Articulate. Clean. Seditious Conspiracy @wethefifth Editor-at-Large @TangleNews Partner @freethinkmedia | @bigthink Board @theFIREorg #MLIDAIDDS
Catchfools, USA
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Race, gender, sexuality — these aren't matters of shame or pride. They aren't the substance of anyone's identity. They're happenstance.
I honor the dignity/potential of every individual, but real pride is derivative of character and achievement. Pride isn't trivial; it's earned.
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Kmele 🖐 retweeted
This is a great contrasting companion piece to the one written by @kmele awhile back about his experience with school and his daughter. readtangle.com/lets-have-an-…
Another @wethefifth invite for @nhannahjones ?
Ooof. Hard reading. Brave to write. True personally, false impersonally.
Everything she documents is a management and accountability failure rather than a resource failure. NYC spends $36k per pupil, the highest of any large district in the country. There haven't been big gaps in funding within states by race or income for decades.
Ironically, she pulls on the heroic history of blacks integrating schools to justify segregating her child.
A great piece on why voice fails, even a powerful voice, in the absence of the threat of exit. See The tragedy of Jonathan Kozol below
nytimes.com/2026/09/20/magaz…
marginalrevolution.com/margi…
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I’m honored to serve as the President of PEN/America, which has been defending free expression and celebrating literature for over a hundred years.
pen.org/press-release/award-…
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Kmele 🖐 retweeted
I remember her writing that the only person who understood “Holy the Firm” was a child and that he understood it completely.
She was a theologian, a philosopher, a perfect writer. She spent every day thinking and also every day being. She made me a better person.
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BREAKING: Skynet CEO Warns Company May Bring About Apocalypse, Overshadowing Modest UI Update
Claude Cowork and chat are merging into one Claude.
Ask a quick question or hand over a report, and Claude takes it from there, even after you close your laptop. If something's unclear, Claude asks—you keep the final say.
Rolling out to Pro and Max over the next few weeks.
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“AI doomers should be held accountable for their doomsday claims. It’s made up… It’s irresponsible. We ought to just keep track of all that and remind people when their claims don’t come true”—@JensenHuang NVIDIA
I agree and hold the CEOs and executives of the companies that make these outrageous claims criminally libel.
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"We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery, rumors of death, beauty, violence..."
***
"Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what's going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.
At the time of Lewis and Clark, setting the prairies on fire was a well-known signal that meant, “Come down to the water.” It was an extravagant gesture, but we can’t do less. If the landscape reveals one certainty, it is that the extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation.
After the one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusions on profligacies with ever-fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire from the word go.
I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn’t flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames."
- Annie Dillard (April 30, 1945 – September 15, 2026)
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So this is that white supremacy thing they’re always talking about. Diabolical.
New York Regents member Felicia Thomas-Williams on why she thinks students shouldn’t have to take Regents exams to graduate:
“You don’t assess a fish on climbing a tree because fish can’t climb trees”
Maybe asking a student to read or do math on a test is a little more reasonable than asking a fish to climb a tree? 🤔
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Kmele 🖐 retweeted
By embracing the American majority's insistence that we should judge people as individuals based on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin
There's a landslide waiting for a presidential candidate who credibly and consistently takes that position
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Kmele 🖐 retweeted
I just like the slogan “TrySocialism” as if, you know, it’s never been tried.
🚨 DSA’s Michaela Branagan Says Militant Labor Organizing is Happening “On the DL”
At Socialism 2026, DSA’s Michaela Branagan said she is “not particularly a constitutionalist” and suggested it would be “one step in the right direction” if the Constitution did not “primarily protect private property like ours does.”
She then turned to a much less visible side of DSA organizing, what Branagan herself describes as “radical militant democratic unionism.”
Branagan says DSA members are building a “current of radical militant democratic unionism” inside unions and that this work often happens “on the DL” through “strategic organizing.”
She says the labor side of DSA gets far less attention than its electoral work precisely because people do not see what its members are doing inside organized labor. Branagan even credits socialist labor organizing, in part, with creating a more “militant sea of struggle” inside unions.
The electoral victories get the headlines. Her point is that a quieter part of DSA’s project is being built inside workplaces and unions.
I’m going to turn this into a thread and pull together some concrete examples of what Branagan is talking about.
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Kmele 🖐 retweeted
This is pretty cool. I drew a 36-year old West African woman living on $5 a day.
Fun game, draw a random life out of what we know about the entire history of human population statistics.
I died at six months old in Bronze Age Southeast Asia.
anyhumanever.com/
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Year after year, I encounter variations on the same bad arguments, propped up by the same ahistorical premises.
I could address each in turn, but I think there's some value in just resurfacing these replies and highlighting the common threads in ALL of these “critiques”.
When surveying US history, what’s more remarkable: that slavery once existed in the United States — or that the same country gave rise to an intellectual and moral tradition that helped outlaw slavery all over the world?
Hint: Human slavery is older than writing.
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And again…
"We know what largely built the nation, and it wasn’t freedom."
Slavery was undeniably important to the development of the Americas, but Kendi’s *analysis* is shallow and incurious.
+90% of enslaved Africans landed in the Caribbean, South America... 6% were sent to British North America.
If slavery 'built the nation':
Why aren’t those regions of the world more prosperous and productive than the US? FTM, why isn’t Russia — where serfdom existed alongside slavery in the US and was at least as expansive?
The answer is nuanced; which is something you might expect from an *academic* who writes + comments on these topics for a living.
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...and again.
"Our past is one of slavery, racism, and injustice. Our systems were built to oppress people of color."
The history of humankind is a dense catalog of inhumanity, subjugation. The American project isn't the apogee of that awfulness; it's part of a sharp deviation from the mean.
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Community Note: This isn't a counterargument.
There are 53 million black people in the United States and white people don't stop until they find the one or two who will provide some
dismissive cover for their past and validate their pathologies. And those one out two agreeable blacks make a living giving white people comfort
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Marc - Which things aren’t true?
Direct quotes, please.
- Kmele (we’ve met — a few times)
This gentleman didn't obliterate Jemele at all. He just confidently said a bunch of things that weren't true. He would benefit from reading about racial capitalism as the beginning to the developing an answer to his question.
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The question isn’t, “Do any countries have universal healthcare schemes?” (duh)
It’s closer to: Have any such countries managed to implement their programs while improving access + quality of care + containing costs?
That’s a much harder question to answer honestly. Universal coverage somewhat addresses who is covered and how care is financed. That doesn't ensure care becomes more available, better, or less costly.
We can play stupid games and ignore all the complexity and nuance here (which is admittedly great for clicks), but that mostly serves to dumb down our discourse.
Foster: The notion that single payer hiding prices, making the government the primary purchaser and provider of all health services would actually improve things. That is absolutely insane. Where has that ever worked?
McGowan: It's worked in about 73 countries in the world
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