Latest posts

  • The Glitterball Hunger Games: Dancing With the Stars Season 34 Kicks Off by Breaking Its Own Math

    The Glitterball Hunger Games: Dancing With the Stars Season 34 Kicks Off by Breaking Its Own Math

    Opening Night, Chaos Optional “Dancing With the Stars” opened its 34th season like only an American reality juggernaut can: too many contestants, too much glitter, and not nearly enough functional technology. Fourteen couples poured onto the ballroom floor, the disco lights blinded half the audience, and the producers announced no eliminations this week—as if America

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  • Republicans Canceled Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert Because Free Speech Is Only for Them

    Republicans Canceled Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert Because Free Speech Is Only for Them

    The Blood in the Water Let’s get this out of the way: Jimmy Kimmel is off the air. Pulled by ABC. Indefinite hiatus. No return date. Disney—the big corporate mouse with the oversized ears and the even bigger fear of FCC regulatory hellfire—yanked “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” because he made jokes about Charlie Kirk after Kirk

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  • The Death of Charlie Kirk and the Politics of Selective Grief

    The Death of Charlie Kirk and the Politics of Selective Grief

    Violence Is Not the Answer Let’s start with the obvious: I condemn political violence. All of it. Every bullet, every act dressed up as “justice,” every attempt to turn disagreement into bloodshed. No cause, no grievance, no ideology makes murder acceptable. And yet here we are, talking about another assassination carried out on a public

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  • Shutdown Theater: Now With More Subsidies and Security Funds!

    Shutdown Theater: Now With More Subsidies and Security Funds!

    Welcome back to Washington, America’s longest-running soap opera, where every September the same plotline airs: Will the government shut down? Will Speaker [insert name here, they rotate faster than NFL quarterbacks] hold the caucus together? Will Chuck Schumer furrow his brows meaningfully? And will anyone, at any point, think about the millions of actual humans

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  • The Party of Free Speech Wants a Muzzle—As Long as It’s for You

    The Party of Free Speech Wants a Muzzle—As Long as It’s for You

    Ah, yes. The brave defenders of free speech. The warriors against cancel culture. The self-styled martyrs of the “say what you want, snowflake” movement. They’ve spent years assuring us that America needs to be a safe space—for their offensive jokes, for their racist uncle’s Facebook rants, for their senator’s homophobic tweets typed at 3 a.m.

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  • Trump’s War on the Calendar: Why Four Quarters Are Just Too Many for Capitalism to Handle

    Trump’s War on the Calendar: Why Four Quarters Are Just Too Many for Capitalism to Handle

    Once again Donald J. Trump has logged on to Truth Social, thumb trembling with the divine power of an unpaid intern, to announce that America no longer needs quarterly earnings reports. Semiannual will do just fine, thank you. If this feels familiar, that’s because it is. Trump tried the same thing in 2018, after a

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  • Brian Kilmeade and the “Just Kill ’Em” Doctrine: Fox News Accidentally Says the Quiet Part Louder

    Brian Kilmeade and the “Just Kill ’Em” Doctrine: Fox News Accidentally Says the Quiet Part Louder

    If satire is dead, Brian Kilmeade personally strangled it on live television when he suggested, with all the seriousness of a man discussing football stats, that unhoused people with mental illness should receive “involuntary lethal injections.” His actual phrasing—“just kill ’em”—landed with the thud of a guillotine blade hitting the stage floor of Fox &

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  • Trump’s Federal Reserve Circus: Cutting Rates and Ties With Reality

    Trump’s Federal Reserve Circus: Cutting Rates and Ties With Reality

    When Independence Means Whatever He Says There are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and Donald Trump trying to fire someone he doesn’t like. Now he’s aiming at the Federal Reserve, the supposedly independent temple of monetary policy that has somehow become just another episode of his reality show. Markets expect a 25-basis-point cut at

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  • The Charlie Kirk Narrative Smells Like Yesterday’s Fox News Leftovers

    The Charlie Kirk Narrative Smells Like Yesterday’s Fox News Leftovers

    Not a Conspiracy Theorist, Just a Smell Test Enthusiast I don’t wear tin foil hats. I don’t subscribe to newsletters about the Denver Airport being a Masonic portal to lizard people. I am not a conspiracy theorist. I follow the facts wherever they lead, even if they lead me to deeply inconvenient places like “Charlie

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  • The Eternal Gravity of Shit: Why Hierarchy Is Humanity’s Favorite Hobby

    The Eternal Gravity of Shit: Why Hierarchy Is Humanity’s Favorite Hobby

    We like to tell ourselves that human beings are noble, empathetic creatures. We write novels about kindness, sing songs about love, build religions around compassion. But spend thirty seconds in line at Starbucks or thirty minutes Doordashing lukewarm Chipotle to someone in yoga pants, and the truth hits you in the face like a soggy

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