“Heated Rivalry Is Getting Conservatives Hot and Bothered“. Not in the fun way, of course.
“MTV Rewind is an absolute wonder. It collects over 33,000 music videos, shows, and exclusive concert footage spanning the station’s four decades. Want Pop Up Video? No problem. An MTV Unplugged concert you haven’t seen in ages? Sorted. Need to show a millennial how truly terrible early ’80s music videos were? This is your resource. The site is searchable, well-organized, and captures the fun, rebellious aesthetic that MTV packaged and sold us when we were growing up.”
“Jessica” is the new Karen, according to Gen Z.
“Now, Republican Party members can’t even articulate what their party’s principles are. The party once synonymous with low taxes is now responsible for high tariffs. The party, once in love with the free market, is directing the government to buy shares in private corporations and to meddle in merger deals politically. The party once proud of its role in winning the Cold War is cozying up to Russia and undermining NATO. Now that is a party in crisis.”
“That’s where Carlsson comes in. He’s now helping to heat the homes of 80,000 residents in Finland with waste heat from local cryptocurrency miners, as a part of a project run by his new employer, the bitcoin mining company MARA Holdings.”
RIP, Wilbur Wood, former MLB knuckleball pitcher mostly for the White Sox. As the obit says, we will never see another pitcher like him again.
RIP, Valentino Garavani, Italian fashion legend.
“None of this, by itself, is going to upend the transatlantic alliance, but some leaders are starting to consider more powerful levers. Among the most potent would be evicting the U.S. military from more than three dozen European military bases Washington has used for over 50 years to project power in the Middle East and beyond—facilities that made a decisive difference in the Yom Kippur, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars, and Trump’s 2025 attack on Iranian nuclear sites. Mainstream European politicians are now talking seriously about kicking Americans out of these bases and banning U.S. overflights in Europe.”
“Since President Donald Trump took office, the [Department of Education] has not publicly announced a single investigation into racial discrimination against Black students, instead prioritizing investigations into alleged anti-white discrimination, antisemitism complaints and policies regarding transgender students.”
“Catholic social teaching testifies that when national interest narrowly conceived excludes the moral imperative of solidarity among nations and the dignity of the human person, it brings immense suffering to the world and a catastrophic assault on the just peace that benefits every nation and is the will of God. In our current national debate about the fundamental contours of American foreign policy, we ignore this reality at the cost of our country’s truest interests and the best traditions of this land that we love.”
“Based on what has been publicly released, the whole interaction between Good, Ross, and the other ICE officials was a series of unforced errors by the government. The entire encounter, even accounting for Ross’s own footage, illustrates the general lack of professionalism with which ICE has operated over the past few months and its abandonment of its own internal policies.”
“Cryptocurrencies Are Dying in Record Numbers, Report Says”.
Cows may be smarter than we first thought.
“American professional sports leagues are set up to keep the drama of winning and losing within certain bounds of consistency. It’s a model you can really only call socialist. This has a lot of positives. The leagues are collectives designed to keep everyone on the same playing field, so that the same 30 or so teams can stage the same number of games at the same level of competition with the same general trappings, year after year. The trick is: The owners are the constituents, and thus the beneficiaries. Those who can buy in to one of these clubs can’t really lose. The citizens of Oakland can; John Fisher can’t. Dodgers fans of the 2000s can; Frank McCourt can bungle the team’s finances amid a messy divorce and nonetheless exit with a golden parachute.”
“But a surge in meat-eating by Americans would involve flattening vast tracts of ecosystems such as forests to make way for the hefty environmental hoofprint of raised livestock, emitting large quantities of greenhouse gases in the process, experts have warned.”
“If the period from the mid-2010s to about 2022 was the Peak TV Era, the industry is currently — and firmly — in the midst of its Downslope Days.”
“Recent research suggests that the price of child care shapes fertility decisions like whether and when to have children, and how many to have.”
RIP, Rob Hirst, founding member and drummer for Midnight Oil.
“Why Does Greenland Look So Big on the Map?” The short answer is “the Mercator projection”. The longer answer is in this article, it basically has to do with the fact that you can’t evenly wrap a rectangle around a sphere – the example given is covering a basketball with Christmas wrapping – and it’s well worth reading. Then go read about the Robinson projection, the Winkel tripel projection, and my personal favorite, the Goode homolosine projection. And if you’re still thirsty, there’s a lot more where those came from.
“A society that elevates assholes will inevitably be ruled by them.”
“Even as the justices tried to insulate the Fed from the worst effects of the unitary executive theory, the theory undermined them at every turn.”
“Federal immigration officers are asserting sweeping power to forcibly enter people’s homes without a judge’s warrant, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo obtained by The Associated Press, marking a sharp reversal of longstanding guidance meant to respect constitutional limits on government searches.” Fuck ICE.
RIP, Floyd Vivino, best known as “Uncle Floyd”, the creator and star of “The Uncle Floyd Show”, a staple of New Jersey UHF and cable TV from 1974 to 2001. I can’t say I ever caught an episode, but one of my buddies growing up was obsessed with it, and it was his posting on Facebook that alerted me to Uncle Floyd’s passing. They don’t make ’em like Uncle Floyd anymore. Rest in peace.
“ICE pulls over Texas Monthly’s senior taco editor while reporting in West Texas”. Fuck ICE.
“Emerging Evidence Provides Basis for Opening Investigation of ICE Agent Who Killed Renee Good”. Fuck ICE.
“Going forward, it will be more difficult, timely and costly for LGBTQ+ workers to seek justice for these and other workplace harassment issues related to their gender identities and sexualities.”
RIP, Gladys West, pioneering mathematician whose work on a more accurate mathematical model of the Earth led to the development of GPS, celebrated as one of the now-justly famous “Hidden Figures”.
“So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.”