Free screening today of my friend Kristin Tieche's hugely entertaining documentary on bats, THE INVISIBLE MAMMAL. I loved it despite having no particular interest in bats (well, okay, maybe a little . . . )
thinking of our many, many big strong men of politics glitching out and powering down even when they're being lobbed puffball questions, and contrast this with Parton letting Walters's condescending bullshit bounce off her like bullets off of Superman, and having a laugh in the bargain
Jesse Hawken@jessehawken.bsky.social · last mo.The shit she had to put up with! youtu.be/If-oWqUYzlQ
I was just talking to a friend today about Dolly Parton's Imagination Library - new books every month, totally for free, for kids ages 1-5. My son was part of the program - this is a copy of the letter that came with his last book, right after his 5th birthday.
Reminder: Dolly Parton helped fund the Moderna vaccine for COVID.
Dolly Parton, who helped fund the Moderna vaccine, gets a ‘dose of her own medicine.’ (Published 2021)
The country music star broke into song before she was inoculated, and urged her fans to “get out there and get your shot.”
nytimes.com
Doctorow: Canada has a perfect opportunity to establish digital sovereignty and take it to America's techlords. New rallying cry: "Move fast and break THEIR stuff." pluralistic.net/2026/08/24/e...
Pluralistic: How Canada can help Americans and defeat America (23 Aug 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.net
I am flabbergasted to discover that there is a brand-new issue of FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION available for purchase at asimovs.com, with stories by Alex Irvine, Eleanor Arnason, Cat Rambo, Harry Turtledove, Rich Larson, Fawaz al-Matrouk, Bruce McAllister, and many others:
"This is the dialectic-there is a very short distance between high art and trash, and trash that contains an element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art." -Douglas Sirk #BOTD
Still feel like "Musk and his crew of incels destroyed a bunch of stuff they didn't understand and thereby hastened the deaths of millions of children" did not get the public attention it warranted.
USAID Whistleblower Says It Was Even Worse Than People Knew
Political appointees wanted a quiet drawdown, the whistleblower says. DOGE wanted an execution.
wired.com
You may not need to watch BLMABG all the way through, but goddam. The first 15 mins are essential
New Beverly Cinema@newbeverly.bsky.social · 5mo agoBela Lugosi in three from director William Beaudine! THE APE MAN (1943) & VOODOO MAN (1944) & BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA (1952) screen next Monday & Tuesday, April 27th & 28th. 16mm prints of The Ape Man & Voodoo Man courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
Thank you for that obvious correction, which I've been hoping for. Have also been wondering how these guys pay their taxes, if they skipped the grade-school lessons on how to calculate percentages. Or am I . . . naive??
Bill Grueskin@bgrueskin.bsky.social · 5mo agoThis man oversees how we spend many billions of dollars to support research in science and medicine. We are completely screwed. (Also, and yes it’s a minor point, but if a drug goes from $100 to $600, that’s a 500% increase)
Articles about Jared Kushner's diplomatic role with Iran that mention Kushner has received billions from the Saudi government (2/28-4/19): NYT: 5 of 58 WashPost: 1 of 43 WSJ: 0 of 40 AP: 0 of 26 CNN Wire: 0 of 18 NY Post: 0 of 17 Chicago Tribune: 0 of 4 LA Times: 0 of 4 Boston Globe: 0 of 2
Lourie's GORGO was the only monster movie I can remember that my mom actually liked. She obviously identified with the, um . . . well, I don't want to give the plot twist away.
Charlie Largent@charlielargent.bsky.social · 6mo agoBTD - Eugène Lourié - Production designer to director, from Grand Illusion to The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
what’s funny about this is that tarantino wrote this “ezekiel 25:17“ for the film. it isn‘t actually in the bible. publicwitness.wordandway.org/p/hegseth-bo...
Hegseth Borrows Violent Prayer from ‘Pulp Fiction’ to Bless Iran War at April Pentagon Worship Service
For the second month in a row, Pete Hegseth, who likes to call himself “secretary of war,” read a violent prayer — that echoes a scene in the Quentin Tarantino film Pulp Fiction — during a worship ser...
publicwitness.wordandway.org
Last month the Trump FCC announced a "ban" on all foreign made routers (almost all of them), demanding ambiguous favors from manufacturers if they wanted to continue doing business in the U.S. Netgear is the first to gain approval. Did they agree to bribes? Backdoors? who knows! 🗽💩
The FCC just saved Netgear from its router ban for no obvious reason
How did Netgear do it? Nobody’s saying.
theverge.com
The effective federal corporate income tax rate: 1950: 50% 1990: 25% 2020: 13% Stop asking "but how we will pay for it?" Restore the corporate tax rate. That is how we will pay for it.
Here's the thing: Democrats already know who can win. They know which policies are popular with voters and which candidates are vocally in support of those policies. They're going to throw a billion dollars into trying to prevent those candidates from becoming the nominee.
"At some point if the ship doesn’t turn around, maybe it will start taking on water or listing badly or hit an iceberg, or perhaps the iceberg has been there all along and is named Donald Trump."
The United States is destroying itself | Rebecca Solnit
The daily news can’t adequately convey the administration’s sabotaging of our government, economy, alliances and environment
theguardian.com
give jd vance some credit. he couldn't get regime change in iran, but he did in hungary.
"Sanders leading the anti-AI charge is a critical mission. The Democratic Party and the country desperately need a leader who isn’t afraid of being portrayed as a Luddite or anti-business and will therefore forcefully air concerns about the proliferation of AI." newrepublic.com/article/2086...
Bernie Sanders’s New, Necessary, Bold Act: Taking on the AI Oligarchs
The 84-year-old has a new cause—and it’s as important as anything he’s ever done.
newrepublic.com
A video of Alex Pretti reading out the final salute of an unnamed veteran he cared for until the end of his life in the ICU, posted to Facebook by his son.
Even Rosemary didn't want people talkin' shit 'bout her Baby
Josh Marshall@joshtpm.bsky.social · 6mo agoI don’t begrudge any parent defending their kids, even if they turned out malevolent and feral. But what’s funny about this is that until like three years ago maybe Elon had insanely positive press basically constantly and always.
it's incredible that as long as you do the right amount of bigotry you can just rob the country blind and enough people will not care, even though those same people will be filled with incandescent rage if someone uses food stamps to buy a 12 pack of diet coke
Again, the first Tea Party rallies in April 2009 -- heavily promoted in advance by Fox News -- only had about 300,000 attendees across 750 cities, but the media treated it like the Second American Revolution. There will be multiple *individual* No Kings rallies today that have more people at them.
Mark Harris@markharris.bsky.social · 6mo agoThere's a long, bad journalistic tradition: All conservative grass-roots political movements are fascinating heartland phenomena, all progressive grass-roots political movements are ineffectual bleating. This one is written off as powered by white female college grads--the wine-moms slur, basically.
This is a nationwide phenomenon. The centrists and normies are more viciously angry than the socialists and anarchists, who gave up long ago on the illusion of a working system. Would encourage leftists of all stripes to take it seriously, welcome them in while they’re receptive.
Mike (beep boop era)@latimeriidae.bsky.social · 6mo agoWalking thru the “Ultra Normie” No Kings rally in my extremely rural, white town and there are Patagonia wearing moms carrying signs that say “DEAD PEDOPHILES DONT REOFFEND” and “ICE GETS THE WALL” and I hi fived an old guy with a sign that said MY DADDY FOUGHT NAZIS AND SO WILL I” this is wild