics, or even if you are an occasional Democratic donor, this new @adambonica.bsky.social piece is the most important thing you can read today.

The Democratic Party cannot build power if it allows scam pacs to thrive

open.substack.com/pub/data4dem...