Jeff Sharlet

History is stuffed--if you want to peer under forgotten rocks--with dumb fascists who were flashes in the pan. If he's dumb, we're really screwed, because he's been running laps--ok, golf carting laps--around opposition for ten years. Bannon's long been sidelined.

I don't think so. He's like slime mold: He calculates without thinking. And while we can look at a million steps we might see as mumbles, um, that mold has done more to wreck democracy and consolidate fascist power than anyone in US history.

Slapping your base in the face is authoritarian 101. Demonstration of power. It's ok. Let the sycophants scream and grumble. This is "I alone can fix it" shit.

I'd urge you to really resist that thinking. We're ten years into a fascist more effectively demolishing democracy and consolidating power than ever in US history. Let's stop telling ourselves ha ha he dumb. If only.

Oh, I doubt that very much. The first half -- he liked watching Mamdani hurt Cuomo. The second? Keep things in scale. Mamdani looms large to us. Vast majority of Americans haven't heard of him.

To hell w/ the "love" life of opportunistic courtiers such as Lizza & Nuzzi. But I *do* want to read about how Nuzzi allegedly played catch-&-kill for RFK. I *don't* want to pay to do so. I'm a huge advocate of subscribing, subscribe to ton of publications. Not that. C'mon, somebody, details!

Puzzled by shock at Trump/Mamdani presser. Long history of autocrats opportunistically--& temporarily--embracing enemies. I think Mamdani's right to use the moment. Suspect he gets it's just that. & also knows Trump sees he gets a little "winner" shine & can later say "I gave him a chance."

Good advice. I like to start by imagining the $1 table at a used bookstore 30 years from now, picking up a moldy volume with no dust jacket, reading a few pages, and wondering "OMG, what the hell was this guy thinking?" And that's my book.

Dare to dream

She has special plans for that day

(“Wait,” said my fact-checker, Larry Summers’ 19-yr-old niece, for whom I’m renting a modest one-bedroom in Williamsburg, “does Georgetown even have ‘brownstones’?” “Kid,” I told her, patting her knee, “journalism is who you know, not what you know. You’ll learn.”)

Americans just waking up, you heard it here first. Remember to subscribe to my substack, Big Bamboo Bop, only $15,000 a yr. I’m just a poor working journalist w/ a mortgage to cover on my humble 3-story Georgetown brownstone.

Many years older? Check. Face like an old trapper who likes to spin yarns of the bear what got away? Check. Sudden rep for “complexity” obscuring fundamental fact of self-serving submission to fascism? Check. Steroids? Check. No doubt about it: MTG & Nuzzi are an item.

i promise i don’t mean to high horse this but if you’re thinking about giving lizza ten bucks there are a lot of good independent journalists whose work you could subscribe to for a month instead

He was. I let my sub lapse. What’s it say about Sanford?

Black and white horizontal of a woman with long greying black hair in a black hoodie and black hat and black scarf. Her face is weathered, her lips are closed and she smiles. Her dark eyes almost disappear into shadow. Here’s all I know about Asama: She was standing on the side of an empty road, as if waiting to cross. There were no cars, no people. Everything had been rebuilt and everything was starting to crumble. Except Asama. Was it the hood? The hair? Her scarf? Why did I ask to take her picture? Why did she nod? Why did she smile? Why, when I lowered the camera did she open her lips to show her one tooth, and why didn’t I take its picture? I make too many assumptions. She wasn’t from there. She lived “here,” but only since September. Before that she’d lived “there,” the other there, she didn’t know how many years. Why had she come? “Had to leave.” Good answer.

I fall for certain phases. Oh, autocorrect! You know I meant “faces.” But the typo tells the truth, I am really speaking of phases. Big and craggy and once-beautiful. You know what I mean by “once.” You know she’s beautiful, right now, in this picture. 8/30 of a London snapshot a day.

Apologies, Ruth. I’ll delete the post. I misread. Also, how can I get on that Canadian gravy train?

Yes, Wired editors are our enemies. You got it. Man, you are on the front line! Who’s next? We must smash the low paid civil servants who fail to heroically sacrifice their jobs?

Ha! I meant “heroic,” but once again the typo autocorrect gods smile on me, because “heretic” works even better.

Maybe if people understood difference between a corporation, Condé Nast, & a magazine, Wired, that’s been doing heretic work, it’d be in a stronger position to fight back when the corporation cuts.

True, but I hope you don’t mean “lots of people can’t afford to live on $135 k” because, well, those are a certain class of people, indeed, 1 or 2 %.

Military section chief tells subordinates he’s authorized by Trump to force his Christianity on them Of all the many heinous, vindictive, and flat out unconstitutional things that this administration has done thus far to transform our once great country into a Christian nationalist oligarchy, it is o...

I missed this Trump admin memo when it came out, but it’s a doozy: tossing our First Amendment to explicitly permit supervisors to instruct subordinayes to accept Jesus & even what church to attend & how to pray. Latest from @chrisrodda.bsky.social: www.dailykos.com/stories/2025...

Rolling out the Matt Christman quote from after Charlottesville (2017) again:

This story is nuts.

"ICE agents then surrounded the judge’s car and demanded everyone to exit the vehicle, threatening to smash in the windows if they did not comply."

Wait you have matching SpongeBob PJs and slippers and you don’t think that’s dressing up??

Fun fact: former Veggie Tales writer Eric Metaxas in a public debate with me once suggested that my then 5 or 6 yr old nephew might be a secret Islamic terrorist. It was super weird. That was before he was widely known as a fascist. But I got an inkling. Still, I do like shallots.

Neat! Aliens!

Partly, perhaps, because urban Austria is religiously not anywhere near as diverse as U.S. 1/3 none, 1/3 Catholic, most of remainder split between Islam & Eastern Orthodox. I could show you one road in rural East Tennessee with more range—& more disagreement—among Protestants alone.

B&W vertical of many tubes of wires against a worn concrete wall.

B&W vertical of many tubes of wires against a worn concrete wall.

Day 7, 30 days of cheap shots from London: guts of the city, the underneath, the tubes of the tube. I had so much more to say today, but my eldest arrives early am, and I promised myself I’d post something daily. So this is it. The connections.

Thanks—will definitely read his work.