As a quick reminder, comments are separated by “==” while those separated by “—” are a thread. Text in italicized braces (“[ ]”) are added here for context, while any in non-italicized braces were in the original comment as posted.
I’ve made you wait long enough. Let’s get to it.
2026-06-12
[And we start off with one I forgot to include last time. Oddly, it’s about memory.]
It’s the 43rd anniversary of the June 12, 1982 rally in Central Park, NYC, against nuclear weapons - the largest peace demonstration in US history, with an estimated 1,000,000 participants.
Just a reminder those weapons have not gone anywhere.
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2026-06-15
[Submitted to the National Park Service Planning, Environment and Public Comment System]
I write in opposition to the proposed “Triumphal Arch at Memorial Circle.”
Contrary to the description, this proposed arch celebrates not our founding principles but rather a parody of them. It is “monumental” for the sake of being monumental, its size substituting grandeur for grace, expansiveness for elegance.
It is, to put it simply, big just for the sake of being big, not for any artistic or even memorializing purpose; it’s an expression not of pride but of pridefulness.
Which is why it seems oddly appropriate that the proposal is “drawing on the historic Roman precedent of erecting freestanding arches,” reaching back to a time of emperors and empires, of “bread and circuses” and gladiatorial contests to find inspiration for architecture as well as for fights on the White House lawn.
It is particularly improper for this latest outgrowth of Donald Trump’s desperate desire to be remembered as someone of oversized importance to be intended as an entrance to Arlington National Cemetery, where if it has any effect at all it will be to disrupt and distract from the solemn air, the contemplative atmosphere, of the site.
If it is to be built anywhere, let it span some side avenue somewhere, where it can, in time, come to be seen like the monuments and arches peppering London, as a pretty but ultimately quaint and otherwise unimportant reminder of times when some leader’s sense of self-importance outran their self-awareness.
==
2026-06-16
[Some guy who was supposed to be an FBI agent asks someone about their social media posts.]
Dunno about the assumptions he’s a fake, but if I make it out correctly, the shirt says “FBI Newark” so I wonder is the post was about the subhuman treatment of detainees at Delaney Hall.
EDIT: Okay - I just looked at it again and I’ve joined the “Fake!” brigade. The shirt does say “FBI Newark” but the emblem is a freaking World Cup logo and the shirt has a Nike swoosh on the sleeve.
If this dude was for real he dang well ain’t dressed for the occasion.
ANOTHER EDIT: It also occurs to me that he never actually said he was with the FBI and falsely claimed he’d already given his name - and while I don’t know for sure, I really doubt an agent would open a conversation with a warning about lying.
==
2026-06-20
[OP: Those arrested for plotting the attack on the UFC fight were driven by a version of right-wing Xianity.]
“Pure TDS.”
What is? The plot? The reports (both police and press)? The presence/absence of the Christianity-related aspect in them? What?
The notion among some extremists, underpinned by some version of “Christianity” (the quotes are deliberate), that “the US government is run by an elite group of individuals who sacrifice and consume infants” is neither new (Have we already forgotten “Pizzagate?”) and its targets are every bit as likely to be (and have been) Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama as our current Orange Overlord.
In fact, it and its antisemitic roots go at least as far back as “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and indeed much further (as that volume is a collection of previously existing antisemitic slurs).
So while this plot may well have had no connection with the administration’s own embrace of its version of radical Christian fundamentalism, the dismissive notion that this was “pure TDS” with the unsubtle implication it was a bunch of crazy lefties denies both the history and the facts. I call BS on TDS.
==
2026-06-23
[“Labour’s declining fortunes are unrelated to its rejection of trans rights and GAC access.”]
I can and do accept all of that as true, but it utterly misses the point, which is that throwing trans folks under the bus didn’t do the party a flipping bit of good.
Indeed, rather than question the argument, it reinforces it: Abandoning trans rights with the idea it will improve your electoral chances is foolish - and, I believe, perhaps even self-defeating because I suspect it may have hurt Labour (although perhaps only a little) through loss of enthusiasm among those who hoped for an overall more progressive posture than they got.
==
2026-06-23
[A Kansas transwoman changed her driver’s ID to conform to state law and then got threatened with prosecution for having a “false” ID.]
What I find surprising here is not that it happened, but that it was the first time. This is exactly what many of us predicted when the law was passed: You don’t change your gender marker, you’re risking being charged with carrying a “fake ID.” You do change your gender marker, you’re still liable to be accused of having a “fake ID.”
Like all such laws and their kin, it has nothing to do with identification. It has to do with forcing trans folks into the closet, so far into the closet they couldn’t find the door with a flashlight.
A quick not-really-relevant sidebar on a little thing that bugs me: I wish we’d stop referring to our “preferred gender,” like our gender was a choice, a preference like our favorite color or favorite cuisine. It’s not one’s “preferred” gender, it’s their gender. I realize I could be hit with a flood of complexities, but I‘m referring to one narrow point: Your gender is you, it’s who you are, not a mere “preference.”
I expect others might think I’m making too much of it and perhaps I am, but I keep thinking of the term in the mouth of a hater: “They know it’s not real, they say it themselves: They just ‘prefer’ to call themselves that.”
==
2026-06-23
[A troll turned up in comments whining that the same article as the above hadn’t referred to the transwoman as “he” and “a man.”]
“That makes me a transphobe?”
Yes, Because it’s transphobic (fear of trans people) to be “opposed to discrimination” so long as it’s limited to areas “out there,” all safely legalistic and hypothetical, that do not involve you having to interact with real people living real lives.
I realize that “sex realist” is the term now favored by a number of terfs, but that does not make it a sensible one. Anyone truly realistic about the concept of sex would know that it’s a good deal more complex than both the “XX vs. XY’ you learned in some high-school biology class and the “biology is destiny” you absorbed from the society around you - and you would at least know and accept the basic concept that sex (relating to reproduction) and gender (sense of personal identity) are not the same thing.
I see where below you say “we’ll call it quits” om arguing, so I’ll leave it there with the hope you remember the old warning about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing.
==
2026-06-24
[A
Rastafarian who had his dreadlocks shorn by prison guards in violation
of federal law saw his suit tossed by SCOTUS on the grounds that the
guards hadn’t agreed to be sued and yes you read that right.]
“It’s fair to wonder if the outcome would have been different here if a Christian”
No, it’s not.
Because there is no wondering involved.
Of course it would have been different. The emerging theocracy would allow for nothing else.
-
2026-06-24
[“Yet it’s Christians who continue to claim persecution”]
I wrote recently that they need to feel persecuted because they regard that as a sign that are right with Jesus and so are among the “elect” to be brought to eternal life and spared.
-
2026-06-26
[“It’s designed that way. The persecution complex is part of their brainwashing.”]
I dunno that I can go with “designed” and “brainwashing,” as they imply that the designers and brainwashers deliberately created it knowing it’s bullshit.
But the idea that suffering is proof of validation is a thread in the Bible - e.g., Matthew quotes Jesus as saying “You will be hated by everyone because of me,” Paul wrote “we glory in our sufferings,” and James wrote “consider it pure joy whenever you face trials.”
The notion that being (supposedly) persecuted is proof of righteousness is hardly new and it is neither exclusive to, nor did it originate with, Xianity.
==
2026-06-25
[Armed ICE agents came to a polling place in Syracuse to tell a poll worker to take down an Instagram post critical of ICE.]
Contrary to [host] Jesse [Dollemore], we should hope we are “frog-potted.” When the myth was actively tested in lab conditions, in every case there came a point where the water got too hot and the frog refused to accept it and jumped out - if you will, rebelled.
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