Jennifer Senior

The Trump admin is really crushing it with their midterm strategy

Didn’t know that. Well, my ER friend and ICU nurse friend vacation together, so maybe there’s still a common bond? (Different hospitals,maybe that helps.) You know that the handsome, gray-haired nurse on the show is an actual ER nurse, right?

I am obsessed with doc and nurse responses to the Pitt. Am dear pals with both a ER doc AND an ICU nurse and am always searching for their feedback. So fascinating to hear you say…

How Vietnam Inflamed the Civil Rights Movement

Of course @bstaples.bsky.social, who at the NYT produced one gem after another about forgotten histories of African Americans, writes a sharp review here, about the cynical deployment of Black Americans to Vietnam and the grotesque internal discrimination they faced. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/b...

Watched the pilot of ER last night because I’m such a fan of The Pitt and cannot get over these two.

In which @peterbakernyt.bsky.social ‬⁩ slyly uses Trump’s favorite phrase in the (finally) accurate context.

Yes, and while we’re at it, energy drinks and cars. But seriously, every other ad seemed to be about AI companies, some of which I’d never heard of, and Ubereats and Seamless and Alexa and Instacart and and and and …

Plus GLP-1s

I wonder.

So basically only Silicon Valley and pharmaceutical companies could afford spots during the Super Bowl this year

Still outraged that a bunch of toilets ruined a really good Phil Collins song.

I watch football once a year and each time my husband and son have to re-explain to me what a down is

I’m showing up tonight for Bad Bunny and good commercials.

The normalization of this kind of discourse and imagery and stunt is one of the most insidious poisons to have seeped into modern GOP politics.

xoxo

Raise your hand if you've worked with Book World's @johnwilliams.bsky.social and found him to be one of the most casually erudite, perceptive, and nimble editors you've ever known.

🙋‍♀️

Washington Post Begins Laying Off More Than 300 Journalists

They’ve gotten DOGE’d, essentially. It’s a deliberate tactic. Gut until the institution doesn’t work. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/b...

Given how volatile and terrifying these situations are, I am blown away by the bravery of the citizens who continue to film them at close range.

Anecdata:

—Life in DC in recent months has been shadowed by omnipresence of National Guard. But almost no one "hates" the NG members, or blames them. They're doing their best, mostly ramping down rather than amping up tensions.

—People around the US fear and *hate* ICE and CBP cowards. For cause.

Nice little country you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.

Barry Blitt, Air Mail.

Tfw your childhood pediatricians reunite to tell you that you have osteoporosis

Yes. And Johnny Cochran a bit. But deleted bec I realized it sounded too much like “look at me coining a new term” rather than what you describe. My mind *reflexively* rhymes when I think about this stuff, precisely because I came of age w Jackson, Cochran, Clinton (“Mend it don’t end it”) etc

Apparently the Reflecting Pool was too inconveniently located.

Brilliant. Maybe moldering on one of the nonexistent floors of the Trump tower

‘He’s a Maximalist’: Inside Trump’s Gilded Oval Office Take a 3-D tour of the president’s office, where he covered a third of the wall space with gold.

No better metaphor for this man’s narcissism than the two gilded mirrors he’s put in there — mirrors! — each the size of the framed Declaration of Independence. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

A December Photo Essay ’Tis the Season—letting nature tell the story

And now, your moment of zen. From the divine @seremony.bsky.social.

(The images really are spectacular.)

A December Photo Essay
open.substack.com/pub/sarahmur...

Yes, and: While not advancing the ball can be a legitimate argument, can there *ever* be enough stories about the US committing torture right now? And isn’t TV the far more powerful medium to tell them?

Yes, the Venn diagram there must be impressive

Thank you, who knew I had 7 Grammys

Google AI just told me that Jennifer Senior wrote “Let’s Pretend We’re Married”. When I followed up, asking why it thought so when I’d written absolutely nothing by this name, it basically said, Oops, our mistake, turns out that’s a Prince song.

We are so doomed