Leaves, and societies, tumble down
I thought shit was coming at us fast last week. Oh my sweet summer child.
Golden State Valkyries’ dream season ends in heartbreak. And that’s good for them, by Marcus Thompson Ⅱ.
Meanwhile, the Ballers have forced the Pioneer League Championship to go to Game 5!
Bridging the Gap Between Standards and Policy, by Mark.
CSS to speech: alternative text for CSS-generated content, by Sara Soueidan.
Keegan Neave: A wonderful pun on Wikipedia is at risk of extinction.
[cetacean needed]
Thousands march in Dublin to demand greater Irish-language rights and help for Gaeltacht, by Éanna Ó Caollaí.
How to Cook Like The People You Just Deported: Authentic Ethnic Flavors for Bigots who Don’t Deserve Them, by Pharoah Bolding.
How to Tell the Difference Between a Lone Wolf and a Coordinated Effort by the Radical Left, by Carlos Greaves for McSweeney’s.

ファシストになるより、豚の方がマシさ。
Charlie Kirk, Redeemed: A Political Class Finds Its Lost Cause, by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Charlie Kirk Was Not Practicing Politics the Right Way, by Jason Koebler and Samantha Cole.
On Charlie Kirk and How the Media Helped Perpetuate a Trans Boogeyman, by Gabe Dunn.
The Vast, Left-Wing Conspiracy, by Philip Bump.
DOJ Deletes Study Showing Domestic Terrorists Are Most Often Right Wing, by Emanuel Maiberg, via Eric W. Bailey. It’s still available in the Wayback Machine, of course.
Il fascismo è stata una controrivoluzione contro una rivoluzione che non ha avuto luogo.
FBI Readies New War on Trans People, by Ken Klippenstein, via Erin Reed. Erin continues:
Within hours, the Oversight Project at the Heritage Foundation—the same outfit driving Project 2025[…]—released a four-page memo urging the bureau to go even further. Its proposal: formally designate all transgender activism as “Trans Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism,” a new category of domestic terror threat. […]
The memo’s first section lays out its definition of “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violence and Extremism,”[… which] includes anyone who argues that stripping away transgender rights constitutes violence or an existential threat to transgender people. That […] is sweeping: by its logic, nearly every transgender rights activist or organization—merely for pointing out the tangible harm that comes from losing rights—would fall under the label of extremist.
Also by Erin: Vance, Miller Announce Crackdowns [on] Left-leaning Nonprofits That Criticized Kirk, Calling Them “Terrorist Networks”, and Two Republican Congresspeople Call For Institutionalization Of Transgender People.
This is eliminationist, genocidal rhetoric. There’s nothing ambiguous about it. And it didn’t come from a random Bluesky account with 28 followers. It came from a sitting member of Congress.
Trump’s UCLA Settlement Proposal Reveals Massive Anti-Trans Attacks: Students And Faculty Fight Back, by s. baum.
Also by s. baum: Trump—And Mayor Eric Adams—Want NYC To Institute A Trans Student Bathroom Ban.
Speaking of bathroom bans: see Britain’s Bathroom Ban, by Toby Buckle. Guess I won’t be heading to the UK any time soon. Good thing I don’t ever transit through Heathrow. Oh, wait. The Brits are, as always, at it again.
Trump has declared war on the transgender community, leaving Americans to seek asylum — from America, by Io Dodds.
Disrupt the cis-tem: Meet Ireland’s rising trans punk bands, by Al Fartukh.
Let’s be clear about what happened to Jimmy Kimmel, by Zack Beauchamp, via Kottke.
The right to speak our minds and to disagree with each other — to disturb, even — is at the very heart of what it means to be a free people. It is not to be denied. Not by violence, not by the abuse of governmental power, nor by acts of corporate cowardice.
As a Guild, we stand united in opposition to anyone who uses their power and influence to silence the voices of writers, or anyone who speaks in dissent. If free speech applied only to ideas we like, we needn't have bothered to write it into the Constitution. What we have signed on to — painful as it may be at times — is the freeing agreement to disagree.
Shame on those in government who forget this founding truth. As for our employers, our words have made you rich. Silencing us impoverishes the whole world.
The WGA stands with Jimmy Kimmel and his writers.
Who’s after Kimmel?, by Adam Parkhomenko and Sam Youngman. Corporate-owned media is bending the knee to our dim-witted dictator.
This is not complicated: Trump’s FCC identified speech it did not like and threatened ABC with extreme reprisals. This is state censorship. It’s now happening in the United States of America, not some far-off country. It’s happening right here and right now.
This act by the Trump Administration represents a direct attack on free speech and artistic expression. These are fundamental rights that we must protect in a free society. The American Federation of Musicians strongly condemns the decision to take Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air.
We stand in solidarity with all those who will be without work because of government overreach.
ABC can pretty much fuck all the way off, by Jeff Tiedrich.
Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel have been canned by groveling corporations seeking merger-favors from the administration, but there will never really be enough silence and obedience and flattery for the insatiable ego of the misery-in-chief. Which is to say that an old man, almost eighty, is still groveling and screaming for some kind of mommy-and-daddy approval he didn’t get and never will and that’s a major force in global politics. He’s always publicly, as we say of toddlers, self-soothing and compensating, in his case by telling himself and everyone else how fabulous he is, which would be shameful and humiliating for anyone who possessed an ounce of self-awareness, but there are no molecules of that substance in him.

S.F. Democratic Party: We believe in nothing, by Joe Eskenazi. Next time you’re in San Francisco, I encourage you to visit Sunset Dunes Park. It’s such a wonderful addition to our city.
Why Do Ds And Rs React Differently to Election Losses?, by Noah Berlatsky.