You can’t tell me with a straight face that men are natural leaders but also that they’re too delicate to manage an algebra boner.

American Woman

Boys Will Be Boys

When my younger self imagined motherhood, there were always daughters. Raising girls was something I took for granted, like the rising sun or garbled announcements on the uptown 4/5/6…

Read more

a month ago · 153 likes · 62 comments · Dina Honour

The Garden of Forking Paths by

Silicon Valley, once the more benign hub of misfit computer nerds, has morphed into a bro-factory for post-modern dystopia, populated by megalomaniacs who expend their brain cells on hyping and pitching what they could build without contemplating whether they should.

Come As You Are by

There are a lot of people who hate women in this country, and they’ve proven it by the numbers, twice. They keep proving it. They’d vote for a swamp creature with no morals or desire to read a book for the pleasure of it — a racist, nasty Jabba the Gut — before they’d vote for a woman.

Come As You Are

Newton's Third Law

Last Friday I drove up the coast with my daughter to attend the wedding of close friends. If you haven’t done the drive up the Pacific Coast Highway from southern California to Big Sur, it is cinematic and breathtaking, and the stuff of movies for a reason…

Read more

a month ago · 94 likes · 61 comments · Ally Hamilton

Subscribe now

American Woman by

No one bothered to write down women’s stories. And so we’re left with half a historical record, one that assumes those stories weren’t worth remembering.

American Woman

The Hero's Journey

The great epics, the stories with marquee names, the texts that pepper college syllabi like heroic confetti, are almost universally about men. Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Hercules. Frodo, Luke, Paul Atreides. The bold journeys to faraway lands, the internal struggles into hearts of darkness, they’re the stories we can pluck from ou…

Read more

a month ago · 103 likes · 88 comments · Dina Honour

The Noosphere by

the qualities that help people survive won’t be the ones our societies have long rewarded most. It won’t be dominance, destruction, aggression, endless expansion, or hyper-individualism. It will be care.

The Noösphere

The Climate Change Driver Still Hiding in Plain Sight

The Noösphere is an entirely reader-supported publication that applies recent social science research to the cultural, political, and technological issues shaping our …

Read more

a month ago · 125 likes · 7 comments · Katie Jagielnicka

The Garden of Forking Paths by

And that may be humanity’s great hope: that an AI disaster wakes us up before the technology gets so powerful, so embedded in our lives, that any unexpected catastrophe rises to the level of existential risk. An early wake-up call could then trigger real global regulation.

The Present Age by

The problem is not something she says or does, but who she is. And that’s just bigotry.

The Present Age

The Punchline

I wrote yesterday about the correspondents’ dinner and the press corps that sat through it. The room was the story, and I stand by that. But one bit from Friday night has been stuck in my head all weekend, and I want to stay on it for a minute…

Read more

a month ago · 477 likes · 8 comments · Parker Molloy

Subscribe now

Letters from an American by

Fascism has always been a vehicle for frustration with a system that was failing the people. But it has never been a solution for fixing that system.

American Woman by

Not all prisons have bars, some have white picket fences.

American Woman

The Silence of the Girls

How could we have known…

Read more

a month ago · 222 likes · 47 comments · Dina Honour

The Noosphere by

History has a funny way of becoming decidedly less male-dominated the moment we stop assuming it always was.

The Noösphere

Archaeologists Keep Finding Women Where Men Were Supposed To Be

The Noösphere is an entirely reader-supported publication that applies recent social science research to the cultural, political, a…

Read more

a month ago · 830 likes · 49 comments · Katie Jagielnicka

Public Notice by

Donald Trump is the face of hate. He is the face of war. He is the face of a pandemic. And now he is the orange, sagging face of explosive diarrhea.

Public Notice

Trump’s latest public health initiative: explosive diarrhea

Read more

a month ago · 503 likes · 39 comments · Noah Berlatsky

Subscribe now

American Woman by

True protection is not fighting a bloody battle on my behalf; it’s not starting wars or electing men who start wars in the first place. Men sending other men to die for oil, for land, or Trojan women? That’s not protection, it’s the patriarchy exploiting the bodies of men the same way it exploits the bodies of women.

American Woman

Swallows and Amazons

Early in the 2017 film Wonder Woman, there’s a flashback to the moment when the peace of Themyscira is shattered by the violence of men. As metaphors go, it’s about as subtle as an anvil dropped by Wile E. Coyote…

Read more

2 months ago · 175 likes · 53 comments · Dina Honour

everyone is entitled to my own opinion by

optimally, you’d prefer that the President of the United States and the dumbest fucking moron on the planet were two different people — but we don’t have the luxury of living in that timeline. we live in the shitty one. lucky us.

everyone is entitled to my own opinion

Preznit Fuckwit finally gets his beady-eyed pig-face on money

Mad King Donny and his royal court of sewer clowns never stop coming up with new ways of wasting America’s time on stupid bullshit…

Read more

2 months ago · 2957 likes · 566 comments · Jeff Tiedrich

Subscribe now

Newsletters

Kareem Takes on the News by

We created this situation decision by decision. We won’t improve it by kicking the can down the road to our grandchildren because we were too lazy, greedy, or addicted to creature comforts to pick it up ourselves.

Kareem Takes on the News

Trump Cashes In, Sanitizes History, and Pollutes the Planet

What I’m Discussing Today…

Read more

2 months ago · 325 likes · 55 comments · Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

American Woman by

They just wanted a hot woman to give them her number as proof of something that only mattered to them. Their worthiness, their virility or attractiveness, or just their existence as a human being in need of human connection.

American Woman

Game Over

When my sons were young enough that I was still monitoring their screen time, they spent an unholy amount of it on YouTube, watching other people play video games. I was baffled…

Read more

2 months ago · 119 likes · 70 comments · Dina Honour

The Noosphere by

Under capitalism and patriarchy, where institutions are largely organised around protecting the interests of those at the top, time doesn’t trickle down any more than money does. The hours saved by new technologies rarely find their way back to the people whose lives they were supposed to improve.

The Noösphere

Time Doesn’t Trickle Down Either

The Noösphere is an entirely reader-supported publication that applies recent social science research to the cultural, political, and technological issues shaping our …

Read more

2 months ago · 127 likes · 13 comments · Katie Jagielnicka

The Play Typer Guy by

the Supreme Court is a threat to democracy right now because these specific conservative justices are hostile to the rights granted to all Americans since the Civil War.

The Play Typer Guy

Expanding The Supreme Court Is About More Than Simple Reform

Liberal calls for expanding the Supreme Court have only increased as the conservative justices keep playing Calvinball with democracy, empowering the mad king Donald Trump and gutting individual liberty, most recently the Voting Rights Act but let’s never forget the overturning of…

Read more

2 months ago · 39 likes · 14 comments · Stephen Robinson

Unmanned by

while not all men practice violence against women all women live with the reality of male violence; every single day, all over the world.

Unmanned

29. What Teenage Boys Already Know: What's a Little Rape Compared to a Man's Potential? A Weekend Long Read

Unmanned is a reader-supported publication. If you’ve found this essay useful and thought-provoking, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support means a great deal and enables me to dedicate more time to in-depth feminist writing, research, and advocacy. Thanks for reading and sharing…

Read more

2 months ago · 131 likes · 26 comments · Soraya Chemaly

Come As You Are by

I don’t need four whole women to come forward with sexual assault allegations before I decide this is a man I don’t want to know. I don’t need three women to come forward. I don’t need two. Nothing good happens to women or girls who decide to talk about what happened, the cost is always greater than any possible “reward.” Women and girls rarely get anything for their bravery but grief, and more trauma. They get attacked again. Especially today, when social media has turned people into the most vicious, heartless versions of themselves.

Come As You Are

Go Ahead, Jump to Conclusions

I am not someone who likes drama. Maybe it comes from growing up with a lot of chaos and violence, and maybe it’s also my nature. On my first birthday, my mother baked a heart-shaped cake for me. My birthday is the day after Valentine’s Day, and she had really hoped I’d be born on the 14th. My entry into this world almost killed us both, so it’s too bad…

Read more

2 months ago · 85 likes · 48 comments · Ally Hamilton

Airplane Mode with

Every man alive was raised marinating in a misogynistic culture. That’s not a personal attack, that’s just the water. The question was never whether patriarchy shaped you (congratulations, it did!) but whether you’re willing to keep asking how it still does. Present tense. Ongoing. Forever!!

Airplane Mode with Liz Plank

The Bar for Progressive Men Is Somewhere Under the Earth's Crust

Writing like this takes time: the reading, the receipts, the staring at a wall composing zingers about men who think they’ve done the work. Paid subscriptions are what make that time possible. Free ones help too, and sharing this with your group chat is its own form of love. Thanks for being here…

Read more

2 months ago · 412 likes · 38 comments · Liz Plank

Subscribe now

Newsletters

Kareem Takes on the News by

These measures, all wrapped up in the SAVE Act, are allegedly needed to prevent voter fraud, but nobody pushing the bill demands documentation for the fraud claims used to justify it. Yet, they are perfectly happy demanding documentation from tens of millions of voters.

