I wish it weren't all so relatable!

"Just hangin' around" - a Constitutional injury since 1787.

This is how the democratic minority stays the democratic minority.

Screenshot of the tv broadcast of the ballet Swan Lake from the fall of the Soviet Union.

It's us, you guys. He's talking about us.

Swan Lake gifs are the new black squares on everyone's social media. Let's make it happen.

The Uno Reverse Law is in full effect, as always. Today is the last day of American civilization, unless something revolutionarily wonderful can happen.

The Grim Weaver.

This was so much fun! Hope it was as much of a blast to make it.

Millennial Careers are Breaking Down: ‘I’m Just Trying to Survive’ Stalled careers, rising costs and the quiet calculation of how long this still works in part two of The Disappearing Ladder

This is spot the fuck on about hollywood, and I’d pay be curious to get past the paywall, but cannot spend $5 to read things I already know to be true. Maybe you would like to, however!

RIP, Eric Overmyer. Wrote on The Wire. Co-created Treme. Created Bosch. One of the few writer/producers, both working with David Simon and on his own, who actually knew how to make the "every season of our show is a Novel For Television" structure work.

I want the podcaster guy to ask him if he believes other people really exist; I think there's like a 60% chance he says "well obviously I can't actually prove other people are real." In which case I think we can just lock him in a room with an LLM for a decade and use his money to build some schools

What your employer tells you when you ask when you get health insurance.

Every accusation they make about someone else is a confession about themselves.

Was this the greatest figure skating event in my lifetime? Right now I would say yes

Oh noooo, the company that extracted our data for their models is having others extracting data for their models

The "Uno Reverse" is this guy's one move.

Have you seen the news? Or, not the news, but the press releases? “Prediction markets,” which are fundamentally gambling companies that benefit from preferential regulatory treatment, are shacking up with putative “news organizations.” In December, CNN and CNBC signed “multi-year exclusive partnerships with prediction market platform Kalshi to integrate event-based probabilities across its TV, digital, and subscription products from 2026.” Polymarket has cut similar deals with Dow Jones, Yahoo, and Substack. This is a familiar playbook. Outside of Defector and a few other oases, contemporary sports media primarily functions as the top of the funnel for gambling interests. There is an addled, soulless logic to running this scheme back with the political and financial press. To their credit (?), Polymarket has put a fresh coat of heavily leaded paint on the approach: The post announcing their Substack deal highlights an anti-vaccine and pro-Ghislaine-Maxwell influencer linking to the odds that the US government confirms that aliens are real. They expect you to regard this as the future of journalism; it is followed by a disclaimer that none of this “financial, investment, legal or any other type of professional advice.” I’ll grant that this is one possible future of journalism. But Defector is another, better future. We don’t feed our readers to gambling companies; we don’t use generative AI; we don’t have outside investors to please. Subscribers enable our critical, independent stance. If you’re as sick of this shit as I am, please consider becoming one.

subscribe to defector: defector.beehiiv.com/p/journalism...

ICE must be abolished. It has become a lawless, rogue agency. Federal law enforcement agencies must follow the law, if they're going to have any credibility enforcing it.

We are demanding justice for Renee Good and the prosecution of ICE agent Jonathan Ross for her murder.

AOC: I want everybody to understand that the cuts to your health care are what’s paying for this. You get screwed over to pay a bunch of thugs in the street that are shooting mothers in the face.

Like, this is no different than the video of the guy telling the person in the car that it was their one warning to stop.

It’s not rogue officers. It’s the whole mindset.

I keep going back to this. This is a taunt. They're taunting us. There is no other possible interpretation of what they're doing.

But media simply ignores this deranged behavior, because if they talk about it, one must conclude that DHS is a rogue agency, of villainous paramilitary thugs.

It’s not a contest to see how much grief you can consume in one sitting. You know enough about what’s happening to understand that it’s evil & wrong. You don’t have to inflict more harm on yourself. Find the small things you can do—& do them as you can, with care. Support others doing the same.

OUT: Helping you pay for health care.

IN: Helping oil companies pay for their infrastructure in a foreign country.

Himes: "I was delighted to hear that Tom Cotton, chairmen of the Senate Intel Committee, has been in regular contact with the admin. I've had zero outreach and no D I'm aware of has. So apparently we're now in a world where the legal obligation to keep Congress informed only applies to your party."

250 years feels a lot more like an expiration date than it does like a birthday...

I can't even be outraged by this guy anymore. If Congress wasn't a joke, with roughly half its members consistently putting party over country, he never would've made it to a second term.

Marco Rubio talking like a big boy

“Don’t play games.” - Marco Rubio, after participating in a lawless invasion of another country and the decapitation of its government

I'm not a historian but my analysis is it's "Not good" when a government constantly commits crimes and tells the legislature, courts, and general public "What are you gonna do about it"

I mean yeah it’s an authoritarian takeover but can we take some comfort in the fact that the people doing it are INSANELY stupid?

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