Democrats too often create a villain-less politics, and it’s a reason why many people don’t trust them.

Some people get into journalism because they’re skeptical of power, and others do so because they’re impressed by it. Moments like this are clarifying with respect to who’s who.

louis! i loved your recaps this season. do you think you'll cover season 9 as well? 🤞

the thing about “democrats should take popular cultural positions” is that what constitutes popular is a function of an interaction between the public and elites. if a faction of elites start screaming about a vulnerable minority and another faction says they have a point, this shapes the public.

trans woman Bebe Scarpinato outside Bellevue Hospital, 1971 // protest outside NYU Langone, which began cancelling health care appointments for trans youth this week, 2025

Chuck you’re not gonna believe this

Not gonna lie I did kinda expect our Democratic politicians to have something like a plan to counter the 920-page detailed fascist blueprint that was published in April 2023

it worries me that so many gen z people seem to think that celebs/actors/etc want to be informed about rpf about them. it’s like they forget that people find that shit weird as hell and quite uncomfortable. put yourself in their shoes. it’s not cool 😭 fourth wall is always key

Rebecca Solnit on Facebook: I spent much of the last almost 24 hours not doing my usual job--the one I do for a living, which is at present writing my current book (plus answer endless emails)--to do the job the legacy media and major news outlets were not doing: reporting on the impact and illegality of the latest coup attempt by the Trump team. If we had the press I wish we did, I might've urged you here and there to contact your representatives or commented a little but I would not have been scouring for informed and expert opinions and interpretations on what was happening and posting them madly, because you would've been reading and listening to them in that mainstream media. Most of what I shared did not come from them because they were pretty useless and behind the curve, these institutions valued in the hundreds of millions with immense salaried staffs. It came from legal scholars and experts, independent journalists--including Marisa Kabas, an independent journalist at The Handbasket who was the first to report the leaked order to cut off all that funding. The New York Times, the Washington Post, etc. didn't get the scoop. She did, and even the next morning a lazy, lackluster underreporting and playing down of what happened. Really you can blame the outcome of the November election in part on that kind of sanewashing and normalizing and softening up of all their Trump coverage and the consequences of what he has done and threatened to do--and is doing now.

wow, many thanks to the amazing @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social for the kind words. and i share in your frustration.

www.facebook.com/share/p/19vX...

bc on one hand, the show has cast members saying opposite things about buddie. seems like buddie is DOA, but the show can’t cut the cord bc they don’t want to lose that fan base. but they can’t be clear or positive-sounding with the canon couple shippers either, so all the queer fans feel bad 😬

the us admin is hurtling us towards authoritarian rule so one tv show seems pointless, but it does suck that somehow BOTH queer shipper groups for 911 are pretty miserable this hiatus. that’s due to the show’s choices + its thoughtless and cynical media strategy re: queer fans

Excerpt from NBC News article that quotes a Republican operative saying, "Some of this stuff has only been talked about at cocktail parties at the Heritage Foundation in jest. And they're actually doing it all."

Excerpt from 2016 NYRB "Rules for Surviving Autocracy" piece by Masha Gessen. Rule #1 is "Believe the autocrat."

This is what consumes me. 1) NBC News today. 2) Masha Gessen, 2016. His enablers kept acting like it was just a big fucking joke, despite all of history telling us it was not.

[mouth directly on the microphone] public opinion on immigration is malleable

AOC remains one of a handful of elected democrats who understand how politics operates

Yeah, I’m an ex-Soviet and I’m seeing the exact poisonous cynicism, apathy and meanness that wrecked my childhood. It’s so striking and unnerving. Propaganda works! And It works best on people convinced they’re too smart to fall for it, like many Americans.

If anyone needs something to cheer them up right now, the bucktommy fandom has spent the last couple of days raising over $9000 (and counting) for various charities all over the world.

Universal Basic Income saves lives. It is a life-saving policy.

I remain convinced that if you resort to convenient bigotry to win votes, the people whose votes you gained will eventually vote for a more sincere bigot, while the people you abandoned will never trust you again.

wild how you can even see this in 911 fandom. such as in some recent podcasts

the way the hosts are trying not to laugh 😭😭

I’m sorry you’ve gotten it multiple times 💔 it’s the same for many of my friends in NYC. I think it’s just constantly circulating there, so if you just… spend time around people, it’s easy to get. Still, masking might have saved you from even more infections, so I think that’s a wise practice

the hiatus has been pretty negative. maybe you can take a break? if it’s not working for you then it’s not working! 💙 maybe it will get better when the show come back

that Ryan interview has pretty much closed the door on Buddie. someone who's making their personal brand about being conservative and Christian simply won't accept a queer storyline - it doesn't fit. and I do wonder more now if he will leave the show, bc that interview did not seem aimed at 911 fans

painting of a ufo firing a beam to abduct capybaras in the forest

capybaras being abducted

prints: www.inprnt.com/gallery/guil...

#capybara #alien

This is also why I think that if Buck and Tommy get back together in 8b, someone who binges the whole show later won’t really notice a big problem. They’ll only be surprised/sad/confused for a few hours, until they get to the makeup episode, lol

insane how awful 911 was after 8x05...it should be studied

They won’t do this, but it’s just annoying because all the attention is going to a ship that doesn’t seem to be happening anytime soon, and meanwhile the canon queer ship is getting neglected media-wise 😐

oh yeah, to be clear, I’m not criticizing the cast members for what they’re saying. This would be directed at Tim and the team that decides the media strategy (and tells the cast what to say). They should know whether Buddie is planned. If there’s no plans, they should stop leading people on imho

and like, you have to have Ryan on board to have his character suddenly become queer, and he's just... not on board. and is the network fine with ANOTHER main becoming queer now? i doubt it. it seems they have no plans, so at this point it's basically leading fans on. and i think that sucks.

i'm getting so tired of this line, clearly from publicity, that the 911 cast would be "fine if [Buddie] happened." clearly Ryan would not be fine bc he's now saying "Eddie is straight" instead. it's a confusing/bad approach having different messages out there. if there are no plans, just say that