A B&W still of a man wearing all black looking down, with a long, heavy brow, at a woman in white wearing a braid around her head. They are both smoking; their cigarettes touch so one can be lit. It's sexy and intense.

Watched the first Powell/ Pressburger collaboration The Spy in Black (1939), which was beautifully shot, whether the action took place in claustrophobic spaces like a submarine or panoramic ones like battles off the coast of Orkney Island. Great plot twist, & Conrad Veidt's charisma is hard to beat.

Reporters:

Here's a simple question that will generate viral stories.

"How exactly is it Marxist?"

The response will be a dodge, so you've got to stay with it and follow it up.

"No, you said DEI was Marxist. What did you mean by that? Specifically?"

BFFR

know-it-all coworker talks over everyone, students using AI during job interviews, and more It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go… 1. Know-it-all coworker talks over everyone (and is often wrong) We have a new employee, “Sam,” who thinks she knows everything. She has lots of experi...

know-it-all coworker talks over everyone, students using AI during job interviews, and more

www.askamanager.org/2025/05/know...

The Supreme Court is about to let religion ruin public education Two recent cases suggest that the era of secular schools is coming to an end.

“This is taxpayer-funded, state-sponsored religious indoctrination. You’ve just got to call it what it is.”

A lovely short film and perfect for May Day!

happy may day here is a painting I did a long time ago

Jill Sobule, Singer-Songwriter of Groundbreaking 1995 Song ‘I Kissed a Girl,’ Killed in House Fire Jill Sobule, whose 1995 hit 'I Kissed a Girl' is considered the first openly gay-themed song to crack the Billboard Top 20, died in a fire Thursday.

This is a gut punch. One of the very best of humanity and a person who was so important to me and so many others. variety.com/2025/music/n...

George Sanders leans over the counter of a studio set library towards a comely library clerk while Richard Denning looks on in a trench coat

Humphrey Bogart leans over a large tome and makes notes in the reading room of a library

William Gargan gets a sultry look from Janis Carter in the library

Joseph Cotten does some light research on extradition treaties for no particular reason in what appears to really be the Los Angeles Public Library.

Film noir goes to the library:
QUIET PLEASE: MURDER (1942)
THE BIG SLEEP (1946)
NIGHT EDITOR (1946)
THE STEEL TRAP (1952)
#NoirAlley

Googling “how to not procrastinate” for the last three hours.

#writing #writingcommunity #amwriting

Twenty Lessons, read by John Lithgow Key selections from On Tyranny, for viewing and sharing

Every single American should watch this. John Lithgow reading Tim Snyder's On Tyranny 20 Lessons. open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p...

The “methods for doing so” are (1) getting two thirds of Congress and three fourths of the states to repeal the 22nd Amendment and (2) declaring himself king.

That’s it.

Stop treating this despotic bullshit as if it’s some worthwhile thought experiment we have to consider as legitimate.

Exclusive | FDA’s Top Vaccine Official Forced Out In his resignation letter, Dr. Peter Marks cited “misinformation and lies” from Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr.

“‘It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies,’ Dr. Peter Marks wrote in a resignation letter referring to HHS Secretary RFK Jr.”

used to not have toilets, shade or drinking water cause bosses said it was too expensive. With pesticides we would work too close to the spray. Thanks to Cesar Chavez they changed those things. Join us in marching for Cesar Chávez - Francisco, CA farmworker, 28 yrs #WeFeedYou

My desperate need for money continues, and so... I've added more original art to my store, cut prices further on some art, and cleared out all the sold art. Please, take a look!
michaelkupperman.com/shop

