Et tu, Rat Queens? (June 17, 2026)
On the exasperating pervasiveness of disgraced creators in the culture I participate in, and grasping at ways to navigate among the thorns.
No kings (October 15, 2025)
Amy and I plan to march in New York City’s instance of this coming weekend’s No Kings protest. It will be my third march of the year.
We are Kilmar Abrego Garcia, or we are nothing (April 14, 2025)
If we can't bring him home, then we are not the country we claim.
We are all Mahmoud Khalil (March 20, 2025)
Last month I asserted that I would not stand idly by and let harm come to my neighbors through the actions of the federal government. I am therefore compelled to demand that my neighbor Mahmoud Khalil be released from jail, where he sits accused of no crimes, and returned to his family in New York. The state can press charges against him from there, if they wish. I am motivated not just from a sense of basic fairness, but from concern for the ongoing health of the American Constitution, and all of the laws flow from it.
My governors (March 12, 2025)
The governors of my respective home and adoptive states show how to stand up to a gangster president.
It’s a coup, and they are soldiers (February 4, 2025)
And they must be stopped, immediately.
The bare minimum (February 2, 2025)
I will not stand aside and let my neighbors come to harm from a corrupted government.
Nuclear War (December 19, 2024)
Yes, the dog dies. So do the pandas.
Be prepared for a Harris victory (October 29, 2024)
The time has come for my quadrennial spell, the one I accidentally cast in 2016 and then cast again with purpose in 2020. And thus do I create a blog post before November with the correct title, and so the ritual is already executed to the letter. For the sake of propriety, I shall remain at the lectern for the length of a few more paragraphs.
Call them by their name (October 28, 2024)
Look, they’ve chosen a four-letter abbreviation for themselves, just like another authoritarian movement from a century ago, so why not use it instead of recycling that old one with all of its deniable baggage?
Crash (1996) (October 23, 2024)
What immediately strikes me about this film is how none of the characters are obviously relatable. All the increasingly scarred and limping main characters are motivated by a shared sociopathic sexual fetish which shuts them away from the audience.
How and why I deleted 40,000 tweets (January 31, 2021)
Last week, the day before I started my new job, I deleted more than 40,000 old tweets. This action came after some days of soul-searching, and then a bit of research on GitHub. I feel very glad that I did it, in the way one feels glad after a thorough cleaning of one's work-space.
🍿🍿🍿 (January 17, 2021)
Recent events have encouraged me to lower my voice on social media.
What needs to happen now (January 6, 2021)
Things I demand from my federal government in 2021.
I read You Never Forget Your First (November 30, 2020)
I enjoyed Alexis Coe's short and punchy Washington biography, despite its uncertain thesis.
Be prepared for a Biden victory (October 31, 2020)
An act of anti-sympathetic magic to break an accidental curse and see more clearly into a grimly hopeful future.
To my friends not voting for Biden (September 27, 2020)
The bus may not go exactly where we want, but it still brings us to the right neighborhood.
To my friends at Facebook (August 30, 2020)
Please quit.
Independence Day, 2020 (July 4, 2020)
Recognizing two mistakes I made as a participant in American democracy, and resolving never to repeat them.
Black Lives Matter, 2020 (June 2, 2020)
I stand with my fellow Americans protesting the systemic injustices threaded through the nation's laws and culture.
Taking out the trash (April 28, 2020)
A possibly naive but still irresistible vision of post-pandemic America.
Masks are clothes now, and we should all wear them (April 12, 2020)
Despite offering minimal protection, masks' role as a unifying social signal has made them a requisite article of clothing during the pandemic.
Well, I got what I wanted (February 16, 2020)
Acknowledging that I supported impeachment last year, and thinking about what comes next.
UMaine has deplatformed the College Republicans (December 19, 2019)
An unexpected followup to an earlier demand.
UMaine, please deplatform the College Republicans (October 12, 2019)
As a UMaine alumnus, I call on the university to rescind its support for the College Republicans, an organization working at odds with UMaine's public mission.
I saw The Witch (August 17, 2019)
Giving this film a second watch in a different world make me appreciate it more.
How to support Fogknife (August 3, 2019)
Donate to a progressive or pro-climate non-profit organization, and I'll mail you a handsome little vinyl sticker.
I read Plokhy’s Chernobyl (July 1, 2019)
Notes on Serhii Plokhy's dry but enlightening account of the nuclear disaster, and its role in ending the USSR.
Krugman and Pinker on the state and sustainability of human progress (April 5, 2019)
I attended a sort of lecture-duet at Brown University a few days ago, with Stephen Pinker and Paul Krugman giving their respective responses to the prompt question “Is humanity progressing?” This was my first drop-in to an installment of the university’s Janus Forum lecture series. While I get the impression that the two speakers invited to these events often take up starkly opposing views, Pinker and Krugman — while not agreeing, exactly — complemented one anothers’ points in interesting ways.
Yes, let’s begin impeachment (January 19, 2019)
I hereby add my small voice to the rising chorus of those with their minds changed by Yoni Appelbaum's "Impeach Donald Trump", published in The Atlantic this month.
I’ve been playing Diablo III (October 28, 2018)
Years after its initial release, this colorful game of co-op monster-bashing mayhem feels weighted with a despairingly ignorant political message.
I must become anti-Republican to remain pro-humanity (October 6, 2018)
All Republican activity poisons both America and the world. I pledge to seek ways, through both democratic and direct action, to disempower it.
Republicans are enemies of human civilization (June 19, 2018)
Claiming membership in the Republican party today means embracing evil, cruelty, and trading away humanity's future for an extra scoop of ice cream.
Making my position plain (May 30, 2018)
I've begun adding a quiet entreaty about some salient political stances to my open-source software releases.
We can reclaim the second amendment from the NRA (February 24, 2018)
Only a few years ago, the NRA usurped a slice of constitutional law. Let's take it back.
Wherein I light a fresh candle (December 9, 2017)
In September 2016, I wrote a list of promises to myself should Trump win that year's election. I figure that I owe myself a check-in.
I read American Flagg!: Hard Times (October 15, 2017)
Howard Chaykin's Reagan-era comix chronicle imagining a near-future United States in dire trouble.
A letter to my mayor and his moustache about the climate (June 2, 2017)
I just wrote an email to the mayor of Newport. Perhaps I should follow it with a phone call — I’ve proven to myself I can call my representatives in Washington — but email seems like an acceptable starting place, at this level of government.
Black Lives Matter (January 24, 2017)
With Sessions on the stand, this is as good a morning as any to add a new sticker to my laptop. pic.twitter.com/5m3vERaWZs — Jason McIntosh (@JmacDotOrg) January 10, 2017