David M. de León

A four panel comic from Zach Weinersmith's smbc-comics.com. Two people are talking, one is holding a calculator. Panel 1: Character 1: "Hey, check it out! I got France to run on this old calculator!" Character 2: "What?" Panel 2: Character 1: "France is substrate independent! It’s just a collection of agents that believe themselves to be in a location with certain history and relationships! France is software!" Panel 3: Character 2: "France is not software." Panel 4: Character 1: "Look! It’s smoking and complaining about bread!" Character 2: "I’ll be damned." Calculator: "putain!"

Clair Obscur (2025)

@zachweinersmith.bsky.social

Peer reviewers already started referring to me (incorrectly!) with a capital "d", which makes me want to be extra Hispanic and bring in my mother's maiden name.

Oof

Weirdest thing about finishing this academic book is thinking about how people are going to start referring to me by my last name. Maybe even making an adjective out of it. Shudder.

It's fine when nonprofits and lit mags seek un- or low-paid help but they should really feel more badly about it. I want to see open calls for interns or low-to-no-pay positions announced with some real shame and repentance.

Hypervigilance Oatmeal

In going through my last notes for this book I accidentally started writing the next one. Help.

#amwriting

I also played Clair Obscur every day this week but that is because I wrote every day this week.

I wrote every day this week. Lookit me.

I think I have a solid pre-final draft of this manuscript.
#amwriting

I shaved my chest for the first time in forever and now everything I do looks vaguely pornographic.

If I were a medieval serf I would feel zero responsibility for the sovereign's actions. But now, when my power and influence is 0.0001% greater, I feel intense guilt and responsibility. Our political system spreads out blame and culpability but not power.

This is “good girl” enablement 101.

It’s not just fear, it malice and a crux of our past twenty years .

This is someone who actually wants to see someone else suffer for being the way they themselves denied

It’s a vicious form of respectability especially in immigrants

And it’s violent

People keep saying "gamble" like there's an upside here. Like there's the possibility that Teflon Don will squeak a W out here like he does in court. Not thinking about the lives that will be lost.

It's not a gamble. It's a reckless squandering of lives and material. And possibilities.

Some U.S. media (such as the Washington Post here) trace U.S.-Iranian animosity back to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, conveniently forgetting that the CIA helped overthrow a democratically elected Iranian government in 1953, forcing Iranians to endure decades of the Shah’s brutal rule.

It would be so dumb to die in a retaliatory strike because the dumbest people in the world (rightly?) think they will never face consequences for their dumb actions.

The majority’s contention that I reject “ ‘pure textualism’ [a]s insufficiently pliable to secure the result [I] seek,” ante, at 10, stems from an unfortunate misunderstanding of the judicial role. Our interpretative task is not to seek our own desired results (whatever they may be). And, indeed, it is precisely because of this solemn duty that, in my view, it is imperative that we interpret statutes consistent with all relevant indicia of what Congress wanted, as best we can ascertain its intent. A methodology that includes consideration of Congress’s aims does exactly that— and no more. By contrast, pure textualism’s refusal to try to understand the text of a statute in the larger context of what Congress sought to achieve turns the interpretive task into a potent weapon for advancing judicial policy preferences. By “finding” answers in ambiguous text, and not bothering to consider whether those answers align with other sources of statutory meaning, pure textualists can easily disguise their own preferences as “textual” inevitabilities. So, really, far from being “insufficiently pliable,” I think pure textualism is incessantly malleable—that’s its primary problem—and, indeed, it is certainly somehow always flexible enough to secure the majority’s desired outcome.

Justice Jackson taking on Gorsuch's "pure textualism" and arguing for a more holistic reading of Congress' handiwork—worth reading in full. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

this is also not new. the Court's using the same argument for 'equal application' of interracial marriage bans

then: *no* person can marry outside of their race, *any* person can marry within their race :)

now: *no* kid can treat gender dysphoria, *any* kid can have hormones for other reasons :)

Tennessee’s law expressly classifies on the basis of sex and transgender status, so the Constitution and settled precedent require the Court to subject it to intermediate scrutiny. The majority contorts logic and precedent to say otherwise, inexplicably declaring it must uphold Tennessee’s categorical ban on lifesaving medical treatment so long as “‘any reasonably conceivable state of facts’” might justify it. Ante, at 21. Thus, the majority subjects a law that plainly discriminates on the basis of sex to mere rational-basis review. By retreating from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most, the Court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims. In sadness, I dissent.

Justice Sotomayor's dissent in Skrmetti (which she's now reading from the bench) is deeply pained, accusing her colleagues of abandoning "transgender children and their families to political whims" and badly damaging "bedrock" principles of equal protection. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

NYC Comptroller Brad Lander was just arrested by Trump’s ICE agents because he asked to see a judicial warrant.

This is fascism and all New Yorkers must speak in one voice. Release him now.

please someone make a No Tres Reyes poster with Trump, Bibi, and Putin.

I'm probably going to have to borrow to pay for proofing/indexing. And then having to pay for publicity out of pocket---it makes me afraid I'll be another unhoused author on a book tour. (things aren't nearly that bad, but I'm still afraid)

I'm facing unemployment and losing my health care all while scrambling to finish an academic book that I have never and will never make any money off of.

Things are bad for everyone, but it is distressing how academia was not designed for those without institutional or generational support.

In 2018, Donald Trump, then in his first term as US president, let Iran out of nuclear restrictions in exchange for nothing.

Many people, very much including me, warned that he put things on a path with only two possible outcomes: large-scale war, or a nuclear-armed Iran.

And here we are.

Trying to finish editing an academic book about protest while there's another L.A. uprising going on really encapsulates how pointless academia can feel in the moment. I'm trying to keep doing the work I can do, but it all feels so small and so easily coopted.

With the BET Awards happening in downtown LA, I was wondering who was going to say something first. Doechii really is that girl.

Sly Stone, Sly and the Family Stone Frontman, Dead at 82 Sly Stone has died at the age of 82, his family announced on June 9. The musician was best known as the leader of Sly and the Family Stone, the influential psychedelic soul and funk band that played W...

Damn

#RIP "Sly Stone, the leader of the band Sly and the Family Stone, one of the most influential bands in the development of funk, soul, R&B, rock and psychedelic music, has died. He was 82."
people.com/sly-stone-de...

AI is paying someone else to do your work for you, except now the techbros are paying for it, which somehow makes it seem ethical.

sure, jessica ramos went from calling andrew cuomo a sex past and calling on him to resign to endorsing him. but wouldn't YOU put YOUR soul on the line for the commissionership of the new york city department of health and mental hygiene or whatever

Happy pride! I just watched a guy in a black MAGA hat flip out on a hetero couple wearing rainbow gear for allegedly brushing past him too hard. Happy pride!