His politics, to the extent that they’ve ever been legible, have always been off-the-rack big city tabloid bullshit—crudely racist exterminate the brutes/back the blue authoritarianism in the background and ruthless petty rich person squabbling in the front. His actions since becoming president have been those of a dim, cruel child playacting at being a powerful man—giving orders without quite knowing what they mean or how they might be carried out, taunting enemies, beating up the people he can afford to beat up without having to be called to account for it, lying as needed or just for yuks. He hasn’t changed a thing since graduating from punchline to president. It’s been clear for decades that Trump was both an asshole and a dummy; this is now a problem not just for the odd unlucky cocktail waitress and his staff of cheesy apparatchiks but for literally every person on earth.

People are so sensitive these days! People are just offended by every little thing! Millennials, amirite?! --- Are there people upset about stupid nonsense? Absolutely. If it becomes “a thing,” however, it’s because the media made it “a thing.”

However arresting and damning it feels to be called a bigot, I assure you, it is far more painful to endure bigotry itself.

While I’m loathe to discuss the presidential race or the existence of God with strangers or even close friends and family members, I’ll gladly enter into conversations about whether it’s plausible that Joan did what she did with the dude from Jaguar in that recent episode of Mad Men, or why my beloved Packers will return to the Super Bowl this year. And I’ll do this even if I think the other person disagrees. If we end up jousting verbally for a few hours, it’s still fairly certain that we’ll be friends at the end of the night. I wouldn’t be as confident over a difference in party affiliation or spiritual beliefs.

"Let me think about that." In other words: with a glut of information, we're trying to form opinions and take action on it all just as fast as it's coming in, and we're suffering for it.

The always-great Matt Thompson on why episodic news content isn't as helpful as laying a contextual groundwork for a story and then letting readers know about events that happen in that framework.

Basically: It's sometimes amateurish, and there's troubling misogyny, but is that so bad? I say, and I think this is what Kevin is getting at, is that the age-old paradigm of adults worrying about young minds being influenced by media is a bit more complicated -- I think more than a new idea being introduced and etched onto a young mind by 'Twilight', the more likely circumstance is that the ideas therein subtly reinforce existing ideas that the child is already exposed to.

Eric Harvey on point as usual: "Access to technology ≠ access to actual creative skill that people want to watch, not which is just dumb enough to drive people to iTunes."

I.e.: "She spends her evenings reading manga and drinking at home alone, and she spends her weekends lazing around in bed. She’s a dried-fish woman." And whatever you do, do not miss the Bottom-Biting Bug.

"A documentary about the current state of copyright and culture." It's free, of course.

The sad dumbing-down of one of the most visited and trusted news sources in the country.