I wrote about why the regrettable conclusions of Ezra Klein pissed me off so badly in the last couple weeks.

On moral cowardice in an era that calls for clarity, and a popular political instinct to try to solve divisions of abuse by ignoring causes. www.the-reframe.com/eventually-y...

If you're upset about Jimmy Kimmel being "canceled," I'm sure you were just as furious when you heard about Joy Reid
and Tiffany Cross
or Amber Ruffin
or Karen Attiah
or Jemele Hill

Because Kimmel might still have a job if you were

Feeling grateful for my awesome trans family and friends and furious at the absurd, insistent effort to scapegoat & demonize trans folks.

“We are born to dream and make the things we dream about.” - Nicola Yoon

“Being brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared.”
— Alynda Segarra, inspiring us and making us braver at tonight’s Hurray for the Riff Raff concert.

I’m embarrassed by how sad I feel about the Columbia capitulation because it illuminates how desperately I want to believe in institutions and their expressed values.

“Anyone who thinks the administration will mutely walk away after the ink is dry needs to look at both the past behavior of autocratic regimes in general and this administration’s in particular,” writes Suresh Naidu, a professor at Columbia University.

Fantastic and timely intervention by the indispensable Dave Pozen on the true meaning of the Columbia shakedown for higher ed: replacing the rule of law with regulation by deal, which ultimately undermines both regulation and education.

balkin.blogspot.com/2025/07/regu...

Andrea Gibson, Presente! Your legacy will stretch across time and space. Thank you.

a disaster for many reasons, but I’m especially livid thinking about countless disabled students whose families who will have even less in the way of recourse when their kids’ educational rights are violated

Watching these poems, crying, and feeling lucky to have shared a planet with Andrea Gibson. andreagibson.org/best-poems

"When a human dies the soul moves through the universe trying to describe how a body trembles when it’s lost, softens when it’s safe, how a wound would heal given nothing but time.
I can’t imagine it, the stars say. Tell us again about goosebumps.
Tell us again about pain."
--Andrea Gibson, Tincture

There’s no framework for any kind of discussion about the fears or the safety of Muslim New Yorkers. It’s as if there’s an entire part of the population that remains invisible until feared.” — Hanif Abdurraqib

www.newyorker.com/news/essay/z...

Hanif Abdurraqib is one of my favorite essayists, and essays like this are why. It’s beautiful.

the core idea that can radicalize people is so simple:

there is enough.

there is enough food to feed everyone. enough resources to house everyone. money and technology and medicine to stop the suffering of people around the globe.

once you accept that there's only one question:

why don't we?

(Just excitedly ordered Niko Stratis's book "The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman")

"There's sweetness to Springsteen's vision.Things are rough, the weight of the world a burden few shoulders can bear, yet there's love, yearning & desire amid the hardships.There will be loss & heartache, you'll love & lose but find strength to go on." @nikostratis.com thequietus.com/culture/book...

The New York Times was more skeptical of the academic qualifications of a black woman who had secured tenure and become the president of Harvard than they were of a white man who washed out of a grad program with a massive scandal and then became a white nationalist troll.

If Mamdani had checked just Asian or say, Asian and white (bear with me) NYT would never have run that story.

The only reason they ran that story is because of the cultural belief that being Black gives you leg up in society despite research that says that isn't true.

people seem really confused about racial categories maybe we should have some educational programs to teach how these historically constructed categories structure our entire society in insidious ways we could even do programming in workplaces to improve how people communicate with each other

Natasha Cloud knows what it means to be a New Yorker.