Virginia Heffernan
@virginiaheffernan
Longtime journalist OMNISHAMBLES MAGIC + LOSS
New cabinet position in Jan 2029: Secretary of Undoing It All
If you're looking for a new religion, may I recommend the one where the gods throw dice and gamble with our lives
Claude: good at simulating anguish, bad at facts. The school in Minab *was* co-ed. (Not saying “according to Al-Jazeera’s initial reporting” is potentially a fireable offense in traditional journalism.)
I used Google translate. Any help with the Farsi here is deeply appreciated. I also came across some interesting American culture news. It's up to the minute. This might point to why Lego News is both so topical and has the humor and style it does. In short, they're Eddie Murphy fans:
But she was so loyal! How could the president do this to such a willing and dutiful sycophant?
In another world Iran's video of Trump's rotted Lego hand would win a CLIO
Chronic Trump Englazement Disorder afflicts even the valets who quit in a huff
In constrast with the Cheney "greeted as liberators" line about how everyone's cheering that the Times is pushing, this is the Indepedent and Guardian rn:
The Times seems superpsyched about getting its war on again
Very weird photo of Steven Pinker, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins aboard Jeffrey Epstein’s plane. Looks pretty obscenely doctored. Were other figures, just maybe, sitting on Dennett’s lap (wtf) and side-hugging Pinker?
The reason the boomer pussyhats were right is that they included the people whose pussies were grabbed, including @ejeancarroll.bsky.social TDS was nothing but clarity
1939 Italian prediction markets were gamified in the newspapers. Trying my hand at a 2026 version. Better than Wordle!
Deleted all cookies and caches and history and this Heritage thing is still my first return on William Penn. What IS the American Heritage whatever? Just what you think.
This was palpably chilling. Searching Google for the complete text of William Penn's treatise on religious tolerance, I got nothing but the American Heritage Education Foundation. Two pages of nearly identical returns, then nothing. Looked like this. Tried an incognito window, same. Bing is OK.
Early aptitude. Is that what they call it now. Google's AI is like reading the Epoch Times or Pravda these days.
There’s something despair-inducing about a former professor of mine (& Larry Summers’s wife) being asked to get Epstein yet another copy of Lolita and saying oh hey check out Willa Cather if you’re looking for literary novels
Searched for a transcript of the Weiss-Kirk town hall & found this one fr/a Christian site. It's somehow an ChatGPT version of the interview as if "Kirk" was Charlie & not Erika. Why o why. Something is sideways when a question starts with, "After your death, some people argued—"
Gemini, this is not what Adriana Smith’s death, forced life support, and forced birth of this infant, still in the NICU after 6 months, “highlights the need for.”
It's a vibrating week w/ Mike Albo's book Hologram Boyfriends out. This book is so beautiful & delonelyfying. Buy it in any form, and watch your life improve & become funnier. It's also a reminder of the Underminer and our 35y friendship, the best of my life. + @albomike.bsky.social
I meant to put this up for the thrilling one-year anniversary, but I missed it by a week. Anyway:
Oh for Chrissakes. The left needs real candidates. Dude got a blobby & unsecret tattoo that no one but the dandruff club calls a Nazi decoder-ring thing. I used "88" in my handle for years till a dandruff man told me it was Third Reich code. That's his problem. They can't own blobs & integers.
"Following his assassination, he expressed..." is a real AI special.