Leotard Musings

Just when I think Pete Hegseth is the worst person in the Trump administration, Kristi Noem says something, and I change my mind, then Pam Bondi says something, then JD Vance says something, then Stephen Miller says something, but then Donald Trump says something. Contest over.

I'm not sure you can get more marie antoinette than taking away food stamps before thanksgiving while you build a gold and marble dance hall so the other crooks can bring bribe you over a badly-cooked (argentinian) steak

Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink A handful of journalists rebel against a hedge fund that is gutting newspapers nationwide.

If you think you know why US newspapers died, this feature documentary now streaming for free on PBS might surprise you. It wasn't the Internet. Newspapers were specifically targeted by vulture capitalists.

I composed the score for the film, which features electric cello & Crowfoot guitars.

If Starbucks’ baristas molested children with the regularity of Christian pastors and priests, you wouldn’t have been able to get your hands on a pumpkin spice latte in decades.

Team article for life. I can read so much faster than you video people can speak. A thirty seconds article vs a two minute video?

I fully understand how difficult it is to remain focused on any one particular atrocity but this really ought to be a serious scandal and people need to pay heavy prices for this

A fun fact about McCarthyism is that just two and a half years after he was condemned and censured, Sen. Joseph McCarthy drank himself to death at 48.

Fevers break. Petty tyrants fall. Censorship and persecution drive good people to stand together and fight back.

Christian persecution in America is best defined by this image: No actual struggle, wearing clothes that cost more than my entire wardrobe, polished cross instead of rugged, and surrounded by crowds of fellow hypocrites cheering on bigotry who believe they're the victims.

I went to Small Press Expo and got Flip by @ngoziu.com and you guys. This graphic novel is fan-fuckin-tastic. It's so funny and so heartwarming but also a little heartbreaking at times? It's official release is later this month and I highly recommend it.

How fucking embarrassing for Jeffries.

The lack of mainstream coverage of regular huge protests reminds me of a talk from a Twitter employees who explained that they had to drop BLM off the Trending Tags section because otherwise it would have been there permanently. The modern media environment has no appetite for sustained movements.

Today's #WeAreAllDC protest in downtown Washington, D.C. demanding an immediate withdrawal of federal troops from the District and an end to the federalization of the local police department.

JD Vance's willful ignorance is only exceeded by his gratuitous unpleasantness.

How to report on Nazis. And it's real, I checked thenightly.com.au/editions

Old Soviet joke for today:

A man walks into a newsstand every day, looks around, and leaves.

After a long time of this, the owner says “Can I help you find something?”

“I’m looking for the obituaries.”

“The obituaries are in the back of the newspaper, comrade.”

“Not the one I’m looking for.”

The free world needs to boycott the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, just as they should have boycotted the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany.

Everyone needs to see that these fuckos back down a LOT when they face resistance. Which is why it's SO maddening that so many institutions have capitulated.

Me during NCAA gymnastics season.

With NBC's discussion of Donnell never having made an Olympic team, it's my legal obligation to remind you that he should have been on the 2016 Olympic team and had one of the best individual shots at a medal.

fucking hysterical to hear the 'poor little genAI industry' crying about being bullied with "copyright law" as if it's some novel, untested area of jurisprudence.

If you don't want to be sued by 7 million people don't steal from 7 million people, that's a pretty simple legal concept

There is no such thing as a Ghost Deduction in gymnastics. Someone please give Laurie Hernandez and John Roethlisberger a copy of the code of points. All of the deductions are CLEARLY detailed and not at all a mystery. Please can we get some serious commentary in this sport?

Jesus Christ, @nbc show actual routines not people walking on the sidelines. #gymnastics

Adolf Hitler used the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin to promote fascism.

I hope the world deprives Donald Trump of that same opportunity 92 years later.

“What you believe is that some people have less worth than other people, and I think that is an indecent position to take. As a result, there are no details you can present within that framework that interest me in the slightest, and I don’t see any point in any debate about those details.”

I don't like this trend of people being afraid to experience (negative) emotions when consuming art.

Experiencing things outside of your own point of view makes life a lot more interesting, and is honestly necessary to understand the world and people around you.

I think some people have trouble seeing fascism as anything other than 1940s Germany.

But I think 'people going to a comic convention needing to have a plan in case the government's goons show up to disappear people' is a pretty good demonstration of what it can look like in 2025.

Reporter: The FDA has a new AI tool that's intended to speed up drug approvals. But several FDA employees say the new AI helper is making up studies that do not exist. One FDA employee telling us, 'Anything that you don't have time to double check is unreliable. It hallucinates confidently'

oh

Your Prime Day reminder that half of Amazon warehouse workers struggle with food & housing costs.

A third have had to rely on government assistance like SNAP — which is about to get cut.

If Bezos can spend $50M on a wedding, Amazon can afford to treat its workers with dignity.

trump should’ve been in handcuffs in jan 2021 and there is no way to quantify just how much human suffering will result from the disastrous decision to slow walk his prosecution or even avoid it altogether