retroactively mad at my dad and society in general for encouraging me to be a sports fan

From “The Simpsons” house genius John Swartzwelder, interviewed in The New Yorker by Mike Sacks

I think of that movie often because a) Kris Kristofferson was absolutely amazing, and b) because it took me about 20 minutes after the very end to realize what had actually happened.

This monolith of "the West" drive me crazy. It was intellectuals, academies, researchers and journalists who created the peace and prosperity these people now keep trying to attribute to white Europeans. All countries have these people; it's the countries that listen to them that thrive.

I've heard argument regarding inflation that it's basically a mass belief; that it happens because we think it's going to happen. Maybe the markets are the same way? They'll just be kept up by the belief that "economy good"?

File under Should Be Obvious

This basically sums up my economic view AND my feeling about messaging. jacobin.com/2026/04/publ...

“It’s a couple of things that work beautifully in concert. First: no music. Audiences are so sophisticated, but what they’re not accustomed to is not being told how to feel,” Wyle says. “You take all that out and it forces a level of engagement where you’re now looking for clues within the frame of the screen, which forces you to look up from your phone. And I think that is extremely engaging, especially to young viewers who aren’t accustomed to being asked to participate in a nonpassive way in the viewing experience.

“Second point, shooting it with almost exclusively 50-millimeter or 65-millimeter lenses, which is the most comparable to the human eye—and only shooting from the point of view of a human being that’s present in this space. There are no cameras on gurney wheels going in the hallway. There’s no cameras on the ceiling looking down from a God point of view. You are limited to the perspective of a participant. You can look away, but you can’t leave, and it becomes an endurance test for you to stay on your feet as long as we’re on our feet. Which [brings me to my] third point: real time. Real time has an aggregate sense of tension that you don’t get in any other form of storytelling. What happened before is happening now, and these two things are going to add up to the next thing. And if we throw more ingredients into this cooker and keep ratcheting it up, it’s going to pop.”

Wyle makes eye contact for his next point, delivering it with a Robby-esque matter-of-factness. “Fourth point: The election went the other way,” he says with a shrug. “We could have been a really good show with a lot of nice things to say in a perfectly normal Kamala Harris universe. And instead we became almost a beacon of hope and humanity in an alternative universe. But in the midst of that, fifth point—this is essentially competence porn. You’re watching really smart, dedicated people do what only they know how to do at a level that you don’t know how to do it, and you’re so fucking glad that they’re there doing it, and compartmentalizing their own stuff to put your broken pieces back together. You’re so reassured by knowing that there are people out there that laugh and joke and have the ability to lock in like that.”

this is fucking unreal stuff from Noah Wyle on the magic of The Pitt. www.gq.com/story/noah-w...

This combination of geographies is absolutely fascinating me for reasons I can't describe.

Inspired by common login UIs, I'm going to ask people I meet if they want me to remember them and then will immediately forget them no matter what they answer.

I won’t tell Threads, so you’re good.

The drama of the Wendy's social media accounts is awesome. People found out that Wendy's overwhelmingly supports the GOP and now every post they make on Threads get ratio'd to hell and back.

ICE Reports 15th Detained Death of 2026 at Miami Correctional Center in Indiana Tuan Van Bui, the son of a U.S. soldier in Vietnam, died in detention on April 1. He is the second person to die at Miami CC this year and continues the morbid pattern of one ICE death every 6.0 days.

Still on pace: one death roughly every six days in ICE custody.

Reminder: gov't thugs are plucking innocent migrants -- often legal ones! -- off the street, kidnapping them, putting them in concentration camps, & allowing many of them to die.

On our watch, in our names, with our money.

Wow. Incredible even to me the long-term damage that the Republican regime is doing to the economy already. Just completely destroying any trust in the US, and they’re getting out when they can.

Not sure if this makes it better or worse, but: elderly.

Reminds me of the time I was on the metro taking a bunch of people to an anti-Iraq war protest, and these two women behind me saw that sign and one said to the other, "Huh. Pentagon City. That sure says a lot." And I thought, it's a freaking shopping mall.

A milestone in March: for the first time ever, renewables provided more power on the US grid than natural gas.

Time for the birth of terror. Me

‘I got everything I dreamed of – when I had no ability to handle it’: Lena Dunham on toxic fame, broken friendships and her ‘lost decade’ Stardom came fast and hard for the wunderkind who created the hit HBO series Girls aged just 23. Now she’s written a tell-all memoir about why she was forced to retreat from the spotlight

This is a fantastic profile, indirectly making it clear just how unjust a culture obsessed with tearing down everything and everyone they dont like is www.theguardian.com/culture/2026...

these motherfuckers said it would splashdown at 8:07 and it splashed down at 8:07. after going to the fucking moon. fucking a man. god damn

Science is good. We should fund it.

Led by a Reid, the way it’s meant to be.

I’m glued to the Artemis coverage because it is so unlike anything we get to see in the news these days: cool shit done by smart, super competent people working together closely. Positive vibes but not treacly sentiment. Also (probably) a glowing alien god of peace about to emerge from the capsule.

I’ve been meaning to ask you, so thanks for bringing it up voluntarily.

I couldn’t finish it because I thought it was so heavy-handed, but now I think it may have been to subtle.

Millions of American voters wanted to be villains. They came to believe it’s the key to success, while goodness is weak, woke, loser stuff, done only to signal.

Offered the option of unvarnished villainy, they enthusiastically took it. Seeing others suffer more made them feel big.

And here we are.

I spent nearly the entire work day yesterday on the phone with the IRS to get my account unfrozen. It had been frozen due to "human error"--someone changing my account and then trying to undo it--in February 2025.

It didn't occur to me until my wife pointed it out: fuckin DOGE.

Secret Election Funders (via NYT) U.S. politics has seen a stunning increase in dark money donations, undermining promises from the Supreme Court.

i’m so old i remember when obama called out SCOTUS for citizens united during a SOTU, predicting this would happen, and alito shook his head and said “that’s not true”

One reason for journalists to be on BlueSky is that it’s the only social media platform I’m aware of that still doesn’t downrank links to news and other sites. The corporate socials all seem to have adopted a casino approach to their users: lure in with shiny objects and *never show them an exit.*