Kareem Takes on the News

Whose America Will We SAVE?, Donald Trump’s Birthday Grift, & a Questionable "Greatest Living American"

What I’m Discussing Today…

Read more

2 months ago · 322 likes · 81 comments · Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

American Woman by

The most Feminist thing a man writing in this space can do is to amplify the voices and work of women, to pay for the labor they’re doing, and to credit the work that has enabled their own.

No one should expect kudos, a cookie, or even a tasty fish snack for arriving at the party after everything is set up and paid for.

American Woman

O Captain, My Captain!

Back when it first came out, I was enamored with Dead Poets Society. A poetry-quoting teacher who passionately exhorted his cute male students to seize the day, all while critiquing entrenched systems of oppression and rigid gender roles…

Read more

2 months ago · 100 likes · 28 comments · Dina Honour

The Noosphere by

Women and girls continue to be hemmed in by a maze of double binds and restrictions on their autonomy, privacy, and ability to move through the world freely. Our patriarchal society and men, meanwhile, continue to treat these constraints as common-sense necessities, and any abuse that happens as an inevitable consequence of women ‘transgressing’ them.

The Noösphere

Move Fast and Break Women

The Noösphere is an entirely reader-supported publication that applies recent social science research to the cultural, political, and technological issues shaping our …

Read more

2 months ago · 210 likes · 21 comments · Katie Jagielnicka

Public Notice by

Were they alive today, and almost without exception, the revolutionary leaders would be appalled to see this anniversary presided over by a man who treats with contempt the project they risked their lives to bequeath to us.

Public Notice

Declaring War on The Declaration

Read more

2 months ago · 426 likes · 9 comments · Tom Schaller

A cabal of white Christian nationalists and their remora have spent decades attempting to unravel the threads of our republic in favor of an oligarchic techno-fascist theocracy.

Michael Ian Black

I Propose A New Holiday

To those of you bemoaning my lack of output these last couple of weeks (to date, I have received exactly zero complaints about my lack of output these last couple of weeks), I apologize. I’m still in the wilds of Eastern Oregon chasing Sasquatch on the set of…

Read more

2 months ago · 121 likes · 23 comments · Michael Ian Black

The Garden of Forking Paths by

Human brains are the most complex and wonderful creations in the known universe, but they wither when left unused. I worry that we could already be sleepwalking toward that mental chasm, one mindless AI prompt at a time.

The Present Age by

You were allowed the questions. Everybody had questions once. But it isn’t 2021 anymore, and the questions have answers, and the answers are sitting in a Supreme Court opinion and a stack of federal rules and a press release from a man who told the New York Times his goal was to get rid of us. This is a project with an endpoint, and the endpoint is a country where being openly trans gets harder every month, on purpose, until it isn’t possible at all.

The Present Age

Reasonable Concerns

Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that states can keep trans girls and women out of girls’ and women’s school sports…

Read more

2 months ago · 247 likes · 5 comments · Parker Molloy

The Suburban Wilderness by

And I will hope that someday we can do away with the imaginary lines altogether so we can join each other, freely, and appreciate the magic that happens when people live together in a place and create beautiful and unique things that can only come from their special mix of minds and bodies and land and history and truth.

the suburban wilderness

A few thoughts about countries on the occasion of a certain national birthday.

Countries. Nation-states. I’m gonna be honest, I don’t care for them…

Read more

2 months ago · 19 likes · 3 comments · Elizabeth Lukehart

Subscribe now

Newsletters

Kareem Takes on the News by

Trump is not constrained by either ethics or a code of conduct because his employers—the American people—have abdicated their responsibility to elect a President their children, not to mention their allies, can respect.

Kareem Takes on the News

A Miracle on 33rd Street & the Unbearable Smallness of Trump

What I’m Discussing Today…

Read more

3 months ago · 666 likes · 55 comments · Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

The Noosphere by

stable employment, affordable housing, and long-term economic security have become more difficult to attain. Plus, the zero-sum logic of neoliberal capitalism that helped create these very conditions is itself interwined with obsessive status-seeking, pushing all of us to compete endlessly for what we’re told are scarce opportunities and rewards.

The Noösphere

Men Are in an Epidemic, Just Not the One You Think

The Noösphere is an entirely reader-supported publication that applies recent social science research to the…

Read more

3 months ago · 163 likes · 18 comments · Katie Jagielnicka

We’ve somehow allowed ourselves to be conditioned to accept less than the truth from the people for whom truth ought to be their highest calling. Truth and transparency are base requirements for a functioning democracy; if we can’t trust what the government is telling us, we cannot trust what the government does. When we cannot trust what the government does, “representative democracy” is nothing more than a branding exercise.

Michael Ian Black

This Shit-Spewing Machine Goes to 11

This is how dumb I am: I don’t understand how public officials can consistently go in front of the American people and lie. I legitimately don’t understand. Yesterday, Republicans far and wide spouted unsupported claims of vote rigging in this week’s California elections. This week, the President lied to Kristen Welker about his campaign promise not to …

Read more

3 months ago · 181 likes · 24 comments · Michael Ian Black

everyone is entitled to my own opinion by

war is not a video game. it’s serious, last-resort business. war inevitably leads to destruction, and the mass deaths of innocent people. it should be avoided at all costs. and the sober task of fighting a war should be handled by people who understand and respect that — and not carelessly handed to some emotionally-stunted frat boy who giggles over the thought of committing war crimes.

everyone is entitled to my own opinion

what kind of shithole president claims to ‘love the inflation’?

yesterday, during another one of his vulgar Oval Bordello dog-and-pony shows, Lord Shitticus took time off from his busy schedule of praising himself for his imaginary accomplishments, whining about every petty grudge and grievance, and power-loading an endless series of diapers to cordially invite We the People …

Read more

3 months ago · 3181 likes · 439 comments · Jeff Tiedrich

Come As You Are by

He does not want to die in any jail. The people around him do not want to go to jail. Their motivation to avoid that scenario is hard to quantify. Everyone needs to be meeting this moment with the same level of desperation they would if they thought losing in November would land them behind bars. Not theoretically, literally. How would you behave? Please do that, because whatever freedom you think you have is very much on the line.

Come As You Are

Cage Match Diplomacy

A number of years ago, a friend invited me to join a women’s group on Facebook. This was long before the troubles (there have always been troubles, you know the troubles I mean). I wasn’t sure if this friend had anything to do with running the group, or if she simply thought I’d like it, but I liked her so I accepted, thinking I could always leave or mu…

Read more

3 months ago · 75 likes · 44 comments · Ally Hamilton

Subscribe now

Newsletters

Public Notice by

The GOP is all in on misogyny, and any candidate, or political party, that supports women to any extent at all will be targeted with misogyny. It is all in on hating trans people, and anyone who does not embrace othering trans people wholeheartedly will be targeted for transphobia.

Public Notice

Republicans go all in on toxic masculinity in Texas

Read more

3 months ago · 558 likes · 17 comments · Noah Berlatsky

The Noosphere by

Although our patriarchal society has long wanted us to be afraid of older women, I suspect the fear mostly goes the other way around. It’s the patriarchal society that’s afraid of them. It dreads their independence, their self-awareness, their lack of interest in male approval, and their frustration with the system itself. It also dreads the lessons they have learned and the wisdom they could pass on to other women, freeing them from its grip.

The Noösphere

The Women We Still Fail To See

The Noösphere is an entirely reader-supported publication that applies recent social science research to the cultural, political…

Read more

3 months ago · 150 likes · 17 comments · Katie Jagielnicka

Yes, we’re worried that AI will reduce our economic prospects, but more than that, we’re worried that it will reduce our humanity.

Michael Ian Black

A Human Wrote This

Probably like many of you, I’m just starting to wrap my head around AI. The default setting for people in my industry is to condemn the technology as a job-killing, creativity-smothering, doomsday technology; my unions have already gone on strike to ensure protections for actors and writers. We’re told AI consumes unconscionable amounts of water and ene…

Read more

3 months ago · 105 likes · 29 comments · Michael Ian Black

American Woman by

It’s not two sides of the same coin. If misandry is a coin, then misogyny is the banking system.

American Woman

The Ick Chasm

Social media is wild. One minute you’re merrily scrolling, minding your business, and then bam! Some random bit of nonsense hits you smack in the algorithm…

Read more

3 months ago · 119 likes · 34 comments · Dina Honour

The Present Age by

The network has something to hold over everybody we just met: a paycheck

The Present Age

"Stains the Legacy"

Last Wednesday, at the 47th News and Documentary Emmy Awards, an 18-year-old high school senior named Santiago Campos accepted a $10,000 scholarship from CBS News and used his moment at the microphone to tell a ballroom full of the most powerful people in American television that the network had betrayed the man whose name was on the award…

Read more

3 months ago · 188 likes · 7 comments · Parker Molloy

Charlotte’s Web Thoughts by

It is clearly evident that Donald Trump is overseeing the most anti-military presidential administration in American history, and that doesn’t need more than a few moments of good faith reflection to consider. It’s obvious.

Charlotte's Web Thoughts

Yes, June is Pride Month. Get Over It.

