Thomas

@quintonthomas

New Yorker in London. There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.

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Thomas@quintonthomas· Jul 1

With a track record like this, is it any wonder that he's seen as an important voice worth taking very seriously?

text from carville's wikipedia: Nicknamed the "Ragin' Cajun", Carville led successful state campaigns before gaining national attention as a lead strategist in Bill Clinton's winning 1992 presidential campaign. He also played a principal role crafting in the campaigns of several Democratic presidential candidates, including Massachusetts Senator John Kerry in 2004, New York Senator Hillary Clinton in 2008, and Colorado Senator Michael Bennet in 2020. He is married to longtime Republican political consultant Mary Matalin.

Thomas@quintonthomas· Jun 15

Bruno Latour, 2018:

excerpt from Latour's 2018 "Down to Earth": “To go back to the well-worn metaphor of the Titanic, the ruling classes understand that the shipwreck is certain; they reserve the lifeboats for themselves and ask the orchestra to go on playing lullabies so they can take advantage of the darkness to beat their retreat before the ship’s increased listing alerts the other classes!18 For a clarifying episode that is not metaphoric in the least: Exxon-Mobil, in the early 1990s, knowing full well what it was doing, after publishing excellent scientific articles on the dangers of climate change, chose to invest massively in frenetic extraction of oil and at the same time in an equally frenetic campaign to proclaim the non-existence of the threat.19
These people – whom we can call the obscurantist elites from now on – understood that, if they wanted to survive in comfort, they had to stop pretending, even in their dreams, to share the earth with the rest of the world.”

Thomas@quintonthomas· Jun 10

Exactly what came to my mind, too

A quote from Huxley's "Brave New World": "Sleep teaching was actually prohibited in England. There was something called liberalism. Parliament, if you know what that was, passed a lawagainst it. The records survive. Speeches aboutliberty of the subject. Liberty to be inefficient andmiserable. Freedom to be a round peg in a squarehole."

Thomas@quintonthomas· May 26

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Graph from the linked piece that shows the "surging fortunes of California's ultrarich" over time

Thomas@quintonthomas· May 7

www.nytimes.com/2026/05/06/o...

Screenshot from the linked piece: The El Niño building right now, and expected to crest around the end of next year, arrives on top of all our global warming. And it appears stupendously intense — almost certainly stronger than the “Super” El Niño of 2015-16, and perhaps the most intense since the epochal El Niño of 1877. The global consequences of that climatic event were so devastating that the environmental historian Mike Davis called them “Late Victorian Holocausts.”

Thomas@quintonthomas· Apr 27

And you'll never guess the one peer country ranked lower than the UK:

A chart from the study referenced by the Guardian article. The chart shows the US consistently ranked lowest in healthy life expectancy from 2011-2021.

Thomas@quintonthomas· Apr 11

No. In fact, this is how they describe Sasse's scandalous time there:

Sasse served the state of Nebraska in the U.S. Senate for eight years as a high-minded and, by his own account, sometimes ineffectual conservative. Then he quit politics to become the president of the University of Florida, pursuing a different model of civic reform.

Thomas@quintonthomas· Apr 11

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/u...

Quote from the Maggie Haberman/Jonathan Swan NYTimes story on Trump's idiotic decision-making around Iran: "Tucker Carlson, the commentator who had emerged as another prominent skeptic of intervention on the right, had come to the Oval Office several times over the previous year to warn Mr. Trump that a war with Iran would destroy his presidency. A couple weeks before the war began, Mr. Trump, who had known Mr. Carlson for years, tried to reassure him over the phone. “I know you’re worried about it, but it’s going to be OK,” the president said. Mr. Carlson asked how he knew. “Because it always is,” Mr. Trump replied."

Thomas@quintonthomas· Apr 1

This is a very grim piece, but what's really incredible is that it quotes Suzy Welch – THE WIDOW OF JACK WELCH, lamenting the very state of affairs that he himself played a singular role in bringing about. www.wsj.com/business/how...

Quote from the WSJ piece: "Middle managers say they’re on the front lines of the war on fun.

Once used to overseeing a handful of people, they now have far bigger teams. The average manager had roughly 12 direct reports last year, according to Gallup, a nearly 50% jump from when the firm first measured the figure in 2013. AI has changed expectations about productivity, too.

Once-reliable career paths—from business school to consulting, for instance—now look shakier.

“All the conveyor belts are broken,” said Suzy Welch, a management professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, at a recent symposium on purpose and flourishing.

Companies are tightening scrutiny of employee expenses, meaning certain niceties are disappearing, too."

