Jeff Sharlet

Fuzzy memories and hard facts: An SC accuser's claims against Epstein, Trump examined An alleged victim of Jeffrey Epstein gave FBI agents true accounts of her time growing up in SC. Claims she made about Donald Trump remain unsubstantiated.

Breaking: SC newspaper verifies portions of Trump accuser's story. Textbook journalism. Local journalism. Support your local news outlets. www.postandcourier.com/news/epstein...

“Here at the Institute”

Seconded

If you were presented a ballot with Anthropic or Hegseth and forced to vote… I dunno which is lesser. But anyway good news is we’re not in that bind.

It is indeed a bread and puppeteer

Well, there are “other” alphabets, but I meant the rest of this one. You know what I meant. But I get anxious about my typos.

Puffing Anthropic because Hegseth bashes Anthropic is like sticking with Platner because Schumer backs MilIs. I get the impulse. I think for many it’s born of fatigue. The desire for a simple binary. If bad guy says X, not-X is true. But friends, there’s a whole other alphabet we can work with.

Video: We caught Elon Musk's AI company flouting EPA rules using a thermal drone xAI’s Grok chatbot is powered by unpermitted gas turbines at a Mississippi power plant. Here's how we know.

You may have read Evan's groundbreaking investigation into Elon Musk's AI power plant last month. Now we've released a 12-minute mini-doc that dives deep into how the plant is affecting local residents — and what happened in Southaven following our initial report.

Don't Bomb Iran

Protest in White River Junction, Vermont, yesterday. The really sad part: The person in the costume made this sign twenty years ago. "Evergreen."

Me, neither! Not until this viewing.

3rd time through. Each viewing brings new revelations of language, character, performance. Paula Malcolmson as Trixie & Brad Dourif as Doc Cochran are resonating in this moment. & the deep kindness of making Calamity Jane, not great IRL, into the healer she might in other circumstances have been...

"We have frequently printed the word Democracy. Yet I cannot too often repeat that it is a word the real gist of which still sleeps." Walt Whitman, Democratic Vistas, 1871

And yet another layer: In brilliant casting and two astonishing performances, both the coward Jack McCall, who murders Hickock, & Hearst's sadist Mr. Wolcott, who comes into possession of Hickock's last letter, are played by the same actor, Garrett Dillahunt. Which produces meaning, too.

Yes, a rumor that made the rounds, but not true. Misinformation.

"And with wishes even for my enemies, I shall make the plunge and try to swim for the other shore." Last words of a fictional Wild Bill Hickock, as read by locked box sadist Mr. Wolcott in Deadwood. The words, the forces bearing upon & constructing & demolishing each character: my kind of theology.

I just went down it for ten minutes.

You’d be amazed at how often I get variations of that. Or someone trying to cudgel me with my own books they don’t know I wrote. But no excuse for me jumping the gun!

Oh, hell! I’m sorry. Thank you for reading, that’s my oversensitivity. This place…

Huh. That’s a very specific example, about one specific group…

Ah, resist friend.

I’ve figured out the moment that turns this from ordinary abomination into a brilliant horror film. The double-tap chin bobbing smirk right after “I am a a C.” Boom. Boom. Coogler, Peele, Friedkin, Carpenter look on in terrified awe.

Holy war

I've been reporting on varieties of fundamentalism and Christian nationalism for 20+years, around US & world, I've seen violence firsthand, and still this is the creepiest thing I have ever witnessed. Every single element of it. I am afraid it will haunt me for the rest of my days.

From October 2025, Sen. Lindsey Graham to Republican Jewish Coalition: “I feel good about the Republican Party. I feel good about where we’re going as a nation. We’re killing all the right people and we’re cutting your taxes. Trump is my favorite president. We’ve run out of bombs.”

Matted watercolor and gouache on paper of a leafy, fruiting bread nut plant. Lush green in the detailed veins and juicy fruit cut in half on left side

I could get lost in these lush leaves.

A bread nut, created by “artist now unknown” (a phrase I like) (1825), from the Yale Center for British Art’s East India Company exhibition

I wish! But I think you may be mistaken, sir. This is an Epstein discussion forum.

I mean, yes, a failure in the broad political necessity. But not because Tarrio got a sedition conviction. Because so many did not, and all were pardoned. Should they not have charged Tarrio for the risk that other prosecutors wld fail, or that Trump wld return and pardon?

From the coast of Maine to the Sea of Galilee...