Read more

3 months ago · 408 likes · 12 comments · Charlotte Clymer

In a functioning system I wouldn’t have been necessary in the way that I was necessary. But alas, Americans don’t have that system. What we have is the one where the most important qualification for surviving a hospitalization is having someone in your corner who won’t leave and won’t quiet down and won’t mistake a closed door for evidence that everything is fine.

Subscribe now

Newsletters

Kareem Takes on the News by

When governments let people suffer year after year while knowing exactly what is happening, it stops being an accident and becomes a choice.

Kareem Takes on the News

From "Maximum Pressure" to Maximum Concessions, Stop Printing Reports and Start Funding Care, & The AI Debt Illusion

Chaos Is Not Diplomacy: The embarrassing reality of Trump’s rushed Iran deal…

Read more

3 months ago · 249 likes · 23 comments · Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Public Notice by

Trump doesn’t want to be perceived as losing a war. But he doesn’t want to escalate either. So he is stuck insisting that his deal will be awesome and then scurrying away when details emerge that reveal the truth that he lost a war.

Public Notice

Trump has no way out on Iran

Read more

3 months ago · 734 likes · 15 comments · Noah Berlatsky

The Noosphere by

Women are treated either as malfunctioning baby-production units or abstract variables, and then just expected to nobly ‘take one for the team’ and get on with reproducing.

The Noösphere

Falling Birthrates Aren’t the Real Problem

The Noösphere is an entirely reader-supported publication that applies recent social science research to the cultural, political, and technological issues shaping our …

Read more

3 months ago · 228 likes · 20 comments · Katie Jagielnicka

He said, “We’re all here to celebrate the illusion with love.”

Michael Ian Black

I Believe In Almost Nothing

How many planets has your soul traversed? How many life times? What percentage of you is human? What percentage extraterrestrial? All important questions…

Read more

3 months ago · 147 likes · 48 comments · Michael Ian Black

American Woman by

On paper, rape is against the law, but if the culture just kind of shrugs its collective shoulders when women’s bodies are violated, brutalized, and discarded, men are going to keep raping. If the burden of proof is so high that you need a sherpa to lead you to the outcome, then it’s only against the law in dusty law libraries, not in practice. If nothing meaningful happens even when you’re found guilty? Men are going to keep raping women.

American Woman

Promising Young Women

Content warning: This essay discusses rape…

Read more

3 months ago · 176 likes · 49 comments · Dina Honour

Subscribe now

The Present Age by

The whole Republican Party runs this play. Its officials spend their days saying genuinely vicious things about entire categories of people who can’t hit back, and the moment one of them takes a single insult from someone who can, out comes the birthday boy: the wounded innocence, the lecture about civility, the warning that words like this get people killed. The performance has one purpose, and it’s to make your swing the only blow anyone remembers seeing.

The Present Age

The GOP’s Birthday Boy Defense

On Wednesday, a top White House official looked at a photo of a Texas Senate candidate and decided the worst thing he could call him was “transgender…

Read more

3 months ago · 225 likes · 7 comments · Parker Molloy

Human Being by

In a patriarchal, capitalist system, it is objectively not advantageous for women to feel content or empowered. But it is advantageous to keep them disconnected from themselves and their body’s infinite wisdom.

Human, being

the women's locker room could save us

My self-esteem was never higher, my body dysmorphia never quieter, than when I went to a gym in the city. Not because some high-ticket, high-intensity class with club lighting and music to match—this was, by and large, a climbing gym—but because of the locker room…

Read more

3 months ago · 91 likes · 8 comments · Erin Nystrom

Endless Urgency with

once a political system starts rewarding absolute loyalty over independent thought, it inevitably becomes more extreme, more dishonest, and more disconnected from reality over time.

Endless Urgency with Mike Nellis

America Is Sleepwalking Into AI Propaganda Hell

Andrew Schultz said something this week that honestly explains the entire problem with modern American politics better than most elected officials ever could…

Read more

3 months ago · 282 likes · 47 comments · Mike Nellis

Come As You Are by

What kind of president would take $10 billion dollars from hardworking Americans for a crime that had nothing to do with them?

Come As You Are

Are You There, Judy Blume?

I was fourteen when I got my period, which was on the older side in my friends’ group. I’d read Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret, when I was twelve, and thought the moment would be sacred somehow, that maybe I would feel a sense of womanly wisdom as it started coursing through my veins. I didn’t expect…

Read more

3 months ago · 160 likes · 81 comments · Ally Hamilton

I know if only this world would fucking show up for girls and women and children and every group of people who feel vulnerable because of the angry white men who feel the need to dominate and overpower everything, it might melt and unfurl.

Come As You Are

Kangaroo Court

Read more

3 months ago · 89 likes · 60 comments · Ally Hamilton

Unmanned by

Capitalism itself is intrinsically racialized and patriarchal.

Unmanned

27. "Masculinism" isn't "The Reverse" of Feminism. It's Male Supremacy.

Unmanned is a reader-supported publication. If you’ve found this essay useful and thought-provoking, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support means a great deal and enables me to dedicate more time to in-depth feminist writing, research, and advocacy. Thanks for reading and sharing…

Read more

3 months ago · 120 likes · 14 comments · Soraya Chemaly

We need to teach them, instead, that everyone gets to be a person in the world, not an exception to a made-up default, not a plot device in someone else’s story.

Charlie Finch

Men as Subjects, Women as Symbols

A child hears a string of ordinary words and starts, without knowing, mapping the world…

Read more

4 months ago · 28 likes · 12 comments · Charlie Finch

Subscribe now

Newsletters

Kareem Takes on the News by

It seems that the government is measuring the wrong thing.

Kareem Takes on the News

Karl Rove Sounds the Alarm, Why Historic Low Unemployment Feels Like a Brick Wall for Real Workers, & When the Greatest Champions of Our Era Continue to Inspire Us Off the Court

Kareem’s Daily Quote: Why a little trouble is exactly what we need…

Read more

3 months ago · 423 likes · 49 comments · Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

The Noosphere by

You can’t have AI literacy or broader digital literacy without actual literacy. Literacy is fundamental to everything else — to both navigating everyday life and making informed decisions as an individual, and to understanding the society you live in and challenging it when necessary.

The Noösphere

Why You’re Better Off Reading a Book Than Learning AI

The Noösphere is an entirely reader-supported publication that applies recent social science research to the cultural, political, and technological issues shaping our w…

Read more

3 months ago · 185 likes · 14 comments · Katie Jagielnicka

Part of what has me feeling burnout is the sense that history’s lessons remain unlearned.

Michael Ian Black

I'm Too Tired to Deal With the Apocalypse

My motivation is at an all-time low. Not sure why they might be. I haven’t started a course of Ozempic or anything. Nor have I been working too hard; I haven’t been working at all. The only explanation I can find is burnout…

Read more

4 months ago · 173 likes · 37 comments · Michael Ian Black

Of late, the United States feels far more like a brand than a country, with its shareholders comprised primarily of an ever-shrinking percentage of its population.

Michael Ian Black

Do You Even Patriot, Bro?

Is the United States of America nothing more than a granfalloon? The term comes from Kurt Vonnegut’s book, Cat’s Cradle, in which he defines a “granfalloon” as “a proud and meaningless association of human beings.” A motorcycle club might be a granfalloon. Or fans of a women’s basketball team. Or anything else. A nation, for example, or, really, all nat…

Read more

3 months ago · 158 likes · 29 comments · Michael Ian Black

American Woman by

using AI to build worlds, craft characters, develop narrative, and frame the language to produce a manuscript isn’t writing a book. It’s assembling the bits and pieces of someone else’s work. It’s taking credit for the group project that you never showed up for until the end.

American Woman

The Rest is Just Unwritten

Mrs. Vacca’s third-grade classroom was up the hill from the main school building, housed in what we euphemistically called “the portables.” In reality, it was a series of double-wide trailers on blocks. We spent that year practicing penmanship, dutifully filling out worksheets with line after line of cursive loops and tails…

Read more

3 months ago · 82 likes · 71 comments · Dina Honour

Airplane Mode with

There is something genuinely, clinically wrong with a man who sits on piles of money while people die from lack of access to food and medicine and housing and thinks the problem is government spending.

Airplane Mode with Liz Plank

Man With Infinite Wealth Generously Offers To Keep It

Writing about the rich and powerful isn't without risk and it takes a lot of time and research and a willingness to say the thing out loud. Your support is what makes that possible. If you're not subscribed yet, this is your sign. I need you in the room…

Read more

3 months ago · 323 likes · 20 comments · Liz Plank

Annie’s Newsletter by

More than 60 years into a singular career, McCartney continues to surprise and delight, and find new ways to reflect on the beauty of love, friendship, human connection, and life’s rich pageant.

Subscribe now

Kareem Takes on the News by

our legal system is basically a private club with a very expensive membership fee. We know rich people get better bail and better plea deals, but Maxwell’s situation proves that the VIP treatment follows you right through the prison gates.

Kareem Takes on the News

The Velvet Rope in the Cell Block, The Bare Minimum Is a Dangerous Place, & Back To Reset

Kareem’s Daily Quote: Another writer, because we’re on a roll…

Read more

4 months ago · 279 likes · 48 comments · Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Civil Discourse with

It should be impossible to ignore the fact that Epstein’s crimes continued because powerful people looked away. Some of them rationalized what they saw or decided proximity to wealth and influence mattered more than protecting vulnerable girls. Some people participated. Some helped conceal it. Some kept showing up at Epstein’s side after there was plenty of reason to know better.

