Trump's "art of the deal" has always been about "negotiating for the right to save face after losing catastrophically on a dumb gamble, followed by furiously jumping into another investment so as to erase the memory of the last loss". That's his career. Nothing has changed.
Way to go, Hungary! Light the way home for the rest of us.
There is nothing left to do but laugh. We live in the most glorious age of clowns and fools in all the eons of human folly.
There are so many things that will need changing if we survive this moment. Among them is that if you have a constitutional court, it has to have a procedural workflow that kicks in INSTANTLY on a government action that might be unconstitutional. Wait a year or two and you might as well not bother.
I would have said twenty years ago or so that the most dangerous thing any political leadership can do is to take away something swiftly from people who've had it for a while. I'm waiting in 2026 for that insight to kick in, given how many people have had things taken away by Trumpism.
From Deep State to Deep Shite.
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So glad that congress isn’t alive to see this.
I'm preparing an "archive pack" for students in my History of the Future class for a late-semester assignment, and one is on space colonies. I just found a 2010 book on lunar settlement that includes a chapter on making sure there are HR professionals in any moonbase. Somehow this amuses me.
I'm trying to think past my intense loathing and anger towards what to do about it. It's part of his long history of saying more and more repellant things but it's got to stop. The world, let alone this country, can't keep going like this. It's a hostage crisis, and we're his hostages.
I'm trying really hard but I just cannot shake that the ostensible leader of my own country has said that he intends to obliterate an entire civilization tonight. Whether or not it's just bombast, or it's just an exaggeration of "I'm going to bomb infrastructure", it's profoundly unacceptable.
Remember when the news in Trump's first term would suddenly go "today's the day when Trump finally became presidential?" Well, today's the day when the NYT got so stuck up Trump's ass with bothsideism that they couldn't get out again. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/03/u...
Good. Yes. It's hard! But you not only can do it, you must do it. If you have that place, that responsibility, that calling. If you have to use AI to write a review of a book, a film, a play, a song, then step out. Let the many waiting for their chance to do it better have their moment.
"Oh who cares who divided up Poland, right? Water under the bridge and all that. Got to just accept reality."
I go out of my mind when I see a confession that a review of a film, book or play for one of the few remaining daily newspapers was done w/AI. It's not fucking hard! You are one of the last people standing in that gig! There are 10,000 people who could do what you're doing and do it beautifully!
One wonders where Ted's pinky is whenever he flees Texas during a crisis in order to party in Cancun.
If I were king of the world, I'd make copious misuse of quotation marks in social media messages by public figures at least a misdemeanor, a felony on repeat offenses.
Bret Stephens: We've only bombed ONE girls' school. In other wars we bombed weddings, schools, supportive villages, we murdered parents in front of their children, we tortured people in prisons. This war is going MUCH better.
Mueller was the Captain Vere of American politics, following the law despite the fact that pure evil was a foul stench right under his nose, despite the fact that he knew he was being played. Following the law into Hell and dragging us all in with him.
Well, you know, at least he didn't kill a puppy for licking his daughter's face. Or did he? I can't keep track of the depravity of these people any longer.
A hat trick here of complaints about the NYT. One of the things that is really shining through now in their stage-management of the news to provide a positive reframing of Trumpland is the feedback loop between the NYT and think tanks where both parties are trying to "speak with and for power".
Speaking of the NYT, they're also ON IT when it comes to remorselessly fact-checking world leaders. Turns out Spain's Prime Minister is...kind of right that Spain's use of renewables is providing them with some energy security. This for some reason is a news story that needs to be in today's mix.
Trump did this and Trump did that, but don't worry, the New York Times is ON IT. It turns out--surprise!--that what Trump did for Trump's reasons is actually (drumroll) consistent with long-term American policy priorities! According to think tanks desperate to remain relevant, that is.
About organizational cultures, especially those that mean to be in confrontation with dominant systems. Here's the thing: if we can't make that organization express the world we want to live in, then maybe that tells us a lot about the world we're in. But it's not an excuse or a justification.
There are at least three overlapping conditions of state-lines:
1) The “performative” (aesthetic) state — the state as bullshit
2) The banausic state — the state as bureaucracy
3) The occluded (“deep”) state — the state as secrecy
With love and respect. Leaders should play a role in administering movements but not in embodying movements. Adoration of charismatic leaders breaks them and gives them power they shouldn't have, and then enlists movements in protecting that illicit power. It's time to end this cycle.
I keep telling myself I'm over the daily feeling of horror when Trump says something unforgiveable, that I'm confident in my take that the MAGA core want him to be unforgiveable and stupid as part of their nihilism, and then Trump says that something and I'm right back in the cycle.
I gotta say that I love reading social media about The Pitt because people take the characters SO SERIOUSLY, it's like they're talking about people they know personally. That's a huge success for the show. It's a completely different conversation than in a lot of fan forums.
Near the end of Lord of the Rings, Frodo says he can't imagine the Shire any more, or anything good in his former life.
"I can't recall a public official saying that they'd made a mistake, or being serious about serious matters, Sam..."
