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Emily St. James

@emilystjams

Writer! TV: Yellowjackets. Novel: Woodworking (out now). Podcasts: Arden. Journalism: Vox, A.V. Club, NYT, etc. Like a large language model but for my formative trauma. Newsletter here: https://episodes.ghost.io/

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Latest posts by Emily St. James @emilystjams

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After detainments and deportations, the lives left behind in Minnesota From abandoned possessions to unpaid rent, many Minnesotans had to lean on family, friends and community organizations for help with their unfinished business.

"Each person plucked from their day-to-day existence left a whole life behind. There are shoes by the front door and an empty bed. There’s a car in the driveway and a job undone. There are pets that need feeding, bills that keep arriving and leases with months left to pay."

10.03.2026 18:53 πŸ‘ 461 πŸ” 212 πŸ’¬ 4 πŸ“Œ 13

besides wages i mean.

10.03.2026 07:20 πŸ‘ 19 πŸ” 3 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

they should invent prices that go down.

10.03.2026 07:20 πŸ‘ 55 πŸ” 9 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Not sure I agree with the exact placement, but the right top half and bottom half, tbh

11.03.2026 02:25 πŸ‘ 6 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0

evil

11.03.2026 00:17 πŸ‘ 110 πŸ” 17 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

I think this story is a really good example for people to look at when it comes to understanding bias at NYT. It's not that the reporter, Dana Rubinstein, says anything outright false. But the framing, word choices, etc., add up to an unprofessional and biased account.

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15.02.2026 22:32 πŸ‘ 4971 πŸ” 1043 πŸ’¬ 35 πŸ“Œ 4
OPINION: I asked a former Trump official to justify this war

OPINION: I asked a former Trump official to justify this war

So the case for Congress is, once we have gone to war, if they don’t like it, they can remove the money?

Congress does not have a constitutional role in the declaration of war. Congress has a role in cutting off funds for wars, which it has threatened to do. And the president doesn’t have to get permission.

But yes, you can debate, you can decide. That’s his choice in how he wants to do it.

I mean, here I will quote the Constitution: β€œThe Congress shall have power to declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water.”

So the case for Congress is, once we have gone to war, if they don’t like it, they can remove the money? Congress does not have a constitutional role in the declaration of war. Congress has a role in cutting off funds for wars, which it has threatened to do. And the president doesn’t have to get permission. But yes, you can debate, you can decide. That’s his choice in how he wants to do it. I mean, here I will quote the Constitution: β€œThe Congress shall have power to declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water.”

Behold the intellectual might of the conservative legal movement

10.03.2026 12:17 πŸ‘ 2592 πŸ” 462 πŸ’¬ 60 πŸ“Œ 62

I often think about the sequence where we're in a rollicking club right before an air raid, followed by thieves pilfering the jewelry off the many dead bodies in it after it is bombed. I think it gets at something profound about how easily a life can be snuffed out and how rarely we consider that.

10.03.2026 16:10 πŸ‘ 11 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

I love Tati, but my wife once fell asleep in a screening of Playtime (in her defense, she had been up for, like, 22 hours before that), so I am voting McQueen FOR HER.

That said: I seem to be one of the few who really loved Blitz, but I did!

10.03.2026 16:02 πŸ‘ 31 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 5 πŸ“Œ 2

Tontines require less infrastructural lift, so definitely the former.

10.03.2026 15:58 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

They're a pretty fun idea that has the unfortunate consequence of gamifying murder in many ways.

10.03.2026 15:55 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

If we really tried, I'll bet we could get Trump to make tontines legal again.

10.03.2026 15:43 πŸ‘ 54 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 6 πŸ“Œ 1

I really wanted to like all those shows and frequently did like Glee and AHS!

10.03.2026 15:39 πŸ‘ 6 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0

Thank you!! Those were some of my favorite critical writing I've done.

10.03.2026 15:28 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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goddamn is this a breath of fresh air after Allred 2024

10.03.2026 03:56 πŸ‘ 16637 πŸ” 3833 πŸ’¬ 165 πŸ“Œ 155

Long-time buddies Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were out for a pleasant van drive in Oklahoma when, all of a sudden, their lives would change.

10.03.2026 13:19 πŸ‘ 8909 πŸ” 1809 πŸ’¬ 172 πŸ“Œ 39

Very excited to read Lily on this show!!

10.03.2026 15:18 πŸ‘ 22 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

(I am also very curious why we are discoursing about this.)

10.03.2026 15:16 πŸ‘ 20 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Not every critic is this way, but I hated writing negative reviews and got little pleasure in them. I knew it was time to hang it up when I could feel myself getting a little too mean.

10.03.2026 15:15 πŸ‘ 88 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 7 πŸ“Œ 0

When people say Lynchian or whatever it's always the strobe lights and the surrealism and the whooshing ambient dread, and never that scene in Twin Peaks when Ben and Jerry excitedly eat too much bread and deliver their dialogue through gobs of gluten

10.03.2026 15:03 πŸ‘ 494 πŸ” 74 πŸ’¬ 15 πŸ“Œ 17

I sometimes worry that too many people think being a good critic means being a self-righteous dick about every little thing and I think far too many miss the point that you can't critique anything if you don't know how to love something.

10.03.2026 13:02 πŸ‘ 3575 πŸ” 603 πŸ’¬ 4 πŸ“Œ 133

My guess is it’s randomized because that was not my experience

10.03.2026 03:07 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Yes, I wouldn’t doubt that you could train AI to make plausible ersatz Cormac McCarthy that would fool most readers. But if you gave AI the sum of human literature up until McCarthy’s first novel, it would never spontaneously create his style.

10.03.2026 02:31 πŸ‘ 136 πŸ” 27 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 0

So many people catching strays off something aimed only at me.

10.03.2026 02:23 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

I realize this is designed to drive me, specifically, insane, but AI models can do reasonable pastiche of any given writer or style of writing, and the problem becomes more obvious cumulatively. Thus, I'm not sure what the point of a quiz like this is*.

*-it is to drive me, specifically, insane.

10.03.2026 02:21 πŸ‘ 102 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 12 πŸ“Œ 0

Obviously they're not the same person but I do feel like the trans attack ad stuff might roll off of Talarico in a similar way to how it rolled off of Zohran, because I think that both are able to stay on message and already talk to people like real people instead of like consultants

09.03.2026 23:56 πŸ‘ 158 πŸ” 8 πŸ’¬ 7 πŸ“Œ 1
Preview
Guess What Moderate Democratic Voters Aren’t Anymore? Moderate. Two new polls suggest that moderate Democrats, too, want higher taxes on the rich and some measure of economic populism. Moderate isn’t what it was in 1992.

Moderate Democrats with columns in newspapers are constantly saying the Democratic Party is way too liberal on "social" issues. Moderate Democratic voters in real life do not feel this way. With some polling data from @gelliottmorris.com and @dataforprogress.org. newrepublic.com/article/2074...

09.03.2026 15:29 πŸ‘ 3611 πŸ” 928 πŸ’¬ 94 πŸ“Œ 113

Rambaldi's ultimate goal was to achieve immortality

09.03.2026 19:48 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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