Pushing back, turning tides
The “first 100 days” of this administration has been the narrative hook of the week—even for the President, who held a fascist rally in Michigan to mark the...
The ways in which it’s getting bad
Tariffs reach our shores The costs of this adminstration’s tariff policy hit Temu over the weekend, if Reddit (r/TemuThings) offers any indication. Shipping...
Among all the dipshits and liars
Do we give grace to Pete Hegseth that he is too stupid to understand how bad he is at his job leading the largest department in the federal government? We...
Sometimes doing things works
I felt overwhelmed by the news this week. This is normal. It’s normal because the news these days presents a nonstop torrent of stupidity, corruption,...
We all report the news
Do we know for a fact that it was three million people who turned out for last Saturday’s Hands Off Day of Action? 5.2 million? We don’t, because despite the...
Hands (off) across America
For someone who has chosen a vegetarian diet—especially when chosen for ethical reasons—dining out can be an isolating experience, with the majority of...
The stupidest possible scenario
In 2016 John Scalzi articulated “Trump’s Razor”, in which we are advised to “ascertain the stupidest possible scenario that can be reconciled with the...
What if we didn’t suck?
With a provocative question (“What if we didn’t suck?”), progressive online content creator Kat Abughazaleh (“Kat Abu”) announced last week that she is...
America is not an idea
The U.S. has been built atop not merely one but many ideas—simple ideas and complex ones, some good ideas, some bad ones. Yet while America has consistently...
Trans kids are a blessing
March 31 is International Trans Day of Visibility. Trans people have always been here, and always will be. Read about the ACLU’s “Freedom to Be” massive...
Be as courageous as you can
One missed night becomes many, becomes more than one might particularly wish to count. 20 lessons on tyranny Historian and professor Timothy Snyder has left...
No need to call them racists
You also might find yourself weary of dear friends and family members feeling attacked or defensive or hostile at the mere mention of racist language or...
The internet is also good
It has been awful to watch the fires in and around Los Angeles from a distance. I cannot imagine what it has been like to live through (or near) them, even...
All so deeply weird
I’ve hesitated to write about the New Years Day attack in New Orleans, which killed 14 people and injured dozens. Or the Cybertruck explosion at the Trump...
America didn’t vote for this
There’s still math being processed in the wake of November’s election, but the numbers we have access to can be employed to tell very different stories....
Things we know about Memlon Fuchs
This post is inspired by Justin Hendrix’s persistent tracker of Elon Musk’s wealth and power. I will not attempt to keep up with every news development, but...
The Kakistocrats
I was reminded this week of the word “kakistocracy”, a government run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous people. Perhaps because people were...
What might be possible
December traffic (at least in the Bay Area) has gotten worse since I last had to commute by car every day. This week the hour-long drive to my mom’s took...
Verifiable truths
I suppose I’m not surprised that opinions in the mainstream media continue to worry that the growth of Bluesky, and the cultural norms of its early adopters...
An expression of violence
Still Too Much News Beyond the world of TFP’s transition picks, the Syrian government has fallen, and the suspected killer of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare has...
So long as money keeps flowing in and out
Every year I am required by my job to complete an Anti-Money Laundering training course. Some details evolve each year, but the fundamentals stay the same....
Crowned heads heard it and shrieked
I felt this one in my lower back: Two stages of writing: 1) This shouldn't take too long 2) Oh no— Neil Renic (@ncrenic.bsky.social) December 4, 2024 at...
Something true enough (on accident)
I have experimented casually with a small variety of Machine Learning-"Generative AI” tools, and work with folks who have tried many of them. I have been...
Thousands of people in the streets
There is still too much news to process. Conditions are still evolving in South Korea, after President Yoon Suk Yeol declared—and then rescinded—martial law,...
What happened before
Declining to take the bait The legacy news media is spending a lot of minutes and column inches on President Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter. I’m...
Some things require the grappling hook
This morning we got ourselves out of the house in time to join Oakland’s Trash Falcons on their weekly mission: picking up trash in the Adams Point...
Things I wish I didn’t know
I wish that I knew nothing about Fox weekend morning show host Pete Hegseth, TFP’s current nominee for U.S. Secretary of Defense. I wish I didn’t know that...
The awful things won’t go away
On (not) keeping up with the news Through my Bluesky feeds I’ve been keeping up with events of the day, but I’ve been choosing topics here more deliberately....
An abundance of food
We didn’t feel like turkey so I made fried chicken. The recipe works well to make the night before and rewarm before serving. One @#$%ing thing The boy was...
Debilitating after-effects
For many of us days pass without mentioning how Covid-19 has killed more than 1.1 million people in the United States. That’s more than the 675,000 lives...
Ideas of myself
I’m following too many people on Bluesky. I know many people follow hundreds (even thousands) of accounts, but I can’t process the volume of information...
Despite the headwinds
Was feeling slightly lost working through lists of through local nonprofits, and took a break to listen to W. Kamau Bell talking to Cecillia Wang, the...
Turning to stories
There is a torrent of news developments coming out of TFP’s transition: Cabinet nominees who are unqualified, corrupt, sexual predators, and authors of...
Making good choices
I earn a good technology company salary, so I can give a good amount of money away. But I don’t consider myself especially gifted at sorting through all of...
The need for trust
I had little time for much “national” news today, but did watch a 34-minute video from Hank Green tying together historical strands of media revolutions and...
The eighth coin
We are reminded that TFP is not invincible. That his agenda is not inevitable. Just eight days ago TFP posted about his intended nominee for Attorney General...
Call things by their names
It is going to get bad. Congresswoman Nancy Mace and House Speaker Mike Johnson feel empowered to deploy dehumanizing language to attract attention and...
Improving people’s lives
On changing minds A prompt on Bluesky this week asked “Is there anything you’ve changed your mind about because of the election?” Journalist/author Adam...
Not all the news is bad
Anil Dash is back again with a blog post (“Don’t call it a Substack”) and a Bluesky thread suggesting that Substack—much like Fuchs’ purchase of Twitter—is a...
A lot of things
While I don’t have an ADHD diagnosis, my brain shares many traits with those who do. The design of this project is built to allow me the freedom not to...
True and concrete
Was reflecting after last night’s post whether it is useful for me to describe RFK Jr. as a “menace”. But by Wiktionary’s definition the language is not an...
A little less worse
The national news media appears to be re-running the playbook of pretending that words posted on Twitter (or Truth Social) on TFP’s account are a) official...
Those close by
I’ve still not yet mustered the courage to process the daily national news. Mere glimpses of what’s been happening have felt like facepunches, when my ears...
Words of appreciation
A nonprofit newsroom near you Embedded into the decision to start an online publication (rather than a private journal) is my desire to help shorten the...
The next test
The most difficult day of a new habit continues to be all of them. But then you get up the next morning, finish washing dishes and cleaning the kitchen from...
One act of service
We work from our homes most days. Unlike most days, 120 of us sat together this morning at my local office. This collection of humans had become a single...
Free-to-paid
Upon sharing the link to this project, a friend asked me “Why Buttondown and not Substack?” It can’t merely be the Nazi problem and the anti-trans problem,...
How else we voted
With the national headline swallowing up all of my brain’s oxygen, I missed finding out about nearly everything else I had voted for (or against) in the...
My last tweet
I turned back into a lurker on July 23, 2023, the day that Memlon Fuchs* announced that Twitter would now be rebranded as “X”. My last tweet, posted that...
The most difficult day
The biggest trouble with starting a daily practice is always the next morning. And also that there’s another morning after that. A reason to keep going today...