Brian PJ Cronin

Seeking Covid Shots for Their Children, Some Parents Hit a Wall

This one's for all the parents who have told me they're going through hell trying to find Covid vaccines for their children: It's not just you! Gift link:

I've been working on a book proposal and alternating between "this is meaningful" and "this is pointless," and a friend recently shared this quote that she stumble on in a Goodreads review: "Every book is a grand gesture of optimism on the part of both the reader and writer." Keep creating, friends.

They're really on a mission to make you feel like you're responsible for climate change if you need meds to breathe. Tell you what, reduce some of the billionaires to not being billionaires to help greenhouse gasses & we'll keep staying alive with our inhalers.

gotta say I don't think it's a great sign for society that the top editor of a major American news outlet thinks we're in a "fight for the West." (against WHOM, Bari?)

As basic question from an ex-police reporter: Can some of our journalists detail the training regimen all these new federal agents receive? The lethal incompetence involving use of force and perameters of the 4A suggests they are just handed guns, masks and badges and told to go fuck people up.

As time goes on I really think one of the most important pieces of art from the last ten years is that Dark Crystal prequel series on Netflix because it teaches kids the important lesson that collaborating with bad people will not spare you from being destroyed by the bad people.

You can’t get anti-institutionalists to trust an institution I will stipulate at the outset that I do not know how to reverse the long trend toward distrust in traditional American news sources. There's probably a solution out there, likely something involving ...

I was curious if The Post's shift to accommodating the right was yielding any distinct benefit to the paper. To this point, it hasn't — and it's hard to see why it would.
More data (including on CBS) here:
www.pbump.net/o/you-cant-g...

The line about Weiss having “a cop's heart and a tadpole's brain” is one of those insults like “short-fingered vulgarian” that latches onto its target so deeply that it stays there forever.

In the process, Weiss gets to continue two of her lifelong passion projects: trying to get people fired, and mainstreaming previously verboten ideological strands, like how the Nazi salute means something else or how genocidal starvation is actually fine. Even in the most generous reading—where her entire career and indeed life might reflect anything more than the cold calculus of a pure cynic who wants the approval and patronage of the world's richest and vainest reactionaries—Weiss's entire worldview is in the negative. She positions herself as a freewheeling intellectual and iconoclast, taking on the stilted orthodoxies of liberal power, but the irony is that her effectiveness is totally circumscribed by the limits of that orthodoxy. She does not have an original thought in her head, merely a list of supposed excesses and hypocrisies riddling the elite liberal world.

simply a brilliant blog from @redford.bsky.social on billionaire bootlicker bari weiss taking over cbs news
defector.com/bari-weiss-s...

Another call for sources: I'm reporting on pediatric Covid vaccine access. If you've had trouble finding pediatric doses in stock, or if your child was turned away, I'd love to hear from you: maggie.astor@nytimes.com.

Thanks to those who replied to my pregnancy callout; that story will be out soon.

We have many great images from the @umaw.bsky.social event in DC on Monday, but this has got to be my favorite - Alexia Roditis of Destroy Boys with Rep Rashida Tlaib (and an amused Yasmin Williams looking on)

The man has now released three (excellent) covers of songs from Low’s THE GREAT DESTROYER album, just go ahead and do the whole album my dude

Not to be a pedant but Bari Weiss was a junior editor who occasionally wrote opinion pieces in the opinion section, not a columnist.

They know this is the most popular they’ll ever be because they know where the economy is going.

When Roger Ailes moved here to the Hudson Valley he was apparently constantly raving about how Obama was going to land black helicopters on his lawn and have him disappeared.

Out There: Migratory Patterns When the climate forces you to move

Climate change is affecting the ways in which both birds and people migrate, and raising some difficult questions in the process. buff.ly/LqrFwg1

Starting to think that ICE is actually not the courageous and ruthless militia of head-cracking freedom warriors that the administration said they were if all it takes to foil an entire battalion of them is a giant frog in a tiny cape

Everything at the pizza place near my parents’s apartment costs 30% more than it did last year and based on this speech I don’t think those prices are coming down anytime soon.

Making a t-shirt that says YOU DO NOT HAVE TO TALK ABOUT, OR TO, THE BASTARDS and not taking it off for the next several years

Bringing a Survey to a Gun Fight “Pollingism” Has Failed Democrats and Voters. Here’s Why, and What to Do Instead.

Here it is, my answer for every time I get asked "why don't (most) Dems just...[message better, be bolder, sound authentic...etc]"

www.weekendreading.net/p/bringing-a...

Kind of surprised how viscerally angry I just got hearing “All Caps” in a commercial for AI

FEMA Withholds $300 Million in Grants Until States Account for Deportations

The Trump administration’s racist, cruel, and illegal immigration agenda is making us all less safe.

The EMPG grant has been stopped again and is one of the single most important disaster funding sources for state and local governments.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/c...

We are, once again, clean on OPSEC

Ooo I will check it out, thank you!

For the Friday night crowd:

I jokingly said, "Is this just your life now?" to the UPS guy who came to my door with my package and a $42 fee. He just gave me this long, silent stare.

this is like half of r/ups now

What a dark day for press freedom in the United States

Out There: Migratory Patterns When the climate forces you to move

I wrote about climate migration for birds and people, and if the industrialized world, which is primarily responsible for causing climate change, has a moral responsibility to welcome refugees from countries that have been hit the hardest (spoiler alert: we do.)

Massive fire breaks out at refinery in El Segundo An explosion and fire rocked a refinery in El Segundo on Thursday night, causing massive balls of flames that could be seen for miles.

Massive fire breaks out at refinery in El Segundo