In Praise of the Old WASP Elite (Because Dignified Hypocrisy is Better Than Garish Cruelty) Lately, I’ve found myself pining for the old WASP elite. Do admit, we used to have a better class of rich people. I mean, you’d never have seen Paul Mellon prancing around a stage in Wisconsin with…

oh man, this was a good article. The ruling class doesn't even have the decency to have good taste anymore lithub.com/in-praise-of...

A Leaner Saudi Arabia Turns From Grandiose Plans to Pragmatism

“Without transparency, ‘reassessment’ is just another word for evasion,” said Maryam Aldossari, the spokeswoman for a Saudi opposition party in exile. “Who is accountable for the public money wasted, and for the people whose lives were shattered in the process?” www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/w...

أشير الى كثرة الشعارات اليمينية المتطرفة المشفرة: علم أسرى الحروب والمفقودين في المعارك ("پاو - ميا")، عصابة الثلاثة في مائة، الأحرف اليونانية
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
أساطيرُ تتناول قصصَ فئةٍ قليلةٍ من الشجعان الذين يحاربون ضد الطغاة، في الواقع ليست إلا أوهام رجال بيض أثرياء، يعتصمون داخل شاحناتهم كأنها حصون.

How an Animators’ Strike Led to the Making of Song of the South “Black people will not be fully able to breathe—a word I do not use lightly—until property itself is abolished.” –Rinaldo Walcott * There is perhaps no film that so clearly illustrates …

Vicky Osterweil on the intersection of labor conflict, nationalism, and white supremacy within Disney studios

Little chickens just hatched 🐣 99 % of all chickens are factory fHarmed. Their lives start on conveyor belts. Their lives end on conveyor belts. In the slaughterhouse. Or on their way to the macerator. No welfare only suffering abuse torture and murder in animal farming. #LiveVegan live a good life✌️

How To Put Money Directly Into Union Power Union Now is here.

There's an important new group launching tomorrow, that will channel money directly into building union power. We're having a big ass launch rally in Manhattan tomorrow with Bernie, Zohran, Sara Nelson, and a bunch of union people and you should come.

www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/how-to-put...

The obvious answer here is that the student protest movement was broadly smeared as anti-semitic and aligned with terrorists, and a variety of institutions from government, media and the universities acted as if that smear was true, threatening, suspending, expelling and even deporting students.

I agree with this. Gentrification is just aesthetic criticism rather than being an adult and speaking of housing as private property and speculative asset as a central mechanism for capital accumulation and crises

Happy Surrender and Freedom Day! On April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant and the Army of the Potomac. home.nps.gov/apco/planyou...

The historical epic PALESTINE 36 is showing in cinemas from Friday YouTube video by Curzon

مش بيصدق انني حاقدر اتفرج هالفيلم جو سينيما بالولايات المتحدة يوم الجمعة www.youtube.com/shorts/Xdt85...

I don’t think people around the world realize how bad the attack on Lebanon was today. It’s BAD. Like 9/11 BAD. Hospitals are overflowing and do not have enough blood. We still don’t know what the death toll is.
This is TERRORISM. Pure and Simple.
April 8. Never forget.

cc: @nytimes.com

Rescuers gather at the site of an Israeli air strike in Beirut. [Hussein Malla/AP Photo]

Smoke rises following Israeli air strikes in Beirut. [Anwar Amro/AFP]

Firefighters at the site of an Israeli air strike that hit an apartment building in Beirut. [Hussein Malla/AP Photo]

The Israeli military described the bombardment as the largest coordinated strike of the current war. [Hussein Malla/AP Photo]

Israel strikes central Beirut without warning https://aje.news/ygb521

All the little quail hatched out today. The hen had laid a bunch of eggs in a planter and she hunkered down under last season’s dried-out basil. I went out to check on them today and they were just leaving the nest. I counted 11 on the ground and another 5 still bopping around in the planter.

A Pillar On Its Side | Amit Chaudhuri What we saw as shrines were remnants of a home, a bit of a lifetime or several lifetimes that still had some of the magic of the everyday in which the gods had for long happily existed.

"It’s easy enough to say that the creation of the monumental implies the erasure of the everyday or the ordinary but this is often true. The “ordinary monument” is rare, though it might well exist; the “monument to the ordinary”, like Ulysses, is rare too. " www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...

ugh, terrible, I'm so sorry!

What if we just went back to reading a bunch of books and thinking about them together, and that was the class? With syllabi no longer than three pages.

just had a bunch come by the feeder outside my office window! so beautiful, and such a pretty song!

oil may be destroying the environment, but it's important to remember that it's also driving conflicts and propping up some of the worst regimes in human history

THE GREAT ARCH Trailer | TIFF 2026 YouTube video by TIFF

oh look they made the Brutalist for people who like history, politics, and good taste www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypAE...

What Paul Ehrlich’s Fear of Scarcity Did to American Politics Ehrlich’s lurid predictions of imminent planetary doom captivated the public, but they did not come true.

it only seems like the population bomb didn't go off if you aren't a butterfly, a wolf, or an elephant www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Cover of Journal of Animal Ethics, Volume 16, Number 1, Spring 2026 Teal background with darker teal silhouettes of different animals and white letters spelling "JAE"

In Journal of Animal Ethics Vol. 16, No. 1, Wasseem Emam (@ethicalseafood.bsky.social) outlines why the ethical lives of aquatic animals matter—and why justice, sustainability, and development frameworks must not bypass them.
Read on @projectmuse.bsky.social: muse.jhu.edu/pub/34/artic...

The number of displaced persons in Lebanon is now over a million. 20% of the population, roughly, is unable to sleep their home tonight.

What Working People's Struggles to Survive The Great Depression Can Teach Us Today Historian Dana Frank shares the stories of people who survived the Great Depression—and what lessons they offer working people today.

Historian Dana Frank shares the stories of people who survived the Great Depression—and what lessons they offer working people today.

Richard Seymour, Cognitive Dissonance — Sidecar On the Iran war.

Epic fury and cognitive dissonance
@leninology.bsky.social
@newleftreview.bsky.social
newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

The UAE has taken functionally zero refugees from Middle East conflicts. Contrast that with counties like Jordan or Turkey which, while with more than their own share of problems, host millions of Syrians alone.

"Americans prefer a car-dependent lifestyle."

I can't tell you how much I hate this glib sentiment. The only way to determine someone's true, enduring preference is to give them full familiarity with their options. Americans have no familiarity with their options! They've only seen sprawl!

A post from Yoni Appelbaum that reads "Albuquerque turned a wall of its airport bookshop over to its local university press, and goddamn, now I want this in every airport." The post includes a photo of a wall of books with a sign that says University of New Mexico Press.

I usually avoid posting things from the other place but I will make an exception because this is so damn cool. @yappelbaum.bsky.social

I really think Hesgeth believed Iran would get knocked out in the first round and there was no need to plan for everything that was obviously going to happen next, Israel knew better but kept that to itself, Trump was incurious and easy to persuade, and nobody in administration dared push back.