stuart styron

Alex on twitter writes: "Someone on Twitter writes: "You’re a menswear writer. You don’t know anything about manufacturing in America, or steel mills, or metallurgy, or CNC machining, or how anything is produced from raw material into a finished product in this country or anywhere. Stick to writing about “men’s fashion."" I reply: "i actually had a career in knifemaking before this. the reason why you can't avoid tariffs in knifemaking is because everyone relies on Gobelin machinery. are you aware of this?" Alex replies: "Gobelin machinery? What exactly are you referring to?" I reply: "you Gobelin DEEZ NUTS!"

"stick to menswear"

The news is grim but at least we get Trinity Rodman back on the field.

The story of how Trump sells access to the White House - to benefit himself and his family financially and to benefit his political operation - is shocking and sordid.

No President has ever monetized access like Trump has.

1/ It's a story you need to know.

Lemme just say if President Bernie Sanders had unilaterally imposed, by executive fiat, hundreds of billions of new taxes, personally browbeat executives about job cuts and investments and then fired the head of BLS, the Chamber of Commerce and the business orgs would not be sitting idly by.

fumbling in a cloud of vibes and misinformation is good enough for the president and it ought to be good enough for the economy as a whole!

Opinion | I might lean left — but Marjorie Taylor Greene is winning my respect The congresswoman, who represents my district, has shown genuine political courage lately.

let me sum this piece up for you:

“hey, it’s me zaid jilani! you might remember me from my credulous profile of josh hawley, published the literal day before january 6. well now i have another credulous take, the time on another far-right maniac. i am definitely not an idiot.”

the “woke AI” stuff is honestly so dumb that i don’t even know how to talk about it

I hesitate to post this but since I’m not running for anything or trying to get you to subscribe to a Substack I’ll use this as a chance to say

1) If this president does something illegal to you, don’t go along with it.

this is psychotic

What if that’s false, not so, a convenient and cringing lie? What if late night television’s value is not lost, and Shari Redstone is—consistent with her other recent business decisions—offering to capture and harness its cultural potency for the political tribe in power?

When you're a star

Fascism For First Time Founders

Over the last year or so I've seen a disturbing tendency in tech/startup/VC worlds to buy into the neoreactionary view that for startups to be successful they need to get on board the Trump train. Yes, there are the big name folks who everyone knows about and who…

Me too. Large, simple, minimal things blown up to huge size look interesting. Lots of SoCal desert where these things spring up like One Ones from the dirt and it's cool as hell

A fair, thoughtful article on why no one should just dismiss Trump's decision to push out the experienced, long-serving local federal employee who worked to disseminate warnings about potentially deadly storms and floods.

t.co/n4O7YqHbB7

if Trump were actively trying to impoverish and deskill the united states for the sake of our competitors, what would he be doing differently?

The actual cycle of Twitter is that it was exploited by liars and Nazis in 2016 and so the company tightened its moderation rules and then a bunch of people on the right caught up in those rules decided it was biased and that included Musk who bought it and has now automated the Nazi lies.

i simply cannot believe this is real life. sometimes i think the whole world is doing a bit just to drive me insane. it’s hilarious.

BREAKING: Scientists are staging a “science fair” in the lobby of a Congressional building to tell elected officials about the critical knowledge the US will lose because their research grants have been canceled.

Congressional Event: A Science Fair of Canceled Grants The Things We’ll Never Know: A Science Fair of Canceled Grants.

A focus on the futures we will lose if the WH continues to dismantle research across agencies spanning the EPA, DHS, NIH, NSF, USAID, and DoD (via NASA Watch).

When: Tuesday, July 8, 2025, 11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. ET
Where: Rayburn Foyer, Rayburn House Office Building

nasawatch.com/congress/con...

Feline Feces (lib catturd) @kitttenn.bsky.social M dashes (the long dash) are a dead giveaway. LLMs love using them for some reason, while actual human beings have no idea how to type that into the computer. They also love sets of three, overtly parallel structure, and impersonal writing. July 6, 2025 at 2:16 PM 1 quote 12 likes

Stop spreading this garbage about em dashes in ACTUAL EDITED PROSE OH MY GOD.

Plenty of actual human beings know how to type em dashes! We’re called “writers” and “editors” — maybe you’ve heard of us?

Rumors is obviously one of the greatest albums of all time, but there’s really no reason for “The Chain” to go as hard as it does

UPDATE: This has gotten worse. Blackburn struck a deal to facially exempt certain types of state AI regs, but actually included a provision that would prohibit nearly all regulation on tech companies including those that Blackburn seemed to try to get out of the law

An open letter to the American public on respiratory virus vaccines Read an open letter to the general public from the AMA and medical societies reaffirming support for vaccination to protect against flu, COVID-19, and RSV.

As US government authorities can no longer be relied upon to provide reliable medical information, the American Medical Association and 78 other medical societies have written an open letter to the American public underscoring the importance of vaccines.
www.ama-assn.org/delivering-c...

Worth a watch:

Head of Signal, Meredith Whittaker, on so-called "agentic AI" and the difference between how it's described in the marketing and what access and control it would actually require to work as advertised.

It's not just #NIH. It's not just #NSF. It's not just #NASA.

The whole scientific community has to make clear that all science across fed agencies is being destroyed in the US.

We can't just ask for our particular piece of the pie. The whole pie is being thrown out - saving your bit won't work.

A meme image of JD Vance

(Pace salsa voice) NEW YORK CITY!

If your law is good when there are good people in office, but dangerous when there are bad people in office, your law is bad.