this is true tbf. we're not laughing. except for the pope stuff, that's legit funny

An advertisement for the book The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby, along with the following text: "A tale of extremism, carelessness, greed, and hypocrisy, Blanding’s gripping narrative exposes the damage that has been wrought by a single family devoted to both God and profit." —Joshua Hammer, author of The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu

So thrilled for this endorsement from Joshua Hammer, one of my absolute favorite non-fiction writers! THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO HOBBY LOBBY launches July 14. Available for pre-order now. www.michaelblanding.com/hobbylobby
..
#hobbylobby #nonfiction #politics #christiannationalism #archaeology #booksky

I am broken-hearted at the terrible news that my alma mater, @hampshirecollege.bsky.social, after 56 yrs, is closing. Its death is a victory for conformism, for corporatism, for higher education's dull love of hierarchy & status. It's a grievous defeat for imagination & experimentation.

Headline on Hollywood Reporter that reads ”Paddington 4, Escape From New York' Reboot in the Works”

I misread the headline as one movie and got very excited for a moment…

there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men

This is what Christian Nationalism looks like.
More specifically, this is what White Christian Nationalism looks like.

A government that belongs to We the People preaching broken theology from a "holy book" while utterly failing to make the lives of those people better. Christian Nationalism fails.

Come on then, and remove him.

A 'Dinosaur Smarties' Easter egg.

Erm, they're called palaeontologists, actually.

actual nytimes headline FEMA Official Says He Teleported to Waffle House. Experts Are Dubious.

you, a naive fool: i do believe there are some things the nytimes won’t both sides

the nytimes:

My photo shows the ancient Coțofenești Helmet from Romania. The helmet is made from three welded gold plates, on which complex relief decoration was made by a punching method, consisting of geometric, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic motifs. The top half of the helmet is covered in a repetitive, evenly spaced, embossed raised pattern of rounded, fan-ridged bumps which give the helmet a studded look. The crown of the helmet is missing. Over the front opening, at the forehead, are two large almond-shaped eyes, thought to be apotropaic (magical) eyes to ward off evil. They are framed by thick curved lines that sweep outward like dramatic eyebrows, and there is a vertical ridge down the centre between the eyes. The two cheek guards are decorated in relief with a human figure holding a dagger, sacrificing a kneeling ram. The right cheek guard design is partially seen in my photo. The neck guard (not seen in my photo) is decorated on two registers: on the upper part are four sphinxes, and on the lower part three griffins with a leg of an herbivorous animal in their muzzles. The helmet was discovered in the village of Poiana Coțofenești, Prahova County, Romania, in the late 1920s. Experts date the helmet to the mid-5th century BC. I saw the helmet on display in the temporary exhibition ‘Archaeological Treasures of Romania’ at the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid in 2021. It was on loan from the National Museum of Romanian History in Bucharest.

FANTASTIC NEWS!

The 2,500 year-old gold Coțofenești Helmet from Romania has been recovered! 🤩

Also recovered are two of three ancient gold bracelets, all were stolen in a raid on a Dutch museum more than a year ago.

📷 by me 2021

#Archaeology

#booksky

A meme image of a quote during a TV newscast that says: Quote From Man Stabbed “What are you gonna do, stab me?”

seems like america’s entire iran war strategy is just this

chappel roan fires her publicist cause the publicist was in the Epstein Files and like magic, stories start appearing about how she's a raging bitch

like magic, i tell you

Anyone watching that speech has no idea whether Trump is escalating or deescalating the war with Iran. But to be fair, neither does he so🤷‍♂️.

I worry that people who do not write regularly do not understand that writing is hard for everybody?

including writers?

like I actually do quite a lot of writing, nearly every day

I have written two books and a dissertation among other things

writing is fucking hard!