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

Forgetting About Jeffrey Epstein

Donald Trump is playing the distract and delay game again. It’s a game he frequently plays with success. Jeffrey Epstein, Trump’s relationship with him, and allegations that were made about Trump’s own sexual misconduct posed the most significant, sustained threat his presidency has seen. Then we went to war in Iran…

Read more

4 months ago · 1968 likes · 127 comments · Joyce Vance

Public Notice by

We’re already in a political crisis, and we won’t emerge on the other side with something better unless Democrats fight with every tool available to them — including the ones they’ve been too timid to use.

Public Notice

This is a crisis of democracy. What will Dems do about it?

Read more

4 months ago · 515 likes · 35 comments · Paul Waldman

Trump has put in place arbitrary, senseless policies that have devastated farmers. As a result, rural communities have lost faith in Trump and begun to realize, belatedly, that he hates them, as he hates anyone who fails to lick his boots as he kicks them in the face.

Public Notice

Farmers are rightfully pissed at Trump

Read more

4 months ago · 646 likes · 26 comments · Noah Berlatsky

Subscribe now

The Garden of Forking Paths by

We live in an era that feels like we are merely members of the audience while the billionaire barons announce the future to us lowly peasants—who should be grateful for their kindly overlords.

https://open.substack.com/pub/brianklaas/p/why-dont-politicians-have-a-vision?r=12ull&utm_medium=ios

The Noosphere by

Young women, meanwhile, are becoming more liberal, more progressive, more likely to identify as feminists, and less willing to embrace rigid ‘traditional’ gender norms

The Noösphere

Young Women Keep Breaking Free From Religion

The Noösphere is an entirely reader-supported publication that applies recent social science research to the cultural, political, and technological issues shaping our …

Read more

4 months ago · 147 likes · 12 comments · Katie Jagielnicka

American Woman by

Men aren’t going to be able to patriarch their way out of a masculinity crisis because patriarchy is what caused it in the first place.

American Woman

If Men Are in Crisis, I Know Something That Might Help

There’s a lot of saltiness, sarcasm, and satire in my work—not to mention alliteration—so if you read that title and assumed it was snark? Fair enough. But cross my heart, I’m serious. Stick a needle in my eye…

Read more

4 months ago · 158 likes · 50 comments · Dina Honour

Human Being by

We simply accept traffic, gas prices, and giant parking lots as the natural order of things. But it’s not. It is simply familiar. The prevalence of car-centric infrastructure was a choice. It was planned and intentionally designed for. And it might just be time for us to unchoose that choice.

Human, being

selling my car changed how I see everything

I, like many people across the nation who live in growing cities (or, I suppose, anywhere with a window of weather good enough for road work that only lasts 6 months), am all too familiar with the symphonies of bulldozers and excavators, the wafting smell of fresh asphalt, and the labyrinth of road closures and detours that plague our summers…

Read more

4 months ago · 88 likes · 11 comments · Erin Nystrom

Endless Urgency with

We need more public figures willing to risk backlash instead of treating moral courage like a branding exercise. We need more people willing to defend vulnerable communities before it becomes socially safe to do so. And we desperately need more people who understand that having influence comes with responsibility.

Endless Urgency with Mike Nellis

Charles Barkley’s Latest Comments Are Driving MAGA Insane

This week NBA Legend Charles Barkley went viral again after speaking emotionally about Jason Collins — the first openly gay player in major American professional sports — and talking openly about the homophobia that still exists in this country, particularly in sports culture and in parts of the Black community…

Read more

4 months ago · 779 likes · 44 comments · Mike Nellis

Come As You Are by

Maybe there’s a world where we don’t have to work so hard for the really basic things, where it’s a total given that whatever the color of your skin, whatever your gender, whomever and however you love, you are always worthy of compassion and dignity and the same rights to freedom and peace as anyone else.

Come As You Are

French Toast for the Table

When I was little, tiny things used to bother me. I’m talking about things like the tags on my clothing. Whatever else might be happening around me, if there was an itchy tag scratching the back of my neck or side of my ribcage, I found it nearly impossible to focus on anything else. I needed to have the tags cut off, a thing that could make either of m…

Read more

4 months ago · 174 likes · 90 comments · Ally Hamilton

I’m Thinking Of Mending Things by

And yet, everywhere I look, it’s men who are moving fast and breaking things — in relationships, workplaces, in community, and the wider world. This is patriarchy at work: a social system engineered to place men at the center of power, granting them dominion over political life, moral authority, social standing, and the bodies and property of others.

More To Hate by

convincing a group of people to be violent rather than tender, as a condition of their “real” membership in that class, is one of the weirdest, grossest tricks.

More to Hate

When Men Are Tender

Animals have always naturally gravitated to my husband. I have photos of him under endless cats, dogs, and also reciprocating scritchies with several horses. He knows just how to interact with a creature that is ever-so-slightly nervous: there’s a subtle openness of body language that accompanies leaving them nicely alone to come to him on their own ter…

Read more

4 months ago · 278 likes · 12 comments · Kate Manne

Subscribe now

The world feels so heavy right now. Because of that, or to combat that (not sure which), I’ve been reading a lot of “heavy” books and articles — lots about feminism, racism, socialism, sociology, consciousness, etc. I’ve learned a lot, and some of that has helped with the heaviness. Some of it has also contributed to the heaviness.

Last night I was having one of those moments that has happened way too frequently over the last few years. I was feeling all of that heaviness weighing me down, and it was hard to have any motivation to do anything. So I did what I usually do when I can’t think of what I should be doing; I looked for a book to read.

Reading has always been my go-to for whenever I have downtime. Most of the time, I can get lost in a book and the heaviness will dissipate somewhat, but none of the books that I had been reading were really grabbing me in that way, so I decided that it was finally time to just buy “Where the Music Had to Go” and start reading it.

I’m only two chapters in, but so far it’s been great, and it has grabbed my attention enough to lift some of that heaviness. That was enough to make me realize that sometimes it’s okay to do things that might seem frivolous, even in very serious, very heavy times. Not just okay, but maybe necessary?

I will continue in my search for knowledge about the “important” things, the heavy things, but I will also pepper in some lighter topics. Some of those lighter topics, like the Beatles, have influenced my life in very positive ways, and have helped make me into the person that enjoys learning about the heavier, more “important” things.

Subscribe now

Newsletters

Letters from an American by

“Mothers’ Day”—with the apostrophe not in the singular spot, but in the plural—actually started in the 1870s, when the sheer enormity of the death caused by the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War convinced writer and reformer Julia Ward Howe that women must take control of politics from the men who had permitted such carnage. Mothers’ Day was not designed to encourage people to be nice to their mothers. It was part of women’s effort to gain power to change society.

The Status Kuo by

The Trump White House wants us to be alarmed. It wants everyone, friends and foes alike, to understand how willing it is to abuse its prosecutorial powers against its political enemies.

The Status Kuo

The DOJ Just Came For Virginia’s L. Louise Lucas

Yesterday, the FBI raided the office of one of the most powerful Democratic state lawmakers in the country…

Read more

4 months ago · 556 likes · 50 comments · Jay Kuo

Public Notice by

Our old democracy is dead. If we don’t want Jim Crow and rule by the Klan, we’d better be willing to rip up our current institutions and make better ones.

Public Notice

How Democrats can avenge the demise of the VRA

Read more

4 months ago · 471 likes · 18 comments · Noah Berlatsky

American Woman by

And that’s the problem with sexism. It’s insidious. It snakes and slithers, infiltrates and incubates until it’s everywhere

American Woman

It Defies Logic

A friend and I were at her kitchen table, talking…

Read more

4 months ago · 111 likes · 23 comments · Dina Honour

The Present Age by

The Times got a man whose breaking point was Easter morning. Buckley got a man whose breaking point was Trump’s failure to put more political enemies in cages. Both versions came from the same Tucker, in the same week. Both are real. Only one was prepared for the audience he’s currently trying to recruit.

The Present Age

Don’t Fall for the Tucker Carlson Apology Tour

The cover of this weekend’s New York Times Magazine asks: “What Does Tucker Carlson Really Believe…

Read more

4 months ago · 221 likes · 16 comments · Parker Molloy

everyone is entitled to my own opinion by

having a crazypants president is not sustainable. alarm bells should be going off in Congress and in every newsroom in America right now — and yet, our institutions have one again failed us, and have normalized having a deranged and impaired president.

everyone is entitled to my own opinion

Preznit Fuckwit brags about pointing at a squirrel. a grateful nation cheers.

of the myriad accomplishments that Preznit Fuckwit has accomplished during an entire lifetime of accomplishments, none fill him with a greater sense of pride than his preternatural ability to point at shit…

Read more

4 months ago · 3195 likes · 518 comments · Jeff Tiedrich

Come As You Are by

You have to willfully ignore American history to be against affirmative action and DEI policies, or to be a white person and look another white person in the eye and call those policies racist.

