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JV Last writes about one of the most profoundly depressing aspects of this election — half the country’s willingness to reward Trump with another term despite his performance as the worst leader in a national crisis in memory. There’s a Churchill quote that goes something like this: The after effect from the extreme prostrations of war—even a successful war—is ennui. He was explaining that in democratic societies, wars begin with drums and parades, but ends with public disaffection.3 There might be a corollary to this rule concerning pandemics because it is pretty clear that COVID broke something deep in the American psyche. It’s why people went crazy for two years, screaming at strangers in the grocery store about masks. It’s why we have a mass economic delusion in which people aren’t able to accurately perceive the state of the economy. It’s why we got the meme-stock phenomenon.

He’s your current employer, and you live in his house.
Not a red flag. Not for you at least. As the person in the higher class, he is the one with the most to lose. For you, there is nowhere to go but up.

He lies to you about who he is when you first meet.
Not a red flag. This is called keeping the mystery alive, and he is smart to make a habit of it early on.

He accuses you of putting a spell on his horse.
Not a red flag. Insisting that the person you like has used dark magic is actually a very common method of flirting. All the kids/ grown men are doing it. Other versions of this technique include accusing the person you like of being a little fairy, accusing the person you like of being a little elf, and repeatedly referring to the person you like as “an unearthly thing.”

Why did leading designers in 2000 look down their nose at the web? And are things any better today?

The post This Web of Ours, Revisited appeared first on Zeldman on Web and Interaction Design.

Bytedance yesterday launched a social app called Tiktok Notes in Canada and Australia. I tried it out, since I live in Canada. I was able to log in using my Tiktok account to log in. The user interface has preview blocks. It was pretty easy to upload a couple of photos and add some text. … Continue reading Bytedance: Add ActivityPub to Tiktok Notes →

And it’s not over yet The Republican Party has been in such a state of pandemonium for so long that it’s hard to imagine what new turns it can take. Yet from week to week it always does. The 2020 election tantrum and insurrection was certainly the pinnacle of Trumpish anarchy but the GOP congress has been working hard to emulate their Dear Leader ever since they won the majority in 2022. It’s a bad idea to make sweeping statements about them finally jumping the shark since they always manage to outdo themselves but this week is certainly one for the books if only because the stakes are so very high and they have sunk so very low. As I wrote a couple of days ago, House Speaker Mike Johnson was caught in a trap between his fellow right wing zealots led by Marjorie Taylor Greene who have appropriated Donald Trump’s hostility to Ukraine and the rest of his caucus which is more reluctant to see the world blow up. The events in the middle east last weekend were a sober reminder that the United States’ role in global security isn’t the best issue to use as leverage for parochial electoral advantage. It can get real very quickly.

Victims speak to Byline Times as some are forced to cough up thousands of pounds to access their abusers' trial transcripts

Myopia is not progressive Anytime a glass-half-empty progressive launches into how they refuse to vote for “the lesser of two evils,” don’t even argue the point. Reject the false premise. It’s not an invitation to debate anyway. The framing is intended to shut down debate. Want to see how it’s done? Behold AOC: Actually, she didn’t articulate a progressive case for Biden in that clip, exactly. She advocated for a progressive perspective larger than the presidential race and the war in Gaza. Here’s where AOC understates the point. It’s not just hundreds of elections at issue in November, it’s tens of thousands in 50 states and the territories. There are 914 elections in North Carolina alone, and that number doesn’t include hundreds of municipal races. That’s one state. And the entire NCGOP council of state slate is a horrorshow. Friends don’t let friends not vote this November. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

In this column, Kristen Mulrooney writes letters to famous mothers from literature, TV, and film whom she finds herself relating to on a different level now that she’s a mom herself.

Dear Alison,

I am forever thinking about the time Katherine Heigl made some negative comments about your character, saying that you were painted as a shrew and a killjoy, and that you and your sister seemed “humorless and uptight” while the men in your lives got to be “lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys.”

After letting my indignance about those comments stew for over a decade, I am writing to you today to adamantly defend your honor, because I think you were painted with all the right shades of patience and resistance, all of your lines drawing boundaries exactly where they needed to be. The problem wasn’t the painting—the problem was the way we’re primed to view women, and honestly, I hate it.

In a world of bullies, no one is secure Polling seems to be swinging President Joe Biden’s way, for what that’s worth. While he’s out in the field promoting his accomplishments, Donald Trump is stuck in a New York courtroom. The problem for Biden is that Trump’s courtroom antics are getting the headlines. Trump is the living embodiment of conservative disrespect for the rule of law when applied to them: “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.” Trump models himself after mobsterJohn Gotti, says Tim O’Brien, Senior Executive Editor at Bloomberg Opinion, and has compared himself to Al Capone.

The BBC announced three new Doctor Who original novels to celebrate the new season, with Millie Gibson reading one of the audiobooks.

The LiveJournal community, circa 2005

The university café where English adjuncts hold their office hours

My tenth-grade ELA class when I ask them to write one (1) poem

The subject line of Submittable email notifications

Bard College

Any and all bars named after Oscar Wilde

Literary Twitter

The reception for the Nobel Prize in Literature the year Bob Dylan won

An MFA workshop forbidden from writing any more poems about birds

English professors walking by the new $80 million STEM building

The comments section of a think piece about the TV show Dickinson

Coffee shops with horoscope-themed drink specials that have run out of oat milk

Poets surreptitiously checking for their names in the “Notable” section of The Best American Poetry anthology

The Best American Poetry anthology

The Moleskine display at Target

The Ticketmaster waiting room minutes before Taylor Swift tickets are released

As part of a revamped and expanded weekly podcast series, David Sirota explores how the DNC crushed 2024 primary challengers — and might have hurt Biden’s reelection chances.

The current media storm surrounding a school in Brent, where a pupil took legal action against their school for alleged Islamophobia, has led to outcries from liberal and Tory commentators alike about the sanctity of secularism. What it reveals, however, is that Muslim school pupils have become the undeserving target of a reactionary political elite […]

The state says EMTALA, a law barring discrimination in emergency medical care, interferes with its abortion ban.

The post Idaho Goes to the Supreme Court to Argue That Pregnant People Are Second-Class Citizens appeared first on The Intercept.