Sharing an excerpt of facebook screenshot of Amanda Gailey: As someone who uses Signal every day, I need to explain how totally committed to being an absolute dumbass multiple people had to be in order for this security leak to happen. Okay, so in Signal if you want to talk to multiple people you have to create a group and give it a name, for example "JD Vance Humps His Couch." You then add people from your contacts to the group. If you are a competent user of Signal, you can then restrict the permissions so that only designated admins can add people. If you are an absolute dipshit whose only job qualification is pwning the libs on Twitter, you would create a group about war plans and not know about or activate this functionality. If you are in a group and are allowed to add members, either because you are an admin or because the admin was raised on lead paint milkshakes, you then must do the following to add someone: Click on "JD Vance Humps His Couch" Scroll down to "Add Members." Select one or more people from your phone's contact list. Click "Update" Confirm that yes, you want to add that member. This is impossible to do accidentally. Then, once you have gone through the multi-step process of adding a member, an announcement appears on the screen for literally everyone in the group to see: "JD Vance Has Added Chairry to the Group." This sentence is a line in a single-stream text thread and if anyone is reading their messages they cannot miss it. (If they are not reading their messages, one might wonder why they have been included on the chat to begin with.) At this point, anyone can say in the chat or privately, Hey JD, why are you adding the bedroom-eyed plush chair from Pee-Wee's Playhouse to our chat about your upholstery problem? Yet nobody in the war bro chat said a thing about the new member added to the group.

This is art. 🤗

And I realized you are in singing,
unseizable as music, indifferent as
musical notes, distant from us
as we are from ourselves.

—Adam Zagajewski (1945-2021)

"Patriotism is supporting your country all of the time and your government when it deserves it."

Teen Warned Not To Accept Group Chat Invites From National Security Advisors She Doesn’t Know

Teen Warned Not To Accept Group Chat Invites From National Security Advisors She Doesn’t Know

A simple line image of a yellow cartoon sunshine on a white background with black text saying, “and here we fucking go again. I mean good morning”

Mr. Dudek acknowledged in an interview with The New York Times on Friday that he had concerns about what would happen if the fast changes generated problems that impaired the agency. He told advocates during the meeting that if they disrupted citizens to the point of being untenable, the agency would roll them back. In another instance, the Social Security Administration briefly ended a contract that had allowed parents of newborn babies in Maine to sign their children up for a Social Security number at the hospital, instead requiring them to do so in person at an office. Mr. Dudek said he had ordered the move after watching Janet Mills, Maine's Democratic governor, clash with Mr. Trump at the White House. He quickly reversed that decision, as well as another to end electronic death reporting in the state.

"I was ticked at the governor of Maine for not being real cordial to the president," Mr. Dudek said in the interview. "I screwed up. I'll admit I screwed up."

The acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration admits he retaliated against the entire population of Maine—mostly newborn babies and their parents—because he thought the state’s governor had been rude to Trump in a White House meeting. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/u...

I make a show called @sleepwithcelebs.bsky.social that's all about putting you to sleep by having famous people tell you mundane things until you pass out. There are sleep shows, there are celebrity interview shows, there is only one celebrity interview sleep show.

"A very strong vetting process" is not the same as legal recourse or due process. For example, Jews selected for labor details or gas chambers went through a very strong vetting process.

I simply do not believe the truth of our existence is that we have to be this selfish and malicious to be happy

Promotional image for "We Dissent" podcast episode 40, titled "Breaking Down President Trump's Executive Orders." Features guest Dena Sher from Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Includes invitation to listen on We-Dissent.com.

New Episode Alert! Don't miss AU's Dena Sher on the latest episode of We Dissent! we-dissent.org

April at the New Bev is filled with film, including a new 35mm print of Donnie Darko, a trio of Anna May Wong rarities, ‘70s hippie musicals, films by Altman, Breillat, Schrader, Spielberg, Visconti, & more! Let us know what you’re most excited to see!

I've cossed more international borders than most, been through checkpoints and searches and have trained human rights activists, journalists and others in staying safe in repressive regimes. In the past few days I've provided some friends with travel advice for no particular reason; here's a thread:

To "orientate" or "orientated" are not uncommon in Britain, but they bring scorn in the U.S. In both varieties of English, we usually "orient" or have "oriented." In the OED corpus, the verb "orient" meaning "to position" rather than "to face east" predates "orientate" by six years (1842 and 1848).