Come As You Are

The Wild Audacity of the Smallest Men

How can you tell whether the people who write the laws in your state or country believe your life is as valuable as theirs…

Read more

4 months ago · 79 likes · 32 comments · Ally Hamilton

Unmanned by

The goal is not to replace male centrality with female centrality, a patriarchal frame, but to dissolve the systems that require anyone’s subordination as the cost of someone else’s identity, safety, and well-being.

Unmanned

26. No One Told Men the Floor Was Made of Women

Read more

4 months ago · 585 likes · 96 comments · Soraya Chemaly

Subscribe now

Kareem Takes on the News by

We have become a society that excels at the mechanics of power while losing the purpose of our soul.

Kareem Takes on the News

The Illusion of Security at the Washington Hilton, MTG Keeps Sounding the Alarm, & Vatican Dinners and Venture Capital

What I’m Discussing Today…

Read more

4 months ago · 198 likes · 43 comments

When a party stands by while billions in financial benefits flow through a presidency, they aren’t just “putting up” with corruption anymore. They’re helping build the pipes.

Kareem Takes on the News

More Than Just a Map, The Art of the Endless Distraction, & How Much Is a Dream Worth?

Kareem’s Daily Quote: Sit. Stay. Heal. (Or help to heal others…

Read more

4 months ago · 283 likes · 46 comments · Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

The Noosphere by

For some men, acknowledging the influence of gender norms, and their fundamental similarity, and humanity, to women, can perhaps be even outright intolerable, because to recognise that women are like men is also to confront all the ways they have dehumanised and objectified women.

The Noösphere

How Small Gender Differences Become Big, Stubborn Myths

The Noösphere is an entirely reader-supported publication that applies recent social science research to the cultural, political, and technological issues shaping our …

Read more

4 months ago · 146 likes · 13 comments · Katie Jagielnicka

why do we operate from the position that political violence is unacceptable, but run-of-the-mill gun violence is just something we have to live with?

Michael Ian Black

One Act of Gun Violence Was Averted Last Saturday Night

Three times nut jobs tried to kill the current president. Three times they failed. Which is good. Great, even! We need a presidential assassination like we need another hole in the head. Poor choice of words but I think you take my meaning…

Read more

4 months ago · 141 likes · 16 comments · Michael Ian Black

The Play Typer Guy by

Trump doesn’t just govern in opposition to the wishes of half the nation. He has actively waged war against “liberal America.” He has never even pretended he’s the president for the entire United States.

The Play Typer Guy

Donald Trump And The Speckled Band

There was a third failed attempt on Donald Trump’s life on Saturday. Although I look forward to the eventual end of Trump’s putrid existence, I would never want him assassinated. I oppose all forms of political violence, but on a more practical level, it would only benefit the MAGA movement if some fool with a gun made Trump a martyr…

Read more

4 months ago · 52 likes · 23 comments · Stephen Robinson

Subscribe now

American Woman by

Claiming that men have created and maintained the world, while neglecting to mention the role of women, even in passing, even in birthing, says it all.

American Woman

Unpaid Labor Day

In Europe, tomorrow is May Day, otherwise known as International Labor Day. I’m posting today to align with tomorrow’s day of coordinated action. d…

Read more

4 months ago · 101 likes · 48 comments · Dina Honour

Changing the Channel by

no American should have to leave their country, family, and friends behind to afford a home or medical care, feel safe, or know what it means to slow down.

Changing The Channel with Kirsten Powers

For the First Time Since the Great Depression, More People Are Leaving the US Than Entering

When, in 2023, I began the process of purchasing property in Italy with the intention of living there, I had no idea that I was part of a nearly unprecedented trend in the US…

Read more

4 months ago · 78 likes · 13 comments · Kirsten Powers

everyone is entitled to my own opinion by

the number one job of any government is to take care of its people. this is a truth that we have completely lost sight of in America, where we’ve been gaslighted by some ludicrous fairy tail about how the oligarchy must come first, and all their bounteous table scraps will come trickling down to us if we wait long enough.

everyone is entitled to my own opinion

I’m sorry, but Preznit Fuckwit’s vulgar Epstein Dance Hall is the last thing we need right now

everything fucking sucks right now. we’re bogged down in an unwinnable don’t-you-dare-call-it-a-war in Iran. We the People struggle to pay our bills as the price of gas, goods, and services continues to soar. you’d better pray you don’t get sick, because a hospital stay will bankrupt you. masked government thugs roam the streets of our cities — and don…

Read more

4 months ago · 3169 likes · 496 comments · Jeff Tiedrich

Human Being by

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But the most important beholder is ourselves. And what we behold has very little to do with how we look and more so with how we feel about what we see.

Human, being

the report | vol. 30

If you pay attention to Substack notes (although I’m betting a vast majority of you don’t—and, fair), then you may have noticed I’ve been doing a little challenge: posting a photo of my face every day for 30 days. Now, I don’t think I’ve felt compelled to do a 30-day challenge even once in my life, but this time is… different. So I wanted to explain why…

Read more

4 months ago · 26 likes · 6 comments · Erin Nystrom

Come As You Are by

If you want things to change, you can’t vote for people who don’t respect women. You can’t vote for people who hurt women. You can’t defend men and boys who demean or assault girls or women. You can’t laugh when they tell jokes, you can’t make excuses for them, or ignore it when they say demeaning things. Not if you care and want things to be different.

Come As You Are

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

I need to tell you something Grimm. In the original Snow White — the story, not the film — the Evil Queen was Snow White’s mother, not her stepmother. That’s not necessarily the grim part…

Read more

4 months ago · 439 likes · 152 comments · Ally Hamilton

I’m Thinking Of Mending Things by

By understanding that “all of us” must truly mean all of us—or it means none of us.

the entire global economy would crumble without the perpetual subsidy of unpaid (and underpaid) female labor.

Wyrd Sister

Stealing My Life to Subsidize Yours: The $600K I Didn't Earn While Making Your Life (and Career) Easier and More Successful

A long overdue Part 2 in a series of essays composed as creative-nonfiction “letters” to my ex…

Read more

8 months ago · 182 likes · 20 comments · Wyrd Sister

Subscribe now

Newsletters

Kareem Takes on the News by

The world “as it is” is probably far more complex and beautiful than the narrow version we allow ourselves to see. We might never be able to take in the whole picture, but we’d get a lot closer if we spent less time polishing our own lenses and more time trying to understand the tint in ours and everyone else’s.

Kareem Takes on the News

Dismissing Excellence in the Highest Court, The Brief Life of a MAGA Secretary, & Stagflation 2.0

What I’m Discussing Today…

Read more

4 months ago · 323 likes · 51 comments · Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Civil Discourse with

The president of the United States is threatening to bomb civilian targets and devastate a civilian population. War crimes, plain and simple.

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

The Week Ahead

We seem doomed to another week of war news. On Sunday, Trump announced on Truth Social that the U.S. military seized an Iranian-flagged ship that he said tried to run the U.S. blockade in the Strait of Hormuz. Marines boarded the cargo ship Touska after it was disabled. Trump posted that the USS Spruance “gave them fair warning to stop,” but that “The I…

Read more

4 months ago · 1869 likes · 140 comments · Joyce Vance

Letters from an American by

This pattern—expecting Republicans to behave wildly and cheat to grab power while expecting Democrats to behave according to the rules of normal times—has been going on now for years

Public Notice by

It doesn’t take a law degree to understand that if a powerful public official can stop the press from reporting something, on pain of an expensive defamation suit, simply by flatly declaring everything is false, the whole notion of a free press kind of grinds to a halt.

Public Notice

Kash's kayfabe lawsuit

Read more

4 months ago · 573 likes · 22 comments · Lisa Needham

The Noosphere by

Overall, there are fewer explicitly masculinised AI systems and tools, and those that do exist tend to occupy roles tied to authority, expertise, and control rather than service or administration. When technology is designed to serve, it’s often given a woman’s identity. When it’s designed to decide and instruct, it’s often given a man’s — or no human identity at all.

The Noösphere

The Future Is Female (Servitude)

The Noösphere is an entirely reader-supported publication that applies recent social science research to the cultural, political, and technological issues shaping our …

Read more

4 months ago · 206 likes · 18 comments · Katie Jagielnicka

there is no such thing as a good war and there’s no such thing as a legal war (at least from that higher perspective). There are only gradations of bad.

Michael Ian Black

War Crimes? What War Crimes?

Somebody called me out yesterday because I struggled to articulate my confusion about what constitutes a war crime, and why, on the latest episode of Have I Got News For Your Ears. The phrase they used was “incredibly historically illiterate,” to which I fully copped. It’s true…

Read more

4 months ago · 75 likes · 19 comments · Michael Ian Black

American Woman by

Are there men who take the back road, the low road, and the road less taken? Sure. But just because you don’t intentionally use the better road to get you there faster doesn’t mean you’re not benefiting from the road’s existence.

American Woman

Yes, All Men

Whenever I write about misogyny, I choose my words carefully, lest a chorus of male voices rise to remind me not all men…

Read more

4 months ago · 485 likes · 129 comments · Dina Honour

The Present Age by

The top four issue priorities the skippers named for 2026 were secure health insurance, making the rich pay their fair share, bringing down the cost of living, and affordable housing.