Thomas@quintonthomas· Mar 31

In fairness, he's a busy guy.

text of the book reviewer's corporate bio: "Alex Preston is Head of Advisory at Man Group, responsible for Advisory and for the firm’s client research collaboration with Oxford University, OMI Advisory. He was previously Head of Content at Millennium. Prior to that, he was Client Investment Strategist at Man Group, working for the firm from 2013 to 2020.

Alex started his career in 2001 working for a credit hedge fund before moving to The Carlyle Group, where he was Head of Global Trading. He is a prize-winning author and journalist, writing regularly for The Economist, Financial Times and the Guardian.

Alex graduated from the University of Oxford with an MA in English Literature, and holds a PhD from University College, London. He is also a CFA charterholder."

Thomas@quintonthomas· Mar 3

Same guy:

Thomas@quintonthomas· Mar 3

Thomas@quintonthomas· Mar 2

Hi Jill, What is your defense of the NYT's flagship morning newsletter promoting columns on Iran by opinion writers who have been catastrophically wrong about foreign policy for decades? In what way does this serve the public interest?

Thomas@quintonthomas· Feb 13

"“Get over it” also seems to be his message, implicitly, to those who dwell on his bank’s deep ties to Epstein. Whatever he personally knew about his bank’s involvement with the sex trafficker, he set the tone and the standards for his senior executives, who cultivated Epstein’s lucrative business for years. “Jamie” didn’t act as a “moral compass” – and this wasn’t banking as a “public service”."

Thomas@quintonthomas· Feb 6

David Remnick choosing to help Ben Shapiro run his latest con is certainly a choice in fucking February 2026

Screenshot of the New Yorker Radio Hour's latest episode, titled "Ben Shapiro is Waging Battle Inside the MAGA Movement."

Thomas@quintonthomas· Dec 22

LOL "During the editorial call, meanwhile, a tired-looking Weiss appeared a bit incensed over the backlash to her pulling the CECOT story while doubling down on her decision."

A screenshot of Weiss on the call in question, captioned: "Weiss doubled down on her decision to spike the CECOT story during Monday's editorial call. (CBS News)"

Thomas@quintonthomas· Dec 18

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/u...

Quote from the linked New York Times article on Donald Trump's long, close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein:

"When they arrived at Mar-a-Lago, Ms. Coleman said, her daughter was promptly handed a glass of champagne. She took it away, but waiters kept offering more. Each time one of the middle-aged men at the party approached her daughter, Ms. Coleman would walk over and introduce herself as Ms. Davis’s mother.

During a trip to the bathroom, they ran into Mr. Trump’s new wife, whom they had met earlier. Ms. Maples clasped her hands, Ms. Coleman recalled, and looked her in the eye. “Whatever you do, do not let her around any of these men, and especially my husband,” she told Ms. Coleman. “Protect her.”"

Thomas@quintonthomas· Dec 16

I'm still trying to process this, which I had the misfortune of encountering the other day:

Thomas@quintonthomas· Dec 11

*Joshua And while I'm here, another choice quote from the piece, describing Haldeman touting immigration to apartheid South Africa:

Haldeman also encouraged Canadians to follow his lead: “This country seems to have unlimited opportunities for development. The Rhodesias and South Africa could easily stand 50 million white people. We flew over hundreds of miles in which we could scarcely see even a native hut.”

Thomas@quintonthomas· Dec 11

From a damning piece on Musk's racist, antisemitic, conspiracist grandfather, Jacob Haldeman: www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Quote from the linked piece: "Like many anti-Semites, Haldeman saw natural allies in two seemingly opposing forces: communism and capitalist financiers. “Moscow and Wall Street always work hand in hand at the conspiracy to form a World Government under their control,” he writes in his book.

In Haldeman’s telling, the International Conspiracy was even behind the anti-apartheid forces both within and outside South Africa. He said they had sparked the Sharpeville “riot” on purpose to make money on the South African stock-market drop that came after it. Haldeman consistently argues that Black South Africans are happy with their position under apartheid, even grateful for “the protection of the White people,” and that international meddlers are to blame for riling up opposition. “They know that the White man has done so much for them,” he wrote."

Thomas@quintonthomas· Dec 3

Quote from the linked story: "But Ms. Stefanik is not alone among Republican women in feeling aggrieved by Mr. Johnson. Some of them said privately that the speaker had failed to listen to them or engage in direct conversations on major political and policy issues, suggesting that doing so was a cultural challenge for Mr. Johnson — an evangelical Christian who has often voiced firm views about the distinct roles men and women should play in society."

Thomas@quintonthomas· Nov 26

It takes a certain amount of... chutzpah?... to pose this "question" in the same ~24 hour period that the following headlines appear:

"Nvidia Says It's Not Enron in Private Memo Refuting Accounting Questions"

"A New Way to Ruin Thanksgiving: Making AI Slop Recipes"

"Why rural Wisconsin is blocking the AI data center boom: 'Horses are skittish'"

"OpenAI denies allegations that ChatGPT is to blame for a teenager's suicide"

Thomas@quintonthomas· Nov 26

Lecturing the creator of Flask AND the creator of Django/datasette??

