Mitch's Blog

David Brooks: We Deserve Pete Hegseth. The U.S. is not a serious country, so we should have a talk-show host as Secretary of Defense. We’ll have a reality TV host as President in four days.

Hamilton Nolan: Looting Season in America: The oligarchy blooms.

Zeynep Tufekci: Zuckerberg’s Macho Posturing Looks a Lot Like Cowardice. Zuck supports the incumbent President who threatened to throw him into prison. But yeah sure, he’s a tough guy because he does MMA.

NYTimes.com:

Trump seems to imagine an American autarky: a closed nation, self-sufficient and indifferent to the rest of the world.

…

Imposing tariffs, expanding territory, a new Mexican war and a traditional vision of the American people — these are what the nation needs, Trump says, to be “great again.” In which case, MAGA cannot possibly refer to anything in the 20th century, when the United States essentially built the modern international order, as much as it must refer to some time in the 19th century, when the United States was a more closed and insular society: a second-rate nation whose economy was many magnitudes smaller and less prosperous than our own.

All the timelines. Mastodon, Bluesky, Discord, RSS, Tumblr, newsletters. All of it.

Keeping up with the news is a colossal waste of time and source of needless stress. You can stay on top of everything you need to know in five minutes a day, most days.

This morning, I didn’t listen to any podcasts while walking. Ninety minutes of thinking, interacting with the dog, listening to the world around me, feeling my breath go in and out, and my feet walking the earth. I did not die.

There is no safe word: A long, disturbing in depth investigation into serial rape allegations against Neil Gaiman, by Lila Shapiro at New York magazine.

Gaiman responds: “I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone.”

Isaac Asimov was one of my heroes when I was a boy and into my 20s. Years after he died, I learned about truly awful behavior he engaged in routinely.

For many years after that, I held Asimov in contempt.

But now my respect for him is restored. I once again admire him today, for the qualities I admired in him before I knew about the other things. I admire his talent, work ethic, intelligence and nerdy charm.

Harlan Ellison was one of my heroes as well. His reprehensible behavior was always apparent — even his friends say oh yeah Ellison could be a colossal asshole. But I continue to admire his talent, intelligence, work ethic, loyalty and courage to do the right thing, publicly and loudly.

I was a Mel Gibson fan until he went publicly Nazi. I haven’t been able to watch anything with him in it since.

I never was a Harry Potter fan but I admired J.K. Rowling personally, before she became a professional transphobe.

Orson Scott Card was one of my favorite writers in the 70s and 80s. I haven’t read his work since he became a professional homophobe. I don’t miss it either — there are still about a million great works of fiction that I will never have a chance to read. Even without Card, I have no shortage of books to love.

Everybody loved Bill Cosby, me included.

Sometimes I can compartmentalize feelings about a public person I admire when horrible and credible allegations surface against them. I can still admire their good qualities and hold those qualities up as a standard to aspire to myself, while eschewing their bad qualities.

Other times I can’t compartmentalize in that fashion, and I can no longer tolerate a person I admire who reveals themselves to be personally reprehensible.

Cottage cheese is having a moment.

I’m surprised to learn it was ever out of style. I love cottage cheese. I eat it nearly every day. Have for years.

The Laken Riley Act mandates harsh, unjust penalties to petty offenders and will overburden the criminal justice system. Democrats will regret helping ot pass it, says Michelle Goldberg.

Here’s something I saw when walking the dog: An elegant weapon, for a more civilized age.