The Present Age

The Scolding

Cory Booker gave a speech at the Michigan Democratic Women’s Caucus luncheon over the weekend, and in the days since, a clip of it has pulled in nearly 10,000 likes and more than five million views on an X account called “best of kamala harris.” A lot of people are watching. A lot of them seem to think Booker is finally telling it like it is…

Read more

4 months ago · 138 likes · 33 comments · Parker Molloy

When we can no longer collectively agree on what is real, it becomes almost impossible to respond to things that actually are. When real attacks gets dismissed as theatre, and a real threats gets memed into irrelevance, the people who benefit most from that confusion are the people already in power.

✿ shit you should care about ✿

when nobody believes anything anymore

God, I always jinx it…

Read more

4 months ago · 44 likes · 3 comments · shit you should care about

Subscribe now

Kareem Takes on the News by

We treat poverty like a personal failing instead of the predictable result of things like stagnant wages, insane housing and food costs, and massive wealth gaps.

Kareem Takes on the News

A Two‑Week Sprint Into a Forty‑Year Problem, When Political Theater Meets a 2,000‑Year‑Old Institution, & The Real Reason Stress Keeps Winning

What I’m Discussing Today…

Read more

5 months ago · 368 likes · 41 comments · Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Every major fortune in this country is built on a foundation the public funded. Yet, the people who benefited the most from those investments are often the ones screaming that taxation is “theft.”

Kareem Takes on the News

The Palace Says It Cares, But Actions Tell a Different Story, Tax Day Shows the Gap, & Trump vs. The Pope Who Doesn’t Need His Approval

What I’m Discussing Today…

Read more

5 months ago · 267 likes · 53 comments · Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

The Noosphere by

Money makes people happy much the same way that air keeps them alive. If you have enough, you might not even notice it. But if you don’t, you’ll quickly become aware of it. And if your situation stays unchanged, it can even become a life-and-death situation.

The Noösphere

Who Gets To Be Happy in an Individualistic, Capitalist Economy?

The Noösphere is an entirely reader-supported publication that applies recent social science research to the cultural, political, and technological issues shaping our …

Read more

5 months ago · 152 likes · 13 comments · Katie Jagielnicka

Holding a door open for somebody. A smile at a stranger. A moment of grace for somebody who needs it, including yourself. To think that any of those things could ever be irrelevant strikes me as the height of foolhardiness.

Michael Ian Black

Corey Feldman is Relevant!

Back in my bad old Twitter days, a common insult from the various trolls was to call me “irrelevant.” I never understood what they meant. Irrelevant to whom? Surely not to the person responding; otherwise, why bother reading what I had to say…

Read more

4 months ago · 171 likes · 28 comments · Michael Ian Black

American Woman by

The problem is you. You, adult man, are supposed to know better. What do women expect? They expect that as a grown male person, you act like a grown male person and shut that shit down. Be best.

American Woman

How to Avoid Accusations of Sexual Misconduct at Work

Though this is framed in satire, there’s nothing funny about sexual misconduct…

Read more

5 months ago · 155 likes · 45 comments · Dina Honour

We live in a world where girls are lauded for inventing a nail polish that detects if a drink has been spiked. Where young women in clubs are needled. Where gang rapes are filmed and posted to social media.

We live in a world where a website where men can trade tips on how to drug and rape their wives was visited 62 million times in a month.

American Woman

A Willing Suspension of Disbelief

Mrs. Kilburn taught my AP English class. Every day, she stood in her knee-length skirts and sensible shoes, her hair slightly unkempt, and tried to convince a classroom of teenagers to look for meaning in the written word…

Read more

5 months ago · 204 likes · 71 comments · Dina Honour

everyone is entitled to my own opinion by

it’s important for Democrats to keep raising the issue of Donny’s steep mental decline, and keep it in the public’s consciousness — especially right now, when Dear Leader is acting so erratically — and fucking up so shittacularly — that even the the hardest-core MAGA cultists are beginning to be all ‘dude, what the fuck?’

everyone is entitled to my own opinion

Couchfuck McGee speaks to an empty arena. try not to laugh

United States Vice President Couchfuck McGee has been on quite the roll lately…

Read more

5 months ago · 5014 likes · 460 comments · Jeff Tiedrich

Human Being by

The American Dream. It’s a simple formula, really—go to school, get the job, buy the house, have the family, and work work work your way up the rungs of society, as high as you possibly can, so you can retire at 65, say “I did it”, and spend the next 20 years slowly dying.

Human, being

am I too old to be here?

Two weeks before my 33rd birthday, in a wild turn of events, I got a job as a barista…

Read more

4 months ago · 100 likes · 18 comments · Erin Nystrom

The Humanity Archive by

American reliability is what is being spent. And reliability, once forfeited, does not return on a handshake.

The Humanity Archive

The World Is Laughing at Us

You have seen the comment. Maybe you have said it yourself…

Read more

5 months ago · 118 likes · 4 comments · Jermaine Fowler

Come As You Are by

Feminism just means you believe women and men are equally valuable human beings, intrinsically. It doesn’t mean you think women are better. Wanting to be done with the patriarchy doesn’t mean “erasing male voices” which is what a man said to me a while back. It means we make a circle, and men and women (and I am including everyone when I say men and women) are in the circle, no one is on top. The most vulnerable people are in the middle of the circle, being lifted up.

Come As You Are

Prince Harming

A number of years ago when my kids were about five and eight and my mom was still alive, she started asking when I was going to get on the dating apps. I’d been doing the single mom thing for a good four years at that point, busy the way a woman is when she has two little kids and owns a business, and is somehow also trying to write a book…

Read more

5 months ago · 982 likes · 175 comments · Ally Hamilton

Subscribe now

Newsletters

Kareem Takes on the News by

we very well could have a president in serious mental decline who is still in charge of the most powerful military on earth, to say nothing of the nuclear codes. If that’s not a five-alarm fire, I don’t know what is.

Kareem Takes on the News

Doctor Breaks Silence on Trump’s Health, A Cuba Policy Built on Painm & A Championship Won the UCLA Way

What I’m Discussing Today…

Read more

5 months ago · 670 likes · 62 comments · Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Two trades totaling $1.45 billion, both placed right before presidential announcements that moved global markets, and the combined institutional reaction is…silence.

Kareem Takes on the News

When Both Sides Declare Victory, Who Drops Nearly a Billion Before a Ceasefire, & Typhus Is Back in L.A.

What I’m Discussing Today…

Read more

5 months ago · 245 likes · 34 comments

Letters from an American by

the noteworthy story is not what the president says; the story is the president himself and his obvious mental deterioration.

The American people spent the whole day wondering if their mad king would destroy the world, only to find out he was terrorizing them in order to protect his ego after starting a disastrous war.

Public Notice by

Treating all income the same would be a radical reorientation of the American tax system, and it would likely take years of advocacy before circumstances would align to make it possible to pass it into law. But that debate could be its own political end. Make Republicans defend the current system that almost everyone finds so unfair. Draw attention to the absurdity of all the loopholes and carveouts, most of which were designed by and for the rich.

Public Notice

Note to Democrats: Paying taxes is not a moral failing

PN is supported by paid subscribers. Become one ⬇️…

Read more

5 months ago · 395 likes · 14 comments · Paul Waldman

This is a crazy person, who did a crazy thing, and is likely to do many more crazy things soon.

Public Notice

TACO Tuesday's lasting hangover

Read more

5 months ago · 677 likes · 23 comments · Liz Dye

Subscribe now

The Noosphere by

Time spent on care and domestic labour is certainly not wasted time. Our entire world, and patriarchy itself, runs on it. It essentially runs on women’s time. Yet it simultaneously refuses to recognise its value.

The Noösphere

Patriarchy Is a Time Thief

The Noösphere is an entirely reader-supported publication that applies recent social science research to the cultural, political, and technological issues shaping our …

Read more

5 months ago · 210 likes · 20 comments · Katie Jagielnicka

The Play Typer Guy by

we are seemingly stuck with Trump. That’s become the Republican Party still enables him, despite all his crimes and obvious madness. His approval rating keeps sinking but he maintains almost unwavering support among Republicans, who hate liberals more than they worry about their kids dying in the shadow of a mushroom cloud.

The Play Typer Guy

The King Is Mad But So Are His Subjects

Donald Trump posted an unhinged, even for him, message on Easter Sunday…

Read more

5 months ago · 46 likes · 45 comments · Stephen Robinson

American Woman by

Maybe all of those moments will slow until the stretches in between grow so long that you’re not aware of the clocks stopping. Not at all. And in that last tick—long enough to hold a lifetime played backward in one last flutter of an eyelid—will be everyone you ever loved telling you yes. It was enough.

American Woman

Stop all the Clocks

This essay appears in my book, This is a Love Song. Read it, then see why I’ve decided to share it with you here. xx…

Read more

5 months ago · 58 likes · 41 comments · Dina Honour

It’s been long enough. It’s time for men to resign from the seats of power and control, from the corner offices, the back rooms, the palaces, parliaments, and presidencies.

