kevin

Chuck Schumer: ‘The American People Deserve A President Who Can More Credibly Justify War With Iran’ WASHINGTON—In a pointed critique of President Trump’s foreign policy leadership, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer stated to members of the press Thursday that “the American people deserve a presid...

From The Archives:

new met tristan

clearly she was onto something seeing as how they fucking killed her

The Largest Nurses Strike in New York City History Just Kicked Off Nearly 15,000 healthcare workers across New York City are on the picket lines demanding safe staffing and workplace protections.

"...No nurse should be asked to accept less pay, fewer benefits, or less dignity for doing lifesaving work. Our nurses have kept this city alive through its hardest moments. Their value is not negotiable.” —New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani

It’s out in German and will be soon in English: Jeff Brown and I considered the new Matthias Pintscher opera DAS KALTE HERZ at Staatsoper Berlin.

omg!!!

A ★★ review of Hamnet (2025) I think I'm pretty allergic to weepy 16th-century period pieces populated by it-boy movie stars with perfect teeth and chiseled beards and Oscar fantasies, though I tried to approach this one with an ...

I went to see Hamnet and found it pretty tedious, though I may be allergic to this genus of weepy period piece:

MacKenzie Scott Donates $45 Million to the Trevor Project Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife has made a donation to the LGBTQ+ advocacy group that the organization calls “transformational.”

BREAKING: Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife has made a “transformational” donation to the LGBTQ+ advocacy group. This large gift comes just months after the Trump administration shut down counseling services for queer youth.

My latest for @wired.com:

Such awful news - fantastic critic and writer, I learned so much from him

Really saddened and shocked to hear of Andrew Clements' death. A wonderful critic, matchless on 20 and 21st century music, and a great colleague and friend to whom I owe an immense debt of gratitude for his role in giving me my own break as a critic. It's a huge loss. And he will be greatly missed.

we’re in the vet’s office waiting room and they just called for Agamemnon. we all looked at the Great Dane but it turns out Agamemnon is an orange kitten in a backpack that makes him look like an astronaut cheese puff

Cops are taught not to shoot into cars. ICE keeps doing it anyway. Immigration agents have shot at least nine people since September. All of them have been in cars.

Immigration agents have shot at least nine people since September. All of them have been in cars.

If calling a state secret police agent a murderer for committing murder will lead to more murder by the state secret police, it sure seems like the problem is with the secret police

"In America, when a officer murders an innocent person, billionaires give them a cash bonus."

American Dialect Society Selects Slop as 2025 Word of the Year NEW ORLEANS MARRIOTT–JAN. 9—The American Dialect Society, in its 36th annual words-of-the-year vote, selected slop as the Word of the Year for 2025. More than three hundred attendees took part in the deliberations and voting, in an event hosted in conjunction with the Linguistic Society of America’s annual meeting.The word slop was recognized for its widespread use for low-quality, high-quantity content, most typically produced by generative AI. While AI slop was a nominee in the American Dialect Society’s 2024 Word of the Year vote, in 2025 slop could stand on its own, with theAI context often implicitly understood. Slop was also recognized as a productive combining form to describe anything of little value generated in mass quantities. Presiding at the Jan. 9 voting session were Ben Zimmer, chair of the ADS New Words Committee, and Dr. Kelly Elizabeth Wright of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.“Slop isn’t a new word. It has moved from the pig sty, to the algorithm, and now forms new compounds such as sloppunk, slopification, and friend slop,” Dr. Wright said. “This productivity has no end in sight.”Word of the Year is interpreted in its broader sense as “vocabulary item”—not just words but also phrases, compounds, and affixes. The items do not have to be brand-new, but they have to be newly prominent or notable in the past year.The vote is the longest-running such vote anywhere, the only one not tied to commercial interests, and the word-of-the-year event up to which all others lead. It is fully informed by the members’ expertise in the study of words, but it is far from a solemn occasion.

The American Dialect Society's Word of the Year is SLOP!

“Slop isn’t a new word. It has moved from the pig sty, to the algorithm, and now forms newcompounds such as sloppunk, slopification, and friend slop,” Dr. Kelly Elizabeth Wright said. “This productivity has no end in sight.” 🧵

i saw him do pelleas with sandrine piau and it was transformative

yes!!!

justice4bears

excuse me @mayor.nyc.gov, will you invite the unhoused basement bear to live in the greatest city in the world

The best thing I saw in 2025 was Festen - Parterre Box It's a dazzling, shocking, and entertaining 100 minutes - one of the best new operas I've seen.

On Festen, my favourite opera of 2025

Gonna have to rename the Streisand Effect the Bari Weiss Effect

omg yes

The lp stockhausen festival of hits

Can you believe I paid less than a dollar for all these hits?!??!

Not the Onion. Literally, NOT the Onion.

@bencollins.bsky.social

Washington National Opera Is Leaving the Kennedy Center

The storied Washington National Opera decides to leave the Kennedy Center where it has played since 1971, perhaps the most significant artistic rebuke yet to Trump’s campaign to remake the facility in his image and attach his name to it. @adamnagourney.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/01/09/a...

"They made me feel really old,” he says. “They were like, ‘What is a wolf and why is it on parade?’ And I was like, ‘I hate both of you.’ And I was like, ‘Feist? 1,2,3,4?’ And they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, we watched that on Sesame Street.’ And I was like, ‘Again, I’d like to push you down a flight of stairs. Your youth enrages me.’”

I will read every interview with Heated Rivalry writer and director Jacob Tierney because his quotes are truly a reporter's dream: www.rollingstone.com/music/music-...

ANDING ROCK Standing Rock Sioux Tribe The Office of Chairman Sitting Bear P.O. BOx D Fort Yates, ND 58538 CHAIRMAN SITTING BEAR'S STATEMENT REGARDING SRST PUBLIC SAFETY JANUARY 9, 2026 I have been receiving reports and evidence of First Nations people being racially targeted, assaulted, and detained by the federal agency Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE). We want to remind our members to be safe and proactive by carrying with you at a minimum your tribal identification cards or a copy of your degree of Indian Blood. Our tribal identification affirms our citizenship and political status. Our Nation is a sovereign government and our members are not immigrants. We are not subject to immigration enforcement on our own lands. Any federal activity within our boundaries must recognize and respect our tribal sovereignty, treaty obligations, and established jurisdictional boundaries. Any ICE presence or activity within our lands is not authorized, not welcome, and will be addressed. Unauthorized personnel will be escorted off our lands.

Looks like ICE is now cracking down on … Native Americans.

This letter was just posted by the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North/South Dakota:

“Our Nation is a sovereign government and our members are not immigrants. We are not subject to immigration enforcement on our own lands.”

VF1

VF2

Great @vanityfair.com story about how wealthy Upper East Side "liberals" have gone full QAnon about Mamdani. www.vanityfair.com/news/story/m...

Inside the Philadelphia Art Museum’s Epic Meltdown The exclusive story behind the brutal ouster of Sasha Suda and the new civil war at Philadelphia’s premiere cultural institution

In a @phillymag.com exclusive, here's the inside story of how Sasha Suda's reign at the Philadelphia Art Museum fell apart so spectacularly, and the board of directors who made it happen.