Thomas@quintonthomas· Nov 25

Has anyone checked on this idiotic hack?

Thomas@quintonthomas· Nov 18

lithub.com/the-history-... @muhammadshehada.bsky.social

An excerpt from the linked piece: "Even in our darkest imaginations, no one could have conceived of Gaza’s streets littered with the decomposing bodies and skeletal remains of our loved ones; that stray dogs and cats would be filmed feasting on those bodies; that Israeli soldiers would confess to driving their tanks over hundreds of living and dead humans and crushing them into mush; that parents would scour the streets looking for hacked pieces of human flesh to put randomly in plastic bags and consider each 10–20 kilos a child; that thousands of kidnapped Palestinians in Israeli “torture camps” would be systematically and routinely beaten, raped, forced to perform sexual acts on each other, forced to drink from toilets, starved to near death, blindfolded and chained 24/7 in crowded cages whose air is filled with the “putrid stench” of “neglected wounds left to rot” and amputated limbs, that the perpetrators would document and brag about their atrocities every minute of the day; and that the world would watch all this live-streamed and yet allow it to continue unconstrained."

Thomas@quintonthomas· Nov 16

Ah, yes. Because popularism.

YouGov polling of the question, "Should Britain start extracting shale gas?" As of Sept 2025, 50% of respondents responded, "Should not," compared to 25% who responded "Should."

Thomas@quintonthomas· Nov 13

from Starr's Wikipedia:
Defense of Jeffrey Epstein
In 2007, Starr joined the legal team defending Palm Beach billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who was accused of the statutory rape of numerous underage high school students.[65] Epstein would later plea bargain to plead guilty to several charges of soliciting and trafficking of underage girls, serve 13 months on work release in a private wing of the Palm Beach jail, and register as a sex offender.[66] Starr said he was "in the room" when then-US attorney Alex Acosta made the deal that yielded the plea bargain for Epstein and later described Acosta as "a person of complete integrity," adding that "everyone was satisfied" with the agreement.[67]

Thomas@quintonthomas· Nov 10

For insight into Maxwell's treatment of dogs, here's Christina Oxenberg describing a visit to Maxwell's NY apartment in 1991: pagesix.com/2020/01/16/r...

Quote from Jan 2020 NYPost story: "Also there was “a baby Yorkshire terrier” named Max, which Maxwell had been gifted, Oxenberg writes. “More than once, she threw the quivering little bundle violently across the room. She thought this was hilariously funny.” Oxenberg’s recollection appears as part of a serialized tell-all memoir that the writer has been updating every week on Patreon."

Thomas@quintonthomas· Sep 21

"A presidential historian and biographer of President Ronald Reagan"

from Craig Shirley's wikipedia entry: "He joined the staff of the Republican National Committee in 1982. During the 1984 presidential campaign, Shirley was communications director for the National Conservative Political Action Committee.[11] After Reagan’s reelection, in the late fall of 1984, Shirley opened his own firm and worked on numerous matters in co-ordination with the Reagan White House including aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, support for the Strategic Defensive Initiative, support for the Afghanistan Mujaheddin, support for Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA, and support for the Tax Reform Act of 1986. He also worked on the White House Conference on Small Business in 1985.; and lobbying on behalf of The Heritage Foundation for weapons shipments, via apartheid South Africa, to perpetuate Jonas Savimbi's 20-year insurgency against Angola. He also supported Reagan's Tax Reform Act of 1986, which reduced the top marginal tax rate from 50 percent to 28 percent, and participated in the 1985 White House Conference on Small Business.

In 1986, he became a consultant to Vice President George H. W. Bush's political action committee, Fund for America's Future, and supported George H. W. Bush's 1988 presidential bid.[12] In 1991, Shirley ran an advertising campaign that recruited Kuwaitis to make false charges against Iraq during its occupation of Kuwait which helped lay the groundwork for the Gulf War, later doing public relations for the Embassy of Kuwait and for an international democracy conference hosted by Czechoslovak President Václav Havel. Shirley briefly partnered with David Keene, but that association ended in 1992.[12]

During the 1990s, Shirley founded, on behalf of a group of privately owned utilities, a lobbying entity called Citizens for State Power, which — as the Tulsa World pointed out — was a "secretly funded front group to create an illusion of public support," spending "$350,000 on ads for his anti-deregulation group."[13] In 2000, Craig Shirley & Associates …

Thomas@quintonthomas· Sep 12

Same situation at the New York Times: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/u...