American Woman

If You Give a Man a Muffin

Years ago, Laura Numeroff wrote a series of children’s books of mice and moose and a deep love of baked goods…

Read more

5 months ago · 112 likes · 41 comments · Dina Honour

The Present Age by

The post-1945 legal architecture was built on the assumption that a leader capable of committing genocide would at least try to hide the intent. American political media has spent the last ten years teaching itself to help a leader who won’t.

The Present Age

Take Him Literally

On Tuesday morning, Donald Trump posted this on his Truth Social platform…

Read more

5 months ago · 117 likes · 14 comments · Parker Molloy

American Crisis by

The press, because of its own conventions and time-honored practices, normalizes him, and thus fails to get across the extreme nature of this president’s behavior. Ten years of sane-washing have had their effect. He remains in power, reelected, undeterred.

American Crisis

How the media should cover this deranged president

The moment I saw Trump’s crazy and dangerous Truth Social post on the morning of Easter Sunday, I could imagine the freakout in newsrooms across the country. The essence of it would be something like this: “How much of this do we publish? How do we report this without breaking with every one of our standards and traditions…

Read more

5 months ago · 562 likes · 189 comments · Margaret Sullivan

The Existential Republic by

when we look at what women actually build when given the chance, across cultures and centuries and every corner of the world where female authority has been the norm rather than the exception, we find something that looks nothing like what Stalin built, or Mao, or Kim Il-sung.

The Existentialist Republic

Women have never built a dictatorship. Not once. Is sexism the reason? Or is there more to it?

Read more

5 months ago · 253 likes · 82 comments · Christopher Armitage

Subscribe now

Newsletters

Kareem Takes on the News by

This country has a long habit of telling the story of Reconstruction as if Black Americans were passive recipients of rights handed down by generous lawmakers. But the record shows something very different. Black civic leaders pushed hard for a definition of citizenship that was as wide as possible, not just for themselves, but for everyone born here. The 14th Amendment gets framed as a gift from Congress. In reality, it was shaped by people who had every reason to demand a country that finally lived up to its own promises.

Kareem Takes on the News

The Houthis Didn’t Suddenly Materialize, Where Accountability Goes to Die, Clowns Become Candidates, & History Has Receipts...Legal Spin Doesn’t.

What I’m Discussing Today…

Read more

5 months ago · 365 likes · 29 comments · Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Letters from an American by

Now we are seeing what that sort of a government, devoid of experts and beholden to the whims of a single man, looks like. After a year in power, Trump’s administration has embroiled the U.S. in a war of choice that has created an extraordinary global energy crisis, inflation is rising, job growth is down

The Play Typer Guy by

Trump will send young men and women to Iran, where many will die or return permanently wounded or psychologically scarred. No matter what Trump or Republicans call this war, people will suffer because Trump is bored and doesn’t care. War isn’t about glory or false bravery. It’s just killing. That’s all.

The Play Typer Guy

What's War Under Any Other Name Good For? Absolutely Nothing!

Donald Trump is reportedly considering sending military troops to Iran, because for him, all the world’s a video game and its people merely NPCs. Trump is an unhinged madman and that’s proven an obstacle in making any lasting deal with Iran, so he’s now threatened to “unleash hell” on the nation from the comfort of Mar-a-Lago…

Read more

5 months ago · 31 likes · 15 comments · Stephen Robinson

Democrats should get out of their own identity-obsessed heads and just rally behind the candidate they believe is the most qualified and can win because they stand for something that will resonate with voters.

The Play Typer Guy

It's Not 'Safer' For Democrats To Nominate A White, Straight Christian Man For President

Donald Trump’s approval has sunk to an all-time low of 33 percent. That’s lower than Joe Biden’s when he disgracefully left office older than when he entered. Yet, Democrats are still running scared. That’s expected, though. They have to do it. It’s part of their lifestyle…

Read more

5 months ago · 49 likes · 31 comments · Stephen Robinson

American Woman by

We don’t hate men. We hate the system. The system churns women up and spits us out, but we’ve learned how to survive the worst of its teeth. We’ve learned how to exist in the spaces in between.

American Woman

She Knows

It’s not often that I read about misogyny through a male lens…

Read more

5 months ago · 214 likes · 69 comments · Dina Honour

everyone is entitled to my own opinion by

I hate that we’ve normalized this shit, so let me once again point out how completely crazypants it is for a world leader to threaten a sovereign nation and promise to commit war crimes via a post on social media. no other country on the planet does this. America is now a rogue state, and an international embarrassment.

everyone is entitled to my own opinion

war crimes, for fun and profit

Preznit Fuckwit continues to wage Schrödinger’s Don’t-You-Dare-Call-It-A-War on Iran…

Read more

5 months ago · 2923 likes · 437 comments · Jeff Tiedrich

Come As You Are by

It’s okay if your heart breaks — it’s the hardened heart you have to fear. A hardened heart can lie with impunity. An open, loving heart is strong, it’s meant to break, and heal, and break again. If it wasn’t meant to do that, none of us would still be here, shining away, fighting for the world to be better than this.

Come As You Are

I'm the President Now

I wonder what would happen if we all started lying in the face of reality with absolute confidence — and then walked away. It sounds insane, but there are people who live their lives that way…

Read more

5 months ago · 128 likes · 67 comments · Ally Hamilton

Airplane Mode with

The Trump administration feels like a dare that started as a joke in 2015 and somehow is still going.

Airplane Mode with Liz Plank

I Need Adults In Charge And I Need Them Now

Powerful people count on no one paying attention. Subscribe and prove them wrong. Someone has to and it turns out that someone is us…

Read more

5 months ago · 180 likes · 10 comments · Liz Plank

To decide that you’re enough by just being.

Maggie Rogers

on singing and standing still

2 April 2026…

Read more

5 months ago · 187 likes · 20 comments · Maggie Rogers

Subscribe now

Newsletters

Kareem Takes on the News by

Think about that for a moment: people inside the government hiding their own policy from their own bosses because doing the right thing had to be done in the shadows. That alone tells you everything you need to know about the environment they were working in.

Kareem Takes on the News

How Social Media Became the New Tobacco, The Promise We Broke, & When Public Health Goes Quiet

What I’m Discussing Today…

Read more

5 months ago · 283 likes · 44 comments · Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Public Notice by

When democratically elected officials refuse to defend democracy, when they celebrate the prospect of winning not by gaining more votes, but by disenfranchising more voters, democracy is in great danger. The SAVE America Act push has demonstrated once again that Trump hates democracy. It shows that most Republicans will not vocally defy him, even when the voters he’s targeting are their own.

Public Notice

The SAVE America Act could backfire bigly on MAGA

Read more

5 months ago · 707 likes · 39 comments · Noah Berlatsky

The Trump administration is populated by whiny little boys who wanted nothing more than to prostrate themselves before the most pathetically corrupt poseur American politics has ever seen. They’re led by a paunchy 79-year-old who slathers on makeup every day, is obsessed with his hair, never exercises, would find the idea of demonstrating physical courage in the service of someone else to be absurd, and loves nothing more than dancing awkwardly to a song about gay men cruising for sex.

Public Notice

How MMA defines the Trump administration

Read more

5 months ago · 452 likes · 18 comments · Paul Waldman

The Noosphere by

In an unequal, prejudice-ridden society, the value of knowledge is often judged by the identity of those who produce it. So, in a patriarchal society upheld by misogynistic beliefs and attitudes, knowledge is devalued when it becomes associated with women.

The Noösphere

Anti-Intellectualism Has a Hidden Target

The Noösphere is an entirely reader-supported publication that applies recent social science research to the cu…

Read more

5 months ago · 311 likes · 30 comments · Katie Jagielnicka

The real work of the world, which I now understand to be further lining the pockets of a select group of oligarchs, is borderless. In this world, people are a commodity no different than oil or corn. They get bought and sold, sent hither and thither, consumed, and thrown away.

Michael Ian Black

Epstein Showed Me Chinatown

As we await the ground invasion of Iran (or not), my attention returns to the Epstein Files. Since the massive, though still woefully incomplete, January document dump, I’ve been fascinated by the power structures to which they point. After decades of nuts-o conspiracy theories like Q*Anon, the Epstein Files suggest that much of the world really…

Read more

5 months ago · 214 likes · 34 comments · Michael Ian Black

Subscribe now

The Play Typer Guy by

The only reason Trump achieved and maintains power is because Americans gave it to him willingly. You or I might not have voted for him, but he won two free and fair elections — no conspiracies here, please — within a democratic system of government Americans insist is awesome.

The Play Typer Guy

Why The GOP Is All Trumpism, All The Time

When news broke that former FBI Director and special counsel Robert Mueller had died, Donald Trump responded in a predictably horrible way: “Robert Mueller just died,” Trump crowed on social media. “Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people! President DONALD J. TRUMP…

Read more

5 months ago · 37 likes · 17 comments · Stephen Robinson

Healthcare is a top concern for voters, and healthcare is almost always a bad issue for Republicans, who keep trying to take away people’s healthcare. There’s probably a connection.

The Play Typer Guy

Could Religious Bigotry, Racism Benefit Democrats For Once?

