Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images) We throw around the term “brain worms” a lot. Brain worms this. Brain worms that. Joe Biden has brain worms, Donald Trump has brain worms, the news has brain worms and is also giving us brain worms, the worms are everywhere. I saw Dune 2 in theaters, because of the worms and also in order to appease the worms that have lodged in my brain from being on Twitter a lot. I have watched five seasons of the ABC copaganda show The Rookie in the past two months, because of the brain worms. Sometimes I cannot remember names and dates; this is also because o ..read more

Liz Hafalia/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images; Roy Rochlin/Getty Images The Bible says there is nothing new under the sun, to which I say that there are nevertheless an infinite number of ways to combine the things that already exist under the sun in order to create something that still manages to be uniquely horrible and unnecessary. Take, for instance, podcasts. Does the world need a new podcast? Absolutely not. Does the world need a new podcast on electoral politics, specifically? Fuck no. And still, this week former Obama administration bigwig and presidential campaign guru David ..read more

YouTube The Pulitzer Prizes are always a slightly dubious affair—these are the people who think Bret Stephens is one of our nation’s top thinkers, after all—but they are usually rather easily ignored. Share Not this year. 2024’s edition might go down in history as one of the prize’s most infamous. That’s because of who hands out the Pulitzers (Columbia University) and how they handled the most important story of the past year (Gaza). On both counts, the decisions of the Pulitzer administrators turned the awards into a sick joke. First, the Columbia-centric part of the problem. Columbia, as e ..read more

CNN I have covered the U.S. media for a long time. I have watched more hours of cable news than is healthy for any human being. I am under no illusions about the standards by which our biggest networks operate. So I hope you will believe me when I say that this CNN segment on Wednesday about the pro-Palestine student protest movement is one of the most jaw-dropping, poisonous pieces of propaganda I have ever seen on a U.S. news outlet. It came from CNN’s chief political correspondent Dana Bash, who has been a fixture on the network for decades, and it is so heinous that it merits a detailed ..read more

Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images On Tuesday evening, just after 9 p.m., hundreds of New York City Police officers swarmed Columbia University to clear students from an encampment formed in protest of the genocide in Gaza.  Things have been escalating on campus for weeks—a previous encampment was cleared earlier last month—but things hit a fever pitch in recent days after protesters occupied Columbia’s Hamilton Hall. The activists flew a Palestinian flag from the building and hung a banner from the second floor that read “Hind’s Hall” in honor of 6-year-old Hind Rajab, a Palesti ..read more

Scott Olson/Getty Images As you may have heard by now, South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi Noem murdered a puppy — a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer named “Cricket,” to be exact. She led Cricket to a gravel pit near her house and shot the dog to death. Then, intoxicated by the heady thrill of gun violence, Noem gathered up a goat from her family farm, led it down to that exact same gravel pit, and proceeded to shoot it to death, too. Share This is not conjecture or baseless partisan mudslinging. This is something Noem publicly admits — even brags about — in her unfortunately titled forth ..read more

Reason/YouTube Ever since the student movement for Palestine blossomed across the country over the past couple of weeks, very smart media types have been pondering the same question: what in the world could be making all these kids occupy their campuses, face down police brutality, and risk suspension or expulsion? What is going on??? New York Times writer Amanda Taub—whose title at the paper is “The Interpreter”—devoted a recent column to this vexing topic. Yes, the protests against genocide are just like a viral illness that overwhelms people who might otherwise not want to get sick. St ..read more

Chris Ware/Getty Images It’s been a good long while since we put a call out for reader submissions for Bird of the Week. And now that Fowl Hysteria 2024 has ended (congrats again to the burrowing owl!) we definitely need to replenish our bird stock. Subscribe now So here we are again. You teach us about birds we should know. You remind us about birds we’ve forgotten. You elevate the obscure, cherish the sensational, and advocate for your favorites with class and panache. And, as you know by now, we pay very close attention to your picks! Need we remind you that a reader-submitted bird even w ..read more

Getty Images It’s absolutely undeniable: There’s something incredible happening on college campuses across the country, and it’s only spreading. It started at Columbia University, where students set up tents last week in solidarity with Gaza after university President Nemat Shafik testified before Congress, making such novel, useless points as arguing that even saying “from the river to the sea,” long a rallying cry for Palestinian liberation, could be grounds for discipline. Columbia students said they’d keep the encampment on campus until the school divested from Israel. Share Then Shafik ..read more

Photo: me As a New York City resident, I take an interest in where my tax dollars are spent. Yesterday, at least some of those dollars were being spent to pay NYPD cops to hang around—in riot helmets—outside the locked gates of Columbia University. (Presumably, Columbia paid for the festive balloons on the gates.) The vibes at Columbia were exactly as strange and slightly ridiculous as that picture when I swung by on Sunday. I’m on record as saying that I don’t think we should spend much time as a society stressing about what happens on fancy college campuses, but the Columbia leadership’s w ..read more