Jonathan Arendt, PhD

Yesterday’s lunch. Peak Cajun cuisine IYKYK

Back from a month in southern Louisiana. Temps didn’t change the entire drive back up. Feels like I’m still there. Less rain and humidity but man… hot.

a blurry picture of a person with the words `` you got that right '' written on it . ALT: a blurry picture of a person with the words `` you got that right '' written on it .

My Canadian wife, whispering to me emphatically at a BBQ back home in Louisiana: “Jonathan, there is *only meat* at this BBQ!”
Me:

Bellicose manchild wants the Nobel Peace Prize?

Fuck Trump.

My cousin weighs in on my IG post. It’s gonna be a great summer, back home and down South.

Trump doesn’t look like he’s enjoying his little birthday party.

(I should also add, since this is blowing up - by my tiny standards lmao - that “no thing” was Elizabethan slang for vagina so, yes, Hamlet is calling King Claudius a “pu**y”. You can decide for yourselves if that particular connotation of the term extends to the current case)

It really comes down to race and racism. It’s inarguable. So when people voice their criticism by saying “Why is everything about race to y’all?”

Because y’all made everything about race in the first place!

Like, are y’all even paying attention?

If y’all didn’t start none, wouldn’t be none.

🤣

This is on track to be my biggest post (which isn’t saying much, I know).

But as much as I love Hamlet and how much Hamlet means to me, I can live with that.

“No thing” was yonic and “thing” was that phallic. But yes. That’s exactly what he was doing. I love that entire exchange.

“Much Ado About Nothing” is such a great title and most people don’t realize what it really means.

After spending a decade on studying policing and incarceration of kids, you’re absolutely right. This is what so many want the police doing. Just keep those Others in line and away from us.

Many Sheriffs in Louisiana have specifically relied on small town folks not doing anything about them. For over a hundred years now.

POTUS claimed the Los Angeles riots led to “many deaths”

Yet, more people have died because of Trump’s parade than have died in LA as part of the “riots.”

I’ll leave y’all to determine who the real danger is.

Was the story about the 101st Airborne Ranger who died practicing for the parade confirmed true? Feels like it belongs in this list too.

Hamlet: The king is a thing ...
Guildenstern: A thing, my lord?
Hamlet: Of nothing.

We’re on an autobahn to autocracy. I knew we were in for terrible things but I grossly underestimated the speed at which we’d be blowing through guardrails

No. Kings.

Photo of a Mardi Gras crown, lying on top of green, yellow, and purple Mardi Gras beads

We only recognize one kind of crown in Louisiana. We only throw parades for one kind of king in Louisiana.
#NoKings
Happy No Kings Day for all who celebrate.

Like… I want to see OKC win but when I’m watching the game, I end up pulling for Indiana.

WTF is that?

Good point. There is no greater deterrent right now than nuclear weapons.

All they are doing is giving the deterrence argument more credence. Foreign policy is just administrative myopia at this point, with a ‘might makes right’ ethos behind it.

It’s the size of a walkable neighborhood.

AI news stories are running rampant making it look like the final stand in The Walking Dead. It’s weaponized for propaganda.

Now we’re seeing why the Trump admin wants to control AI themselves for the next decade.

Control the medium, control the message

It was plastered all over the news in 🇨🇦, too.

People asking me, knowing I’m 🇺🇸, what the hell was going on. Saying at least it couldn’t get any worse.

Oh, sweet summer children.

I actually think this has a chance to go from his only strength to a real liability. The cracks are already showing with the exceptions and concessions he’s already looking to make. The brutality cannot be ignored.

“Thirty-eight years ago…”

😳

Damn I got old fast

It’s really just a way to get a tuned out audience to focus up.

I prefer a good chiasmus, but even Shakespeare had heroic couplets and internal rhyme and repetition.

It serves the same purpose, but is also a testament of how far we’ve fallen off. “To be or not to be” to “let me be clear”

I’ve worked in schools in impoverished communities back home. Youth prisons. I can only imagine how many more broken and traumatized families there would be in your line of work. Kids who battle for a chance and face odds longer than we can fathom

It’s not about quelling violence.

It’s actually the opposite. He is fomenting it. He is actively stoking it. He’s rooting for it. Because that will give him the cause to drop an incommensurately large hammer to the adulation of the rabid Roman Coliseum Redux fans of his

They were so happy. Dad was carrying a big area rug. They were here now and looking to make a home their own.

As a Louisiana native, it’s embarrassing. He’s so stuck in the 1800s he probably thinks tarring and feathering is actually still a thing.

Just stopped by a pasta place to pick up a lasagna for dinner tonight.

Next door, there’s a paint store. There was a family of four, recent refugees, picking out paint for the girls’ new room.

Seeing these two girls, probably 4 and 6, excited about their new room and house. F*ck the haters.