Steve Mark

Oof. This beauty. #poetry #poems #inspiration #hopeinthedark

a man in a tuxedo and bow tie is standing next to a woman in a dress at a party . ALT: a man in a tuxedo and bow tie is standing next to a woman in a dress at a party .

“They were careless people…they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

So on brand for this would-be emperor and his callous cronies.

I did so at the height of the COVID pandemic when they platformed irresponsible anti-vaxxers, and I have never looked back or missed it for a minute.

This "therapy," widely discredited by medical professionals, is literally killing queer kids. As Schraeder Rodriguez notes, "Queer youth who have been threatened with or subjected to conversion efforts are twice as likely to have suicidal ideation."

THISSSSSSSS

Yesterday's No Kings protests were apparently the largest since the first Earth Day in 1970

The NYT covered that story with a six column headline across the top of the paper and two full pages inside

Today, two small pics below the fold and a story on page A23

They constantly let America down

Same

Of all the great signs I saw at yesterday’s #nokings in New Haven, this is the one that will stay with me. #nhv #gscia

‘Nuff said. #nokings 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Great turnout in New Haven, CT for the #nokings rally and march. #gscia #nhv

In protesting peacefully we reclaim our cities and communities from state brutality. These are our spaces, our homes.

The Autobiography of Medgaf Evers and Fahrenheit 451

Timely #reading and rereading before and after joining #nokings protests today. #booksky

Their project depends on making us all feel alone, isolated and powerless. Taking part in a protest destroys all of those feelings in an instant. Go.

"The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other's light"—James Baldwin

A friend sent this important reminder to me this morning in honor of my birthday, James Baldwin once again speaking necessary truth across the years, in a time when showing compassion, care, and love, to “magnify each other’s light” is critical work. #hopeinthedark #wisdom #inspiration

Underreported in most of the stories about the silencing of Jimmy Kimmel, Sinclair Broadcasting has snapped up hundreds of local stations with an eye toward promoting conservative talking points pre-packaged as "news." Media consolidation is a key tool of autocratic governments.

OF THE EMPIRE We will be known as a culture that feared death and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity for the few and cared little for the penury of the many. We will be known as a culture that taught and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke little if at all about the quality of life for people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a commodity. And they will say that this structure was held together politically, which it was, and they will say also that our politics was no more than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of the heart, and that the heart, in those days, was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

How I wish this Mary Oliver poem was not so prescient about this terrible moment we are all living through #poetry #poems #truth

So funny, and not funny at all.

A little something to soothe the soul in these crazy, crazy times.

I did. Wow. Thank you.

We're three lines into "First they came..."

On Vaccines, Kennedy Has Broken Sharply With the Mainstream While many officials and scientists embrace other parts of the secretary’s agenda, his stance on vaccines is alienating allies who fear a public health crisis.

On nutrition, Jeffrey Dahmer has broken sharply with the mainstream.

"Life in the United States is profoundly changing, is profoundly different than it was even six months ago, because we do now live in a country that has an authoritarian leader in charge."

Rachel Maddow, August 4, 2025

Get great content, support my local public broadcasting, and stick it to the thought police all at once? Oh yeahhhhhhhhh. I am so in.

The name "Alligator Alcatraz" reminds us that America is currently run by adults who are like malicious, giggling children using magnifying glasses to burn ants.

👏 Also, Prime Day sales were down 41% on the first day, according to Bloomberg. #dumpAmazon

We are literally living through the absolute dumbest moment in history.

Need another reason to avoid Amazon? You're welcome.

“As a nation we are as close to autocracy as we’ve ever been. It seems like fascism is basically a war on consensus reality and we need to put a pin in those points where it’s so obvious that it’s not true...We need to flood the zone too but with the truth.”