Dan Mitchell

All about "reactionary centrism" Why do so many influential voices spend their time policing the manners of the left while the right dismantles democracy? In this episode, Michael Hobbes — cohost of the much-celebrated “If Books…

This episode of @volts.wtf ft. @michaelhobbes.bsky.social is so great! Edifying and cathartic.

pca.st/episode/f4d9...

This is flying under the radar:

Donald Trump FIRED the DOJ official in charge of suing Live Nation-Ticketmaster for monopolizing ticketing and hiking prices.

Then, their stock jumped.

If Trump's DOJ takes it easy on Ticketmaster, it'll be a slap in the face to every American.

60 percent of the country's citizens don't make a profession out of writing news columns. I'm not sure how to put this more plainly .... um, "lol."

Some of the stuff Obama did was outright appalling. Immigration, "clean coal," letting Wall Street get away with murder, listening to Larry Summers, etc.

I liked him mostly because he was *competent* (after 8 years of Bush) and well-intentioned.

So often, when I talk about any of the many complaints I had about Obama, people look at me bewildered: "But I thought you liked Obama." I explain that I basically did like him, but he did tons of stuff I disagreed with.

Many people, including very smart ones, have a childlike view of politics.

OED: "The earliest use of the noun punim is in the 1960s. OED's earliest evidence for Punim is from 1965, in Transatlantic Review.

I was looking something up about the popular use of "punim" after a friend said she was unfamiliar with the word, and I came upon this in the Oxford English Dictionary, of all places.

Are they using AI for etymology entries?

Not much is more insufferable to me than people who are against "the system" or "the establishment," no matter what the system and the establishment do and no matter who is involved.

Maybe the starkest example of this is when the post-leftists all turned on AOC once she was in office.

Starting to wonder what planet these folks live on, because there's a long list of stuff they keep claiming you need to show ID to do (check out a library book; stay at a hotel) that everyone knows you... don't need to do that for.

YouTube video by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Why Everyone's Talking About Stephen Colbert, CBS, The FCC And James Talarico

Last night when Colbert did this segment, he reported that the Talarico interview had gotten 3.2 million views. It's now at 6.2 million. I think they tape right around now, so that means it got at least as many views on the second day. This is the biggest bed-shitting I've seen in a while.

Seems like editors that rely on the “Trump says…” headline style could choose to run a headline “Rep Ted Lieu says Epstein files contain allegations of Trump raping children”.

I can't deal with all the stories of "detained" children. It's too much for me to bear. All it took yesterday was to see a quote from one saying "I don't like it here, I want to be at my school." It broke me.

Still, we could have been saddled with Kamala Harris who was bad for...reasons.

He's not thinking about this logically at all, as is clear from his responses. But the logic is incontravertible. "The owner of my favorite deli distributes pictures of kids being raped. But man, his pastrami is the best in town, so Imma keep going there."

How does that logic not apply?

Yes! This, too. I have a much better (oy) "audience" here than I ever did on Twitter. That was true after a few months here, after having been on Twitter for years. Way more followers, much more engagement.

I don't know that this amounts to "sociopathy" in a clinical sense. That would have to be determined on a case-by-case basis by a psychiatrist. But as a group, these people behave sociopathologically when it comes to how they do their jobs and how they apprehend public life. It's terrifying.

"I'm fine with supporting a child-porn distributor who is also a Nazi if it gets me a bigger audience."

This is absolutely chilling. And they all think like this. Just zero attention to whether things are good, bad, true, false, dumb, smart. Bloodless. Inhuman. ANTI-human.

bsky.app/profile/nick...

They'll never understand this very simple concept. He is *by definition* fine with child porn, disinfo, conspiracy theories, Nazi propaganda. That doesn't mean he likes that stuff, but it means he doesn't care about it. Again, by definition. It's not a complicated matter.

This is a pathology.

Yes, they are lol. Weiss was an NYT columnist for years. She shouldn’t have been, but that qualifies. She’s just not a reporter. Maybe this should change, but according the many decades of practice, she’s a journalist, even though she’s terrible at it.

Damn

After they did "mandating" and "metrosexual," the NYT has been on a consistent hunt for new "trends" to apply silly names to. I like how the display copy here completely undermines the whole basis of the piece -- a common feature of these things.

Yeah, as I suspected, it's not a "diagnosis," which is a formal medical procedure. This piece is referring to people taking online quizzes, etc. And from my quick skim, I very much doubt any of this is "changing our idea of romance." These pieces are so fucking tiresome.

"Diagnosis?"

FDA reverses course, agrees to review Moderna’s flu vaccine The FDA reversed course and told Moderna it would review its application for a new flu vaccine, the company announced Wednesday.

Public pushback matters... and reveals levers of power.

www.statnews.com/2026/02/18/f...

Opinion journalists are journalists, but she’s never reported a news story in her life. She’s never been a reporter.

YouTube video by Matt Williams The Tiny Home Improvement Joke Fans Never Forgot

This little clip, and the comments, will tell you more about America than a year's worth of the NYT ever could. It's about a running gag on "Home Improvement" where Tim Allen would hit his head on a pipe when going down stairs. The commenters talk about it like it's a watershed moment in comedy.

Gives new meaning to The Colbert Bump.

(this was just a guess, btw. I realized that it could so easily be true that people might assume I have some knowledge of this).

sorry, but you're being very clowny here

YouTube video by Celebs AgainstTrump R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe told Trump to shut up in the 90’s 😂 #michaelstipe #rem #trump #democrats

This is a funny little anecdote, but...Donald Trump went to a Patti Smith show?

www.youtube.com/shorts/Q-fD4...

Note yet again: if you're not covering politics, you can tell the plain truth in plain language without fear. Imagine if Steve Inskeep had posted that this was "disgraceful." It wouldn't happen.

(Inskeep works for NPR and Ryssdal doesn't, but it's all public radio).