They don’t have the power to do what they’re threatening on a grand scale. But they want us to think they do.

the real glory of world war two was that it involved a warrior cult being ground down and beaten to a pulp by people who would rather have been doing something else.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 11mo ago

Hegseth: "Maximum lethality -- not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct. We're gonna raise up warriors. Not just defenders."

surely we can come up with something better for 7 billion people than being lorded over by a bunch of plundering elderly murder and torture enthusiasts who whisper to each other about printing spare organs so they can immiserate others in perpetuity

The biggest scandal in US public life *ought* to be that we are the richest country in history & yet our infrastructure sucks, our transportation choices suck, our cities suck, our healthcare sucks, our public administration sucks, & in dozens of little ways, our daily lives suck.

the thing about Trump and Putin meeting is that Russiagate was basically entirely correct and the fact that the media bought Bill Barr's Mueller Report cover letter saying "he didn't do it" hook line and sinker remains a national disgrace

The military takeover of Washington is not a “distraction” from Epstein. It’s a military takeover of Washington, which is an even bigger deal, and those of us who kill brain cells reporting on this stuff knows it’s been an explicit goal since before the election.

appropriate that the calvinists are now moving toward a vision of god as tyrannical leader of a cult of personality

LOWρUFO 🇺🇦🇵🇸🌍@lowrhoufo.bsky.social · 12mo ago

New heresy just dropped

"We're all throwing dildos at women athletes to promote our memecoin" really puts a fine point on not just how sexist, mean and stupid so much of right now is, but also the grim degree to which we're just inundated with Stuff a 15-Year-Old Dipshit Would Think is Cool. A confederacy of Beavises.

Chris Cuomo posting a deepfake of AOC the same week that Jim Acosta “interviews” a deepfake of a school shooting victim are both harbingers of how traditional media power players will help usher in the worst of the AI slop era

On this Chairteenth, we celebrate the good folks of Montgomery, especially our guy AquaMayne. Special shout out to the folks who, within 72 hours, recreated this in their apartment complex. A COMMUNITY!! 💀

This is what media sanewashing our insane president looks like, courtesy today of ABC, CNN and The NY Times:

i think the correct way to think about the lonely boy question is not "how do we reach out to incels?" but "how do we make sure that a teenage boy looking for romantic advice isn't flooded with right-wing propaganda?"

We inventid art, poetrye, and musique and we hadde an amazinge fuckinge tyme.

IMHO no person who has never menstruated should be allowed to graduate from medical school until they have experienced a period pain simulation

Eldritch kcarruthers@kcar.me · last yr.

“brief but devastating” visit to a male GP registrar left them reeling. “He didn’t examine her, ask questions or look at her history,” Kylie says. “As we walked out the door, he told Annabelle: ‘Most pelvic pain in women is a mental health condition. Be prepared not to get any treatment.’”

The Devil's Done Come Back: New Ghost Tales from North Carolina, The forthcoming @blairpub.bsky.social anthology edited by @edsouthern.bsky.social (in which I have a short story), is longlisted for North Carolina Reads! You can vote here; voting ends 7/31: docs.google.com/.../1FAIpQLS...

The GOP passed a budget that will eviscerate health care in rural areas. They delayed much of the impact for after the midterms, hoping the public will think any discussion of the impending collapse is hyperbolic. Local reporters have a chance to do service journalism that'll make a splash too.

People have no idea, not really, how this budget is about to wreck their very foundations.

Delighted to have a short story in this @blairpub.bsky.social anthology, edited by @edsouthern.bsky.social, which is available for preorder: bookshop.org/p/books/ghos...

The Devil's Done Come Back: New Ghost Tales from North Carolina

New Ghost Tales from North Carolina

bookshop.org

Get up, y’all. It’s Independent Bookstore Day.

There were clearly millions of people who voted for Trump in 2024 who didn't think he'd do the things he ran on in the campaign. One way to think about this problem is that many people don't expect the federal government to do anything, so it's all just reality TV to them.

Fellow authors, I love you, and I know it feels like we don’t have a choice, but B&N and Am*zon both scheduled sales this week to preempt Independent Bookstore Day, a hugely vital source of income for indie bookstores. Please don’t promote their sales; please promote your local indie this week.

Are you a progressive from a blue state who hates seeing Europeans indiscriminately blame all Americans for Trump? Remember this feeling the next time you’re inspired to talk about the South

Join us this Friday, April 11, at 1PM in the Hodges Reading Room of Jackson Library for a reading by UNCG Creative Writing faculty member Terry Kennedy buff.ly/7jHDKW4 #UNCGEnglish #UNCG #UNCGWay #FindYourWayHere @mfagreensboro.bsky.social

what booker is doing right now is an example of what i mean when i say things like “we need more ambition right now.” there is room in american politics right now for people with ambition to take big stands and reap the rewards. he’s doing it!

I'll post photos & happy memories from #AWP25 soon, but first this sad little real-life allegory: Friday I went to an offsite reading in the courtyard of a community center, adjacent to a gym hosting pickup basketball games. Being me I watched before the reading started . . .

For the love of whatever prime mover you ascribe the universe to I implore you from the bottom of my heart that the very first time you email someone, don't write them a several thousand word essay, you will mark yourself as someone without a sense of boundaries and your email will not be read

Jeffrey Goldberg thinking he was being pranked and then realizing he was actually just in the war plans group chat is such a good microcosm of how it feels to be alive right now, everything seems fake until you realize it’s actually real and incredibly stupid

Okay it may seem bad that Meta appropriated the entirety of the written word without compensating or even consulting with any writers, but consider what the world got out of it: a thing you accidentally tap in Instagram

When civil society institutions — big law firms, Ivy League institutions — cave to Trump rather than fight what appear to be illegal demands, do they expect him to be satisfied and stop? Do they believe others should step in and fight where they have not?

Everyone’s like “this can’t be fascism it’s too dumb” but they don’t understand that fascism is in fact almost always very dumb! Fascist dictators are cruel and stupid men. And it’s popular because many people are cruel and stupid!