Obergedidntfall

Jeff Hiller winning an Emmy is doing a lot of emotional labor for me right now.

An extraordinary, eloquent, courageous letter from Dean Treanor. This is how you stand up to a bully. Proud to be a double Hoya today.

I wonder at what point during an actual apocalypse the public typically loses its appetite for new post-apocalyptic literature and streaming content?

The things Nixon resigned over are the things this administration does three times before lunch on the daily.

An unelected emperor—who has now placed himself above the Congress and the courts—working with a cadre of coders with no knowledge of governance, has been installed by what seems to be a figurehead president to deconstruct the component pieces of government that he disfavors. As Garrett Graff ably illustrated over the weekend, if this were happening in any country other than the United States of America, it would be acknowledged as a coup. Just because the president is authorizing it doesn’t make it lawful. And just because Congress has done nothing to stop him doesn’t make it legal. The fact that it doesn’t quite look like a coup, because there are suits and ties and papers involved, is by design. This is the dismantling not just of entire federal agencies, but of an entire architecture of democratic self-governance, by a man who believes we will not be able to name it quickly enough to stop it.

What is it called when an erratic billionaire, whom nobody elected, rampages through the federal government, purging civil servants, seizing functional control over trillions of dollars, and attempting to destroy entire agencies—all in violation of the law?

This is a coup. slate.com/news-and-pol...

I think our only hope is if Elon Musk picks a fight with Kendrick Lamar.

My resolution this year is to continue to believe I will read the books I buy.

How does one apply to become a bot? I think I could really thrive if I made the switch.

Unrelated to the current scandal, I found a previously purchased audiobook copy of Cormac McCarthy’s “Suttree” in my downloads queue and I started listening to the first chapter and laughed out loud at the overflorid, portentous, bonkers prose. Had to double-check that it wasn’t H. P. Lovecraft.

I’m pretty nostalgic about two weeks ago, a moment when it seemed like some things were possible.

It is just going to be Mad Max with clown cars soon.

Oh well, maybe when an artificial general intelligence takes over it will be less credulous and mean-hearted than we’ve proven to be

News you can use

“Sanewashing” is a decent term for the media tidying up incoherence or inconsistency in Trump’s endless, toxic “weave” in the interest of a simple, clear headline or lede, but “abetting gaslighting” is more accurate.

Thought for an instant that my cursor was moving without my permission but luckily it was just a literal bug scurrying across the screen.

Um, prayer?

Reasonable line to draw.

The enemy of my enemy is my Dick Cheney.

Trump’s going to provide IVF for everybody and he’s going to make Mexico pay for it!

tl;dr but i wish they would have at least told me what my superpower was

Plausible hillbillity.

I gather a lot of pearl clutching is taking place about how “woke” these Olympics are. They just don’t make Olympics like they used to in 1936 anymore.

Never thought I’d see the day where it would make sense to say Kyle Gass is the new Kathy Griffin.

WeWork didn’t.

Pretty sure it’s a Genesis album. I don’t know why people spray paint it all over the buildings downtown, though.

I used to only have to know JFK, FDR, LBJ and MLK, and RBG a bit later, but now I’m expected to be familiar with, among others, ACB, AOC, MTG, DJT, and SBF.

The Republicans have already shown they are willing to refuse to seat a duly appointed Supreme Court Justice just because they could, and most of them are ready to refuse to certify a duly elected Democratic President in 2024 if needed, and that’s what the Speakership fight really comes down to.