Yet anti-LGBTQ+ therapists now enjoy a First Amendment right that is denied to abortion providers. But as Jackson pointed out, the inconsistency runs deeper. After Chiles, parents who seek to “convert” their transgender children have a constitutional right to do so. But thanks to last year’s decision in Skrmetti, parents who seek to affirm their transgender children with medication have no such right. States can ban gender-affirming medication but evidently cannot ban anti-transgender talk therapy. And the majority does not explain why anti-LGBTQ+ speech receives heightened protections when other viewpoints do not. Surely, Jackson wrote, a state can direct doctors to discourage, and not encourage, smoking cigarettes. It can prohibit doctors “from telling an anorexic patient to eat less” while allowing them to recommend eating more. It can stop doctors from encouraging patients to end their lives. These laws, too, censor speech on the basis of the state’s preferred viewpoint—in Gorsuch’s words, they “enforce orthodoxy.” Why is it, then, that nobody seriously argues that they’d violate the First Amendment, too?

The Supreme Court's "conversion therapy" decision today is indefensible on its own terms. A ton of medical regulations restrict speech on the basis of "viewpoint." Nobody thinks they're unconstitutional. This court just subjects pro-LGBTQ protections to special hostility. slate.com/news-and-pol...

Giant phallus-shaped iceberg floating in Conception Bay surprises residents of Dildo, Canada

A new contender for best headline

The word blurb was coined in 1906 by American humorist Gelett Burgess (1866–1951).[2] The October 1906 first edition of his short book Are You a Bromide? was presented in a limited edition to an annual trade association dinner. The custom at such events was to have a dust jacket promoting the work and with, as Burgess' publisher B. W. Huebsch described it, "the picture of a damsel—languishing, heroic, or coquettish—anyhow, a damsel on the jacket of every novel". In this case, the jacket proclaimed "YES, this is a 'BLURB'!" and the picture was of a (fictitious) young woman "Miss Belinda Blurb" shown calling out, described as "in the act of blurbing." The name and term stuck for any publisher's contents on a book's back cover, even after the picture was dropped and only the text remained.

The original Belinda Blurb

It brings me great pleasure to inform you the word "blurb" is named after a made-up woman named Belinda Blurb whose job is to tell everyone how great a book is

Wait until they find out about Donald Trump!

At least they’re succeeding in bringing back biblical foundations

The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby NetGalley helps publishers and authors promote digital review copies to book advocates and industry professionals. Publishers make digital review copies and audiobooks available for the NetGalley comm...

Book reviewers take note! My upcoming book on Hobby Lobby, Christian Nationalism, and antiquities trafficking is now available for download on #NetGalley! www.netgalley.com/catalog/book... #booksky #Nonfiction #Narrative #Investigative #ChristianNationalism #Evangelicals #antiquities #artcrime

See we can have nice things

The lack of evangelical Christians? Let's take a little count of some of the evangelical Christians in power:

Speaker of the House
Secretary of Defense
The departing Secretary of DHS
Trump's nominee to replace her
US Ambassador to Israel
OMB Director
Director of White House Faith Office

Honestly, the only way we're going to get the urgency we need to stop this before it devolves into world war-like chaos is to tell Trump no more ballroom for as long as he's at war with Iran.

Good morning! Yes, this is he

I have used
the missiles
that were in
the arsenal

and which
you were probably
saving
for Russia

Forgive me
they were powerful
so shiny
and so deadly

kind of crazy that if you have enough money and don't like what you see in the media, you can just buy up every film studio, news station, and social media app and change it

The Republican-Evangelical Suicide Pact to Kill the Earth and Bring Back Jesus Christian fundamentalists and Republican politicians are going to bring Jesus back, even if they have to kill us all in the process.

open.substack.com/pub/johnpavl...

Awesome

I'm thrilled to share that Separation of Church and Hate is a 2026 Audiobooks Audie Award Winner in Non-Fiction!

Check it out from Simon & Schuster Audio today: bit.ly/4i1dQy2 #Audies2026