Democrats are ever hopeful of flipping Maine and even Texas in their respective Senate races. However, Ohio might offer more favorable conditions for white whale hunting…

Read more

5 months ago · 46 likes · 28 comments · Stephen Robinson

American Woman by

There are times when men and women pick up arms to defend—ideas, bodies, selves, borders, nations. That is difficult enough. This, though? This is a few not-so-good men cosplaying an unholy trinity with the lives of others.

American Woman

Operation Mother Fury

When I started writing this, a US missile had just hit a school full of girls in Tehran. I’d gone to bed worried about ‘normal’ fascist buffoonery, and I woke up to a war. The smoke hadn’t yet cleared before the spittle-flecked men started shouting about might and enemies and raining hellfire…

Read more

5 months ago · 101 likes · 37 comments · Dina Honour

everyone is entitled to my own opinion by

ace job, Donny. you’ve manage to alienate our closest allies and turn America in a pariah state. you’re so universally loathed right now that the only people willing to defend your fucked-up antics are the lickspittle toadies of your own party.

everyone is entitled to my own opinion

let’s all watch a French general tell Donny to go fuck himself

everything, everywhere continues to fucking suck out of control, so let’s just put the hero of the day right up top. here’s France’s General Michel Richoux on live TV, telling America’s Mad King to go fuck himself…

Read more

5 months ago · 3697 likes · 489 comments · Jeff Tiedrich

The Existential Republic by

We are living through a moment that is specifically the kind of moment his philosophy was built for. Institutions protecting themselves at the expense of the people inside them. Moral appeals landing on ears that were never going to hear them. The people still standing up running low on whatever it is that keeps you standing when the losses accumulate and the wins don’t come fast enough.

The Existentialist Republic

The Philosopher King

Read more

5 months ago · 208 likes · 65 comments · Christopher Armitage

Come As You Are by

I guess if the group-think is strong enough and the spines of senators are weak enough, billionaires can enter the building disguised as Republicans and that’s how we find ourselves in The In-Between.

Come As You Are

Defensive Driving

I have a big desk in my studio where I used to write, but most days now I sit on my couch in the den at the front of the house. I don’t know why or what changed — it might be that I set it up when my house was full of my own teenage kids and also their friends, so I’d have somewhere quiet to go if I needed it. Now I like to write near the bay window whe…

Read more

5 months ago · 73 likes · 29 comments · Ally Hamilton

The Honest Broker by

The most noticeable thing in culture today is the replacement of aesthetic values with financial targets. In the creative economy, money is now the starting point, the endpoint, and everything in-between.

The Honest Broker

Four Steps to Hell

Smart people have recently asked: What is the aesthetic vision of the 21st century? What are the stylistic markers of our time? What are the core values driving the creative process? What is our zeitgeist…

Read more

5 months ago · 747 likes · 144 comments · Ted Gioia

I’m Thinking Of Mending Things by

Throughout our lives, no matter how calculated we are, the devastating truth is we will get hurt and we will hurt. We will have to decide whether to forgive, to stay, or to walk away

The Suburban Wilderness by

At some point - I couldn’t tell you exactly when - I began to suspect that God was actually kind of a petty asshole, a bully, and a fascist. (I mean, have you read the Old Testament?!)

the suburban wilderness

On being cultureless

Last week, many folks in my country celebrated St. Patrick’s Day. I’m among some 36 million Americans who claim some Irish ancestry. The Irish diaspora worldwide is estimated to be between 50-80 million, a number that dwarfs the current population of Ireland, which stands at about 6 million. In the 19th century, millions of Irish either died or fled gen…

Read more

5 months ago · 57 likes · 10 comments · Elizabeth Lukehart

Subscribe now

Newsletters

Kareem Takes on the News by

Institutions don’t collapse with a bang; they dissolve one ignored norm at a time.

Kareem Takes on the News

Zero Evidence Against Powell, When Asylum Isn't Asylum, & The Mayor Who Won't Bend

What I’m Discussing Today…

Read more

6 months ago · 329 likes · 45 comments · Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

when someone keeps a public scorecard of who’s “loyal” and who’s “disappointing,” they’re not measuring fairness. They’re measuring obedience.

Kareem Takes on the News

Putin’s Bubble Gets Smaller, Bondi Subpoenaed, & Cool It on the Judge Attacks, Says Chief Justice

What I’m Discussing Today…

Read more

5 months ago · 380 likes · 57 comments · Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Public Notice by

Trump will continue to claim prices are falling when they aren’t, because he doesn’t care whether prices are falling and thinks the electorate is too stupid to notice his lies. He will also occasionally continue to boast that prices are up while doing everything he can to enact policies that fleece consumers and harm working people.

Public Notice

The real affordability hoax

Read more

6 months ago · 521 likes · 17 comments · Noah Berlatsky

Trump hopes to bribe energy companies not to erect wind turbines. During a self-inflicted energy crisis, when gas prices are soaring, he wants to take hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money and use it to set back the wind energy industry for a decade.

Public Notice

Trump wants to bribe energy companies to kill wind energy

Read more

6 months ago · 493 likes · 16 comments · Liz Dye

The Noosphere by

We call hoarding a disorder when it comes to stuff. So why, when it comes to hoarding extreme wealth — even as more than a billion people live in extreme poverty — do we hesitate to apply the same logic?

The Noösphere

What Kind of World Allows Trillionaires To Exist?

The Noösphere is an entirely reader-supported publication that applies recent social science research to the cultural, political, and technological issues shaping our …

Read more

5 months ago · 166 likes · 16 comments · Katie Jagielnicka

Subscribe now

To be American is to be marketed to. To be American is to be quantized, our individuality reduced to the ones and zeroes of our consumption, that data sorted and milled and sold back to us.

Michael Ian Black

Pay Attention. Be Honest. Eat Doritos.

Feeling a little scattered in my thoughts today. A mix of fatigue, worry, and the aftereffects of Monday’s oral surgery, which has the inside of my mouth feeling a bit like a shattered Christmas ornament. I doubt whatever I write today will have much vale - whatever’s top of mind one moment gets replaced by something else the next. A fug. I suspect a lo…

Read more

6 months ago · 128 likes · 18 comments · Michael Ian Black

American Woman by

I’ve never understood the fuss about testicles. They’re fragile and timid, and at the slightest sign of cold or danger, they retract like small sea creatures into a cave. Disappearing just when you need them the most—typical.

American Woman

Dear Frank

Dear Frank…

Read more

5 months ago · 104 likes · 42 comments · Dina Honour

The Present Age by

And then she said the thing that stuck with me for the entire year that followed: “A far bigger issue is that we aren’t giving people something to vote for.”

The Present Age

"What if We Didn't Suck?"

Kat Abughazaleh lost her race for Congress last night. She came in second in a 16-person Democratic primary for Illinois’ 9th Congressional District, trailing Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss by roughly 4,000 votes. She’s 26. She’d never run for anything before. She moved to the district a year ago. And she came closer to winning than anyone expected when she…

Read more

6 months ago · 349 likes · 13 comments · Parker Molloy

The Big Picture by

It’s time to embrace the voters who may self-identify as “moderate” but whose guts crave a Democratic Party that fights for the little guy against the corporate oligarchs, and who want single-payer health care and wealth taxes.

The Big Picture

Economic Populism Is Not Just For The Left Anymore

Read more

6 months ago · 226 likes · 25 comments · The Big Picture and Todd Beeton

everyone is entitled to my own opinion by

election fraud is not a problem. there is virtually no ‘election fraud’ in America. it’s a rounding error away from zero. Donny has been convicted of more felonies than there have been proven cases of ‘election fraud.’

everyone is entitled to my own opinion

White House dumbfuck admits that ‘helping consumers is not our concern’

barely a day goes by when America’s Mad King — or a member of his royal court — doesn’t find some new way to cordially invite We the People to go fuck ourselves…

Read more

6 months ago · 3632 likes · 378 comments · Jeff Tiedrich

The Humanity Archive by

Institutions do not hide the truth because it is false. They hide it because it is true. The files are not sealed because the allegations are baseless. They are sealed because the agents who reviewed them marked them credible enough to pursue. A society reveals itself not in what it celebrates but in what it cannot afford to look at directly. And what a country does to its most vulnerable is what it is. Not what it says it is. Not what it prints on its monuments. What it does when a 13-year-old girl sits across from FBI agents and describes what happened to her — and the files disappear, and the attorney general lies, and the bombs start falling — that is what it is.

The Humanity Archive

Epstein's War

52% of Americans believe Donald Trump launched the war on Iran at least in part to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal…

Read more

5 months ago · 141 likes · 6 comments · Jermaine Fowler

Dyslexia is not a learning disability. It’s a learning difference. Dyslexic brains process information in larger, more interconnected patterns. You read a room the way other people read a page, because rooms were always where the information actually lived for you.

Alyssa Milano

When Trump calls dyslexia a disqualification, he isn’t talking about Gavin Newsom.

On March 16th, Donald Trump sat at the Resolute Desk with puppet JD Vance behind him and said some of the most genuinely revealing things any American president has said in public. Not the most inflammatory, though it made…

Read more

6 months ago · 195 likes · 9 comments · Alyssa Milano

Subscribe now